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Not So Fast
Reports of the Jewish Agency's death are
highly exaggerated.
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
W
hat looked like a bud-
ding detente between
the acting chairman of
the Jewish Agency for
Israel, Yehiel Leket, and Deputy
Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin
promptly collapsed last week in
a flurry of angry accusations
against Mr. Beilin by leading
Jewish Agency personalities. Mr.
Leket and Mr. Beilin have been
parrying for months over Mr.
Beilin's proposals for restructur-
ing organized Jewish life the
world over.
At a four-hour meeting held
Dec. 19, Mr. Leket and a number
of other Jewish Agency officials,
including Director General
Moshe Nativ and Chairman of
the Youth and Hechalutz (Pio-
neering) Department Shlomo
Gravetz, agreed to cooperate on
executing two of Mr. Beilin's-prin-
cipal ideas for reform.
The first was to start a pilot
project in Washington, D.C., to
bring thousands of unaffiliated
Jewish youngsters to Israel next
summer. The second was to be-
gin building the new mass de-
mocratic Jewish organization
that Mr. Beilin calls "Beit Yisrael"
(House of Israel) — albeit by re-
cruiting only people who are not
already members of other Jew-
ish frameworks.
It was not agreed (contrary to
Mr. Beilin's original "Action
Plan") that Beit Yisrael would re-
place the World Zionist Organi-
zation. The WZO encompasses
all the organizations defining
themselves as Zionist (including
Hadassah, B'nai B'rith, and the
Conservative and Reform move-
ments), and their delegates elect
half the Jewish Agency officials.
Mr. Beilin also withdrew his
call for Diaspora Jews to cease
their financial contributions to Is-
rael. (The Jewish Agency is pri-
marily funded by American Jews
through the Associated and oth-
er Jewish federations' contribu-
tions to UJA. Currently the
agency's main purpose is "the in-
gathering of the exiles" — bring-
ing Jews to Israel and helping
them settle into the Jewish state.)
But conflict continued over
whether the money would go only
for settling immigrants and for
education or be invested in social
welfare programs for the weaker
sectors of Israeli society, which
Mr. Beilin believes is the sole re-
sponsibility of the Israeli gov-
ernment.
Finally, it was agreed, accord-
ing to Mr. Leket, that the out-
come of the meeting would, for
the time, be withheld from the
press. All in all, an encouraging
compromise in the interests of
both sides.
Unfortunately, detente last-
ed barely more than a day. On
Dec. 21, the prestigious daily
Ha'aretz not only printed an ex-
clusive on the meeting but got the
gist of it wrong. "Beilin and Leket
agreed on the establishment of
an organization to replace JAFI
and WZO" read the front-page
headline. The body of the story
elaborated that "Beit Yisrael will
be the establishment link be-
tween Israel and the Jews of the
Diaspora in place of the World
Zionist Organization and the
Jewish Agency" and that "Leket
promised Beilin the Jewish
Agency would assist him in the
establishment of the organiza-
tion."
It must be said that the item
smelled fishy from the start, for
one could hardly imagine Mr.
Leket agreeing to help dismantle
the organization he heads. In a
radio interview that same morn-
ing, Mr. Beilin himself was quick
to call the item "exaggerated" and
"inaccurate." He also explained
the attitude of Jewish Agency of-
ficials to his Beit Yisrael plan as
a qualified one.
"What the agency people said
was: If we're talking about an or-
ganization designed to reach peo-
ple unassociated with any
establishment, we not only have
no objection, we'll even encour-
age it. If, on the other hand, you
want to replace us, we're not pre-
pared to be enthusiastic about
that."'
Mr. Beilin, however, then took
the opportunity to reiterate his
own view that the WZO is "es-
sentially an oligarchy and plu-
tocracy" that should be replaced
"with a democratic organization."
In parallel media interviews,
the affable Mr. Leket — who is
on record as favoring reforms in
the WZO but not its dismantle-
ment — also clarified, in rather
stronger language, that what was
written in the headline "never
happened." "Someone must be
trying to kill me," he quipped. "I
woke up this morning, saw the
headline, mused it over, and
burst out into such laughter that
I thought I would die."
Nevertheless, rather than be
dismissed as a misunderstand-
ing or blamed on journalistic in-
accuracy, the - affair has
burgeoned into a full-scale row.
And so the familiar dance of
one step forward, two steps back
goes on.
❑
(