The Israeli government has launched a television and internetadvertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends andrelatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying non-Jews. (Persons of European descent, take note. — Ed)
Theadvertisements, employing what the Israeli media described as “scaretactics”, are designed to stop assimilation through intermarriage amongyoung diaspora Jews by encouraging them to move to Israel.
The campaign, which cost US$800,000 (Dh2.9 million), was created inresponse to reports that half of all Jews outside Israel marrynon-Jews. It is just one of several initiatives by the Israeli stateand private organisations to try to increase the size of Israel’sJewish population. According to one of the advertisements, voiced over by one of thecountry’s leading news anchors, assimilation is “a strategic nationalthreat” and warns that “more than 50 per cent of Diaspora youthassimilate and are lost to us.”
Adam Keller, of Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, said this was areference both to a general fear in Israel that the Jewish people mayone day disappear through assimilation and to a more specific concernthat, if it is to survive, Israel must recruit more Jews to its“demographic war” against Palestinians.
The issue ofassimilation has been thrust into the limelight by a series of surveysover several years carried out by the Jewish People Policy PlanningInstitute, a think-tank established in Jerusalem in 2002 comprisingleading Israeli and diaspora officials.
The institute’s research has shown that Israel is the only countryin the world with a significant Jewish population not decreasing insize. The decline elsewhere is ascribed both to low birth rates and towidespread intermarriage.
According to the institute, abouthalf of all Jews in western Europe and the United States assimilate,while the figure for the former Soviet Jewry is reported to reach 80per cent.
Israel, whose Jewish population of 5.6 million accounts for 41 percent of worldwide Jewry, has obstructed intermarriage between itsJewish and Arab citizens by refusing to recognise such marriages unlessthey are performed abroad.
The advertising campaign isdirected particularly at Jews in the United States and Canada, whosecombined 5.7 million Jews constitutes the world’s largest Jewishpopulation. Most belong to the liberal Reform stream of Judaism that,unlike Orthodoxy, does not oppose intermarriage.
One-third of Jews in the diaspora are believed to have relatives inIsrael. According to the campaign’s organisers, more than 200 Israelisrang a hotline to report names of Jews living abroad after the first TVadvertisement was run on Wednesday. Callers left details of e-mailaddresses and Facebook and Twitter accounts. The 30-second clipfeatured a series of missing-person posters on street corners, insubways and on telephone boxes showing images of Jewish youths abovethe word “Lost” in different languages.A voiceover asks anyone who “knows a young Jew living abroad” tocall the hotline. “Together, we will strengthen their connection toIsrael, so that we don’t lose them.”
The campaign supports agovernment-backed programme, Masa, to subsidise stays and courses inIsrael of up to one year that seek to persuade Jews to immigrate andbecome citizens. About 8,000 diaspora Jews attend its programme eachyear. The government has been trying to develop Masa alongside a rivalprogramme, Birthright Israel, which brings nearly 20,000 diasporayoungsters to Israel each year on sponsored 10-day trips to meetIsraeli soldiers and visit sites in Israel and the West Bank promotedas important to the Jewish people.
Although Birthright is regarded as useful in encouraging a positiveimage of Israel, officials fear it has only a limited effect onattracting its mainly North American participants to move to Israel.Many regard it as an all-paid holiday.
Masa officials said youngJews who participate in their projects strengthened their Jewishidentity and were more likely to become politically and socially activeon behalf of Israel-related issues.
The campaign quickly provoked a storm of debate on Jewish blogsites, especially in the United States, with some terming it “divisive”and an insult to Jewish offspring of intermarriage. A link to Masa’s“Lost” campaign had been dropped from the front page of its websiteyesterday, possibly in response to the backlash.
The campaignwill probably strike a chord in Israel, however, where a poll in 2007found that 46 per cent of Israeli Jews believed all Jews should live inIsrael because it was “the only way Israel and the Jewish people willbe strengthened”.
Mr Keller, of Gush Shalom, said few Jews in the United States orEurope, the main target of the campaign, needed to come to Israel formaterial reasons. “They come from ideological motives, and many of themare right-wing nationalists who can be encouraged to settle in the WestBank.”