Task Force on Israeli Arabs Brings Their Plight to Mainstream

While the plight of Israeli Arabs has long been a cause for the more liberal groups in Jewish communal life, a task force started last year has helped push the issue more into the American Jewish mainstream.

Nearly one in five Israeli citizens is Arab, yet this population of 1.2 million still is seeking equality in Israeli life.

That creates a potentially explosive situation, says the executive director of American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues.

“Jewish-Arab relations in Israel is the most pressing domestic issue facing Israel today,” Jessica Balaban says. “The 20 percent minority cannot be ignored.”

This week the task force is holding conferences in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco to raise awareness of the issue.

Israeli Arabs in the past several years have become increasingly discontent with the disparity between Jews and Israelis in terms of education, social welfare benefits and representation in government.

In October 2000, 13 Arabs and one Jew were killed during riots in Arab villages. The riots led to a report by the Or Commission and two subsequent reports warning that unless Israel works to create an equal society, the civil unrest could become rampant and more violent.

Tensions have mounted on both sides.

Jewish Israelis chaff as prominent Arab Knesset members have met with Israel’s enemies in Syria and Lebanon.

And in recent months, as groups such as the Israel Democracy Institute push for Israel to draft a constitution that codifies rights for all Israeli citizens, Israeli Arab groups have published four separate position papers on their rights.

The most eyebrow raising, titled “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs,” was drafted in December by 40 Israeli Arab intellectuals. It denigrated Israel’s history, and called for the right of return of Palestinians to Israel and changing the Israeli flag to feature something less inherently Jewish than the Star of David.

But Balaban said that paper and others spurred conversations,which led Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to announce last month that he will hold a conference focused on expanding dialogue between Israel’s Jewish and non-Jewish citizens.

Progress has been made by the Israelis, especially in the months following the Lebanon war last summer. The government and the Jewish Agency for Israel stepped in to help Arab villages recover from Hezbollah rocket fire, and Jewish Israelis recognized that Arabs also were under attack.

Those involved in the cause say the American Jewish community must press for more advances, which is why the task force was formed in January 2006. It provides educational resources, as well as a vehicle through which organizations and foundations can convene on projects.

Among its some 66 members are key American Jewish organizations and private foundations. They include the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the United Jewish Communities; eight Jewish federations from major cities; and major private foundations such as the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Foundation, the Samuel Bronfman Foundation, the Everett Foundation and the Koret Foundation.

It has also been able to enlist the Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox movements.

“For the first time you have a broad range of American Jewish organizations working on addressing minority rights in Israel, and particularly Israeli Arab rights,” said Larry Garber, president of the New Israel Fund and a member of the task force’s steering committee. “And there are a number of specific events that have happened as a result.”

Supporting the Arab Israeli cause has not been an easy sell in Orthodox circles.

When the Jewish Agency allocated money it received from the UJC’s Israel Emergency Campaign to help Arab towns rebuild after the Lebanon war, some of the strongest critics were Orthodox.

But Nathan Diament, the director of public policy for the Orthodox Union, said the modern Orthodox community generally understands the need to help Israel’s Arab citizens.

“I think people appreciate that the Jewish community overall raises funds to help people in need in Israel, and that part of helping Israeli society be a better society is dealing with all the segments of that society and we can’t ignore that,” Diament said.

Despite an annual budget of only about $400,000, the task force has made headway in its efforts, according to Rabbi Brian Lurie, the head of the Hanna Fromm Foundation and a member of the task force steering committee.

Jewish philanthropy sectors in recent months have formally placed the issue on their agendas. At its General Assembly in November, the UJC ran four sessions dedicated to the plight of the Israeli Arabs.

Also at the assembly, UJC passed a resolution urging Jewish federations to work with the Jewish Agency and the JDC to educate American Jews about the Israeli Arabs’ situation, consider missions to Israel to engage with Israeli Arabs and help build an Israel that benefits all of its citizens. In addition, the UJC started the Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Coexistence to help foster relationships between Jewish and Arab Israelis.

In March, the Jewish Funders Network held several sessions at its annual conference in Atlanta that dealt with the issue.

Garber acknowledges that until recently, only a handful of groups were pushing the cause. Even some members of the task force have been quiet about their educational missions to Israel.

Lurie said he made two previous attempts to start the task force, but in the shadow of the second intifada it could not find traction. Now, however, diverse voices in the Jewish community have allowed the message to seep into the mainstream, he said.

“On this side of the ocean,” Garber said, “there is an appreciation of the danger Israel faces by not dealing with the issue and the sense that this is core to our own Jewish values. We can talk about how the Arab minority in Israel is doing better in socioeconomic terms than Arabs in other Arab countries, but we as Americans don’t appreciate that African Americans or native Mexicans are doing better than people living in Africa or Mexico.

“We want to see that people are treated equally and provided the same opportunities to develop. If Israel is going to remain a democratic state, it needs to figure out a way to do the same.”