November 19, 2008

by Cnaan Liphshiz

This year, for the first time in 20 years, participants from countries outside the United States - including Israel - took part in the World Zionist Organization's General Assembly workshop for aspiring Jewish writers.

The Do the Write Thing program, launched two decades ago, at once offers an insider's view of Israel and underscores the lines that separate European, American and Israeli coreligionists.

During the five-day program, 30 journalism students and aspiring writers toured Israel and attended sessions of the United Jewish Communities General Assembly, which is taking place in Jerusalem this week. The WZO writers program coincides every year with the GA.

On Monday, the participants hosted a panel discussion attended by Meretz legislator Avshalom Vilan and the Hatikvah party's Arieh Eldad.

The writers later attended a lecture given by former chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon on the regional threats Israel is facing. Approximately 30 minutes after meeting with the writers, Ya'alon confirmed local rumors circulating in the media about his intention to join the Likud party.

According to 24-year-old Erica Nurnberg from Washington D.C., Ya'alon's address provided a perfect example of the contribution Israeli participants had made to the program. One of the Israelis in attendance, a journalist, had asked Ya'alon about his Likud ambitions during the workshop lecture. Ya'alon, however, decided to sit on the scoop for another half an hour and declined to comment.

The program, which the World Zionist Organization's Hagshama department runs in cooperation with the Jewish Agency and the American Jewish Press Association, also gave Nurnberg a chance to observe "Israeli cluelessness" about the Jewish world.

People in Israel, she says, tend to be either very religious or very secular. She also noted the North Americans were far more aware of what was going on in Israel than vice versa. She added she would have liked to learn more about Israeli, rather than American, philanthropic projects.

Laurent Spierer from Switzerland was struck by the differences in the focus of European Jews from their Israeli and American counterparts. "If this were a European program, there would have been much more of an emphasis on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism," he says. "You can tell it's an American program."

Spierer, 25, who lives in Geneva, noted that the participants only heard one Arab-Israeli speaker and did not meet with any Palestinians. "It was balanced in the sense that we were as exposed to the right wing as to the left wing in Israel, but only within the Zionist spectrum," Spierer said.

Katya Minakova from Moscow, in her early twenties, says she found the trip to be an opportunity to educate Israelis about their "misconceptions" about Russians. "For a start, people here don't seem to know that Russia still has a large Jewish community," she said.