Opinion: Shame on NYC council candidates seeking DSA endorsement
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Michael S. Miller is executive vice president and CEO at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Photos courtesy of JCRC
By Michael S. Miller and Noam Gilboord
It’s been months since a screenshot was revealed of the foreign policy section of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) questionnaire for New York City Council candidates. Appallingly, it’s tellingly apparent that all too many Council candidates submitted those questionnaires without fully comprehending the implications of their answers.
The NYC DSA asked only two questions about foreign policy of those seeking the group’s endorsement, both directly concerned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Candidates were first asked, “Do you pledge not to travel to Israel if elected to City Council in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation?” After public outcry that such wording would prevent trips to Israel even in a personal capacity – that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim council members would not be able to visit their families or pray at their holy sites – the sloppily worded question was revised.
The newer version of the question was changed to, “Members of the City Council are regularly taken on an expenses-paid trip to Israel that functions primarily as a political junket to foster ties between local officials and the Israeli state. Do you pledge not to participate in these trips in your official capacity if elected to City Council in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation?” The second question candidates are asked remains the same: “Do you support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement? If not, why?”
NYC DSA claimed that they “did not ‘single out’ Israel.” Rather, “the City Council did” by traveling to Israel on a Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC-NY) mission. In reality, the City Council and other legislative bodies have often taken official trips to Taiwan, Ireland, Puerto Rico, and other places. The only group that singled out Israel is the NYC DSA. The fact that the questionnaire’s entire foreign policy section consists of only two questions – both relating to the boycott of Israel – and no other foreign policy questions are asked about any other country, smacks of an insidiously discriminatory application of a double standard concerning Israel within the NYC DSA.
For over 30 years, JCRC-NY has led missions to Israel for over 1,500 individuals including City Council members, NY State Senators and Assembly Members, some Congress Members, faith leaders, diverse communal leaders, university and college administrators, union representatives, and social service providers. Some correctly argue that taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund these missions. In fact, JCRC-NY raises every penny from philanthropy to sponsor them. As the organizers of these trips, we take offence at referring to them as “political junkets.” Anyone who has ever travelled on one of these missions to Israel can attest to how substantive they are as educational experiences and how exhausted participants are at their conclusion.
We will not shy away from the fact that JCRC-NY proudly supports the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish, democratic state in safety and security. We, like the overwhelming majority of world Jewry, believe in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. After millennia of oppression, expulsion, and extermination, having sovereignty and statehood enables the Jewish nation to be the master of its own destiny.
JCRC-NY also has a longstanding policy of supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in a peace agreement that ends with the State of Israel living side-by-side with an independent Palestinian state. We support the rights of Palestinians to self-determination and statehood. Palestinians deserve to be the masters of their destinies as well.
JCRC-NY views its missions as opportunities for participants to explore Israel’s social, political, and economic character, its unique security challenges in the Middle East, and to learn more about and build relationships with the diverse Jewish community. We encourage participants to ask hard questions of all speakers in an effort to expand their knowledge and understanding of deeply complex issues.
Each mission itinerary is carefully crafted for mission participants. While many missions have similar elements, no two missions are exactly the same. We regularly visit sites holy to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths; hear from security experts and civilians living on Israel’s borders with Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza; speak with officials from the governing coalition and opposition parties; learn from minority communities including Israeli-Arabs (Palestinian citizens of Israel), Druze, Ethiopian Jews, Eritrean and Sudanese migrants to Israel, and the many challenges each of these communities face in achieving full integration and equality in Israel. We do not simply portray all the wonderful things about Israel and then go home.
Our itineraries also include visits to the West Bank. In the Palestinian Territories, we hire local Palestinian guides to join us, who are free to speak their narrative. While we may disagree with certain of their perspectives, we never shut them down. We meet with Palestinian Authority officials, academics, pollsters, business leaders, factory workers, and activists. We also view the security barrier from both sides, move through military checkpoints, and visit Jewish settlements. These experiences are invaluable in shaping one’s understanding of the complexity of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Many mission participants return to New York with more questions than answers and a profound desire to learn more. Virtually all return with a firm understanding that Israel is a multi-faceted, diverse, and sometimes fragmented society, which faces real social and political problems – similar to those in the United States. They recognize that Israel has a right and a just mission to exist as a safe haven and homeland for the Jewish people.
When faced with existential crises, the Jews of Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Iran, and elsewhere sought refuge and found a new home in Israel. Insidiously, the BDS movement is committed to eliminating Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign safe haven for such Jewish communities in distress. Its ultimate goal, as we noted in 2016 (when an NYC Council supermajority passed a resolution condemning the BDS movement), is not to simply criticize Israeli policies, but to end Israel’s existence as a democratic, Jewish state and erase Jewish majority status by flooding the country with millions of Palestinian refugees. Jewish rights to self-determination would be denied.
A movement that fights for Palestinian self-determination while simultaneously working to negate Jewish self-determination, fits the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, as adopted by the Obama Administration’s State Department.
Shame on the NYC DSA for asking future City Council members to pledge to forgo an opportunity to learn more, first hand, about one of the world’s most difficult and complicated conflicts.
Shame on the NYC DSA for endorsing BDS, a movement which denies self-determination to the Jewish people.
Shame on those candidates who filled out the questionnaire seeking the DSA endorsement.
When COVID-19 is behind us, we look forward to welcoming future members of the New York City Council and other legislative bodies on JCRC-NY missions to Israel.
Michael S. Miller is executive vice president and CEO, and Noam Gilboord is COO and director of Israel and International Affairs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
