Enemies everywhere we look

French people arrive in Israel, driven out by fear of Islamist killing. Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky and Minister of Immigration and Absorption Sofa Landver welcome them. Photo by David Sajem.

Jews by Religion and Jews of no Religion in the United States. pdf file
Annual Assessment 2013-2014
By JPPI

Jerusalem, 2014
Three extracts from beginning, end,  conclusion and a section on Palestine from the middle of the 242 pp report, Jews by religion and Jews of no religion in the US..

The Government of Israel

The War against De-legitimization
2014

From Part 1:

It is recommended that the Government adopt and implement a comprehensive strategy for the war against the international phenomenon of delegitimization of Israel, in the spirit of the plan that was developed under the leadership of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and of the recommendations made by the Jewish People Policy Institute. The Government should allocate funding at the level required to strengthen the tools and frameworks necessary for the plan’s implementation, and in order to enhance inter-ministry cooperation, with an emphasis on the Foreign Ministry while involving Diaspora organizations in its execution.

Explanation

The threat of de-legitimization is of strategic significance for Israel – one that is no less serious than the physical threats the country faces – and human and budgetary resources should be invested accordingly in response to it. Given the severity of the threat, and in comparison to the readiness in the face of other threats, it is important to strengthen the effort and to allocate the funding necessary to do so. About a year ago, during the presentation of JPPI’s Annual Assessment, the Government resolved to assign primary responsibility for handling the phenomenon to the Minister for Strategic Affairs, and his ministry established a dedicated staff and developed a strategic action plan consistent with the conclusions of JPPI’s delegitimization project.

According to these conclusions and plans, the effort at this stage should concentrate – with Foreign Ministry involvement – on certain Western European countries that constitute a dangerous international incubator for the phenomenon and whose governments even provide, directly or indirectly, millions of dollars in funding de-legitimization organizations. This funding helps to bring the phenomenon to other countries, including the United States; at the same time, ties should be expanded with non-Western international actors\jews by religion; a focused campaign should be waged using sophisticated tools (not necessarily those of the government), including media and legal means, in order to expose the de-legitimizers’ true intentions and to place the main perpetrators on the defensive; Israel’s “other face” should be presented to international public opinion; and significant international networks should be developed for the war against de-legitimization that include non-Jewish and liberal players while also running a campaign in the cyber arena.

In light of the above, the budget necessary for these activities should be increased substantially. The Non-Orthodox Streams JPPI recommends that the State of Israel enhance the status, the role, and the level of official participation of the non-Orthodox Jewish streams (including secular streams) in the religious life of the state, in order to strengthen and underscore its pluralistic, inclusive character.

At the same time, initiatives must take into account existing the jewish people policy institute 15 Israeli perspectives and institutions that provide religion with a public role, and to involve them in the proposals brought up for discussion.

Explanation

The Orthodox rabbinate’s monopoly on matters relating to ritual and personal status are an impediment to Diaspora communities’ identification with the State of Israel, an impediment whose severity has been intensifying in recent years. In order to enhance the Diaspora’s identification with Israel, this monopoly should be ended. At the same time, it should be recognized that religion is part of the Jewish national collective identity (as it is in other nation states), and many in Israel and overseas – not all of whom are necessarily religious – consider public and state religious expression as part of the State of Israel’s Jewish character

Increasing Aliyah from Europe

JPPI recommends that an administration be established within Prime Minister’s Office that will be responsible for advancing Aliyah from Western Europe in general and from France and Belgium in particular. The administration will focus the efforts of the various national and government bodies charged with Aliyah promotion, the Aliyah process, and immigrant absorption. It will deal with coordinating and managing all matters related to the Western European Aliyah continuum under a single integrated umbrella, with a single information system and a computerized information management system, and by redefining the Aliyah and absorption continuum. Intensive efforts are required in the two main areas that constitute key impediments to tens of thousands who have expressed great interest in making Aliyah to Israel and/or in migrating in general:

A committee should be established immediately and charged with the removal of impediments and with increasing the pace of Aliyah from France and Belgium. It will deal, among other things, with matters related to education, military service and ties to the IDF, academic and student affairs, employment, professional licensing and recognition of professional degrees, promoting the relocation of businesses, and investments.

The committee’s membership should include the directors general of the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the World Zionist Organization, and should be chaired by the director general of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Actions should be taken to promote Aliyah through cooperation with the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization and to provide information in every possible way, including through active marketing to increase and renew programs to expose various target audiences to Israel, and through activities in smaller and more distant communities.

Explanation

Although there has been a consistent increase in the number of immigrants (olim) arriving from France over the past 15 months, it still falls far of the potential given the new reality in Europe. It is likely that focused efforts to provide solutions for the tens of thousands of Jews who have expressed interest in making Aliyah immediately will lead to the development of a dynamic of mass Aliyah of tens of thousands, or even more, from France.

Various indicators point to push factors leading to an increase in Jewish migration from France and Belgium to other countries. Along with the economic recession and the growing strength of the extreme right in Europe, and pull factors related to Israel’s stable economy, another element has recently been added: the fear for the safety of European Jews in light of the expected return home of hundreds of European jihadist fighters trained in Syria and Iraq.

For a variety of reasons, most of which can be mitigated, Israel is not necessarily the preferred destination of these migrants. Turning the wave of emigration from France and Belgium into Aliyah to Israel requires targeted and focused action in cooperation with the relevant communities.

The French Jewish community is the largest in Western Europe, and for a variety of reasons it is also the community ripest for emigration. Various surveys indicate that an overwhelming majority of Jews do not have faith in the French government’s ability to defend their institutions and are considering emigration. Therefore, this community has been selected as the focus of a pilot initiative of cooperation between government ministries and the national organizations.

Diaspora Communities

Jewish Identity in the Diaspora

Although Jews who identify as “Jews by religion” generally exhibit strong feelings of commitment and belonging to the Jewish people, we must continue to cultivate this population’s connection to the Jewish people. This can be accomplished through interventions that continue throughout childhood, the teen years, and early adulthood. Therefore, high-level Jewish education, which is rich in opportunities for Jewish peer interaction and lasts throughout the teen years – summer camps, college classes in Jewish studies, and Israel trips – must be strengthened and supported.

Jews who report having no religion and lack a significant sense of belonging and commitment to the Jewish people present a greater challenge. The Jewish people should initiate experimental programs that encourage the rebuilding of their Jewish identity without diverting resources from more connected populations. Moreover, we must conduct further, mainly qualitative research in order to continue to clarify the correspondence between intermarriage and “Jews of no religion.”

Toward a Unified Framework for Reporting Expenses and Activities of Federations and other Jewish Organizations

Federations and Jewish organizations should establish a unified and consistent framework for such reporting across Jewish communal philanthropic institutions in the U.S. and, if possible, other Diaspora communities. This framework should also apply to those organizations not legally required to report to the IRS. Such a uniform framework would establish and define a clearly defined and agreed upon categorization of outlays in areas such as education, Israel, and social welfare. Such a framework would optimize planning and facilitate both longitudinal and inter-organizational comparison.

Explanation

Federations currently make public detailed information on their activities. What complicates discussion and policy analysis is that they vary considerably in how such support is characterized at a more aggregate scale in annual reports and other documents. Such variation make comparisons between time periods, organizations, and regions in regard to activities and expenses, as well as outcomes and achievements necessary for informed policy planning, needlessly cumbersome and difficult. |

Greater Integration of Women into Leadership Positions

In order to promote the greater integration of women into the leadership positions in Federations and other Jewish organizations, JPPI recommends that each current leader identify, together with male candidates, at least two women as potential successors and begin the process of preparing them for possible succession.

In the medium term, the American Jewish community should commit to creating specific leadership programs for mid-career women to help them deal with present obstacles to their advancement and direct them to the leadership positions that will become available in the upcoming years. Programs such as Harvard Business School’s Women’s Leadership Forum,1 whose goal is to prepare women to sustain strategic advantage inside their organizations, could be used as models to be adapted to the Jewish community context.

Explanation

Women are seriously under-represented in the top leadership echelons of Jewish non-profit organizations. This under-representation is connected to and exacerbates the alienation of Jewish youth from Jewish organizations and the organized Jewish community, leadership succession, and a lack of sufficient innovation among Jewish organizations. From the point of view of Jewish youth, lack of adequate representation of women in the Jewish leadership contributes to the image of Jewish organizations as anachronistic and hidebound. In regard to the issue of leadership succession, women make up the vast majority of the employees of Jewish organizations and constitute an important, yet underutilized, talent pool, which can contribute to leadership. With respect to innovation, it is well documented that leadership diversity contributes to organizational innovation.

Jewish Identity and Direct-to-Consumer DNA testing

Jewish communities and major Jewish organizations should set up bodies to provide information
and programing for individuals who, through direct consumer DNA testing, believe they have discovered that they have Jewish roots and wish to connect to the Jewish people. Part of the task of such agencies must also be to prevent DNA tests from becoming a device of alienation from the Jewish people.

Explanation

The last few years have witnessed a dramatic increase in the amount of interest in genealogical mapping. Dozens of new businesses now exist that enable consumers to trace their family history online by searching electronic documents; harnessing the power of virtual social networks and crowd sourcing, these businesses connect individuals with close and distant relatives to collaborate on building interconnected family trees.

Concurrently, advances in genetic research and computing technology have enabled direct-to-consumer (DTC) genealogical mapping through DNA analysis at affordable prices. These two methods of ancestry tracing have become interwoven. Of the many discoveries made by individuals taking advantage of these advances in genealogical mapping is the possible existence of Jewish ancestry. These developments offer new opportunities for connecting, engaging, and strengthening the bonds of the Jewish people.
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Implications for the Triangular Relationship: Jerusalem-Washington-the American Jewish Community

[This is one of few sections that mention Palestine, in the same breath as Iran; that is, it’s not to do with How the US responds to the demand for human and political rights in Palestine but how the US inability to conjure solutions in Palestine or Iran (without upsetting Israel) signifies US weakness.]

We cannot ignore the duality that characterizes the relations in the triangle of Jerusalem, Washington, and the American Jewish community. On one hand, there is a deepest sense of friendship that is evident in the United States’ massive practical support for Israel, particularly in the area of security. On the other hand, there is evidence of mutual anger and frustration.

A reasonable scenario in which the differences between Washington and Jerusalem over the Iranian and Palestinian issues intensify may put the American Jewish community between a rock and a hard place. Public expressions of the pent up tensions that currently exist erupt from time to time in different ways. Thus, for example, the incident (January 14, 2014) that forced Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon to apologize for his harsh comments (“Messianic,” “Obsessive”) in attacking Secretary Kerry. And a repeat incident (March 18, 2014) in which Ya’alon cautioned that if the American administration continues to show weakness in the international arena, U.S. national security would be seriously damaged – a remark that drew the harshest of responses from the administration.

The potential for tension on the other side of the Atlantic was also evident this year in the case of AIPAC’s involvement in an effort to pass congressional legislation to tighten the sanctions against Iran while negotiations with it were taking place. AIPAC and Israel were portrayed as trying to work against the president’s policy, and as those who were eager to involve the United States in a new war in the Middle East. While advocates of the legislation claimed that the talks’ success demanded keeping pressure on Iran, the administration explained that the enactment of additional sanctions would weaken Rouhani and the moderates in Iran, and would break up the Western coalition on Iran.

AIPAC backed off the effort and thereby enabled its opponents to claim that it has lost some of its power. The possibility of further strains in U.S.-Israeli relations, therefore, is growing as two strategic issues that have great implications for Israel’s future unfold. The first involves the scenario of an Israeli strike on Iran against the wishes of the American administration or of U.S. support for an agreement with Teheran that is unacceptable to Israel, and the second involves a scenario in which Israel is increasingly viewed as not having met Washington’s expectations with regard to progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Either of these is likely to strengthen the emerging – though as yet far from dominant – point of view in the United States in which Israel is portrayed as a state whose diplomatic foot-dragging and aggressive regional approach are harmful to U.S. national interests and with which American friendship is becoming increasingly costly.

Advocates of this line in the United States claim that their country is liable to be dragged against its will into another war in the Middle East, that its image in the Muslim world is being damaged, that it is being pushed into isolation in international forums, and that it is being subjected to harmful criticism because of its support for Israel. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the growing sense among Israeli decision-makers that the United States is no longer the same resolute and effective superpower Israel could depend upon in dealing with strategic challenges and in moments of truth. The image portrayed is of a weakened power that is seeking to renounce its role as “global policeman” and to lower the profile of its involvement in the region.

Israelis view the erosion in U.S. standing and its unwillingness to exercise its deterrence capacities (such as against Russia, Iran, and in the Syrian arena) as having a harmful spill over effect on Israel’s deterrence capability. The differences between the countries came to light in an interview President Obama gave to Bloomberg reporter Jeffrey Goldberg. Obama stated that the only factor preventing the creation of a regional front against Iran is the lack of a solution to the Palestinian issue. He accused Israel of failing to offer an alternative vision for how it will survive – in the absence of the two-state solution – as a Jewish and democratic state living in peace with its neighbours. He claimed that construction in the settlements has continued aggressively over the past two years – more so than anything seen for a very long time. And he warned Israel: “If Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.”

The meaning of this statement is that, in the event that the negotiation route is blocked, the United States may no longer be able to protect Israel effectively against an international de-legitimization campaign as it has in the past. This warning was repeated in the remarks of White House official Philip Gordon, Obama’s representative at the conference on peace initiated by the Haaretz newspaper (July 8, 2014): “How will Israel remain democratic and Jewish if it attempts to govern the millions of Palestinian Arabs who live in the West Bank? How will it have peace if it is unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupations, and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security, and dignity? How will we prevent other states from isolating Israel or supporting Palestinian efforts in international bodies if Israel is not seen as committed to peace?”

But it was Secretary Kerry’s comments in a closed meeting that have provoked the most anger in Israel and among American Jews (April 25, 2014):

A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens – or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.

Although Kerry later apologized, it did not conceal the mood prevailing in the administration: a mix of significant criticism of Israel’s conduct, and reassuring rhetoric about the resilience of the relationship between the two countries. Thus, for example, the American envoy to the peace talks, Martin Indyk, said that “Unlike the ‘reassessment’ Kissinger did in the Ford administration, there is one significant difference: President Obama and Secretary Kerry would never suspend U.S.- Israel military relations as their predecessors did back then.”

Tension between the two countries were also evident in the Israeli reaction to Indyk’s emphasizing Israel’s role in causing the talks to break down (mainly settlement construction and its failure to release a final set of prisoners). Unnamed official sources attacked Indyk personally in the strongest terms, calling him a “hypocrite” and accusing him of not taking responsibility for his part in the talks’ failure.

Tensions between Washington and Jerusalem do not skip over U.S. Jewry. Critical comments about Israel (particularly Kerry’s use of the phrase “an apartheid state”) have drawn outraged responses from Jewish spokesman in the United States, but they have also caused discomfort as American Jews increasingly find themselves between a rock and a hard place. The delicacy of the Jewish predicament in the United States was revealed when it became known that Pollard’s release would likely be an element of the deal to extend the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. For example, former Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, who opposed the deal, claimed that he has known Jews who were removed from Israel-related government projects after Pollard’s imprisonment, and that Americans with Israeli relatives have sometimes been denied top security clearance. Ambassador Dennis Ross, who supported the deal, has said that the Pollard case strengthened the stereotype that Jews cannot be trusted on issues related to Israel.

Jonathan Pollard is driven away from U.S. District Court in Washington in 1986 after pleading guilty to spying on the United States and giving classified cocuments to the Israeli secret service. He is still in US federal prison. Photo by Reuters.

Pollard, above, is the only American ever to receive a life sentence for passing classified information to an ally of the U.S. [viz. Israel]. The sustained harshness of his sentence appears to be because the US security services do no trust Mossad not to sell his info on to/exchange it with some other country. Or perhaps they believemany AMerican Jews may bw first and foremost loyal to Israel and so must be deterred from this threat to national security?

U.S. Jewry is therefore likely to be challenged more stringently as gaps between Israeli and American positions become wider. The more Israel presses to “mobilize” American Jews behind the effort, and the more Israel operates in the administration’s political back yard (especially if perceived to be favouring Republicans), the more difficult the situation may become. Such a reality could discomfit the American Jewish community and make intra-Jewish divisions highly conspicuous, especially given the claims that American foreign policy in the Middle East is influenced by Israel and the Jewish lobby in a way that conflicts with United States’ own interests.

Conclusion

At the last UN General Assembly, President Obama made American foreign-policy priorities clear: “In the near term, America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the Arab-Israeli conflict. While these issues are not the cause of all the region’s problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can serve as a foundation for a broader peace.”

But along with the importance Obama places on these issues, he also lowered expectations as to the prospect of achieving the goals. In an interview he gave to the New Yorker, he estimated the prospects of reaching final treaties with Iran and between Israel and the Palestinians as “less than 50-50.” The president’s sober assessment shows the severe uncertainty inherent in both issues that are so critical to Israel and to the resilience of the triangular relationship between Jerusalem, Washington and the American Jewish community. Yet, the severe uncertainty, which unfortunately characterizes the entirety of Israel’s strategic situation, does not relieve Jerusalem of the need to take fateful decisions