Bronfman Calls for New Dialogue Between Israel and Diaspora Jews

Edgar Bronfman chairman of the North American branch of the World Jewish Congress, has called for “a really new dialogue” between Israel and diaspora Jewry which, instead of focussing on Israel’s “centrality in Jewish life,” must be focussed on the lifeline of that centrality,”meaning “the, new relationship between Israel and Jews outside of Israel.”

In a guest column in the current issue of the WJC News & Views, Bronfman, who is the convenor of the WJC Presidium’s Executive while WJC president Philip Klutzhick, recently appointed U.S. Secretary of Commerce, is on leave of absence, was sharply critical of Israel’s settlement policies and observed that while most diaspora Jews remain publicly uncritical of Israel, they are increasingly anxious and concerned by political, social and economic troubles in the Jewish State. “There is disappointment in a country which is less than what the original Zionists envisioned — an Israel which we wonted to think of as the embodiment of Jewish ideals: fairness, justice, wisdom,” Bronfman wrote.

Some of the troubling factors, according to the writer, are Israel’s “rampant inflation, abysmal productivity and social services it cannot afford. Dissension exists over the handling of the West Bank and its one million plus Arabs and difficulties with the not quite half million ‘resident’ Arabs who are Israeli citizens. Israel has also dismally failed to deal adequately with its Sephardi population, some 60 percent of the Jews in Israel,” Bronfman wrote.

WARNS OF CONSEQUENCES

This odds up to “trouble,” Bronfman wrote. “It is an Israel which, largely because of its political system has been unable to become (the expectation is undoubtedly unfair, but it does exist) the repository of the Jewish ideal; a country which expects its fellow Jews living abroad, especially in the United States, to ‘hold the line’ for it no matter what; a country whose moral base is slowly eroding because of its inability to explain its ‘expansionist’ policies on the West Bank, let alone its ability to deal constructively and decently with many, too many, of its own citizens and its failure to be the embodiment of Jewish ideals.”

Bronfman said that “Israel must team to stop asking the unreasonable of American Jewry (English, French and others, too). It must stop sweeping from ‘Jews in exile’ and must realize that, as long as it is willing to toke our money, it must at least consult with us on the priorities.”

He warned that “Young Jews, if they stay Jewish, are becoming Less and less willing unquestioningly to say ‘My Israel, right or wrong,’ and so are their elders. Israel will reasonably soon have to stand on its own two feet, economically and politically. To do this, given its location, it will have to be both economically viable and morally impressive,” he wrote.