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March 11, 2008

Israel Office

• Israeli Government Deepens Cooperation with Philanthropic Organizations like NIF
• International Women’s Day in Israel Becomes Mainstream Celebration of Gender Rights

SHATIL

• Strategies Flow at International Water Seminar
• International Women’s Day: Cooking up a New Feminism

Weekly Message

 Working in Washington, DC, I am constantly challenged to assess what is happening in Israel. Not on the issues that draw the attention of our media – the continuing diplomatic quest for peace amidst a deteriorating situation on the ground, the rocket strikes on Israeli cities and towns, the Israeli response that kills both those who launch rockets and too many children, and the most recent horrific terrorist attack on Yeshivat Mercaz Harav where eight seminary students were killed. No, I am concerned with the long-term health of Israeli democracy, particularly on matters pertaining to fundamental human rights values and norms. These are, after all, a core value for the New Israel Fund.

Fortunately, we have the extraordinary reports prepared by NIF’s flagship grantee, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which publishes annually The State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

The 2007 report begins with a focus on the “right to health” and the “increasing inequality in access to health services. The report concludes that the “current erosion of state-provided health services undermines the social contract between the state and its citizens, severely violates basic rights, and reneges on the State’s obligations under [international human rights covenants].” Other sections describe violations of the rights of Israeli and migrant workers, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and those living in East Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories, as well as new challenges to freedom of expression, privacy and basic democratic norms.

I confronted a familiar dissonance as I read the report. On the one hand, despite all the problems identified, the reality of Israel’s democracy also emerges: the free media, the engaged civil society organizations, the still independent judiciary and indeed the ability of the citizenry to change their leaders through periodic elections. And of course, just the fact that such a thorough and candid report is produced by a well-respected and venerable Israeli civil rights organization speaks well of the society from which it emerges.

On the other hand, much like the case in this country, the overall human rights performance of the state seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Most worrying are the trends described in the last section regarding the population’s declining commitment toward democratic values. [The ACRI report relies on the 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, published by the Israel Democracy Institute, whose findings can be read here]. Appropriately, the report endorses steps taken by the Ministry of Education to expand the civics curriculum in high schools and further calls for allocating the necessary resources to ensure that there is suitable training for teachers.

NIF, together with Israel Ventures Network, has been pushing a similar agenda through the Education for Active Citizenship project, which has introduced a K-12 civics curriculum into school systems in three Israeli cities and has lobbied the Ministry of Education to take the program nationwide. The protection of fundamental rights is not only a matter of effective civil liberties lawyers and independent judges, but require the vigilance of an informed population. Reading the ACRI report provides an important starting point.

In this week’s NIF News, we report on new government measures to enhance cooperation with Israel’s non-profit sector, acknowledging the vital role which NPOs like NIF play in Israeli society. In celebration of International Women’s Day, we feature newly published statistics regarding inequality of pay for women as well as a feature in Yediot Ahronot’s, magazine highlighting members of the NIF family. SHATIL relates the experiences of a staff member in Sderot during a Qassam attack, a water rights seminar and highlights an event surrounding International Women’s Day.