Project Interchange Israel- Day 5

The Chronicle’s Sabrina Rubakovic was a part of a week-long trip in Israel with Project Interchange, an institute of the American Jewish Committee. She was one of many representatives from American campus newspapers visiting the Middle Eastern country to broaden perspectives of the region and explore Israeli-American relations. Rubakovic blogged daily about her experience.

Today, I saw the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a window. I was sitting in the home of Bob Lang, the head of the religious council of Efrat, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Out the window and across the street I had a clear view of a nearby Arab town. And there it was, laid out before me: an age-old territorial dispute between Israel and Palestine over Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

But in the eyes of Lang, his homes and the neighborhoods, stores and parks around him were not settlements intruding on the land of Palestinians—they merely made up a suburb outside of Jerusalem. Contrary to popular belief, the settlement overall did not appear any different than the normal suburban neighborhood Lang likens it to, other than in areas where Israelis were still living in mobile homes due to the recent settlement freeze.

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This was one of the many meetings I had today regarding Israel’s foreign relations, including a discussion regarding the challenges of reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times, Ethan Bronner. Bronner said that some of the main obstacles were to find elements of both sides’ narratives that share common ground, and to let the story tell itself rather than trying to influence it with words. He said that word choice can have a significant impact on the perception of bias in a story. For example, the New York Times doesn’t call the barrier through the West Bank a wall because it reflects a bias towards Palestine, and does not call it a fence, because it reflects a bias towards Israel.

I found, however, that the most intriguing session was one regarding not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or journalism, but Israel’s domestic affairs. We spoke with Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee, who was recently named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. Rosen discussed the topic of religious freedom in Israel, averting the attention of young journalists from the mounting conflict mainstream media focuses on. Israel as a whole, he said, is a secular state. There are a few main obstacles to this secularity, however. For example, civil marriage is not allowed in Israel—marriage has to be carried out by recognized religious authorities. Rosen saw this as the biggest flaw to democracy in Israel. He also noted that the Israeli government provides for the needs of all recognized religious groups within the nation (i.e. establishing legal courts for Muslims). In addition, certain discriminatory religious laws exist, including one that prohibits Jews from growing swine.

I asked Rosen if these laws could be appealed and reversed through Israel’s court system, just as civil rights were gained through the United States judicial system. He responded that this has been attempted based on a clause in the Israeli Declaration of Independence (which is similar to the US Constitution), upholding the “dignity and freedom of the human person.” Rosen said the status quo is the will of the majority, though, so these efforts have failed. Overall, he believes that religious freedom will become more of a concern once peace is reached between Israel and Palestine.