Minyan of participants in the Conference of Presidents mission gathers on the Lebanese Border.
Pressed for time, the bus taking a group of American Jewish leaders back to the Tel Aviv airport wended its way through the parking lot of the Rabin Center in Tel Aviv and out the lone exit onto the main road. Except all along the narrow service road Israeli cars were parked under tow away signs, making passage impossible. We were stuck.
So five or so rabbis and middle age and older lay leaders climbed out of the bus and, gathering around a Renault, began to rock it and shove it out of the way. Eventually, we moved it enough for the bus to squeeze through, and we all got back on board, heaving a bit, but proud. Like the nonstop sessions that had just concluded, it was just a little more heavy lifting.
This annual mission of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations spends four plus intense days meeting with and hearing from the highest levels of Israel's leadership, media commentators and academics on all aspects of Israeli life, with foreign policy the primary focus. We also took a trip to the northern region and watched Hezballah observers as they watched us on the Lebanon border and visited a settlement in the West Bank that has grown to the size of a small city.
As far as Benjamin Netanyahu and his government's representatives are concerned, the issues facing the nation come down to three: Iran, the delegitimization campaign and unstable neighbors. Everything else, including the question of Palestinian statehood, is commentary. Opposition leaders include the Palestinian issue as central to the campaign of deligitimization; in other words, if that question were resolved, much of the rage against Israel would be doused.
However they rank the threats, there is no question that Israelis feel surrounded. "We live in a dangerous neighborhood," Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni, who heads the opposition, said in response to one of many challenges from the more right-of-center folks who dominate the floor at COP events. "We all know that. You don't have tell me. I've lived here all my life."
At one of the briefings in the northern section, an officer spoke matter-of-factly about the expectation that the next war will likely include missiles landing in Tel Aviv. (Imagine missiles flying into New York.) "But we know where they would be launched from and they know that we know," he said. "The damage that we did in the last war is the best deterrent from there being the next war."
Everyone is worried about the spreading influence of Iran, and indeed, sees Iran around every corner. An alliance with Syria, feeding weapons to Hezballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Hezballah's emergence as the central power in Lebanon -- and now the turmoil among the Arab nations around Israel. Few doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whom they think is a front for Iran, will eventually emerge as the strongest force in the country -- even if it takes years. "The Iranians are very patient people," said one analyst. "It takes a year to weave one carpet. They aren't in a hurry." They also believe that Iran wants the atomic bomb to ensure the stability of their regime -- much like North Korea has used the bomb to preserve its own.
Still, amidst all of this worry, some aspects of Israeli life have never been better. Last year was the best ever for tourism, with more than 3.5 million visitors. The high-tech industry is booming, with the number of start-up companies second in the world only to the U.S. Remarkable for a tiny nation. Saul Singer, co-author of Start-up Nation, a book about the Israeli high-tech industry, called Israel a "beta country." "It's a miracle," he says. "It's difficult to explain."
Unfortunately, the apparent prosperity and dynamism is "superficial," said Ari Shavit, a columnist at Ha'aretz newspaper. A dysfunctional government system (admitted even by the majority coalition), social injustice and erosion of the middle class and the nagging Palestinian occupation with no clear route to resolution. "People feel anxiety," he says. "Things are terribly wrong."
Of rising concern is the effort of the Palestinians to move away from talks with Israel and to fight their battle in court of world opinion, claiming that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, that Israel is an oppressor, that Israel is an apartheid nation. Despite the fact that none of that is true, it falls on more and more sympathetic ears in Europe and on American college campuses, especially among the political left. This is the so-called deligitimization campaign, which includes efforts to boycott Israel and even arrest Israeli leaders if they venture into certain countries.
Over and over, the Israelis referred to the special relationship with the United States and their concern that the Obama administration is not as friendly as it should be, given their status as a stable friend in the tough Middle East. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, the former Israeli counsel to New York and others all argued to the contrary, but still the impression remains that Obama sees the Israelis as an obstacle to peace and that the U.S. has lost some of its clout. "The U.S. does not hold the main cards anymore," said one representative of the foreign ministry.
Yet despite the gloom, it is that sense of beating back everything that the world can throw at them that prevails. Shimon Peres, the 88-year-old President, marveled that Israel has converted the desert into an agricultural exporter and his country now sells carrots to Russia ("They are 1,000 times larger than us. They have 1,000 lakes; we have two--one dead, the other dying.") Yes, things are not perfect but that is what pushes Israel on. "The greatest contribution of the Jewish people to the world is their own dissatisfaction," he said.
That's probably why a bunch of old men got out of the bus and pushed an offending vehicle out of the way. So we could carry on.
