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Making Marriage Work

Like marijuana? Believe in men\'s rights? Want a secular state? If you happen to have an offbeat or nonmainstream platform for Israel, now is the time to run in the Jan. 28 parliamentary elections. One lesson to be learned from the list of the 30 parties vying for Knesset (see page 18) is that Israelis are disenfranchised, and looking for alternatives to the major National Security issue. And while Aleh Yarok (Green Leaf) -- the party promoting marijuana legalization -- always seems to hit the headlines a week or two before elections (despite publicity before the last elections in 1999, the party mustered 34,029 votes, representing slightly more than 1 percent of the electorate -- 15,000 votes short of the 1.5 percent threshold for Knesset membership), other parties with less headline-grabbing platforms are really set to win big.
[additional-authors]
January 23, 2003

Like marijuana?

Believe in men’s rights? Want a secular state?

If you happen to have an offbeat or nonmainstream platform
for Israel, now is the time to run in the Jan. 28 parliamentary elections. One
lesson to be learned from the list of the 30 parties vying for Knesset (see
page 18) is that Israelis are disenfranchised, and looking for alternatives to
the major National Security issue.

And while Aleh Yarok (Green Leaf) — the party promoting
marijuana legalization — always seems to hit the headlines a week or two before
elections (despite publicity before the last elections in 1999, the party
mustered 34,029 votes, representing slightly more than 1 percent of the
electorate — 15,000 votes short of the 1.5 percent threshold for Knesset
membership), other parties with less headline-grabbing platforms are really set
to win big.

Take Tommy Lapid’s Shinui (change) Party (see page 22).
Their two-page campaign booklet doesn’t get to their political leanings until
the second page. The self-described “democratic, secular, liberal, Zionist,
peace-seeking party” platform includes creating “a secular state, a free-market
economy, [obligatory] military service.”

Does 2 percent of the country really believe legalizing pot
is the most important issue? Are 12 percent really going to vote for Lapid, a
former in-your-face talk-show host whose primary goal is to secularize the
country? (Incidentally, Shinui is attempting to do for the secular what the
religious parties — and in particular, Shas — have done for years: exchange its
vote on security for social benefits such as money for schools.)

“I’ve covered a lot of Israeli elections, but I have never
seen one like this. I’ve never seen the Israeli public less interested in the
two major parties — indeed, in the whole event,” Thomas Friedman wrote in The
New York Times on Jan. 19.

What this means for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is an even
bigger headache on Jan. 29 than he had on Nov. 5, 2002, when he called for new
elections (can anyone actually remember why?). But it also means that the major
parties had better start looking at secondary campaign positions if they want
to be relevant to the Israeli people.

Israelis, in answer to the question, “How is everything?”
might reply: “Hakol B’seder, chutz mimah she’lo b’seder” (Everything is all
right, except for what isn’t all right). The situation with the Palestinians is
so not all right, and the Israelis feel so powerless, that everything else just
seems so much more important.

 

Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles, the tide seems to be turning
the other way vis-à-vis involvement. These last 10 days in Los Angeles has seen
a flurry of Israel-related events and visitors almost as busy as the Oscar
buildup. The University of Judaism’s lecture series featuring Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, turned out nearly
6,000 people. Peres also gave an informal talk to some 100 of Hollywood’s
glitterati (including Barbra Streisand, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, Annette
Benning and Warren Beatty), hosted by fellow countryman and producer Arnon
Milchen (“L.A. Confidential”).

A similar group of impressive Hollywood stars turned up at
the home of DeVito and Perlman to hear out another set of visitors, Mohammed
Darawshe and Daniel Lubetsky, of One Voice: Silent No Longer, a grassroots
petition effort seeking more than 1 million Arab and Israeli signatures urging
an end to the violence and a commitment to peace.

“My eight-year-old child came up to me and said he aspires
to become a soccer player, a doctor and a martyr,” Darawshe told some 70 people
last Wednesday at a more public event at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Darawshe, a
Palestinian, is working with Lubetsky to enact change in Israel, and now “my
son doesn’t want to become a martyr, but a leader. I showed him that a leader
was the best.”

And finally, on Sunday, Jan. 19, some 400 people attended a
full-day workshop at Temple Beth Am, “Learn[ing] how to defend Israel: on
campus, in the media, to the White House, at your office.” The StandWithUs
Advocacy Conference actually had to turn away more than 100 people from the
intense and practical seminar, which included talks on European anti-Semitism,
by the Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper; effective lobbying by Dianna
Stein, the American Israel Public Affair Committee’s deputy director for the
Southern Pacific Region, and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Dist. 24); and writing
letters to the editor by this column’s most frequent contributor, Rob Eshman.

What does all the activity on this side of the Atlantic mean?
While the Israelis are deciding between indifference and apathy, the American
Jews are finally beginning to wake up from their 30-year slumber.  When I lived
in Israel I remember screaming at my friends in America how important some
issue was, and how can they not know about it, and why do they want to talk
about the lastest Spielberg movie?

Now, I find it’s the reverse: from Los Angeles, I’m calling
them for their opinions on the upcoming elections, the latest diplomatic effort
and no, I don’t want to talk about the latest Spielberg movie.

It might take two to make a marriage work — but usually it’s
one party’s commitment that balances a lack of it on the disinterested one’s
part. American Jews’ increasing involvement in a process that Israelis are ready
to throw the towel at — well, that’s just what the marriage counselor ordered.
That, maybe, instead of a toke of the green stuff. 

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