AZM Biennial Assembly
Remarks by William D. Hess, Incoming President of AZM
On the Role of AZM and the WZO
In thinking through a vision for AZM I made a 10-point list. Let me focus here on the two or three items I feel are most important. There is also one that may, in the short run, supersede them all.
- Together, we will make the AZM the relevant, attractive, exciting and meaningful umbrella it is meant to be by sharpening its goals through a series of meetings with constituent leadership.
- With the AZM mission statement in hand, we will travel to re-engage federated American cities and communities that have become estranged from support of Israel and convince them to increase their funding for WZO/JAFI by both dollar amount and percentage of campaign.
1. Begin the conscious re-iteration of the Zionist movement’s founders, following Elie Wiesel’s admonition to find new ways to tell old stories to tomorrow’s leaders.
2. If we can identify 10 communities to visit and succeed with 5 of them I will be bowled over and emboldened to try to visit 10 more. - Then we will figure out how to increase AZM’s budget through:
1. Soliciting foundations and individuals known to be sympathetic to Zionist programs and initiatives to support AZM in new and larger ways
2. Researching and developing foundations and individuals not yet known to be sympathetic to Israel and Zionism to help them better understand the important role both play in the lives of modern Jews
3. There is no rocket science here, no magic pill, just outreach and hard work.
Other items on the list include: strengthening Hebrew education, advocating for aliyah of choice from the West, youth participation (which, parenthetically I am most encouraged to see at this Assembly), extending existing programming initiatives and creating new ones; but in the interests of time I will refrain from discussing for now as there is a more pressing issue to discuss, and that is the relationship between the American Jewish community and Israel. It is deteriorating at a rate more quickly than any of us could ever have imagined.
As it now stands, I understand that once again there are those among the Americans in present and former JAFI leadership positions along with a group of so-called "mega"-philanthropists who are talking, not just thinking and sending through committees, but actually talking about abrogating the contract with the Jewish Agency and somehow doing away with the WZO. That contract gives the Agency an exclusive relationship with UIA and is supposed to be worth $190MM annually. As we are all well aware, that contract has stood in the breach for several years at the Agency's expense. We have watched a sick situation decline into absurdity. Sadly we felt powerless to change the situation. I had hoped that the incoming leadership of JAFI would resonate to retiring board chair Carole Solomon’s validation of the WZO and the Zionist movement as she left office. That did not happen. Compounding the quandary are the quality and intentions of those leading the charge to change. Mostly the quality is good but the intent misguided. The bottom line, to me, is that, once again, the Zionist movement has to stand up for the Jewish Agency and for Israel. We have to raise people’s visions toward the Israel that can be if we are going to change the Israel that is. We have to do what we can to bring more sanity and less ego to the governance over fund-raising and fund allocation among and on behalf of the Jewish people. The present model allows only the rich people to drive the car. We in the Zionist movement know full well from long, difficult experience, that every Jew must have a hand in directing the car, especially as we Jews are so few to begin with.
The situation, if it comes to fruition, is intolerable, unacceptable and we, in the Zionist movement, cannot stand for it. I for one am not ready to permit to surface any threat to close the venerable Jewish Agency, the child of the W-Z-O-, the beating heart of the Zionist movement. Israel could not have been built without the Keren Hayesod around the world not just in the US through UJC and its predecessor the United Jewish Appeal, among the names of whose founders I am proud to say is included at least one of my Great Uncles. Nothing gives anyone the right to threaten the existence of the Agency through starvation and evasion. It is just plain wrong and we have to stand together to fight it.
We all have to keep patiently and resolutely pushing renewal in the WZO, keeping it on the agenda until we effect meaningful change in that most historical of the National Institutions. The Zionist organization, after all, was never conceived to be a charity. Rather, it is the dynamic political arm of the enterprise. The Keren Hayesod was the vehicle by which hundreds of thousands of Jews chipped in to fill pushkeys to make dreams realities. The Zionist movement mobilized Jews on behalf of the idea of a state of and for the Jews and helped raise the money to create the state. We need to renew that activity today among the globalized Jewish youth of today.
