"Which of you is causing me the most trouble? ” New Israel Fund
president Brian Lurie asked the heads of the many groups that his
organization funds at a recent meeting during one of his biannual trips
to Israel.
“Five of them raised their hands at the same time,”
says Lurie, noting that “the one who is really causing me the most
trouble didn’t raise a hand.”
Such is life as president of one of
the most powerful funds of liberal Jewish organizations in Israel,
including all of the complex realities of trying to restore or improve
the sometimes embattled organization’s image.
Although Lurie, who
took the helm of NIF in the summer of 2012, takes issue with the idea
that he was brought in to be a friendlier, less controversial and
harder-to- attack face of the organization, that is certainly his style
when compared to the group’s previous leader, highly controversial
former deputy Knesset speaker and Meretz MK Naomi Chazan.
After
allegations were made that NIF funded groups that provided large amounts
of evidence for the Goldstone Report, which made allegations against
Israeli soldiers for war crimes during the 2008- 2009 Gaza War,
extra-parliamentary Zionist group Im Tirtzu portrayed Chazan in an ad
with horns on her head and associated her with the report.
While
Lurie admits that he and Chazan have the same fundamental principles, he
says that “we come to the issues from different places. I worked in the
Jewish establishment; I’m American. She came from a minority party and
is Israeli.”
He continues, “It’s easier for me to talk to the
Jewish establishment in the Diaspora and easier for some right-wing
politicians to talk to me if we’ve been friends forever. She carried
some political baggage because of her background in the opposition” –
fighting head-tohead over issues in the Knesset – “but the hatchet job
done on her was grossly unfair.”
An ordained Reform rabbi, Lurie
comes from the US Jewish “establishment,” having served as executive
vice president of the United Jewish Appeal and for 17 years as executive
director of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, among
other positions, where he frequently rubbed elbows with top Israeli
officials across the spectrum.
Lurie says that “I knew what I was
getting into. I knew it was going to be controversial, the strong
feelings people had, I was aware of that.” But he also knew that “the
New Israel Fund is the best organization to impact in a more complicated
world. I can’t think of another one with the same tremendous resources
at play.”
Lurie says that his diverse group of old friends,
including former Likud foreign minister Moshe Arens, still talk to him
and have not broken ties over his new role.
DESPITE LURIE’S
generally calm and almost philosophical manner, he gets serious and
forceful when it comes to discussing the controversy surrounding some of
the organizations that NIF funds.
Responding to allegations that
NIF funds organizations involved in anti-Israel activities, like the
divest from Israel movements or forums where Israel is labeled an
apartheid state, he says, “We’re a big tent. NIF is an organization in
the middle of a complicated time.
We will support organizations
which are not black and white, but gray. If an Arab organization does
not believe” in an Israel constituted “as a Jewish state, but does
believe” in an Israel that is “a state of all of its people, I
understand their feeling; still, NIF believes we need a Jewish state.”
Naomi
Paiss, NIF’s vice president of public affairs, who is present
throughout the interview, adds that NIF has clear funding guidelines and
“won’t support organizations working to deny the Jewish people’s right
to sovereign selfdetermination.”
But, she says, if “leaders of Arab organizations prefer a multinational, multicultural state,” NIF won’t cut them off.
She said that there are many targeted purposes having to do with change for organizations like Adalah, Massawa and Kayan, but that at the end of the day the organizations are not “designed to change the State of Israel” itself, regardless of their beliefs, she says.
Paiss also says that she
often attends events where speakers express views she disagrees with and
that NIF “can’t hold organizations responsible for what other
organizations say in a free forum.”
She notes that outgoing defense minister Ehud Barak once said Israel would become “an apartheid state if there was no peace.”
Regarding
the recent first-time publication of the amounts of funding NIF gives
to various liberal organizations in Israel as part of a recent law
demanding such reporting, Lurie says that NIF has always been
“transparent. We list our donors, most of whom are individuals and
foundations.”
This publication and past publications have been
met with critiques of NIF and its refusal to sever or delay in severing
its connections with certain organizations it funds by Gerald
Steinberg’s NGO Monitor, among others.
Lurie hits back at the criticism, saying “I’d like to ask Gerald when was the last time his donors were made transparent.
I
don’t know where to find his donor list, if it is listed. Is that
balanced?” he asks, hinting that Right-leaning organizations are getting
a pass on reporting their funding while Left-leaning organizations are
being scrutinized.
Paiss says that a right-wing organization called Elad “even went to court to prevent making their donor list public.”
Lurie and Paiss also asked who had funded an Im Tirtzu campaign against Lurie with ads in 20 Jewish newspapers across the US.
ASKED
WHAT he thinks of the election results, Lurie gives a somewhat
confusing answer, as if he wrestling with his own contrary feelings or
uneasiness about certain aspects of the results.
Lurie begins
with the word “hope,” but goes on to describe several results of the
election that sounded like the opposite of what would give him hope.
He
says that the loss of Likud moderates (some of whom he is friendly
with, which shows the breadth of his contacts) like “Dan Meridor and
Bennie Begin was a real blow to the Likud party, Israel, the Jewish
people. It saddens me.”
Lurie says the fact that these moderates
did not finish high enough on the Likud list to make it into the 19th
Knesset means Likud will lose “values they instilled in the party, which
is still the largest. They will be sorely missed in the next
government. They were true democrats with a small ‘d’ – people whose
only ambition was to make the state a better place.”
In contrast,
Lurie says that “the current Likud is like other parties to the Right.
I’m not sure if there is anyone to the right of Likud” as it is
currently constituted.
Where does he disagree the most with Likud
and “other parties to the Right”? He says that we “can’t just absorb
chunks of the West Bank and say that’s our destiny. That’s such a
mistaken concept.
We live in a larger world, we’re part of it,
and these barriers and borders,” lead to conflict with those who are
“friendly to us, like the US and Europe.”
Lurie also says that
his view of the election results will ultimately depend on “what the
government would look like. If Yesh Atid is in it, I would be more
hopeful.”
He says he does not agree with some left-leaning groups
that are hoping for an “all-Right government to force Obama to take a
very strong position” against some of the right-wing policies, and that
he would “rather see a more moderate-centrist government in place.”
Lurie
adds that it’s better to have a “smiling, open, positive face than a
closed one. A more moderate government would be good for Israel, good
for Diaspora Jewry and good for the world.”
Asked who represents
the “smiling, open, positive face,” Lurie identifies Yesh Atid’s Yair
Lapid, though he is still critical of Lapid for comments he made
categorically opposing forming a government with a group of “Zoabis,”
referring to the Israeli-Arab parties.
Lurie states that Lapid’s “Zoabis” remark was an “unfortunate comment.
Someone might not like [Haneen] Zoabi, but the plural of it got me.”
IRONICALLY AND despite all of the above, Lurie says that NIF has very little to do formally with issues like the peace process.
“We
believe in a two-state solution, but we’re worried most about internal
issues, not external – that is someone else’s job,” he says
matter-of-factly.
He says that many issues mentioned in the
election, such as “housing, the middle class, the poor, the safety net
and social welfare, working for a more equitable society are
cornerstones we’ve been working on for years,” and are the
organization’s focus far more than foreign policy is.
At this
point Paiss interjects, noting the example of funding programs that help
youth at risk in development towns and marginalized populations, such
as an afternoon school in Ashkelon that teaches the fundamentals of
Judaism. Both also cite Arab youth, Ethiopian youth, women’s empowerment
and educating the Beduin community as major NIF goals.
Lurie takes a deep breath before wading into the controversy regarding the Beduin.
Although
helping the Beduin community is a major priority, he says that “NIF has
no position” on the state’s current proposal, which was largely
developed by outgoing minister Bennie Begin and essentially proposes
recognizing and allowing 62% of Beduin communities in the Negev stay in
place while relocating and compensating the rest.
Looking
uncomfortable, Lurie says “we are studying it. But I’m going to do
something dangerous. I’m going to give my own personal opinion, not yet
reflected by the organization... Bennie Begin is a tzadik [righteous
person],” he says. “What he is trying to accomplish, what the
ministerial committee passed, among Beduin leaders is viewed as having
flaws. Some want more money, more land. But equally, on the far Right,
many say that Bennie is giving away the store, way too much, how could
he have done this?” “Talking with Bennie, and after a cursory review,
with the increase in money and land” in Begin’s plan over a prior plan
that offered to recognize only 50% of Beduin communities, Lurie says “I
think it’s the best attainable deal possible.”
He adds that
reaching a solution “sooner is better. The longer this drags out, the
less likely it can be resolved and there will be real loss. Bennie’s
been the driving force.”
Paiss adds that many key NIF grantees “strongly oppose the plan,” saying that there is still far too much “forced relocation.”
Lurie says that the issue is “complex for the organization, with many groups opposing the plan now.”
We’ve
had “lively discussions,” he says, and that he thinks that eventually
more Beduin will come out and support the Begin plan.
REGARDLESS
OF Lurie’s remark that NIF is an inward-looking organization, he does
not deny that organizations that NIF has funded could have an outward
impact – such as those that criticize the IDF and develop either
nonflattering or biased (depending on your political leanings) video
footage against it.
Once again, Lurie differentiates his own opinions from those of the organization.
“Personally,
anytime I see the IDF portrayed in a bad light, it makes me nervous,”
he says. “I totally appreciate how important it is to keep Israel secure
and strong. Israel is living in a rough neighborhood, and without the
IDF it would not exist.”
He says he recognizes that criticism of the IDF makes “everyone feel more vulnerable, including me.”
That
being said, he says that both personally and speaking as NIF president,
the organizations the NIF funds “do the right thing. We need a
self-correcting mechanism with an occupation going on as long as this
has, where inherently there are abuses.
“We might be the best
army in the world on those abuses, as good as one can be – and no one
with a 40-year occupation would be as good as we are – but we can
improve,” he says.
“The more moral we are, the stronger we are as a nation, for the Jewish people,” he states.
WHEN
LURIE took over as NIF president, he laid out a number of specific
goals in public interviews, including moving the center of NIF’s Israel
operations from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, joining the Conference of
Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and making the structure of
NIF’s funding strategy ”smarter,” among others.
How are these
goals faring half a year into the job? Moving the center of operations
to Tel Aviv is being explored. “There is no question; we need a Tel Aviv
presence.
But how big and when? It is a necessity and it’ll happen before I leave,” says Lurie.
In contrast, joining the conference is a lower priority for now, “but it does make sense” at some point, he says.
Changing
its funding strategy and structure in light of a changing world is one
of Lurie’s primary goals and “at our board meeting this week we worked
hard on this,” he says.
Discussing some less well-known projects
of the organization, Paiss says that NIF was very involved in a campaign
to change what was set to be an all-haredi 50,000-person city placed in
the Harish wadi area between a regular middle-class town of ordinary
Jewish people, a kibbutz down the road and an Arab village up the hill.
Paiss says the new city would have ruined an area where pluralism is working by artificially throwing in a new ghetto.
She
says she has no problem with haredim moving into the new development,
but that NIF is proud it has succeeded in making the new development
open to all.
Paiss also discusses Right Now, an organization that advocates asylum for African migrants.
She
says the group was founded by a graduate of NIF’s social justice
fellows program and is “exactly the young leadership we want to foster,”
adding that we “feel very strongly, if there was ever a case of
treating a stranger well who has no other place to go, it’s here, since
most of them are legitimately seeking asylum.”
Lurie criticizes some Israeli politicians for “public statements against the migrants,” which, he says, “hurt Israel.”
At
the same time, he says that he “understood that it’s complicated in
Israel and that it’s a balagan [mess] in the US Congress also,” adding
that it is “wrong to single out Israel when Europe and the US don’t have
it right either.”
This last exchange between Lurie and Paiss may be the most indicative of the still relatively new face of the NIF.
While
he will not apologize for many of the organization’s controversial
positions, it is likely disarming for opponents of the NIF to hear its
president talking about the importance of the IDF, not singling out
Israel and being ready to give personal opinions breaking with the
organization’s policies.
NIF and some of the organizations it
funds will likely remain controversial, but for those wanting to paint a
blackand- white picture of the organization, Lurie will be harder to
fit into the perennial box.
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