The Golda Meir Educational Association (GMEA), which was established in Israel in 1978 to support the values of democracy, cultural and religious pluralism, and humanistic Zionism, is increasing its efforts to combat growing trends of intolerance and polarization in Israeli society.
“We have the largest program in Israel today against extremism and Kahanism,” David Freilich, executive director of the American Friends of the GMEA, said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We are fighting Kahanism,” Freilich said, referring to the ideology of Rabbi Meir Kahane, which advocates the ouster of all Arabs from Israel, “as part of our overall fight against extremism — from the right as well as from the left and our task of strengthening Israel’s basic values of an open, democratic and pluralistic society.”
Boris Krasny, director general of GMEA in Israel, who was also interviewed by the JTA, pointed out that recent surveys and public opinion polls in Israel have shown a dramatic increase for Kahane and his racist views among Israeli youth.
YOUTHS DON’T KNOW MEANING OF DEMOCRACY
“In our meetings with Israeli youngsters we found out that many of them do not know the meaning of the word democracy. Although we fight the phenomenon of Kahanism, our fight is against the general drift of Israeli society to the margins — right and left. Our primary goal is to teach and explain to the young generation of Israelis the meaning and essence of democracy,” Krasny said.
He noted that while in previous years the GMEA approached adults, the emphasis in the last three years is to reach mostly the youth. “There are about 80,000 students in the 11th and 12th grades in Israel’s high schools, and we will reach about 25,000 of them this year,” Krasny said.
He said that the new program of the GMEA includes six seminars on democracy, pluralism and humanistic Zionism in which the high school students participate, in cooperation with their schools, during a two-and-a-half month period. He said that Israel’s Ministry of Education has recommended that all high-schools in Israel use the GMEA program.
THOUSANDS OF PARTICIPANTS IN GMEA PROGRAMS
According to Freilich and Krasny, thousands of adults and youths, including Arabs, have participated each year in GMEA seminars, workshops and leadership training sessions. They said that prominent authors, such as Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua academics and scientists, as well as local and national leaders, volunteer to conduct discussions on issues such as the nature of Israeli society and democracy, the state of the economy, and the prospects for peace between Israel and its neighbors.
“We view it as our duty to reach out to the Israeli-Arab community as well, with a view to ending the predominance of the PLO-inclined Communist Party and to provide Arab citizens with a positive channel of expression within the mainstream of Israeli life,” Freilich said. He added, however, that the numbers of Arabs exposed to the program is still limited and that most of the effort is conducted among Jews. Freilich and Krasny expressed the view that Israel’s democracy is in danger. They said that the combination of economic instability and the continued unresolved issue of the West Bank and Gaza with its demographic and security implications poses a danger to Israeli democracy. They said the GMEA stresses “the importance of the principle of territorial compromise — within the framework of a peace settlement guaranteeing Israel’s security.”
The GMEA also teaches the importance of religious pluralism within Israel “to counter the growing domination of secular life by the extreme Orthodox, and seeks ways to promote integration between the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities in Israel.” Freilich and Krasny said.
Both said that the future of Israel and the kind of society it is going to be will be determined in the next few years. “We believe that we can win and that we can retain the fundamental values on which Israel was established. But in order to win, we need the help and the support of the Jewish people, especially the support of American Jewry,” they said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
