ARZA newsletter June 1 2010
June 1, 2010 by nicola
IDF FORCES MET WITH PRE-PLANNED VIOLENCE WHEN ATTEMPTING TO BOARD FLOTILLA
Statement by Embassy of Israel in Canberra
Early this morning, IDF Naval Forces intercepted six ships attempting to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. This happened after numerous warnings from Israel and the Israel Navy that were issued prior to the action. The Israel Navy requested the ships to redirect toward Ashdod where they would be able to unload their aid material which would then be transferred over land after undergoing security inspections.
During the intercept of the ships, the demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF Naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs. Additionally one of the weapons used was grabbed from an IDF soldier. The demonstrators had clearly prepared their weapons in advance for this specific purpose.
As a result of this life-threatening and violent activity, naval forces employed riot dispersal means, including live fire.
According to initial reports, these events resulted in over ten deaths among the demonstrators and numerous injured, in addition, more than four naval personnel were injured, some from gunfire and some from various other weapons. Two of the soldiers are moderately wounded and the remainder sustained light injuries. All of the injured, Israelis and foreigners are currently being evacuated by helicopter to hospitals in Israel.
Reports from IDF forces on the scene are that it seems as if part of the participants onboard the ships were planning to lynch the forces.
The events are ongoing, and information will be updated as soon as possible. Israeli Naval commander, Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom is overseeing the events.
In the coming hours, the ships will be directed to the Ashdod port, while IDF naval forces will perform security checks in order to identify the people on board the ships and their equipment. The IDF Spokesman conveys that this event is currently unfolding and further details will be provided as soon as possible.
This IDF naval operation was carried out under orders from the political leadership to halt the flotilla from reaching the Gaza Strip and breaching the naval blockade.
The interception of the flotilla followed numerous warnings given to the organizers of the flotilla before leaving their ports as well as while sailing towards the Gaza Strip. In these warnings, it was made clear to the organisers that they could dock in the Ashdod sea port and unload the equipment they are carrying in order to deliver it to the Gaza Strip in an orderly manner, following the appropriate security checks. Upon expressing their unwillingness to cooperate and arrive at the port, it was decided to board the ships and lead them to Ashdod.
IDF naval personnel encountered severe violence, including use of weaponry prepared in advance in order to attack and to harm them. The forces operated in adherence with operational commands and took all necessary actions in order to avoid violence, but to no avail.
Discussion material is being provided by the Zionist Council of Victoria through a special feature on its website at: http://www.zcv.org.au/site/ index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=535&Itemid=434
AYALON TO DISCUSS CONVERSION BILL WITH US JEWISH LEADERS
by Raphael Ahren (Haaretz)
The bill proposes to authorise Israel’s Chief Rabbinate to engage in conversion matters, to end the monopoly of the conversion courts and to amend the 1952 Citizenship Law so that the right of citizenship will not apply to anyone converting in Israel who was not eligible for immigration prior to their arrival. The bill is intended to alleviate the bottleneck which aspiring converts now face, say Ayalon and co-sponsor MK David Rotem, both members of Yisrael Beitenu.
Opponents praised the initiative to try to ease the conversion process but take issue with clauses they say were inserted to ensure Charedi support for the bill. Earlier this week, The Jewish Federations of North America - a group representing some 400 communities - and umbrella organizations representing non-Orthodox with Jews in the U.S., sent a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him to prevent the bill’s passing. “This proposed legislation will not only fail to achieve its forecasted result, but will dangerously alter the Law of Return by consolidating conversion power in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate in ways that would be disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people,” the letter states. “Furthermore, it will undoubtedly alienate many North American Jews from Israel, widening an already precarious and growing rift.”
Responding to this letter, Ayalon - who with Rotem had visited the U.S. Jewish community leaders in April about the bill - said: “We respect their opinions, and as I said before, we’re going to continue our engagement with the Diaspora communities on this issue.” An official close to Yisrael Beitenu lawmakers told Anglo File any changes to the current draft would be minor and not change its core implications. “We will try to find a solution that satisfies both our needs and the demands of the Diaspora. But at the end of the day, Israel’s needs to have priority,” the official said. Ayalon, who previously served as Israeli ambassador in Washington and as co-chair of the Anglo immigration assistance group Nefesh B’Nefesh, and Rotem asserted this week that they “intend no change to the status quo” regarding non-Orthodox conversions. “The intent of this law is to solve the problem of these 350,000 [Russian immigrants], without infringing on anybody’s rights or privileges,” Ayalon told Anglo File in his Knesset office. He asserted that his party intends to promote additional legislation making life cycle processes more fair for non-Orthodox Jews. “The idea is not to find ourselves flooded by illegal conversions,” Ayalon said, in a reference to foreign workers and Palestinian refugees. He pledged to institute a “mechanism that will distinguish” between sincere converts who studied in Israel or visited as tourists before converting, and those seeking to take advantage of the system.
But according to Nicole Maor, who directs the Israel Religious Action Center’s legal aid center for new immigrants, the intent of the article related to the Law of Return is “to make life more difficult for non-Orthodox converts,” as experience has shown that Orthodox converts are often more readily accepted by Israeli authorities than those belonging to other streams. Furthermore, she argued the section is entirely superfluous. “There is no one in Israel today who is converting anyone who is [an] illegal [migrant],” she said. The religious action center is run by the local Movement for Progressive Judaism.
By explicitly empowering the Chief Rabbinate without mentioning any other religious streams, the proposed law would cause “devastating losses for the progressive movements in Israel,” revoking all advances in fighting for recognition they made over the last 20 years, said Maor, an Australian-born lawyer. “The Supreme Court says there has to be pluralism and equality in the field of conversion because there is no law determining otherwise,” she asserted. “The purpose of this article is to circumvent a Supreme Court judgment from 2004, which said that the Law of Return applies to people who convert in Israel,” contends Maor. “And the effect of this [proposed] article will basically be that the Law of Return doesn’t apply to conversion in Israel. You don’t need to change the status quo, [especially not] by passing a law that would for the first time in Jewish history differentiate between a convert and a Jew by birth.”
“I’m not sure these [critics] have accurate information,” responded Ayalon yesterday. “But this should be discussed in later meetings. I don’t think it is useful to discuss these issues now.”
REFORM ZIONISM
by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)
Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Deuteronomy 16:20)
Among the programs operating at the Hebrew Union College Jerusalem campus are two different rabbinical training courses: since August, I have been directing the Israel Rabbinic Program, a four-year course of study designed to ordain Israelis to serve as Reform rabbis here. There are currently 22 students at various stages of completion. They tend to be in their 30s and 40s, often already experienced educators, from varied religious and cultural backgrounds. They study two days a week intensively, while also working on an MA in Jewish studies from an Israeli university. Meanwhile, we share the campus with another 50 or so full-time rabbinical (and cantorial and education) students spending their required first year in Israel before beginning their studies at New York, Cincinnati, or Los Angeles. They tend to be recent college graduates, from Reform backgrounds; their focus here is Hebrew language and Israel studies - and the experience of Jewish peoplehood. People often wonder why we operate two separate programs - after all, they’re all learning to be Reform professional leaders. However, it is obviously not so simple - the gaps in age, experience, language, life-stage, and program structure make it quite challenging for the faculty to design even limited joint programs and shared experiences. Having decided to try harder, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback (director of the program for the North Americans) and I have managed to pull off a couple of interesting experiments this year.
Most recently, we held a joint study day on the topic of Reform Zionism - lectures, mixed discussion groups, a concluding panel. The discussions were lively and I think we achieved our goals. I personally had the privilege of introducing our featured guest speaker, Rabbi Richard Hirsch (pictured). When I was a kid at Union Institute Camp in Wisconsin, he was one of the dynamic young rabbis that turned us on to the connection between Judaism and the struggles for social justice that were so much in the center of American consciousness then; he went on to found the Religious Action Center, to march with King and Heschel. Enough for one resume. But then, in 1973 he made aliyah, and spent decades working to build the relationship between Zionism and Reform Judaism. That two-part career does not represent an obvious progression - I hope the students got its significance: I think it’s not uncommon for those who are deeply committed to the universalistic, social-justice strand within Reform Judaism to keep their distance from Israel - because it represents the unabashedly ethnic/national/particularistic dimension of Judaism, and/or because as a society - or as a political entity - Israel doesn’t always seem to behave according to our ethical preferences, leaving us frustrated/annoyed/turned off. When Dick Hirsch moved from Washington to Jerusalem he didn’t leave his commitment to universalistic ethics behind - on the contrary, he made a powerful statement that is or should be the guiding principle of Reform Judaism in the Zionist context: if there is one place in the world where we Reform Jews have the opportunity and the obligation to translate our universalistic ethical principles into the messy reality of the political world, it is here, in the country that purports to be the Jewish state, the one place in the world where we are sovereign, where the buck stops with us. If we don’t lead the way to building a state that is a Jewish state worthy of the name (and I don’t just mean that Reform rabbis will have equal rights to marry), then, ultimately, Zionism will have failed, and Reform Judaism will be exposed as irrelevant to Jewish history.
Dick Hirsch is in his mid-80s, but he remains a great speaker. I only hope the students understood who and what they were hearing.
TWO NON-ORTHODOX SYNAGOGUES IN RA’ANANA ATTACKED IN ONE-WEEK SPAN
by Noah Kosharek
Two non-Orthodox synagogues in Ra’anana have been vandalised in the space of one week.
On Thursday, vandals threw bricks at the Ra’anana Masorti Congregation, breaking two of the Conservative synagogue’s windows, and the week before, vandals broke six windows in the Reform synagogue Kehilat Ra’anan, according to police reports filed by members of both congregations
The fact that both incidents occurred within a short time and that both involved the breaking of windows in non-Orthodox synagogues has led some members of the congregations to conclude that intolerance toward the Conservative and Reform movements was behind the incidents.
This is a period of increased tensions among sectors in Israeli society,” said Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the executive director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, as Israel’s Reform movement is formally called. “We very much hope this is a one-time incident or the actions of one person who can be stopped.” Kariv said he expected city officials and Orthodox leaders in Ra’anana to condemn the incidents.
Ra’anana Mayor Nahum Hofri had instructed the city’s security patrol to beef up its presence near the synagogues and install security cameras.
“The Ra’anana municipality takes a harsh view of any attempt at vandalism of public buildings and other institutions in the city,” the municipality said in a statement.
This isn’t the first time the city’s Reform synagogue, which also houses the movement’s kindergartens in Ra’anana, has been targeted, said synagogue chairwoman Judith Katzin. She said its windows were broken two years ago, and again two months ago. The perpetrators, she said, have not been caught.
Although this is the first time the Masorti Congregation in Ra’anana has been vandalised, the head of the Conservative movement in Israel said the attack could be part of a countrywide pattern of intolerance.
“Ra’anana is known for its tolerance. We believe and hope that these are isolated incidents and don’t represent a trend,” said Yizhar Hess, the movement’s executive director. “However, it is hard to shake the feeling that over the past few months, extremists have been setting a new, violent threshold for religious harassment in Israel.”
Hess said arsonists had attempted to set fire to a Conservative synagogue in Arad three months ago, the second such attempt at the same site.
He also said a Conservative woman named Noa Raz was beaten by an ultra-Orthodox man at the central bus station in Be’er Sheva earlier this month after he noticed the imprints of tefillin lines on her arms.
Acknowledgement and thanks to Pro-Zion.