Dinrtz and Dollars
SAWICKI, TOM
DIN1TZ AND The Jewish Agency at a Crossroads TOM SAWICKI With 1,400 Syrian tanks breaking through Israeli defenses on the Golan Heights and 80,000 Egyptian troops successfully crossing the Suez...
...The WZO and Jewish Agency currently share the same chair, treasurer and comptroller, and many of its employees serve two masters...
...Should he wish to restore his reputation and possibly serve again, he would need to undertake a series of public acts of contrition...
...A person in a powerful position whose integrity is flawed will, almost certainly, harm many innocent citizens through his or her actions...
...In that capacity he flew to Canada on WZO funds to encourage leaders of the Jewish Students Network to take baseball bats and beat the heads of pro-PLO student demonstrators...
...And when Kaplan brought in a new corporate spirit, it was resented by many Israelis involved with the WZO/Jewish Agency, including current Aliya Department head Uri Gordon, who chided the South African as "Baron Kaplan" in a recent article in Davar...
...An even more explosive issue is the future of the World Zionist Organization...
...To complicate matters further, the chair of the WZO, Dinitz, also heads the Jewish Agency...
...With the scandal lingering in the air, some major American Jewish donors are beginning to wonder if there is another way for them to participate in the historic task of building the Jewish state...
...By sitting at the vortex of these two organizations, Dinitz has been subjected to conflicting pressures...
...Jewish law would severely restrict press coverage as we know it...
...Biblical law requires equal protection for all...
...Only when one is trying to prevent harm may one, under some conditions, engage in this behavior...
...When the controversial Ariel Sharon was considered in 1983 to head the Agency's Aliyah Department, Diaspora Jewry vetoed the idea...
...One may castigate the leadership of the Jewish Agency for not having been more vigorous in pursuing Dinitz's alleged transgressions...
...Some examples: returning all monies, plus interest...
...It is important in a voluntary enterprise for donor^ to feel good, for their agency to be successful, and for its chief executive to be held in high esteem," says Gerald Bubis, an expert on Jewish communal affairs...
...The director-general of the department is Ainon Mantver, but Gordon, a Labor party activist and Knesset-hopeful, maintains two offices (Tel Aviv and Jerusalem), two staffs and all the trappings, flights, cars and benefits...
...The new instrumentality will redefine the partnership as an Israel-Diaspora partnership, rather than as a Zionist and non-Zionist (fund-raiser) partnership...
...It was not designed as an arena for the conduct of world Jewish public affairs...
...These are, for the most part, issues of Israel-Diaspora politics...
...The $56 million WZO budget, which will decrease to $30 million by 1994, is dwarfed by die Jewish Agency's half a billion...
...I add the last qualification to emphasize that events that occurred years ago and that have not been repeated can be assumed to have been repented and atoned for...
...Once the State of Israel was established, the efforts of both the Zionists and the philanthropists were devoted to supporting the realization of the dream-not simply establishing a state, but building a nation...
...I ask that we leave the determination of my guilt or innocence to [Israeli] legal-bodies....What is at stake is the moral stand of our organization...
...Each department also has the equivalent of a professional executive director...
...An argument can be made that revealing official wrongdoing does prevent further injury...
...Too great a difference existed between the Zionist and non-Zionist ideologies...
...He was elected by the World Zionist Congress and affirmed by the Agency's Board of Governors in 1987...
...But it won't be easy...
...On the other hand, the people who ultimately pay the bills for the system have been pressuring Dinitz to clean up waste and duplication...
...Israeli politicians view it in three ways: those few who are for reform see the commission as a welcome development...
...This was done, says the Talmud, to insure that no one be misled by his stature into following his lead...
...raisers in favor of the fund-raisers...
...Federation officials should point out to their communities that Dinitz is under investigation and that the matter will be resolved soon...
...The Jewish Agency chair is under police investigation...
...those who benefit from and often abuse the current system are against it for fear of losing their privileges...
...The following year he threatened to withhold promised monies to an Australian Jewish student group unless the students were going to tour the settlements in die West Bank...
...The Jewish Agency continued to function as the governing body of the Zionist movement in Israel until after World War II...
...First, the nature of the crime: How serious...
...While he might be the sacrificial lamb in the short term, the long-term existence of the WZO is in question as it plans to celebrate its centennial in four years...
...Is the Jewish Agency a dumping ground for washed up Israeli politicos...
...Leading the pack against Dinitz were leaders of New York Federation-UJA, which supplies more than one of every three dollars the Agency receives...
...Headed by David Ben-Gurion, the Jewish Agency executive became Israel's first cabinet and Ben-Gurion its first prime minister when Israel was founded in 1948...
...When the rabbis in Jerusalem regained their capacity to act, this scholar refused to accept their authority...
...In Judaism, privacy takes precedence except in very limited circumstances...
...There are two additional points particular to the Dinitz case...
...Though I have never been sure of where such a right can be found in the Constitution, I do know that it often stands squarely in opposition to the right of privacy...
...military airlift...
...If the principles can't hold here, they have no true value...
...The Jewish Agency was founded in 1929 by Chaim Weizmann as an instrument for Jews around the world, but primarily in the United States, to donate money to the evolving infrastructure of ajewish state in the making...
...On the one hand, American Jewish donors reaffirmed their commitment to the Agency and its important work...
...Dinitz is innocent until proven guilty...
...In a compromise hammered out during a stormy session of the Agency's Board of Governors in August, Dinitz will hang on to his post until December 31,1994—two years before his term expires—or until the State Attorney hands down charges, which could be anytime...
...A disgraced public official can be reinstated, but only after displaying a greater than usual distance from the source of the problem...
...Judaism views any gossip, even if true, as destructive of subject, speaker and listener...
...It is a tightrope walk with only two safety nets: Mendel Kaplan on one side, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the other...
...But the WZO funds are more fungible because there is Hide oversight by Diaspora leaders, who chair various Jewish Agency committees but few in die WZO...
...Israeli politicians, however, maintain that they are necessary in a country and system that is party driven...
...The violation of privacy inherent in media reporting of a person's private business is governed by the laws of lashon harah (gossip...
...Our society has ceded considerable moral authority to the judgment of the media...
...Perhaps most damaging in the Gafni report was a revelation that "a general accounting and settlement of the chairman's expenses for the period of 1988-92" was only undertaken from March to August 1993...
...We in America know all too well that envy and the titration of scandal and gossip conspire against anyone in the public eye caught in controversy...
...If it is to play a leading role in the world Jewish scene, it must serve as an arena for the resolution of just such issues...
...The unlikely alliance of right-wing Israelis out to get a Labor star, American fund-raisers eager to shape up the Jewish Agency, and a vociferous Israeli press, was enough to unseat Dinitz before the end of his term and taint his 35-year career on behalf of the Jewish people...
...We believe in the power of and capacity for repentance...
...Fund-raisers maintain that there is no need for political directors, whose salaries, staffs and offices account for $4 million in the combined WZO/Jewish Agency budgets...
...If, in fact, Dinitz is guilty and knows it, he may want to admit his guilt and assume some of these burdens now...
...On the one hand, his lsraelitounter-parts demand that he stick up for the current system, which is based on Israeli political parties and political appointees heading departments...
...Exposure and removal from office will prevent these negative consequences...
...More specifically, the donors had to be confident that their funds were being used in the best possible way...
...Barry Freundel is rabbi of Kesher Israel in Washington, DC...
...they have often promoted partisan or personal interests...
...delivered 22,000 tons of equipment, valued at $825 million, during 566 flights...
...The net result of that decision is mixed...
...It has been accused over the years of being a highly politicized dumping ground for washed-up Israeli politicos seeking a last dignified office and a pension, or for young upstarts seeking a platform for their budding political careers...
...What is the proper role of the Diaspora...
...Weizmann decided to try to use that authorization to bring non-Zionist philanthropists from the Diaspora into the Zionist effort...
...Who got hurt...
...Two issues enter our judgment of current ethical violations by a person such as Dinitz...
...Until then, we need to remember our commitment to justice and ethics...
...There are three likely points of contention that reflect the deep divisions within this Jewish superstructure...
...The Arabs were swiftly resupplied with offensive military weapons by the Soviet Union...
...The Jewish Agency looks as if its house is in disarray because of these differences...
...Though the scenario is painful, the principle of equal treatment is primary...
...Then, in 1946, the same year that the World Zionist Organization took over the entire Agency, David Ben-Gurion, who was chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, decided to turn to the non-Zionist philanthropists for support in the critical fight for Jewish statehood...
...Two, the claim that some have made—that people are cutting back on their UJA-Federation pledges because of the Dinitz situation—strikes me as absurd...
...No matter how much evidence is reported by the press, trial and conviction by media coverage threatens the legal protections that underpin our society in ways that are far more significant than anything Dinitz may have done...
...Was it unique or part of a pathis post for now, he's through," says a national leader of the UJA, the Jewish Agency's principal funder...
...While Rabin, who also heads the Labor party, has basically stayed out of the fray (to Dinitz's detriment), Kaplan has been more aggressive behind the scenes in facilitating Dinitz's respectable exit...
...The U.S...
...Nearly half a million new immigrants, mostly from the former Soviet Union, have made Israel their home and had to be housed, fed and employed...
...On the other hand, the American donors have made it clear that there will be conditions—and therefore greater accountability—attached to the funds...
...Certainly, those who set deadlines for his leaving office prior to a guilty verdict are disgracing themselves and any cause they claim to represent...
...Daniel J. Elazar is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs...
...After Israel's founding in 1948, the WZO changed its mandate to spread the Zionist1 message to Jewish communities worldwide by sending emissaries, promoting setde-ment, fostering Zionist education in Jewish schools and bringing hundreds of thousands of young people to Israel on various programs...
...If anything, rigorous enforcement against everyone should begin now...
...It may not save his present position, but it might improve his chance to have his talents called on in the future...
...Dinitz, a respected diplomat with considerable power, was unable to do so, to the detriment of his career and to the future of the leading Jewish nation-building organization...
...Even then, a primary purpose of the Jewish Agency in the Diaspora was to raise money for the Zionist effort to establish a Jewish national home and bring Jews to Eretz Yisrael...
...Dinitz, the chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) and the World Zionist Organization (WZO), is under police investigation for misuse of charitable dollars for personal expenses...
...donating to charities...
...Even though Dinitz will retain Doing Dinitz Dirty Barry Freundel What are the moral and ethical issues raised by Simcha Dinitz's troubles in light of Jewish thought and law...
...The intention was to form a partnership between the Zionists and the philanthropists...
...It was Dinitz's finest moment...
...In 1971, the Jewish Agency, through a contract with UJA that is due to expire in a year, became the established instrumentality through which to funnel Jewish support for Israel—roughly $500 million a year...
...In the Dinitz case the reportage appears to be fairly well-documented and responsible...
...The Jewish Agency was established only in 1929 in Switzerland, pursuant to the League of Nations' authorization...
...At best, Dinitz was lazy in keeping U"ack of his expenses...
...Founded byTheodor Herzl at the first World Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, the WZO became die political instrumentality for establishing ajewish state...
...Even so, there have been some major improvements in the last seven years in the accountability of the WZO/Jewish Agency to Jewish donors...
...The Agency is seeking to renew its exclusive arrangement with American Jewry's largest charity, but many UJA leaders want to renegotiate the terms in order to force greater accountability...
...For many years, American Jewish donors and their leaders were content to let the WZO/Jewish Agency operate with little interference and accountability...
...The Zionists, however, believed that this was not enough...
...Now, 20 years later, the former ambassador is at the center of a controversy that is about to cripple his distinguished public career...
...doing volunteer service...
...When Mendel Kaplan, a tough South African industrialist and major donor to Jewish causes (including the Agency), became chair of die Board of Governors in 1986, he had what he called "an evolutionary agenda" to depoliti-cize the Agency, which assigns powerful department directors and many senior slots according to political affiliation...
...Take the case of Shlomi Gravitz...
...Gifts to Israel are not gifts to Dinitz and they are needed for much higher purposes...
...They wanted to secure those rights for Jews in the countries of Eastern Europe and the Arab world...
...The World Zionist Organization (WZO), which was created in 1897, could have been the agency envisioned by the League's authorization...
...I've cut back significandy on my gift to federation because of the corruption of the Jewish Agency," says a major donor from the Midwest, in the wake of the Dinitz affair...
...The first is about political directors...
...There was no formal institutional mechanism through which the nation builders, so to speak, mostly in Israel, could work with the philanthropists, mostly in the Diaspora...
...Hirsch and his allies, who overwhelmingly consist of Americans, passed a resolution at the last Jewish Agency Assembly in Jerusalem (when the assault on Dinitz was at its height) calling for the establishment of a recon-stitution commission...
...How much harm was done...
...Reducing one's gift over this affair displays narrow vision and a lynch mob mentality that does no one proud...
...And thus began a productive partnership between Kaplan and Dinitz, who have since administered over $3.5 billion in charitable funds...
...But given the developments in Israel, the long-term future of the Jewish Agency may not rest with Kaplan, WZOnicks or even the powerful donors...
...Dinitz has rallied Labor members of the Knesset to his defense, met twice with the prime minister, lobbied key Diaspora leaders in an effort to save his reputation and his position and wrote a widely circulated letter to members of the Jewish Agency assembly denying die charges...
...At that time, many leading world Jewish figures still believed that emancipation was enough for the Jews, that what had happened since the eighteenth century in granting civil rights to Jews in countries like the United States and France was sufficient, and that this should be the goal of the Jewish effort...
...In those days, the discussion of the need to establish a politically sovereign state was kept somewhat under wraps...
...This, they believe, would increase the level of UJA's political accountability to its donors...
...That, however, is one thing that is not to be laid at Dinitz's feet...
...It was created pursuant to a resolution of the old League of Nations as part of its mandate to Great Britain to assume the powers of government in the land the British had conquered in World War I. The purpose of the Jewish agency (with a small "a") was to work toward "the advancement of a Jewish national home in Palestine...
...In the meantime, his rights must be protected if our ethical heritage is to mean anything at all...
...But it has been more than that...
...However, imagining for a moment that is true, it argues most strongly not for Dinitz's removal, but for an indictment of Federation leadership as not having educated their people regarding basic human and Jewish morality...
...At worst, Dinitz abused his American Express and Syms credit cards, lived lavishly and traveled for personal reasons using charitable dollars...
...An internal investigation in September by Philadelphia judge Abe Gafni, who is also on the Board of Governors of the Agency, has cleared Dinitz of most of the rumored charges, although it also confirmed that there was some misuse of Agency funds...
...So too, any public official whose behavior is inappropriate must be removed from office to prevent the lowering of ethical standards by members of the community who may be influenced by his malfeasance...
...Was it an act of commission or omission...
...and Israeli institutional recipients...
...Today, more than 20 years later, the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency represents a major share of the leadership of the Jewish world...
...That requires a behavioral shift...
...Nixon dragged his feet but eventually agreed...
...In September, the board of the United Israel Appeal, the conduit for UJA funds to the Agency, voted to renegotiate its contract with the Agency while also affirming to maintain its exclusive arrangement to send it funds...
...However, due process must be preserved...
...Therefore, those community leaders who use possible reduction of gifts as leverage to get Dinitz to resign should instead question themselves as to whether they have met the challenge of leadership...
...The war began to turn in Israel's favor...
...The appointments are dominated by Labor and Likud politicians, but also include the National Religious Party, the left-wing Meretz party and several American Jewish groupings, including Hadassah and the Reform and Conservative movements...
...the idea of a Jewish national home was the way the Zionist message was framed...
...loan guarantees in the pipeline, an economy that is glowing at a record six percent, stable U.S...
...We never knew there was this awesome organization in Israel called the Jewish Agency...
...This phenomenon is sending tremors through the fund-raising networks in the U.S...
...For the Jewish people to be truly secure and to continue to exist in a creative cultural and political way, they believed, the Jews needed to return to their land, to rebuild their national home...
...Dinitz fell victim to the politics he was brought in to reform...
...So when two Likud members of Knesset filed a complaint against Dinitz with the Israeli police and the Jerusalem Post ran investigative articles last summer charging Dinitz with financial improprieties (Neio Republic editor Martin Peretz charged in the Jerusalem Report that the investigation was politically motivated by the Likud-leaning Jerusalem Post), Dinitz's fortunes began to turn...
...The structure for dealing with problems of this type must be changed, but Dinitz should not suffer for the sins of others...
...The swarm of media reports in Israel and abroad, as well as faxes between outraged Jewish leaders, have proven too much for the Agency's 74-member Board of Governors to handle...
...Only a small fraction of UJA's 800,000 donors have ever heard of the Agency and there are only 398 members of the Agency's General Assembly...
...While normal repentance will rerrtove God's punishment, it does not restore the individual to what he once was...
...At worst, Dinitz abased his American Express card, lived lavishly and used charitable dollars for personal travel...
...Dinitz's successor will need to change much of the Agency politics...
...The true test of those principles comes in extreme circumstances like the Dinitz case...
...All those who treat him as guilty before final judgment, and even before indictment, have violated one of the most fundamental of all human ethical principles...
...Dinitz denies any wrongdoing and charges have not yet been filed by the State Attorney...
...I've found other ways to conuibute direcdy to Israel...
...fund-raisers believe the commission, which will not be established until mid-1994, has the potential to legitimize serious changes in structure, function and even political culture of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization...
...and changing the composition of the Board of Governors from its current 50-50 split between WZOnicks and fundThe Evolution of the Jewish Agency Daniel J. Elazar The Jewish Agency may be the only non-United Nations organization in the world that has a special charter under international law...
...Dinitz, the former Israeli ambassador and confidant of Golda Meir, was a frustrated Labor member of Knesset...
...The Talmud tells of a scholar living outside of Israel who, under extreme conditions that did not allow the Jerusalem rabbinate to function normally, regulated the calendar, including determination of the date on which the new moon was declared and establishment of leap years...
...The Talmud speaks of kings being tried for criminal actions without being asked to abdicate before trial...
...The fund-raisers, whom Kaplan epitomized, wanted Dinitz as chair of the executives of both the Agency and the WZO because of his stature and his promise to reform the Agency...
...But their argument is often undermined by the mediocrity of some of die political directors...
...Either way, his sloppiness in handling his finances made him an easy target and he let the problem fester months after he was warned by the Agency's comptroller...
...We call for the establishment of a new, more comprehensive instrumentality that would be capable of responding to the needs of twenty-first century Jewry," says Rabbi Richard Hirsch, head of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, Reform Judaism's umbrella organization, and a losing candidate for Jewish Agency chair at the last Zionist congress...
...Kaplan took the reins of the Board of Governors several months before Dinitz was elected to head of the WZO/Jewish Agency executive...
...In light of accusations that Dinitz spent at least $22,000 in Agency funds for personal use, UJA may get its way...
...The donors already voted in September to put the Agency on notice that they will renegotiate...
...Those who write media reports are not elected or subjected to rigorous moral scrutiny...
...All parties needed to be assured that available resources were mobilized effectively, that expenditures were properly monitored...
...taking lower level positions and establishing a track record of trustworthiness...
...A thousand employees have been laid off since 1986, unprofitable enterprises and buildings have been sold off, there is greater consultation over;\a wide range of issues, and the Board of Governors is about to be expanded from 74 to 120 members in an effort to be more inclusive...
...Since then, the Jewish Agency's primary work has tern...
...It also gave Dinitz a sense of Jewish mission...
...However, ethical review of press behavior should be ongoing...
...When there was talk in the New York and Los Angeles federations of withholding funds from the Agency to protest Dinitz's alleged misuse of charitable funds, they exercised a level of chutzpah unheard of in the history of Israel-Diaspora relations...
...One, the fact that other officials may be involved in unethical activities is not a justification for Dinitz's acts...
...One proposal Kaplan is quietly circulating would separate the officials and staffs of the intertwined entities...
...The Likud is not the only abuser of the system, as in the case of Uri Gordon, chair of the Aliya Department...
...It was left to the WZO and its president, Chaim Weizmann, to determine what the Jewish agency would be...
...This authorization did not require the creation of a new organization to be called the Jewish Agency...
...The contract runs out in December 1994, but any changes must be announced by December 1993...
...Those covering the story must meet appropriate professional standards and not compete to get out the "dirt" at any cost...
...If we allow the trial by the press it can affect every one of us," Dinilz wrote...
...There is no denying that considerable friction still exists between the representatives of the WZO (the old "Zionists") and the fund-raising communities as a result of differences in conceptions and goals...
...Many Israelis and seasoned Jewish donors, however, know another face of this quasi-governmental organization...
...While it is unclear into what the WZO/Jewish Agency might transform, three things seem certain: serious reform is needed, Simcha Dinitz will probably be the last elected chair of the current superstructure, and increasing numbers of donors will wonder if they should take their charitable dollars elsewhere...
...Despite Weizmann's vision, it failed...
...As the small so the great shall you hear," says Deuteronomy 1:17, suggesting that the latter task is the more difficult...
...We come finally to the question of a person in a position like Dinitz's who is found guilty of engaging in unethical behavior in the relatively recent past...
...Some are even questioning whether it is needed...
...A single institutional framework brought together the nation builders and the philanthropists...
...With $10 billion in U.S...
...No generalized "right to know" exists in Jewish sources...
...Something was still missing, however...
...A series of Israeli press investigations, culminating in a stinging Jerusalem Post investigation in June, accused Dinitz of overspending his annual entertainment budget by more than $10,000, of hiring a car for $200\o bring him from one Kennedy Airport terminal to another, of retroactively being given a clothing allowance in order to cover up use of an Agency-paid Syms credit card, of using his Agency-paid American Express credit card for personal expenses, and of using charitable funds for him and his wife to travel more than the permitted amount...
...Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel, specifically ruled this way in a case involving a shochet (ritual slaughterer...
...No longer would it be necessary to conduct the affairs of Israel-Diaspora relations by having a few Jewish leaders from the United States meet in a room with a few Israeli government heads...
...The Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization have a total of 13 departments, each headed by a politician representing one of the political parties...
...and a smaller minprily of those against it see the commission as yet another vehicle to be infiltrated and manipulated to further their own goals and careers...
...It almost doesn't matter how serious the charges will be against him, the damage has been done and he won't be able to recover...
...Reformers are striking while the iron is hot...
...These needs led, in time, to the reconstitution of the Jewish Agency in 1971...
...Looming over all these battles is the question of the contract between UJA and the Jewish Agency...
...The accomplishments of the Jewish Agency under Dinitz are monumental, although many were caused by the winds of history more than by the agency he heads...
...aid, increased foreign investment, a gradual end to the Arab boycott, a potential peace dividend and a highly skilled work force, American Jewish donations to Israel will become less and less relevant...
...These made Dinitz look good, gave the Jewish Agency the opportunity to fulfill its mission, and made donors feel as though they had affected Jewish history...
...Absent a verdict, it is hard to make a final determination in the Dinitz case...
...President Nixon had not yet decided if the United States was going to airlift arms to Israel and Prime Minister Golda Meir was considering a cease-fire, one that would leave Israel at a serious disadvantage...
...The Jerusalem rabbis responded with an Abscam-like sting operation that eventually led to this scholar being publicly discredited...
...Many UJA leaders want greater say in how their money is spent and have raised two once-taboo issues: changing the "exclusivity clause," thus allowing for transfer of UJA funds to projects outside the Agency framework...
...Divisions nevertheless persist...
...Sheri Cowan, a recent visitor to Israel on a fact-finding mission organized by UJA, says, "the tour was an eye-opener for us...
...Even if he is found to be innocent, he won't finish his second term because of the appearance of scandal...
...It is also a shot across the bow to Israeli politicians who historically operated freely with little accountability...
...If he is found guilty of anything like the offenses that have been charged, there would seem to be no choice but to discharge him...
...How should the funds be divided between Israel and the Diaspora...
...The blame belongs to others...
...Many U.S...
...Miraculous airlifts of 14,000Jews from Ethiopia, 650Jews from the former Yugoslavia and 300 from Albania were organized by the Jewish Agency and funded by UJA, at $200,000 per flight...
...Despite this history—which would have disqualified him from leadership of any Jewish organization in the United States—he has since been promoted to head the Youth and Hechalutz Department with its $8 million budget...
...Six thousand miles from the war front, Simcha Dinitz, the 44 year-old Israeli ambassador to the United States, embarked on a campaign for a U.S...
...A former head of the Likud-affiliated Betar youth movement, Gravitz rose steadily through the ranks to head the WZO Student Department in 1988...
...The three-page letter was also sent to Jewish newspapers...
...Second, concern for the effect on society...
...On average, nearly 50 cents of every dollar donated to one ot the 200Jewish federations in the United States goes to the Jewish Agency...
...If the information is known to be true, stands a reasonable chance of being determinative, contains the least amount of information necessary to do the job and is not motivated by revenge but by a desire to help avoid injury, then— and only then— may it be shared...
...With hundreds of millions of dollars, 2,600 potential patronage jobs and plenty of temporary projects and grants at their disposal, the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization are not just funding Russian absorption...
...Much of his energy appears to be channeled into advancing Labor party interests among the new immigrants his department is supposed to absorb...
...Who should make the decisions and how should they be made...
...Those who pay the piper are demanding a new tune, and it sounds radically different from shmaltzy, old Zionist refrains...
...While the Dinitz affair winds down and a successor is quietly sought (Natan Sharansky, Labor Knesset member Avram Burg and former Speaker of the Knesset Shlomo Hillel are three names mentioned as possible contenders), the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization face deeper issues that threaten not only the career of one man, but the survival of the current structure...
...Simultaneously, the educational and social service needs of American Jewish communities are growing rapidlv and more federations are already diverting money from the Agency for local use...
...However, that removal from office need not be permanent...
...Now there was an institutional framework for the conduct of world Jewish public affairs...
...Some Jewish leaders and donors have hinted that they would argue against renewing UJA's exclusive contract with the Jewish Agency over the lack of political accountability of the department heads...
...The average citizen is afforded such protections and leaders should be too, or else we will have no people of quality to lead us...
...This began to change in the early 1980s...
...In other words, only after the police investigation began did Dinitz repay the money he owed the Agency...
...Heading the WZO/Jewish Agency, with its power, perks and status, was better than ending a distinguished career at the bottom of a Labor Knesset list...
...this strikes me as ethically problematic...
...refusing to use public funds whenever possible, even when legally permissible...
...DIN1TZ AND The Jewish Agency at a Crossroads TOM SAWICKI With 1,400 Syrian tanks breaking through Israeli defenses on the Golan Heights and 80,000 Egyptian troops successfully crossing the Suez and advancing toward Israel, the Jewish state suffered heavy losses in the first days of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973...
...Especially in the United States, the non-Zionist philanthropists had become the community leaders in every respect, except perhaps in leading the fight at the United Nations for a Jewish state...
...Eventually, he may suffer for his own shortcomings...
...been immigrant absorption and settlement within Israel's pre-1967 borders (see box below...
...When the Israeli government considered changing the Law of Return in a way that would delegitimize non-Orthodox Judaism by rejecting non-Orthodox conversions, UJA leaders flew to Israel to lobby against the measure...
...Louis Marshall, the great leader of the non-Zionist philanthropists from the United States, died on his way back from the founding meeting, leaving the new Jewish Agency in considerable disarray...
...This was seen as a fundamental violation of Jewish law...
...While one may hope that Dinitz will resign or take a leave of absence to diminish the fallout from the scandal, his continued claim of innocence entitles him to confront the witnesses and evidence against him in a court of law...
Vol. 18 • December 1993 • No. 6
