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Haim Dov Beliak just e-mailed me about a bombshell piece of news.
Eckstein sittin’ pretty: Helping restore Jesus to his throne at $600K per annumFor the first time in its history, the Jewish Agency has named a non-Jew to sit on its top leadership board. And not just any non-Jew, but a right-wing evangelical. The Jerusalem Post put it most dramatically:
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews will become one of the central strategic partners – and funders – of the Jewish Agency following a deal announced this week that will see some $45 million donated by the organization to the Agency over three years.
The funds will go to the Jewish Agency’s core budget, which has been shrinking in recent years as donors overseas choose to give directly to projects, bypassing the Agency. As a result, many in-house Agency projects, such as Jewish identity programs in the former Soviet Union, face cutbacks each year.
The donation is part of a broader agreement that will see Fellowship founder and president Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein join the Jewish Agency Executive, the 26-member “cabinet” that makes its high-level decisions and implements policy.
Fellowship representatives will also be given seats on the agency’s Budget and Finance Committee and the Coordinating Committee between the agency and the Israeli government.
The groundbreaking move comes at the behest of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the leading fundraiser among the U.S. evangelical community. Eckstein’s International Fellowship of Christians and Jews raises scores of millions each year for Israel. Though IFCJ says the funds do not support “construction of settlements” it clearly supports projects both within and outside the Green Line, as this Haaretz article makes clear, and makes no distinction between them. One thing is for sure: whether or not the group funds settlements its mission calls for 100% support of retention of the Occupied Territories via the work it does with an affiliate, Stand With Israel. This is from one of its publications (pdf):
The Lie: Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace.
The Truth: The Oslo Accord, signed by Israel and the Palestinians in 1993,
contains no language requiring Israel to dismantle or freeze any settlements…When the Palestinians put down their guns, there will be peace.
When the Israelis put down their guns, there will be no Israel.
Haim Dov Beliak tells me he has been the leading private donor to the settlements though I’m trying to authenticate where his resources are spent and whether they have a political/ideological agenda. The new agreement gives him a seat on the Agency’s executive by dint of his fundraising prowess. At any rate, Christian Zionists in general provide massive amounts of financial support to settlements.
It’s laughable that IFCJ’s Christian representatives disclaim a political agenda:
…A Jewish institution official who spoke anonymously…wondered if American Christians’ voice would be heeded when deciding politically-sensitive issues. But a source familiar with the group’s workings said it had always limited itself to apolitical welfare work.
“The Fellowship interacts with donors in terms of values, where the money is going, reporting and accountability,” he said. “But that’s the end of the relationship. The donors…influence over decision-making is almost nil. In the disengagement [from Gaza in August 2005], or on the question of donating over the Green Line, you see that the organization had no political side. It gives according to National Insurance Institute categories of poverty, not political viewpoint,” the source said.
It’s important to understand why IFCJ specifically supports immigration, as this has a theological context for the Christians according to this Eckstein interview in The Guardian:
“They believe, and I believe, that they have a very important role in helping facilitate the in-gathering of the Jewish people as foretold and promised by Isaiah and the prophets and this is part of the messianic redemptive process,” he [Eckstein] says.
In other words, in order to fulfill their End Times prophecy these evangelicals are attempting to bring every Jew back to Israel. The more Jews make aliya, the closer they get to Armageddon and Jesus’ return (which I might add includes the notion that one-third of all Jews will be killed).
Not every IFCJ venture succeeds. Their project to persuade Iranian Jews to make aliya offered a $10,000 bounty for any Iranian who took them up on the offer. There were so few takers they’ll be discontinuing the program at year’s end. They could always have tried bombing a few Jewish synagogues and saying the Revolutionary Guards did it. That tactic has been tried with some success in past attempts to persuade Middle Eastern Jews to emigrate.
IFCJ’s 2006 IRS form 990 indicates that Eckstein earned nearly $600,000 in salary and benefits. Helping restore Jesus to his throne can be quite a profitable venture for some Jews.
Tags: jewish-agency
If yr description of the attitudes of Israelis to the Territories is correct (& I am by no means accepting that it is), it will create all the more shock, dislocation & national trauma when Israel finally ends up withdrawing from almost all of that Territory which Israelis supposedly see as integral to their national consciousness. This is the sickness of both Occupation & settlements. It poisons the soul of the nation & makes it deeply problematic to ever have a normative existence.
You are entirely too ready to see those Israelis who object to the settlements & do NOT see them as integral to Israel as fringe or marginal when they are nothing of the sort. The Israeli left does not see the settlements as illegal?? If so, then they are not the Israeli left. I’d like you to point me to any alleged Israeli progressive who accepts the legality of settlements.
As for Tel Aviv University, you seem to assume that my Israeli professor-correspondent teaches there, but he doesn’t. Besides, I don’t blame the current faculty for sins committed by the Israeli government & Palmach/Haganah in 1948. That is a national issue which will have to be worked out in peace talks.
If you believe that a degree from Ariel College is equivalent to a degree from a fully accredited Israeli university then you’re only fooling yrself.
I presume that you are aware that the settlements in post-1967 Judea/Samaria/Gaza were first put up by the Labor Party. Yitzhak Rabin, even AFTER he signed the Oslo Agreements was a big supporter of building in Gush Katif. I am, of course, including the Labor Party in the “Left” column. The biggest backer of Gush Emunim and settlement in Samaria was Shimon Peres. Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon and David Ben-Gurion were aong the first supporters of building Kiryat Arba next to Hevron. The Israeli Supreme Court, which has always had a Leftist majority has ruled that the settlements are “legal”
I am willing to admit that many of the Labor Party people who supported the settlements will now say it was a “mistake” for PRACTICAL reasons, but I am sure they would NOT say that they are “illegal” or “immoral”, any more than the settlements that were built before 1967 in the rest of the country.
I am using the term “Left” as is generally accepted in Israel. I repeat, part of the Left does agree with your position and part (the majority) doesn’t. Your definition of a “progressive” (a term not used much in Israel) as meaning someone who ipso-facto defines settlements as illegal and immoral is yours and yours alone. MERETZ, which does fit your definition of “progressive” and does oppose all the settlements, views itself as a natural ally of the Labor Party and NOT of the anti-Zionist HADASH or Arab parties and thus even they feel more comfortable with those who in the past supported the Judea/Samaria project.
You’re using ideological terminology that’s WAY out of date. Is Ehud Barak a “leftist?” Hardly. Is Colette Avital a “leftist?” More likely. To call Labor a “leftist” party is quite absurd. Some members are left of center, some are right of center. And as a party it has no strong ideological stance except as some vague centrist force perhaps slightly to the left of Kadima though even that’s stretching it.
That’s nonsense. You’re using the term “Left” in a way that is convenient for yr argument but in no way reflects any prevailing consensus on usage of the term in Israel or anywhere else.
Ho ho, that’ll be news to Peace Now, Meretz, Brit Tzedek, Israel Policy Forum, B’Tselem, Machsom Watch, Anarchists Against the Wall, Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, & scores of other progressive NGOs who believes precisely what I believe. Guess I’m not so all alone as you make me out to be.
What are you smokin’? Is that why Meretz currently sits in government with its “natural ally,” the Labor Party?? Oh, what’s that you say? Meretz isn’t in the government? Well, how could that be? I thought Labor was it’s “natural ally.” Wouldn’t Meretz want to join Labor in the government if it was indeed a “natural ally?” Guess that’s another rhetorical stretch on yr part. Meretz refused to join the government and Labor agreed. Guess they’re not “natural allies” after all.
Meretz “feels comfortable” with past and present supporters of the Occupation? Where are you digging this stuff up? Just as a fer instance. Yossi Beilin was a Peres protégé. How “comfortable” does Yossi Beilin feel about Shimon Peres’ past support for the settlements and Occupation? On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d give it about a 1.
MERETZ is not in the gov’t because Olmert didn’t want them, he wanted SHAS and Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. It was Olmert who won the last election and he decided who would be in the coalition. All the NGO’s you listed are still, all together, considered fringe groups .
Let’s say you are correct and that Labor is not a “progressive” party. Then how many Jewish “progressive” seats there are in the Knesset: MERETZ’s 5 out of 120. Let’s add the 9 Arab seats, one of which in HADASH is held by a Jew, Dov Kheinan (if you consider Islamic fundamentalists “progressives”). Now we are up 14 out of 120, slightly more than 10%. Now, lets say that all the Labor party MK’s agree with you, even though you yourself said they don’t (I mean on the “illegality and immorality” of the settlements)…they have 19 so that puts us up to 33, slightly more than 1/4 of the Knesset. There you have it, the total representation in the Knesset that MIGHT agree with you.
I should add that MERETZ has voters in Judea/Samaria, mostly in places like Alfei Menashe, Ariel and other settlements that are considered “within the consensus” (whatever that may mean).
Yossi Beilin has been ousted by MERETZ so I don’t know how much weight he carries any more in the Israeli political system. He was previously ousted by the Labor Party. I guess they felt that his responsibility for Oslo was a drag on their electoral prospects.
First, Olmert considered asking Meretz to join the gov’t but the party refused to join. 2nd, even if what you say is right (which it isn’t) why would Olmert refuse to include Labor’s “natural ally” in a coalition gov’t.? I guess Olmert doesn’t quite see Meretz as Labor’s natural ally.
Again, says you. I’ve got news for you–you’re a fringe too. Your views are no more representative of the majority of Israelis than mine are.
I don’t judge the popularity of my political views based on the composition of the Knesset. The Knesset, because of many factors, not least of which it’s lack of local geographical representation, is not truly representative of grassroots Israeli opinion. Just look at all the opinion polls whose results completely contradict government policy. A majority of Israelis in favor of sharing Jerusalem. A majority in favor of final status negotiations & an independent Palestinian state. A plurality in favor of negotiations with Syria and Hamas. Sorry, but it’s the government which refuses to acknowledge the views of the populace.
And Mike Huckabee has Jewish voters. So what. There will always be weird anomalies in electoral voting. Besides, if there are those who live in the Territories who oppose the Occupation & want to vote for Meretz, more power to them. One commenter at this blog fits this category. He’s a good soul fr. what I can tell. He’s made his life there but is willing to come back within the Green Line when the Israeli government tells him to.
There you go again. Beilin LEFT the Labor party to form Meretz and he has not been “ousted” by Meretz. He stepped down from his position as party chair which was not a successful tenure for him. I don’t know who you think you’re fooling with yr distortions of reality. But it’s no one here.
Could you give me an example of polls saying “the majority of Israeli favor dividing Jerusalem”? I know that the Genevi Initiative people quote one poll claiming there is a majorithy in favor of that. However ALL the polls I have heard quoted in Israel since the subject was brought up by Ramon a few months ago say there are large majorities against it. The GI people obviously have an interest in promoting results that favor their position, they are not interested in “neutral” observations of public opinion. I think the most reliable polls are the Steinmetz Center polls reported monthy in Ha’aretz and IIRC they don’t show anything like the GI poll results.
You are quite right that my position is not that of the majority in Israel. I never said it was. A majority of Israeli would agree to having a Palestinian state set up IN RETURN FOR A REAL PEACE AGREEENT, something I object to for various reasons. What I said is that the majority of Israelis do not view the settlements as “illegal or immoral”.
Your statement about “Beilin leaving Labor to found MERETZ” is completely incorrect. Beilin, in the Labor Party primaries before the 2003 elections was placed somewhere near place number 40 on the Knesset party list, while polls showed them getting in the low 20′s (they got 19 in the end). When this happened he announced , along with Yael Dayan, that they were jumping to MERETZ, then headed by Yossi Sarid. They weren’t really wanted there, either and were place in spots number 11 and 12 (IIRC) when going into the election they had 9 and polls showed them getting fewer. They ended up getting 6 leading Yossi Sarid to quit. Beilin was then elected head of the party because he lined up the old MAPAM party machine vote in the Kibbutz Artzi movement. This group turned against him in the upcoming race and he was badly trailing in the polls and left the race. It was this machine vote that ousted all the original RATZ people who were among the founders of MERETZ like Shulamit Aloni, Dedi Zucker and Benny Temkin.
MERETZ was founded as a merger between Shulamit Aloni’s RATZ (Citizens’s Rights) and the MAPAM party which previously had been part of the “Alignment” with Labor, along with Amnon Rubinstein’s SHINUI Party, which later broke off. This merger occurred in the 1980′s , long before Beilin left Labor in 2003.
Although I don’t recall all the coalition negotiations, Olmert might very well have asked MERETZ to join but this almost certainly would have been after he already had SHAS inside and MERETZ had very bad experiences with sitting alongside SHAS, both in Rabin’s Oslo gov’t and then Barak’s.
Meretz and Labor are natural allies. Since 1977 there has never been a Labor led government without Meretz (or its predecessor Ratz) nor has Meretz ever joined a government not led by Labor. I’m not counting national unity governments (Labor/Likud). Meretz and Labor are not identical but they are natural allies.
There must be an echo here. Bar Kochba just said precisely the same thing.
As for Meretz joining Labor governments…just how long has it been since Meretz has been in any government? Oh let’s see–the last one was 2000. So that would make Meretz a natural ally of Labor 8 yrs ago. And based on an event that happened 8 yrs ago you make a claim that Meretz still remains Labor’s “natural ally?” And since 1977, how many Labor governments have there been & how long has Labor ruled during that 30 yrs period. Answers: very few & very little.
Bar_Kochba: A survey covered in the Jerusalem Post. I wrote a post about it here–you should find it if you do a search. Let me know if you can’t. NOT a Geneva Initiative poll btw.
The majority of Israelis are prepared to give up most of the settlements in return for real peace. I don’t require every Israeli to accept my precise political or moral outlook. I’m happy enough that they agree with me that the majority of settlements aren’t worth dying for. That’s all that I require.
Thank you for explaining the genesis of Meretz. But you too were incorrect in saying that Labor kicked Beilin out. They didn’t as you yrself make clear.
Putting Beilin in a low-ranking spot knowing that he had zero chance to get in the Knesset is the same as “kicking him out”.
Both the Labor Party and MERETZ define themselves as being in the “peace camp”, so they are saying they are natural allies. Labor, as was explained, was not in a position to force Olmert to include them. If the “peace camp” were to get a majority in the Knesset (the last time this happened was in 1992), Labor would have no choice but to turn to them first as a coaltion partner. There is even talk about merging the two parties.
You yrself said the ranking was produced by a primary election. So no one “put” him there except the votes of Labor members in a primary. In fact, his low placement in the primary vote is yet another indication that neither Beilin’s nor Meretz’s politics make them “natural allies” of Labor.
Labor as a party defines itself as being in the peace camp? You’ll have to explain to me how Ehud Barak, who opposed Annapolis, is in the peace camp. No, sorry. I don’t care what anyone says. Barak can say he’s Harry Houdinin for all I care. It’s what they do that counts. Calling Labor in the peace camp is a gross overstatement. You can keep beating this horse to death (& you will) but you simply can’t find any credible evidence to buttress yr statement. Can you even find a single Meretz MP who has come anywhere close to making such a statement??
Let’s see that makes it 16 yrs. since Labor won a majority & it should take another 16 before that might happen again the way the party is going. If my name were Benedict I could be the Pope. But it’s not and I won’t be. So we’ll just have to wait & see for a decade or so whether Meretz or whatever it’s then called will still be “natural allies” of Labor when the latter party or whatever it’s then called does finally win an election. Let’s not ea. hold our breath, shall we?