When the Jewish Agency Assembly convenes here late next month, it will again find itself dealing with how and when to fill the top job.
Acting Chairman Yehiel Leket, a long-time Agency official, is slated to step aside on June 10 according to a timetable agreed to last February during a meeting of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors. That timetable presumed the Labor Party would elect a permanent chairman by then.
No such luck.
The Labor Party appears nowhere near ready to hold such elections.
Leket’s tenure is consequently expected to be extended by several months, giving him additional time to make the case that he be allowed to keep the job.
Also angling for the position are Labor Knesset Member Avrum Burg and former Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat, who resigned earlier this month from the Likud.
Prime Minister and Labor Party leader Yitzhak Rabin, is understood to be too preoccupied with the peace process to turn his attention to Jewish Agency politics right now. He is also busy picking up the pieces after Labor’s stinging defeat in the recent elections of the Histadrut labor federation.
The Agency’s chairman, Simcha Dinitz, stepped aside last winter after being indicted for aggravated fraud and abuse of public trust related to the alleged abuse of Jewish Agency credit cards.
His trial is scheduled for July but he has agreed not to stand in the way of elections for a new chairman, regardless of the disposition of his case. His tenure will expire formally at the end of December.
ATTEMPTING TO CONTAIN THE DAMAGE
The Dinitz affair rocked the Jewish Agency which, with a budget of $500 million a year, is the primary recipient of money raised for Israel by the United Jewish Appeal. The leaders of the Diaspora fund-raising organizations sought to contain the damage done to the Agency’s reputation and to replace Dinitz as quickly as possible.
The Agency chairman is chosen by the Israeli and Diaspora members of the World Zionist Organization following the selection of candidates by Israel’s political parties.
The choice must be ratified by the Diaspora fund-raisers under the leadership of the chairman of the Board of Governors, Mendel Kaplan.
Because the Labor Party now holds the reins of power in Israel, it will choose the main candidate and submit his name to Rabin.
Kaplan agreed last winter to install Leket as acting chairman until June 10, at which point he expected a permanent candidate would be put forward.
Kaplan and several other Diaspora leaders pushed Leket to agree not to be a candidate for the permanent post, but he refused. He was backed in his refusal by Rabin, with whom he has close ties.
Kaplan and many of the Diaspora fundraisers strongly objected to Leket as a permanent chairman because they believed he did not qualify as the “man of stature and reputation” needed to head the Agency.
Despite Rabin’s full agenda, sources say that Kaplan will try to press him to hold a Labor Party election in the coming weeks. As of now, the clear frontrunners in such a race are Leket and Burg.
Labor Party insiders say it has been all but decided that there will be an election within the central committee and not a national party primary, a scenario said to favor Leket.
Many members of the central committee “are older established figures with whom Leket has strong relationships,” said a party operative.
“Burg would prefer a national party primary because he has a substantial base of popular support,” he said.
OUTSIDER MAY ENTER THE FRAY
At the same time, some insiders venture Kaplan may prod the prime minister to change the rules of the game to allow an “outsider” to enter the fray by bypassing the party machine.
Kaplan told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he would not have any comment on plans for filling the permanent chairmanship until after he meets with Rabin.
That outsider could be Lahat. His recent resignation from the Likud enhances his eligibility for the post. Lahat could not be reached to determine his level of interest in the post.
In any case, party stalwarts say changing the rules is a highly unlikely scenario.
Choosing the chairman “is a piece of the political pie” and Israelis will resist any such an attempt by the Diaspora to wrest it away from them, said one source.
And Rabin, the source continued, is unlikely to want to risk alienating his party so soon after the Histadrut defeat.
Meanwhile, Leket maintains he has not been campaigning but has simply sought to overcome any Diaspora opposition and doubts by doing his job well. “I’m not campaigning now,” he said. “I’ve decided to devote all my time to running the Jewish Agency. I feel I’m successful and have the full support on the political and professional level.”
“He’s been received well,” said one high-level Agency official. “While he is not a dynamic speaker, he says the right things and has increased morale.”
Leket, the official continued, is a “team-builder” who includes people in decision-making. “He also pays a good deal of attention to operations and detail” and this “has been missed and is appreciated by the professional cadre.”
Meanwhile, Burg is said to be campaigning hard for the job, though he reportedly also has his sights set on a ministerial post within the government.
Rabin is under pressure to fill a few of several empty ministerial portfolios with members of the young Labor guard. While he is known not to like Burg very much, Burg is seen as less distasteful to Rabin than some others gunning for the jobs.
In any case, Burg has been on his best behavior with Rabin of late. He sided publicly with the prime minister against his friend Haim Ramon, who successfully challenged Labor in the Histadrut elections.
Meanwhile, in a sign of the times, the fervently Orthodox Sephardic Shas Party reportedly wants to get into the Jewish Agency act, following its coalition victory in the Histadrut elections, a new arena for the party.
Fresh on the heels of the win, where Shas backed Ramon, Shas Knesset Member Aryeh Deri reportedly said the party would set its next sights on “conquering” the Jewish Agency and would begin by supporting Burg’s candidacy.
‘NOT ALL OF US ARE STUDYING IN THE YESHIVA’
Deri was not available to confirm the reported remark and Shas Knesset faction chairman Shlomo Benizri said he knew nothing of this alleged new strategic plan.
But Benizri said the idea of getting involved in the Jewish Agency is a logical one.
“Every (institution) interests us because we are participants in the country,” he said. “Not all of us from Shas are studying in the yeshiva. We can do any job.”
Such activism would be “part of the trend by Shas to spread its wings,” said a highly placed government official. “The party wants to penetrate any existing establishments with power and influence and the Agency represents a new sphere of influence.”
“Shas wants in because Shas wants the money in the Torah Education Fund ($5 million) and because it wants to marginalize the Reform” movement, said one Agency official.
In fact, Shas is not a Zionist party and has no role in the WZO-Jewish Agency. The soonest it could have a “seat at the table” of the WZO is in 1997, after elections at the next Zionist Congress.
However, a proposal is pending to expand the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors, which some believe could be a vehicle for Shas officials to win representation, if only as individuals.
That proposal, put together by the “Committee of Six,” with three representatives from the Board of Governors and three from the WZO, calls for an expansion of the Board of Governors from 74 to 120 members, with the new members to be appointed.
Half of the newcomers would be nominated by the WZO on a technically non-party basis. In this way, individual Shas members could be brought into the Agency by the WZO under pressure from the Labor Party, whose government-led coalition needs Shas support.
The expansion proposal is part of a package of proposed reforms and must be approved next month by the WZO before the Assembly votes on it a week later. It is, in the meantime, being challenged by a Reform-led faction inside the WZO for violating the constitution’s democratic principles of elections.
“It upsets the equal partnership that is supposed to be the basis of the Jewish Agency and introduces into the WZO undemocratic representation,” said Rabbi Uri Regev, one of the heads of the Reform faction in the WZO.
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