Few people in the United States are aware of a major election happening online, but last week the World Zionist Congress opened voting. Every five years American Jews vote for delegates sent to the Congress, and delegates represent various religious and political movements within the Jewish community. The body sounds like a vast Jewish conspiracy to those outside the Jewish community, but it actually just serves as a funding vehicle for the majority of the money donated by diaspora Jewry living outside of Israel spent inside Israel, as well as Zionist programming and organizations within the United States. These dollars go towards Israeli parks, hospitals, learning programs, and more.
But as everything has become politicized, so too have these elections and the allocation of these monies. The politicization of the Jewish community has gone along religious lines; the Orthodox world has become more Republican and conservative, and the less ritually observant streams of Conservative and Reform have veered leftward to the Democratic Party and liberalism. Because of the anti-Israel bent of the American Left, inexplicably, many American Jews have become more aligned with Israel-hating organizations and causes.
Recently, JTA (the Jewish Telegraphic Agency) reported, “Most American Jews vote for Democrats in presidential elections. But the proportion of Orthodox Jews voting for Republicans has risen significantly over the last two decades, amid changes in the political parties’ approaches to Israel and social issues.” In another piece on the same survey we learn more:
“I think it’s Israel,” said Mark Trencher, the founder of Nishma Research, a polling firm that has studied Orthodox political views. “Yes, there are other issues around school choice, around the economy doing well, but really Israel is so predominant. I think that’s what drives this.”
Now the American Jewish Left is using this World Zionist Congress election to try to turn the financial support of the Jewish people against Israel, and they’re not even trying to hide it.
Reporting on the election, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency explained,
No, it’s not an ad for a symposium on the Upper East Side, but a slate of first-time candidates seeking seats in the 38th World Zionist Congress, the legislative authority of a 120-year-old Zionist organization that helps determine the fate of $1 billion in spending on Jewish causes.
The candidates hope to steer funding away from Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and toward causes like expanding rights for women and minorities. The second paragraph of the group’s platform notes its opposition to “the current policy of permanent occupation and annexation,” which it calls “unjust” and a threat to Israeli democracy.
Liberal Jewish groups already hold a majority of the American Jewish community’s 145 seats in the congress, but they have mainly used them to advocate for more religious pluralism in Israel. The new candidates hope to nudge those groups toward addressing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank more directly and to registering the unhappiness of the American Jewish community with the status quo there.
“My view of the American Jewish establishment and the Zionist establishment is that it is morally corrupt by defending the indefensible, for defending an occupation that holds millions of people occupied,” Beinart said in an interview.
Not content to allow politicized leftists take over the Congress and the money it could allocate, more right-leaning (religiously and politically) Jews are pushing back. In his endorsement of one of the slates, the Orthodox Israel Coalition, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro explained, “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish groups like J Street have mobilized to direct funding toward causes that run directly counter to the interests of the organization, including support of BDS.”
It remains to be seen how effective this effort will be to hijack a billion dollars in money meant to support Israel, not undermine it. This little-known election could have far-reaching and disastrous ramifications for Israeli security for years to come if liberals get their way.
Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a stay-at-home and homeschooling mother of four and a freelance writer. She is an editor at Ricochet.com, a columnist at the Forward, and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
