#997 3/1/20 – This Week: Yes, You CAN Light a Candle (but Must Pretty Quickly)

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  We grassroots Diaspora Jews sometimes feel powerless to stand up against international and some major American Jewish groups’ proclamations that the Jewish homeland stops at “the 1967 borders,” that Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem (Western Wall and all) are thus “occupied Palestinian territory.” But next week (and part of the week after) we can each cast our vote against these wrongful historical misstatements.  Here’s why and how.

This Week:  Yes, You CAN Light a Candle (but Must Pretty Quickly)

The very week that I began this mostly media watch back in January 2001, I got my first “unsubscribe.”  It surprised me.  Here’s why.  A fortnight before, a macher in the ZOA (a fugitive from my then almost century-old fraternal order Brith Sholom, of which I was then chairman of its “Israel Activities” committee) had suggested to me that we start a media watch in Brith Sholom.  We did. I started reading my hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, more closely, and found myself astounded that first week to read a front page wire service article that under then President Clinton’s peace plan

     “… Palestinians would have to scale back demands that nearly four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants be able to exercise a right of return to land they fled or were forced to leave in 1948 during the creation of Israel. In exchange, Palestinians would gain . . . .” (Knight-Ridder, 1/4/01, 1, 16)

So in that maiden issue of what this week’s issue is #997, I railed (for the first but hardly last time) against the mainstream media perpetrating this “monstrous misstatement of history” – this reference to “nearly four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants” [Palestine’s entire 1948 population having been less than two million, a good third of it Jews] and the media’s attribution of them to “the creation of Israel,” not to the partition-rejecting Arab invasion for Israel’s destruction. And I condemned the media for not referencing the hundreds of thousands of Israel-absorbed Jewish refugees from Arab and other Muslim lands.

What surprised me about that first unsubscriber’s one-word email “unsubscribe” was how any Jew (however less ardent an advocate of the Jewish homeland he might be than me) could conceivably find railing against such mainstream media anti-Israel imbalance unsubscribable.  I emailed him back to find out.  “Yes, yes, the media is horribly against us,” he said, “but there’s nothing we can do about it, so go find something more productive to do with your time.”  I fired back the old saw “it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness,” and he hung on for awhile.  But the truth is we all feel at times that the world is against us and we ordinary Diaspora Jews, except for contributing money to causes, are powerless to contest it.

But not this week.  This week (and part of next, through March 11) we grassroots American Jews CAN stand up and be counted, not by donating money, but by VOTING for a strong Jewish homeland-supporting American slate competing for representation in the thirty-eighth World Zionist Congress to be convened later this year in Jerusalem.

Here’s how one local organization, the Greater Philadelphia District of the Zionist Organization of America, explained this week why American Jews’ voting matters:

     “In many respects, the future of world Jewry hangs in the balance.  Jews throughout the world will convene in Jerusalem in October for the 38th World Zionist Congress.  There will be 500 delegates as well as alternate delegates participating in deliberations and votes in October based on the outcome of the current election.  Delegates are apportioned based on the voting outcome.  This apportionment not only impacts the Congress in October, but also the World Zionist Organization for the next five years.  The World Zionist Congress and World Zionist Organization control a budget of approximately $1 Billion each year and determine whether or not to support Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria; they determine the focus of Jewish education in Israel and the Diaspora and relations between Israel and Diaspora Jewry; they determine how much to encourage Aliyah; and they determine whether or not to channel Jewish aid dollars to help and rescue Jews in hostile areas such as in Europe.  These are just some of the issues the World Zionist Congress and World Zionist Organization deal with.  As you can see, so much matters on the outcome of this election.”

Rather than give you my opinion why you should vote for slate #11 of the 15 competing U.S. slates, this group of 27 “solidly pro-Israel, Zionist organizations” constituting “the ZOA Coalition,” let me give you a few facts:

FACT:  The official position of the United Nations Security Council (res. 2334) is that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity”; that the UN “reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”; and that the UN “underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”

FACT:  The official position   of the European Union (labeling decree, Nov. 2019) is “non-recognition by the Union of Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967”;  that while products made by Arabs in what the EU called “the West Bank (including East Jerusalem)” could simply be labeled “product from Palestine,” if made there by Israelis the label would have to say “product from the West Bank (Israeli settlement)”; that the term “settlement” has “a demographic dimension beyond its geographical meaning, since it refers to a population of foreign origin”; and that “the West Bank is a territory whose people, namely the Palestinian people, enjoy the right to self-determination.”

FACT:  The official position of the Reform and Conservative American religious movements and several other American Jewish organizations (open letter to President Trump, April 2019) is that the “two-state solution” border between Israel and a new western Palestine Arab state should “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders” save for any agreed “territorial adjustments.”

FACT: Though some have attended J Street conferences, almost all of the Democratic presidential candidates will not attend the upcoming AIPAC conference, even though AIPAC supports “the two-state solution”; none of them supports President Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” which recognizes Jewish homeland rights in historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria; and some would consider moving the Embassy back to Tel Aviv and restoral of American participation in the Iran deal with its time-limited prohibition against Iran developing nuclear weapons.

If casting a vote against these facts, these international and American Jewish institutions’ anti-Jewish homeland positions, seems meaningful to you, going to https://votezoa.org is a meaningful way to cast such a vote.  This site lists the 27 pro-Israel groups in slate #11, the ZOA Coalition, their platform and access to the vote casting process. You can also vote by paper ballot.  ZOA-GPD will send you one.  610-660-9466.   To see all 15 slates’ positions and to vote there, go to www.zionistelection.org.  Voting ends March 11, and won’t come again until 2025.