Good for Israel, Good for the World

Israel’s popularity around the world has been slipping since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin more than a decade ago. There was a time when thousands of young people came to Israel every year to volunteer on kibbutzim and archaeological sites. Those numbers have now been reduced to a trickle. Empathy and admiration for Israel doesn’t run as deep as it once did. The ongoing conflict with the Palestinian people and Israel’s Arab neighbours is the primary cause.

To counteract this decline in goodwill, the Israeli foreign ministry and Jewish groups in the Diaspora devote significant efforts and resources to correcting the public portrayal of Israel and the conflict. This approach is defensive and in the long run counterproductive. A colossal opportunity is being missed to take an approach that lays a different trajectory for Israel and that may even contribute in a small way to the foundations for peaceful coexistence between Israel and its seven closest neighbours.

Israel would benefit greatly if it did more to help the world. By this I do not mean emergency relief operations. These can only make a small dent as they would compete with the work of well-resourced agencies like Doctors Without Borders, Care, and Oxfam that operate globally with decades of experience. Nor do I mean a government aid agency like USAID or the UK’s Department for International Development. Israel is too small to make a real difference on the world stage with such an approach. Moreover an effort led by the government is bound to fail because it will seek to combine good deeds with short-term political gains.

Philanthropists and social innovators need to explore new initiatives in a genuine spirit of tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase that means ‘repairing the world’ or ‘perfecting the world.’ What is needed are international initiatives that are new, in the public interest, that address issues of global concern - and for which Israel does not claim to have all the answers. One possibility would be to host or create the major international non-governmental organisation dedicated to preventing genocide around the world; or an international technology centre devoted to rapidly advancing micro-power and micro-desalination plants; $100-laptops are only one step in the quest for developing adapted educational technology for the world’s poor. A dozen other ideas spanning gender issues, gay and lesbian rights, strengthening judicial independence, low-cost health technology, and more could be explored. Such work would build on a history of Jewish engagement and identification with major social movements and political transformations, including the US civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle.

The obvious place to locate such initiatives is Jerusalem, a world city to which more than half of humanity feels a strong emotional and spiritual bond. A specially designated zone could encourage existing major international non-governmental organisations, like the International Crisis Group, Greenpeace and others, to establish their regional or global offices in Jerusalem. A combination of old and new initiatives would create a critical mass of similarly minded activities. It is entirely feasible for Jerusalem, within a decade, to be for the non-profit world what the City of London is to global finance and Silicon Valley is to IT.
Non-governmental groups do not have to wait for the ink on a peace treaty to be dry before creating the foundations for a new Middle East. The staff in these initiatives should be recruited internationally. Much will be gained from encouraging Jews and Palestinians to work together on other peoples’ problems. Such experiences would put each people’s problems in perspective. It would create a new benchmark for collaboration. The question would no longer be whether a Jew and a Palestinian got along. It would be whether their work made any difference.

Israel will benefit enormously from such initiatives. It will foster a second track of diplomacy with people around the world, on an entirely non-governmental basis. It will lay the ground for a different future and new partnerships between Israel and its neighbours. It will identify Jerusalem with a positive agenda for change and cooperation. In its first 60 years Israel contended with many challenges to its survival. The quality of the next 60 years could be greatly influenced by the active engagement of the best and brightest in Israel and abroad to address jointly some of the world’s major challenges.

You may at this stage express doubts and wonder whether what I have outlined here is somewhat utopian. I can prove otherwise. I head a non-governmental organisation that operates from Jerusalem for the last three years. Among other things, we work with universities to introduce practical, evidence based courses on public integrity reform and anti-corruption. We work in more than forty countries on all continents. It is incidental to our work that our staff comes from ten nations. They include Muslims, Christians, and Jews - Israelis and Palestinians.