TORONTO — Acknowledging Israel’s challenges and flaws shouldn’t mean that people are slotted into an “anti-Israel” camp, Rabbi David Rosenn said in Toronto recently.
Rabbi David Rosenn
The New York-based chief operating officer of the New Israel Fund (NIF) – who is was ordained by the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary and is the founder of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps – said that the organized Jewish community is risking “the relationship that people have with Israel, and their ability to have a nuanced relationship with Israel.”
Speaking Oct. 6 at the Al Green Theatre in place of the NIF’s CEO, Daniel Sokatch, who was unable to get to Toronto because of a medical emergency, Rabbi Rosenn said that some people – especially young people – “want to be supportive of Israel and find there isn’t a way between ‘Israel right or wrong’ and ‘Israel always wrong.’”
In the last six decades, Israel has come to play an “incredibly significant” role in the North American Jewish community, Rabbi Rosenn said. Support for Israel has been “strong, and in the centre.
“There’s been a diversity of opinions on how to support and love and connect to Israel, but the official voices of the Jewish community have pretty much had a consistent message,” he said.
The message, as Rabbi Rosenn conveyed it, is: “We’ve got to support Israel, right or wrong.’”
However, he pointed out, younger Jews grew up with an image of Israel as a Goliath rather than a David.
“It has been very difficult for people to find a way to ask questions, even if they think not everything Israel does is right,” because they’ll be labelled as anti-Israel, he said.
Rabbi Rosenn, who began working for the NIF six months ago, said the organization would like to provide an alternative by supporting efforts to work on social issues including poverty and protection of civil rights.
The NIF has partnerships with almost all the major universities in Israel and works with many government ministries, he said.
But, he noted, about 10 months ago, there was a billboard and newspaper ad campaign in Israel accusing the NIF of being anti-Israel. It claimed, he said, that 92 per cent of the material in the United Nations’ Goldstone Commission report, which accused Israel of war crimes, was provided by NIF-funded groups. The claim turned out to be “completely false,” Rabbi Rosenn said.
“The notion that human rights organizations doing what they should be doing – reporting, not concluding – is somehow a threat to the State of Israel, was really the message behind these ads,” he added. “The New Israel Fund is very proud of its support for the human and civil rights sector in Israel.”
He also noted that, in the wake of some of the human rights organizations’ reports about last year’s Gaza operation, the IDF has begun to change some of its policies. “The New Israel Fund sees it as core to the mission of the State of Israel to continue to reassert and re-entrench its commitments to democracy.”
Prior to and following Rabbi Rosenn’s talk, a protester handed out papers from NGO Monitor, accusing the NIF of claiming to love Israel, but giving millions of dollars to “groups that delegitimize it.”
Rabbi Rosenn said both groups want the same thing – “an Israel that is strong and secure” – but that they disagree on how to attain it. He expressed regret that “people in the Jewish community can’t do more to come to an understanding that we shouldn’t attack the other on issues where we could actually find some common ground.”
Rabbi Rosenn stressed that the NIF is “not going to support organizations that isolate and demonize Israel” and encouraged the audience to visit the organization’s website and look at its principles.
