Israel Advocacy Network Blog - State Zionist Council of Victoria

Day Three & Four - Folk Singers, Settlements, Forests and the Nitty Gritty

What does a famed American actor/folk-singer, a growing settler family, a JNF Forest and voting cards all have in common?

Well, for starters, they all played some sort of a role in my final two days of the World Zionist Congress.

I will begin this story from where my last one had left off – myself wondering what lay ahead for the final two days of the Congress and of the experience in general. My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a guitar in the lobby. I went over and saw a group of Labor and Meretz delegates surrounding Theodore Bikel, a Jewish Hollywood actor and folk singer. He had come along to the Congress with Meretz and was now giving us the pleasure of listening to songs in various tongues – apparently he can sing in 22 different languages. The experience left me feeling positive and uplifted.

The following day, all of the voting delegates were assigned to one of eight different committees to discuss all of the Proposed Resolutions that each of the slates had submitted on issues such as The Zionist Movement, Youth, Financial Support, Settlement and Aliya, Education and Anti-Semitism, Constitutional Matters and the Status of Zionist Federations. I was assigned to the committee discussing Education and Anti-Semitism. We would discuss each of the Proposals – there was about twenty or so for this committee – suggest any amendments and then put the resolution to a vote. All of the Resolutions that made it past the Committees would then be put to a larger vote with the entire Congress present the following day.

This began the exciting part of the Congress for me. To get into the thick of things and be a part of the actual voting process was an exciting prospect. On some resolutions, the group was unanimous, on others they were completely divided. One particular resolution that I did not want to go through was passed because a delegate went to the bathroom – his one vote against the resolution would have made the difference.

Following this meeting, the entire Congress was to go on field trips. This decision to send over 700 people onto field trips around the Jerusalem area puzzled me – especially since for most people the very fact that they were attending the Congress might indicate that they had already been on a number of visits to Israel. And so, I decided to forgo the tour of Mount Herzl for a trip with my fellow Labor and Meretz delegates to a Settlement beyond the Green Line.

It sounds like an odd choice of a group of young delegates coming from the Left. And I guess it was. For us, it was about challenging others and being challenged ourselves. We had heard that the settlement contained illegal outposts and we not only wanted to see this for ourselves but to ask questions to better understand the rationale behind it all. I did not want to go as an agitator, and I spent my time there with an open mind as I listened to the dialogue around me. I think this is as much as I will mention about this tour as I know that the settlements are a very contentious issue and I do not want this to become too politically charged.

Our tour of the West Bank Settlements of Eli and Shiloh was followed by a visit to a JNF Forest. They provided a dinner along with live music and kitschy JNF movies with lots of men from the 40s and 50s labouring the land - a true insult to the intelligence of a group that seemed to come to Israel in search of something far deeper. It reminded me of the 1964 Chaim Topol film ‘Sallah Shabati’ where the new immigrants plant trees for JNF and rich American donors keep coming to have their photograph taken with their donated forest. The signs of the families are switched as each family visits the same forest.

The final day of the Congress opened in usual Israeli fashion – about two hours late and the entire room in complete disarray. And after half an hour of forgone conclusions being voted on, the group was forced to take a lunch break – with 3 hours worth of resolutions and discussions still to be voted upon.

But it was most certainly worth the wait. We sat once again in factions – oddly Labor, Meretz and ARZA on the right and Likud and Mizrachi on the left.

Mostly, people voted along party lines. The majority of the Resolutions were passed, including the one about WZO Reforms that I mentioned in relation to Ron Finkel in my last entry. Disappointingly, one of the standout rejected proposals for me was one that called for at least 30% representation of every gender at the Congress. The wording of course, should have read 30% representation of women, but that was supposedly too contentious. When the Resolution was eventually put to a vote I felt disillusioned and dissatisfied to see the number of women that actually voted against this resolution. Would they prefer that their interests are not taken into consideration? Would they like to continue to see the Zionist Movement dominated by men? In my first entry regarding the Congress I wrote about how proud I was to be one of three women in the elected Australian delegation. At the Congress itself I saw how the Youth managed to come together, no matter on what side of the political spectrum they sat united for the sake of a voice. I wondered, and still wonder, why the women at the Congress could not do the same. Surely we should have come further after all of these years?

The Congress finished soon after the Resolutions were put to a vote. To have the power to hold a voting card was meaningful. A Youth Delegate summed it up perfectly in Haaretz the other day when he said that we must remember that the voting cards were the difference between settling in Uganda or Israel at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905.

As we sung Hatikva I looked around and felt a real sense of unity. After a day of voting, agreeing and disagreeing, everybody stood up and sung the same song, in the same language. Never had I felt so proud to sing the lines ‘to be a free nation in our land’ than at that moment, surrounded by proud Zionists from all over the world.

The entire week the theme of the Congress was ‘Because the Dream Still Matters’. And for me, even despite my ups and downs over the week, the dream well and truly still matters. Will I be as enthusiastic about this in four years time? Will I still be involved with the Zionist Movement? We do not know what the future has in store for anyone. What I do know, is that my love for this wonderful country will always reman, and I will always feel proud to say ‘Ani Tzionit’.