Remembering Cast Lead

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=251514 

Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz warned this week that another military incursion in Gaza would happen “sooner or later.”

Cracks had emerged in Israel’s deterrence, Gantz said, and a second round of fighting appeared to be unavoidable.

Meanwhile, Col. Tal Hermoni, commander of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade, warned that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups in Gaza, emboldened by the Gilad Schalit prisoner swap, were digging tunnels into Israel with the goal of kidnapping another IDF soldier.

These were sobering, though not altogether surprising, messages from our militarybrass on the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead – the army’s 22-day-long offensive that place in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

No less sobering was the fact that if and when another such operation is launched, Hamas will be even better armed. The change in leadership in Cairo, which facilitatedthe opening of Gaza’s border with Egypt, has enabled Hamas to smuggle into Gaza a wide variety of weapons, from sophisticated, Russian-made anti-tank missiles such as the laser-guided Kornet, to shoulder-to-air missiles and other arms spirited out of Libyan during the anarchy that led to the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.

The IDF reckons that during 2011 there was a 15 percent to 20% increase in the amount of weaponry that found its way into Gaza, as reported Thursday by The Jerusalem Post's military correspondent Yaakov Katz.

Still, while a repeat of Operation Cast Lead is looking increasingly inevitable, it does not appear to be imminent.

Since Cast Lead, Hamas has had a vested interest in limiting conflict with Israel. Maintaining stability and consolidating its rule in Gaza are particularly important as Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, embarks on his first fund-raising tour in the region since 2007.

Haniyeh would like to present himself as the uncontested ruler of the Palestinian people – at least in Gaza.

He would like to show Hamas’s ability to maintain order. Also, mortar and rocket fire on Israel reliably elicit Israeli retaliation, invariably leading many among the 1.8 million Palestinians living under Hamas rule to rightly blame the terrorist groups for their suffering. It was for this reason that Hamas’s popularity fell to all-time lows after Operation Cast Lead.

Palestinians realized that it was Hamas’s aggression against Israeli civilians that dragged them into a violent clash with Israel. Many Palestinians rightly questioned Hamas’s irresponsible leadership.

Unfortunately, despite the heartbreaking poverty in which so many Palestinians live under Hamas’s rule; despite Hamas’s focus on preparing itself for another militaryconflict with Israel – at the expense of more pressing social needs; despite the religious fanaticism enforced under Hamas rule, the terrorist organization has managed to rehabilitate its standing.




If Palestinian elections were held now it is not at all clear that Fatah would defeat Hamas. The Schalit prisoner swap, which seemed to foster in Palestinians not so much an appreciation of Israelis’ high regard for life but a conviction that terrorism pays, has strengthened Hamas. So has the Arab Spring, which brought to power a political leadership in Egypt that openly supports Hamas and which has strengthened movements elsewhere with goals similar to Hamas’s. Gantz’s warning of the inevitability of another military incursion in Gaza coupled with Hermoni’s estimation that Hamas is preparing for another kidnapping, underline the inherent dangers of ceding territories under Israeli control to Palestinians without first putting in place iron-clad security arrangements.

Palestinian could have taken advantage of their new-found autonomy in Gaza to begin the hard work of creating a Palestinian state. Instead, in a bloody coup in June 2007, Hamas ousted the corrupt, unpopular Fatah and set about creating an Islamist terrorist state that served as a launching pad for thousands of rockets and mortar shells fired at Israeli civilians in the South. Eventually, Israel was forced to embark on Operation Cast Lead to stop the violence. If and when we are asked to seriously consider territorial concessions again, we must not forget the lessons learned from the Gaza pullout in 2005 and from Operation Cast Lead.

Economic challenges

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=251183



The good news is that the civilian jobless rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1978. In October 155,200 Israelis (5 percent of the workforce) were out of a job, according to figures released Monday by the Central Bureau of Statistics. This low rate of unemployment – the result of about eight years of impressive economic growth, despite a worldwide recession – is significantly lower than the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 8.3% in October. It’s also lower than the US rate of joblessness, which stood at 8.6% in October and a whopping 10.3% in the euro-area.

Unfortunately, there is bad news as well.

The monthly unemployment report is notoriously unreliable because it is based on a small sampling of respondents.

Also, the jobless rate counts only those Israelis who are actively looking for employment and are, therefore, participants in the labor force. However, large swathes of society – particularly haredi men and Arab women – are not part of the labor force.

Just 57.5% of the adult Israeli civilian population was employed in the second quarter of the year, about 15% lower than Western economies.

Furthermore, our economy, which has so far outperformed most Western countries, will soon be dragged down by the ongoing recession in America and the European debt crisis.

Bank of Israel has lowered its GDP growth forecast for 2012 from 3.2% to 2.8%. Last month the OECD lowered its Israeli forecast to 2.9%. As a result of the slower growth, Bank of Israel predicts that the unemployment rate will climb to 6.4% by the fourth quarter of 2012.

The Israeli economy is embarking on a period of slowdown at a time when the gap between rich and poor has reached record proportions. The average income of the richest 10% is 14 times higher than the average income of the poorest 10% in Israel, compared to more egalitarian countries such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden where the gap is six to one.

Israel’s rate is comparable to countries such as Turkey and the US. And according to the 2010 National Insurance Institute’s Poverty and Social Gaps Report, released last month, a whopping 32.6% of Israelis lived under the poverty line before factoring in welfare transfers and other benefits, a slight improvement from 2009.

Income inequality and poverty were two of the central themes of this summer’s socioeconomic demonstrations that mobilized unprecedented numbers of protesters to take to the streets. If nothing else, the public’s collective expression of discontent succeeded in placing socioeconomic concerns higher up on the government’s list of priorities in a country dominated since its founding almost exclusively by diplomatic and security issues.

This summer’s protests demonstrated that severe poverty and extreme income inequality preoccupy Israelis no less than military threats. In fact, one of the central recommendations of the Trajtenberg Committee, created in the wake of this summer’s demonstrations, was to cut about NIS 3 billion from the annual defense budget and use the proceeds to fund socioeconomic programs with the goal of reducing poverty and income inequality.

Two central suggestions were to offer free pre-school education and extend the school day to 4 p.m. to make it easier for both fathers and mothers to find full-time employment.

Unfortunately, it appears that once again our military leaders have managed to play on our fears by warning that a cut in the defense budget could compromise Israel’s military strength and expose the Jewish state to existential dangers. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has, according to media reports, decided not to cut the IDF’s 2012 budget.

If true, this would mean the demise of the centerpiece of the Trajtenberg recommendations. It would also mean that this government has chosen to ignore the Brodet Committee recommendations – ratified by the government in 2008 – which obligated the IDF to streamline its operations in a way that would save NIS 30 billion by 2017, without compromising military capabilities.

A Bank of Israel study found that the defense budget for 2011 had exceeded the parameters set by the Brodet Committee by NIS 3b. During the years 2008-2010, the excess was about NIS 1.5b.

As the economy braces for a slowdown, it is imperative that the government maintain fiscal discipline. But it is no less important to take steps to reduce income inequality and poverty.

Cutting the defense budget – which experts on the Brodet Committee believe is eminently doable without compromising military capabilities, and using the proceeds to implement the Trajtenberg recommendations – would facilitate both.

PLO pessimism

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=251023

Willingness on the part of Hamas, and the even more radical Islamic Jihad, to join the Palestinian Liberation Organization – an organizational framework currently dominated by the “moderate” Fatah – has sparked heated debate.

Optimists argue the move will have a moderating effect on the terrorist organizations. Perhaps Hamas will not delete The Protocols of the Elders of Zion from its official charter; declare its readiness to give up suicide attacks, mortar fire and other murderous activities against Israeli civilians; and reconcile itself to Israel’s right to exist – even within the 1949 armistice lines. But we might see a tactical shift.


After all, Hamas has said in the past that it would temporarily accept a Jewish state within those borders as a stage toward destroying Israel.

In contrast, the pessimists argue that if allowed to join, Hamas will either take control of the PLO or force Fatah to accept its violent radicalism. Hamas will then work to reinstate the organization’s original goal as stated in its 1963 founding charter – five years before the West Bankand Gaza fell into Israeli hands after the 1967 Six Day War – which is “the liberation of their [the Palestinians’] homeland in accordance with their abilities and efficiencies.”

Hamas, say the pessimists, sees the PLO under Fatah as having deviated from its mission at least since Yasser Arafat ostensibly renounced terrorism in December 1988 and agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Unfortunately, there is ample evidence to support the pessimistic view.

Less than 48 hours after Hamas and the Islamic Jihad agreed to join the PLO, Mohammed Shtayyeh, member of the Fatah Central Committee and one of the Palestinian Authority negotiators with Israel, was quoted in the London-based Asharq Alawsat newspaper as saying that the Palestinians may cancel agreements signed between the PLO and Israel – including recognition of Israel.

Meanwhile, Fatah officials told The Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian Affairs reporter Khaled Abu Toameh they were concerned that incorporating Hamas in the PLO would pave the way for a takeover. Indeed, Hamas has been emboldened by the populist uprisings in the region known as the Arab Spring, which have already brought to power political parties in Egypt and Tunisia with Islamist agendas similar to Hamas’s.

Libya appears to be next in line. And Hamas already enjoys strong support from Turkey’s popular prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and North Sudan’s dictator, Omar Bashir. To a large extent it was the empowerment of Islamists in the wake of the Arab Spring that facilitated Hamas’s prime minister Ismail Haniyeh’s first tour around the region since 2007. Haniyeh and terrorist organizations are widely perceived in the Muslim world as the true defenders of Palestinian interests.

Pressure will build on Fatah to prove its loyalty to the Palestinian cause vis-à-vis Hamas by radicalizing its positions.

Threats made by Fatah’s Shtayyeh that the PLO might cancel agreements signed with Israel should be seen as part of a dynamic in which Fatah and Hamas compete to prove their radicalism.

Further hurting Fatah is the lack of tangible benefit from its much-publicized UN bid for statehood, while Hamas can tout the Schalit prisoner swap as a major success and proof that armed resistance is effective. In a recent speech in Gaza to mark the 24th anniversary of Hamas’s establishment, Haniyeh called the prisoner swap a “security, military and negotiations” victory over Israel.

In the same December 14 speech the Hamas head declared that his movement remained committed to armed struggle to liberate “all the occupied Palestinian territories,” making no distinctions between the West Bank and Tel Aviv.

It is abundantly clear that neither Hamas nor the even more radical Islamic Jihad will undergo a process of moderation as a result of being incorporated in the PLO. It is much more likely that the changes the PLO underwent to shed its terrorist organization status and garner international recognition will be rolled back by Hamas.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s support for bringing Hamas into the PLO raises serious questions about his intentions.

Under the circumstances, how can we not be pessimistic about the prospects for a negotiated peace any time soon?

Gender insanity

Discrimination and violence against women – purportedly motivated by religious sensibilities – have spiraled out of control.

In recent weeks, we have been witness to women attacked for refusing to move to the back of the bus to uphold a policy of gender segregation; women forced out of a venue where elections in a Jerusalem neighborhood were being held; women denied the right to come on stage to receive an official Health Ministry prize for research into the relationship between Halacha and medicine; women banned from a Jerusalem ad campaign to encourage organ donations; and women prevented from serving in key IDF positions due to the opposition of a growing, increasingly vocal group of religious male soldiers and officers. And this list is by no means exhaustive.

These incidents have generated a debate over what has been euphemistically referred to as the “banishing” of women from the public sphere. But chauvinism, discrimination or downright violence would more accurately describe this behavior.

On Saturday night, a young haredi man was arrested on suspicion of spitting at a woman helping girls onto a school bus at a religious-Zionist elementary school in Beit Shemesh.

The recent spate of incidents is so severe that it brought the issue of gender discrimination to the center of public discourse. Significantly, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who opened Sunday’s cabinet meeting by denouncing discrimination against women, has called on haredi legislators to speak out publicly against the phenomenon and ask their spiritual leaders to do so as well.

In recent years, a rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox community has adopted more extremist positions, especially with regard to questions of female modesty, known as tzniut in Hebrew. Women’s physical proximity, no matter how perfunctory, has been transformed by radical haredi men into an insurmountable hurdle.

The inner dynamics of the ultra-Orthodox community allow these men to leverage theirinfluence. Moderation is viewed with disdain as a weakness. The result has been an unrivaled push for the radical revamping of the public domain.

Much has changed since Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1895- 1986), the most importanthalachic authority in America, permitted men to commute to work on subways and buses because “unavoidable and unintentional physical contact is devoid of sexual connotations.”

Today, in contrast, where the zealots have a say, women simply do not exist. You can search in vain for a female presence in the ultra-Orthodox press. Pictures of women are taboo, even when the subject is an infant. If there is a doubt regarding the gender of a baby – say in a diaper ad – sidelocks or a kippa are added. Female names are even abbreviated.




This hyper-puritanical world view is, furthermore, being accommodated outside strictly ultra-Orthodox circles. As The Jerusalem Post’s health reporter Judy Siegel reports in today’s paper, at least two state-funded health funds – Clalit and Meuhedet – have published special brochures in deference to ultra-Orthodox sensitivities.

Neither “breast” nor “cancer” is mentioned in these brochures. Instead, code words are used. And even the most innocent photos of women or young girls are vigilantly removed. Faced with the prospect that segments of the ultra-Orthodox community would refuse to read these “sexy” brochures – and thus endanger women’s lives by failing to detect breast cancer early – the heads of the health funds apparently felt compelled to make these modifications.

Similarly, public bus companies, apparently motivated by economic considerations, have allowed haredi activists to enforce gender segregation. By caving in to these unreasonable demands, the bus companies and health funds are giving them legitimacy. And the inevitable side effect is a feeling of entitlement and self-righteousness that emboldens some particularly extreme haredi men to aggressively confront women – whether on the bus, in the streets of Beit Shemesh or elsewhere.

According to a recently released CBS report, by the year 2059, haredim – who currently make up 10 percent of the population – will grow by 580% and represent a third of Israelis. As it grows, the need for haredim to integrate into mainstream Israeli society and transform themselves from a parochial enclave to a full-fledged partner in the flourishing of a healthy Jewish state will grow as well.

What is desperately needed today in the ultra-Orthodox community is the sort of reasonable, pragmatic spiritual leadership personified by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein that would enable such integration. Otherwise, coexistence will inevitably become more and more difficult.

Women’s retirement

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=250286



In 2004, the government decided to gradually raise women’s retirement age from 60, bringing it level by 2026 to the current retirement age for men of 67. So far, it has been raised to 62 and another hike is planned for January 1, 2012. But a deal reached Monday between MK Haim Katz (Likud), the Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee chairman and the Treasury, will delay additional raises until 2017, when the issue will be reexamined by the Knesset.

If you ask women’s rights groups such as Naamat, Women’s International Zionist Organization, Mahut Center, Itach, and Israel Women’s Network, the decision to freeze the rise is a victory for women.

But is that truly the case?

About five months ago, after much deliberation and research, a special commission headed by Finance Ministry Budget Director Udi Nissan submitted a recommendation to the government to continue the gradual rise in the retirement age for women, which began in 2004. Nissan and his associates argued that higher life expectancy (currently 83.5 years for women) has made it increasingly costly to support retired women. For each year added to retirement age for women, the state saves NIS 7 billion in retirement benefits. Later retirement also benefits women: Working longer means bigger pensions.

Calculations made for Globes by the Mivtachim Pension Fund revealed that a woman who retires at the age of 62 receives a pension of NIS 3,870 a month (assuming she began working at the age of 30 with a salary of NIS 5,000, and received a 2 percent annual pay raise.) If she retires at 64 she receives a pension of NIS 4,280; and if she retires at 67 (like men) she receives a pension of NIS 5,400.

In addition, a Bank of Israel study found that the rise in women’s retirement age in 2004 resulted in higher employment rates among women. It seems employers were more willing to hire women because they knew they would be working longer.

Yet the above arguments tell only part of the story.

After the hike in women’s retirement age from 60 to 62, employment rates increased. But the rise could have been the result of sharp welfare cuts begun in 2003 that forced many unemployed to get off the dole and into the job market.

Raising women’s retirement age under present labor market conditions without taking parallel steps to improve women’s employment rates – especially as they approachretirement age – would likely exacerbate Israeli society’s already high level of socioeconomic inequalities and polarization between the rich and the poor.




Older women – many of whom are unemployed – would be forced to wait even longer to receive National Insurance Institute retirement benefits (now at NIS 2,166 a month), leading to more poverty. Also women who do manage to remain employed tend to work in low-paying, physically or emotionally demanding positions such as house-cleaners, cashiers or teachers. Forcing these women to work additional years would be particularly taxing.

In addition, societal prejudices which place undue emphasis on a woman’s appearance make it harder for older females to find work. Entrenched gender roles dictate that women devote more time to housework and child-raising. Less time is left to advance careers. Older women’s employment rates, even years before retirement age, are significantly lower than older men’s. Just 62.2% of women aged 55 to 59 participated in the job market in 2009, according to Central Bureau of Statistics data, compared to 76.7% of men.

Before the retirement age is raised for women, significant steps need to be taken to ensure that more women enter the labor force, get better jobs and remain employed longer.

State-subsidized, full-day childcare would help women get started on a career earlier. Tax breaks and grants to employers who hire older women would help also. So would special state-funded perks to placement firms that find work for older women.

We should, however, stay away from measures adopted elsewhere that penalize employers that fire older workers. Doing so might discourage businesses from hiring these older employees in the first place.

Thankfully, Israel, unlike most of the West, is not suffering from dwindling birth rates.

The balance between young and old is even. As a result, the need to raise theretirement age is less pressing here.

We have breathing space to address gender-based inequalities in the labor market before raising women’s retirement age.

Scary US views

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=248255

In recent days, there has been a truly frightening articulation of the US administration’s perception of Israel vis-à-vis the Muslim world. On Friday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta essentially blamed Israel for its own “increasing isolation,” urging the Jewish state to reach out to its neighbors.

He suggested that Israel make diplomatic inroads with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly Islamist and anti-Israel Turkey, and vulnerable Jordan, a country whose leadership – for the sake of self-preservation – has been making concessions to its own Muslim Brotherhood.

And when asked at the end of his speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington what operative steps Israel could make to advance negotiations with the Palestinians, Panetta said: “Just get to the damn table.”

In other words, the clearly exasperated Panetta believes that if only stubborn Israel would make more concessions to the Palestinians, regional animosity toward Israel would miraculously evaporate after decades of incitement.

Just two days before Panetta made his disturbing comments, US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman, the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor, basically blamed Israel for Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe.

Thankfully the White House later distanced itself from Gutman’s speech, made to a conference held by the European Jewish Union. Nevertheless, Gutman had carefully thought out what he said in advance. This was no slip.

First, he noted the “significant anger” and “yes, perhaps hatred and indeed sometimes an all too growing intimidation and violence directed at Jews generally as a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbors in the Middle East.”




But instead of denouncing Muslims who attack European Jews because Israel stubbornly insists on defending itself in, say, Operation Cast Lead – a military incursion into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to stop rockets and mortar shells fired at Israeli civilians – Gutman attempted to understand these outbursts of violence as a legitimate reaction and, therefore, fundamentally different from “traditional” forms of anti-Semitism.

Though one man was talking about Muslim perceptions in Europe and the other focused on Muslim political leadership in the region, both Panetta and Gutman had one thing in common: a maddening insistence on mixing up cause and effect.

No, Mr. Panetta, Israel’s isolation has not deepened as a result of anything that it has done (besides existing). In Turkey, in the Gaza Strip, in Tunisia and now in Egypt, governments have been voted into power – in democratic elections – that have, or soon will, pursue foreign policies exceedingly antagonistic toward the Jewish state.

After all, what interest would any Arab country in the region have in strengthening ties with Israel at a time when its citizens, given the chance to choose, are expressing a distinct preference for a particularly fundamentalist, illiberal and anti-Western – not to mention anti-Israel and anti-Semitic – strain of Islamic leadership?

What Panetta should have said – and didn’t – was that in light of the increasing hostility directed toward Israel by an increasing number of Muslim states in the region, the US reaffirms its commitment to Israel’s security.

And Mr. Gutman, the hundreds of attacks on innocent European Jews perpetrated by Muslims purportedly in response to Israel’s settlement policy in east Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria or in response to its attempts to defend itself through military means are no less irrational than any other type of anti-Semitism.

Just as Jews such as Gutman’s father were not responsible for the sort of anti-Semitism directed at them during the Holocaust, so, too, is it unfair to point to Israeli policies as triggering Muslim violence against European Jews.

As in the US, the number of anti-Semitic attacks in Western Europe outweighs anti-Muslim attacks, even though Muslims make up a significantly larger population. And alarge percentage of those anti-Semitic attacks are perpetrated by Muslims. In contrast, the number of anti-Muslim attacks perpetrated by Jews is negligible, if they exist at all.

The sorts of views held by Gutman and Panetta are, unfortunately, not uncommon. But it is more than just unfortunate when these views are held by men who have a critical influence on US foreign policy. It is downright scary, especially in light of Israel’s growing need for American support as radical changes sweep the region.

A Diaspora misunderstanding

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=248138

Many US Jews, spurred on by a group of prominent American Jewish media pundits, were apparently upset by an Israeli campaign to encourage Israeli expats living in American to return home.

Admittedly, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry campaign, which resorts to blatant scare tactics, is aggressive.

In one short video, Israelis living in the US are warned against the potential danger of cultural and religious assimilation that could result from raising children in America.

One ad shows a pair of Israeli grandparents seated before a hanukkia and Skype-ing with their granddaughter, who lives in America. The grandparents’ faces are transfixed with sorrow when their precious granddaughter refers to the holiday being celebrated in Israel as “Christmas.”

Yet the sad fact is that for Israelis, in particular second-generation Israelis born in America, rates of assimilation are worryingly high. Recent studies by Dr. Lilach Lev-Ari, head of the Sociology Department at Oranim College and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, have shown conclusively that these second generation Israelis – like the little girl Skype-ing with her Israeli grandparents – tend to define themselves as Americans and do not identify with American Jewry or with Israelis.

One reason for this high rate of assimilation is the fact that their parents – first-generation Israeli emigrants – tend to define their Israeli identity more in national terms and less in religious terms which more readily accommodate the idea of a “portable homeland.”

Army service, the Israeli landscape, the people are all elements that are enlisted to maintain a unique Israeli (not necessarily Jewish) identity. But this sort of identity is hard to pass on to children, unless, of course, fairly frequent trips are made to Israel or active attempts are made to maintain contact with what is going on “back home.”

The fragility of Israeli identity in a Diaspora setting – the target of the ministry campaign – seems not to be fully appreciated by US Jewry. Unfortunately, even among US Jews, who have developed a multitude of creative ways of maintaining Jewish continuity in a super-liberal, multicultural environment have nevertheless been assimilating at high rates for some time now. Israel is, after all, the only place where the Jewish population is actually growing.

However, what really seemed to rouse the ire of the organized Jewish community was an ad depicting a young Israeli woman attempting to commemorate Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers. The moment is ruined by her American boyfriend (husband?) who, we are told, is unequipped to fathom the idea that expats mourn for their fallen soldiers.

True, the message was vacuous, but it hardly seemed to justify US Jewry’s anger, which eased only after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stepped in and stopped the campaign. Michael Oren, ambassador to the US, said it “clearly did not take into account American Jewry’s sensitivities, and we regret any offense it caused.”

While Netanyahu was right to be attuned to American Jewry’s hurt feelings and stop the campaign, the magnitude of the reaction seems to be based on a mistake.

Nowhere in the video depicting the young Israeli woman is it implied that her boyfriend is Jewish.

Nevertheless, numerous media personalities inexplicably jumped to the conclusion that he was. This led normally level-headed commentators to claim that the campaign equated marrying an American Jew with marrying a non-Jew. The ad seemed to be saying that neither will fully understand your Israeliness.

Why would so many smart American Jews be so receptive to a questionable interpretation? Why didn’t they assume that the young man in the video could not be an American Jew because an American Jew would immediately identify with the young woman’s mourning? Could it be that American Jewry have their doubts? 

The campaign was rightly shelved. But the need to prevent the assimilation of second generation Israelis remains. Strengthening Jewish continuity of Israeli expatriates might be accomplished by integrating them into the Diaspora’s many Jewish communities.

Another option is social frameworks tailored especially for Israeli expats such as Tzofim Garin Tzaban, run by the Friends of the Israel Scouts, through which children of Israelis maintain social ties with one another in the Diaspora and volunteer for IDF service together.

Still another option might be extending the right to vote in Israeli elections to some Israelis living abroad as a means of fostering their involvement and connection with Israel. Whatever the method, reaching out to Israeli expats is an honorable endeavor that mustn’t be discontinued because of an unfortunate misunderstanding.