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December 18, 2007

Israel Office

• NIF Grantees Will Monitor Israel’s Implementation of the Bali Agreement
• New Report by NIF Grantee Shows Widening Social Gaps

SHATIL

• SHATIL Facilitates Effective Protests: Discrimination Against Israeli Ethiopians and Housing Rights in the Mixed Cities
• SHATIL at 25 Staff Profile: Evgeny Zadiran

Weekly Message

I am writing this message from Jerusalem, where I have spent the previous six days. Not unexpectedly, my trip has reconfirmed my view that NIF is a truly special organization. Let me share several experiences.

Thursday afternoon and evening, I participated in the NIF Grants Committee meeting together with seven Board members and four International Council members, two of whom traveled to Israel from abroad to participate in the meeting. For five-plus hours, under the leadership of Grants Committee chair Neta Ziv, we debated various issues pertaining to the individual grantees. Were they achieving their objectives? Did the organization’s objectives fit within the scope of the NIF mandate? Was the time ripe for presenting the organization with a final grant?

All Committee members participated actively in the discussion and demonstrated their commitment to ensuring that NIF funds were allocated responsibly. The meeting ended close to 11:00 p.m., with the Committee members deciding upon the precise amounts to be awarded to each of the grantees discussed. After seven hours in the NIF office, and after a full day of work beforehand, they all deserved tremendous congratulations for a job well done.

On Sunday, SHATIL convened a full-day seminar for NIF and SHATIL staff on multi-culturalism in Israel. The staff heard from two prominent professors and from a panel of discussants, representing different segments of the Israeli population. The day concluded with the staff offering their individual perspectives on the subject matter and the implications of what they heard for the work of NIF/SHATIL on the ground.

As a relative outsider to the discussion, I was intrigued at the similarities and differences between discussions of this topic in the United States and what I was hearing in Israel. Obviously, the most fundamental difference relates to Israel’s Jewish identity, and how this impacts on various other identities that Israelis carry (Mizrachi, Russian, Ethiopian, Arab, LGBT, etc.).

Overall, the seminar reinforced the seriousness with which NIF/SHATIL approach their efforts to understand Israeli social issues, and to ensure that our efforts contribute in a manner to the goals of reinforcing Israeli democracy and a more just and equitable society.

The reality of the multi-culturalism discussion was brought home to me on Monday, when I traveled to Gedera to meet with representatives of NIF grantee Friends of Nature. The organization is attempting to address the challenges facing new Ethiopian immigrants as they seek to integrate into Israeli society while retaining their unique Ethiopian-Israeli identity. I was reminded again of the nature of the transition experienced by the Ethiopians who immigrated to Israel in the last 20 years. Not only did they have to adapt to a first-world environment and face the racism of Israeli society, but their associations with Jewish traditions were radically transformed. And, as my colleague reminded me on the way back to Jerusalem, the story of the Ethiopians today is not much different than what was experienced by the Mizrachim who arrived soon after the state was founded and the Russians who arrived in the last 15 years.

Again, I was gratified to see the difference that NIF was making on the ground, addressing concrete challenges with a combination of pragmatism and idealism. NIF is a special organization and I urge all of our dedicated readers, as you plan your travel for 2008, to consider joining an NIF study tour. I can assure you that will learn a great deal about the challenges facing Israel and what is being done to address those challenges in the most meaningful manner. And, of course, as we near the year’s end, to please support our work in as generous a way as you can.

In this week’s NIF News, we report on the participation of NIF-family environmental groups in the Bali summit on global warming and the role they will play in implementing the agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We also feature the ADVA Center’s annual report, which shows growing social and economic gaps between Israel’s rich and poor as well as various population sectors. SHATIL highlights efforts to call attention to discrimination against Ethiopian Israelis and a protest against demolitions and evictions in Israel’s mixed cities. In addition, SHATIL spotlights activist Evgeny Zadiran.