NEW YORK — A progressive Jewish group with Bay Area roots has launched a national media campaign to combat what it considers threats to Israeli democracy.
Called “Voice for Democracy,” the campaign urges Jews to speak out against social inequities that the New Israel Fund claims are undermining democratic values.
The effort stems from a belief that many American Jews may be hesitant to criticize Israel during a time of crisis.
NIF supporters are invited to sign an online “open letter” in a series of ads in The New York Times, the Jerusalem Report and major American Jewish newspapers, including the Jewish Bulletin.
“A democracy is more than just casting a ballot,” said Jim Scheinman, San Francisco regional director of the agency. “Democracy is about having a civil society.”
He said the effort is intended to “give voice to those lovers of Israel” who nonetheless have concerns about some of the country’s policies and practices and may be afraid to speak out.
The NIF views its criticism as being decidedly “pro-Israel,” Scheinman said. “You love the democracy so much you want it to improve.”
The fund, whose national headquarters is now in Washington, D.C., specifically points to the growing gap between Israel’s rich and poor, the need to protect the rights of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, and the battle for religious pluralism in Israel.
Some Jewish leaders are blasting the campaign.
“The people from the New Israel Fund obviously don’t go to Israel,” said Helen Freedman, executive director of Americans for a Safe Israel. “Jews shouldn’t be worried about some false democracy that can’t exist with people whose stated intention is to kill you.”
In San Francisco, Ernest Weiner, regional executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said he supported the NIF’s right to speak out, but he questioned the group’s underlying motives. “The allegiance of an individual is never called into question,” he said. “It’s when someone does something out of bounds that that allegiance is called into question.”
Weiner pointed to the apparent attempted hijacking on Nov. 17 of an El Al plane by an Arab Israeli and the indictment of four Arab residents of Jerusalem in the July 31 bombing at Hebrew University.
“I think there’s a genuine sense in much of the informed Jewish community that some members of the Arab community in Israel are seen as potential hostile threats,” he said.
Norman Rosenberg, the Washington-based executive director of the 23-year-old NIF, said the ads are meant to spark debate about Israel’s social ills and raise money to fight them. “In Israel these issues are debated every day in every way, but that is not the case here” in the United States, where “any questioning is seen as Israel-bashing.”
While he acknowledged that Israel is engaged in a “difficult” military struggle with the Palestinians, Rosenberg said that “we want to make sure that another casualty doesn’t become the democracy we care so much about.”
Weiner was skeptical of any suggestion that American Jews were reluctant to criticize Israel.
“I have yet to meet a Jew who is afraid to speak out,” he asserted. He described the Bay Area in particular as “the breeding ground of outrageous speaking out, frequently without basis.”
The newspaper ads, timed to precede Israel’s Jan. 28 elections, initially will offer an overview of the issues and then will focus on specific topics through the end of the year, NIF officials said.
“The only democracy in the Middle East must remain a democracy. Even in war,” said the ad that appeared in the Nov. 15 Bulletin.
Despite the timing of the ads, fund officials insist the campaign favors neither left nor right in Israel. “This is a nonpartisan effort,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the group’s communications director. “Whe-ther it’s a Labor or Likud government, we’re advocating change no matter who’s in charge.”
Among the first issues addressed are civil rights for Israel’s 1.2 million Arab citizens, “who are waiting to have the promise of democracy fulfilled for them,” Rosenberg said.
The ad warns of threats by some Israelis “to forcibly transfer Arabs, including citizens of the state.”
Such talk, once considered radical, has grown “commonplace,” Rosenberg claimed.
Reached last week on a visit to the Bay Area, NIF board President Peter Edelman said, “Open dialogue and open expression” are vital to the health of any democracy, even for a country in crisis.
“If you don’t have that discussion, you might not get the best policy results,” added Edelman, formerly a high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration.
“I think there are a fair number of people who have concerns who don’t express them.”
The fund has spent $150,000 on the effort so far, and hopes the ads will “generate more funding” for future ads and media campaigns, Rosenberg said.
The campaign represents a departure of sorts for the NIF. The group has awarded more than $120
Information on the campaign is available at its Web site, www.voicefordemocracy.org