Behind the Headlines: Delegates to Debate, but Not Vote on Settlements at Njcrac Plenum

Israeli settlement policy will be a topic of heated debate when delegates from local Jewish community relations councils and national Jewish agencies gather this weekend in Portland, Ore.

But in an apt reflection of American Jewry’s qualms about interfering with Israeli policy, the delegates will be given a voice, not a vote, on the issue at the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council’s annual plenum.

A transcript of the scheduled two-hour debate on settlements will be given to Israeli lead- ers. But no resolutions or statements of policy will be acted on, unless two-thirds of the delegates agree to overturn a ruling by NJCRAC’s leadership.

The plenum planning committee’s decision to have a debate but take no action mirrors American Jewry’s ambiguous situation as Washington and Jerusalem negotiate the terms under which Israel would receive U.S. guarantees for $10 billion in loans.

Israel badly needs the money to help absorb hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. But the United States is insisting that Israel put a freeze on the construction of housing in the administered territories.

While Israel’s Likud government insists that its settlement policy is vital to its security, only a few Jewish organizations, such as the Zionist Organization of America, have formally endorsed that policy.

More prominent have been the positions taken by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the American Jewish Congress, which echo Labor Knesset member Yitzhak Rabin’s declaration that Israel’s recent large-scale settlement drive is “a tragic mistake.”

Most Jewish organizations, however, have avoided taking any stance on the settlements. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, representing some 50 national Jewish organizations, has never debated the issue.

A PUSH TOWARD DISSENT

The explicit purpose of the NJCRAC plenum, unlike other major gatherings of organized American Jewry, is to arrive at a national Jewish policy on various issues.

Advocates of an Israeli settlement freeze see NJCRAC as a particularly hospitable forum because 117 of its constituent agencies are local Jewish community relations councils, most of them far from the New York-Washington corrid of Jewish organizational life. (The other constituents are 13 national Jewish agencies.)

The policies published by NJCRAC in its annual Joint Program Plan are in large measure domestic, covering such issues as anti-Semitism, multiculturalism, health care and poverty, though the plan also contains sections on Israel and world Jewry.

In recent years, activists have pushed NJCRAC to dissent at points from Israeli policy, though the Israel-oriented planks remain far closer to the Likud government’s positions than the domestic proposals are to the Bush administration’s agenda.

This year, the AJCongress and the UAHC proposed amendments to NJCRAC’s proposed “strategic goals,” as well as a sense-of-the-plenum resolution advocating a “moratorium on settlement growth” in the administered territories. The Jewish community relations councils in Detroit and Milwaukee also proposed such measures.

But the plenum planning committee ruled last week that the proposals would not be voted on at the plenum, since they raised new issues not fully examined by NJCRAC’s Israel Task Force, which meets several times throughout the year.

“Proponents of the resolution would argue that we have discussed settlements in the past,” said Kenneth Bandler, director of public information for NJCRAC.

“But the committee pointed out we have never discussed settlements in the context of the peace process or loan guarantees, which raise new issues,” he said.

Under NJCRAC rules, the agenda of what is to become the Joint Program Plan is first discussed by the relevant task forces. Drafts of policy statements to be included in the plan are sent out in December, prompting proposed amendments, which are collated and voted on at the plenum.

AN EFFORT TO UNDERMINE ISRAEL’

The plenum, however, is not the final word. The NJCRAC executive committee meets in June and approves the final wording of all policy statements to be included in the Program Plan, which is released in August.

Theodore Mann, who formerly chaired NJCRAC and is now the AJCongress delegate to the organization, disputes the idea that the settlements have not been discussed before. He pointed to positions going back as far as a 1978 call on then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin to freeze settlements during the Camp David peace talks.

Mann will appeal the planning committee’s ruling and, if necessary, seek a two-thirds vote in the plenum to reinstate the proposed amendments and resolutions.

William Rapfogel of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, said it is a good thing that the resolutions were derailed. He is working with several other national and local agencies to make sure they remain off the floor.

The AJCongress and UAHC moves are “really an effort to undermine Israel,” said Rapfogel, who is executive director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute of Public Affairs. “It will be used as a device to further link the loan guarantees and which can be used to link other issues.”

He said that dozens of other proposed amendments to the Joint Program Plan were similarly not included on the agenda for discussions, including some his group proposed on church-state relations, which “were not seen as part of the mainstream of consensus thought within NJCRAC.”

A PARTIAL VICTORY

Still, putting the settlements debate on the plenum schedule is being seen as a partial victory for those advocating a freeze.

“Many people who feel it was critical to address this issue are very pleased that almost two hours will be devoted exclusively to the settlements issue and that the question of a settlement moratorium will be part of that discussion,” said Thomas Smerling.

Smerling is executive director of a group called Project Nishma, which was founded to help push a dovish line on Israel in American Jewish circles.

“If that’s all there will be, then that’s all there will be,” agreed Mann of AJCongress, who also co-chairs the Nishma group.

He added wryly: “Last year we couldn’t discuss certain issues because there was a war in process. This year we can’t discuss certain issues because there’s a peace in process.”

The JTA Daily News Bulletin will not be published on Monday, Feb. 17, which is a federal holiday in the United States.