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Dear
Sikkuy Friends,
The April cross-country visit by Sikkuy's Co-Executive Directors, Shuli Dichter and Ali Haider, took them to 7 cities and more than 30 public and private meetings.
We would like to thank all of our friends in San Antonio, Baltimore, New York, New Haven, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Napa and Portland who worked so hard to arrange our meetings, public-speaking and fundraising events.
What made this visit so special was the fact that Ali and Shuli were invited to speak to Arab/Moslem, Christian as well as Jewish forums.
They also met with the heads of the League of California Cities, spoke to students at Yale Law School and met with Professor Harold Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School (and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor).
The public venues included:
Leadership meeting at UJA Federation of New York
Meeting with Arab leaders, San Antonio
Temple Beth El - JCRC, San Antonio
Jewish Community Federation, Baltimore
The Milken Community H.S., Los Angeles
Temple Beth Am, Los Angeles
N.I.F. Dinner & Traveling Jewish Theater, San Francisco
Temple Beth Shalom, Napa
Jewish Community breakfast, Portland
We are now beginning to plan the next Sikkuy visit to North America, tentatively scheduled for November, 2005. Please be in touch if you would like to arrange a Sikkuy visit to your community or organization.
Finally, I hope you will take the time to read the adjacent outspoken Op-Ed by Shuli Dichter that was recently published in Haaretz in Hebrew and English.
As always, we look forward to your comments and questions.
Best regards,
Carl Perkal
Director of Resource Development
Sikkuy (carl@sikkuy.org.il)
Shuli Dichter and Ali Haider answering questions from senior class members at the Milken Community H.S. in Los Angeles.
Sikkuy Breakfast in Portland, Oregon.
Ali Haider and Shuli Dichter meet with Christian community leaders in San Antonio.
Sikkuy presentation at Temple Beth Shalom, Napa
Sikkuy friends in Napa at a fundraising luncheon.
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Left: Sikkuy's co-executive directors meet with Professor Harold Koh (left), Dean of the Yale Law School.
Right: Ali Haider (standing) speaking at the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore at a luncheon attended by more than 70 members of the Jewish community and family foundation representatives.
It's time to disengage from discrimination too
By Shuli Dichter
Plans for developing the periphery must be unified to include both Jews and Arabs
Soon the campaigns will begin for settling the Galilee and Negev complete with tempting advertisements. But like advertisements for cigarettes, the invitation for new residents should include a warning (so that no one could later claim "I didn't know"). The warning would make it clear that the Jews who are being invited to settle there would be building their homes on an explosive foundation of inequality with their Arab neighbors.
Two large-scale development plans are now being formulated in Israel, one for Jews and one for Arabs. The National Security Council, as the government's taskforce for Arab affairs, is proposing the plan for developing Arab communities. At the same time, as part of the disengagement move, Israel has requested hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the United States for the Jewish settlement enterprise in the Negev and Galilee. And this is also being presented under the title of "development." However, according to a report from Washington (Ori Nir, The Forward, April 15), government envoys play down the fact that this development plan is intended for Jews only.
The shock of the October 2000 events added a bit of perspective to the perceptions of Jews living in the Galilee, Triangle and Negev, and many of them have already got the message: The gaps between them and their Arab neighbors are untenable from a moral and democratic perspective and constitute a perpetual source of conflict with them.
Take, for example, the per capita allocation of equalizing grants in 2003. In the Negev, this allocation in the Jewish town of Sderot was NIS 1,869; in the Bedouin city of Rahat, it was NIS 658. In the Galilee, Hatzor Glilit, a Jewish town, received NIS 1,844, while Arab Sakhnin received NIS 752 per capita. (These figures were provided by Dan Ben David and Yuval Erez from Tel Aviv University, based on Finance Ministry data.) Last week, Interior Minister Ophir Pines announced a welcome 23% increase to the balancing grants for Arab local authorities. But even if this trend continues and even accelerates, these grants are only intended for current budgets and not for investment in infrastructure.
The disengagement plan will make permanent the historic situation in the State of Israel, and there is a danger that the legitimization of gaps between Jews and Arabs will be "imported" from the occupation regime in the territories to within the state. Therefore, on the morrow of the disengagement, anything less than full equality in infrastructure between the neighboring communities in the Negev, Triangle and Galilee will be considered to be a declaration of permanent second-class citizenship for Arabs.
Pursuing two parallel development tracks will create tension. The Jewish track will be financed by the Jewish Agency and American government, and attract international recognition and oversight. On the other hand, the Arab track will be financed solely from government sources, and will suffer annual budget cutbacks by the treasury.
During the coming weeks, Finance Ministry officials will discuss the level and type of special assistance with representatives of the American administration in Washington. The State of Israel should prohibit the Jewish Agency from planning and implementing any separate development for Jews and should not request any American assistance for development intended for Jews only. Instead, development for both populations should be integrated into the same plan, whose principal goal would be to achieve full equality in infrastructure, mobilizing resources from home and abroad for this purpose. The leaders of the Arab community, for their part, should overcome their distaste for accepting American financial aid or even funding from the Jewish Agency, and demand that their communities be included in the integrated plan.
The Jewish public and potential settlers in particular, should refrain from immediately falling for sugarcoated bargains. They should first check the bitter and harmful taste of this candy. They should realize that as long as their Arab neighbor suffers discrimination in his home, then the foundations of the Jewish home in the Galilee, Triangle and Negev will remain shaky. They should demand in advance from the settlement bodies, that the foundations of the Jewish home be stabilized by creating conditions of equality with the Arab neighbor.
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The writer is the co-executive director of Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality, an NGO promoting civic equality between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel.
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