Uri Dromi’s slow, measured tone lets you know that he really tries to practise what he preaches when it comes to Israel.
He’s been talking about Israel for a while. The retired Israeli Air Force (IAF) colonel is a former chief education officer for the IAF and former chief information officer for the World Zionist Organization.
His calm tone accented his opening talk to about 30 young Jewish journalism students, including me, some of whom identify themselves as on-campus activists. We were part of the Do The Write Thing conference that ran concurrently with the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans last month.
Pro-Israel activism, Dromi said, comes in many forms, although it has progressively moved toward what he called “the direct approach,” which ends with people forcing their views on others in a progressively louder voice.
“I’m for the soft action, the indirect approach,” he said.
That means talking and listening to everyone who has a view on Israel. Have Israelis tell their personal stories and ask questions of others, Dromi said.
No need to yell, he added.
I processed his words in my mind later that morning as I watched police and security haul five protesters out of a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. One of the protesters yelled, “The occupation delegitimizes Israel.” From behind me, someone replied that the protester’s mouth delegitimizes free speech.
The message I heard during my three days at the general assembly was simple: criticizing Israeli policy does not cross a line, although one of my conference mates referred to such people as antisemitic. Criticizing Israel’s right to exist – that crosses a line.
Then came the second part of the message: another line is crossed when we, as a community, can’t talk. How we talk is even more important than what we talk about. Hearing this message, it was almost as if comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which took place at the end of October on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., had made its way into the hotel hallways of New Orleans.
“It’s fine to disagree, but we should find a civil way to do it,” said Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of the Jewish Week in New York City.
Natan Sharansky, chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel, who quietly took the podium in the small room where our conference took place, was leery about silencing dissenting voices.
“We are not demanding one voice” for all Jews, he said. “Use the atmosphere of free dialogue.”
But shouting at the Israeli prime minister is not the way to foster that dialogue, Sharansky said. Such an act only serves to further entrench the creeping polarization in discussions about Israel.
There is room for dissenting viewpoints, was how Howard English, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto vice-president of communications, put it. The point is how we dialogue around them.
At the end of the conference, I bumped into Dromi one more time. I told him I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about with his indirect approach until I saw the protesters at the Netanyahu address. Dromi smiled and shook my hand.
