Welcome to the May issue, the Ninth issue of “Shared Citizenship”, MERCHAVIM's online magazine!

Contents

Editorial: "Civil Society" in Israel: The Struggle for Meaning. Read more...

Current Activities: "Kulanana" ... Towards a Year of Activities. Read full article...

MERCHAVIM Perspectives: Interviewing Mrs. Sari Rivkin, Executive Director of YEDID. Read full article...

Further Activities... : "There's More to it than Art" - A training program for art teachers from the Jewish-secular and Arab-Israeli school streams. Read full article...

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Editorial

"Civil Society" in Israel: The Struggle for Meaning

By Mike Prashker, Founder and Director of MERCHAVIM

With the term "civil society" entering increasingly wide use in Israel, it is timely and important as "shared citizenship" educators to explore its many possible meanings and their ideological and educational implications. Broadly speaking, definitions of the term "civil society" can be divided into two categories: "institutional" and "ideological".

"Civil society is composed of the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state (regardless of that state's political system) and commercial institutions of the market".

The most important – and paradoxically ideological - characteristic of this definition for our purpose is that it proudly claims not to be ideological. In it "civil society" is nothing more than a collection of non-government organizations, in whichever kind of state, be it a progressive democracy or a repressive dictatorship. By this supposedly non-judgmental definition, Israeli non-government-organizations as different as Merchavim and those that in essence work to undermine any sense of shared civic belonging among Israeli citizens of all backgrounds, are entirely indistinguishable.

Ideological definitions are – by definition and unashamedly – ideological. They are inevitably far richer, nuanced and contested, both across society and even frequently within each individual.

As the Director of Merchavim, my ideological definition for "Israeli civil society" is: "The Democratic Space between Government and Business where Israel’s citizens take responsibility and cooperate to make our society fair for the benefit of all 7.6 million Israeli citizens".

As a Jewish-Zionist-Israeli, who founded Merchavim, my personal definition of the term is rather different:

"The Democratic Space between Government and Business where Israel’s citizens and international stake-holders take responsibility and cooperate to realize the vision for Israel as laid out its Declaration of Independence: a Jewish and democratic National Homeland for the Jewish People fair to all our 7.6 million citizens".

Needless to say, I believe that these two distinct definitions can - admittedly with a great deal of hard work - be reasonably reconciled. This is based on the argument and strong comparative international evidence that there is no necessary connection between particular definitions of statehood and a state's potential to be substantively fair to all its citizens. However, it is true and sad that the circumstantial evidence in Israel - of discrimination towards its Arab citizens over the past 62 years - makes this argument hard to make, especially among my Arab-Palestinian-Israeli board, colleagues, friends and fellow citizens.

As "shared citizenship" educators, committed to making Israel a fairer society for all our 7.6 million citizens (whatever our particular and equally legitimate motivations as Jewish and Arab-Palestinian, secular and religious, immigrant and veteran, GLBT community etc. citizens of Israel), we must be keenly aware of the current use and abuse of the term "civil society" in Israel.

One of the most worrying symptoms of the confusion we need to address is the unbridled institutional enthusiasm for the encouragement of "civic activism" across the school system – as if "civic activism" is itself a value – which it is not!

By this criterion, voluntary participation by Jewish-Israeli pupils in hate marches in Jaffa is morally indistinguishable from voluntary civic cooperation between local Arab and Jewish youth run by the Arab-Jewish Community Center in Jaffa!

As "shared citizenship" values educators, it is essential that we understand the fundamental distinction between supposedly neutral "institutional" definitions of the term "civil society" and openly "ideological" definitions of the term. This clarity will – for example - allow us to explain that civic activism grounded in the value of fairness and aiming to promote greater fairness for all Israel's citizens (at whatever local-national and age-appropriate level) is what we – and our schools – should be focused on encouraging.

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Current Activities

… Towards a year of activities

After a year of planning, the Kulanana initiative has recently reached its implementation stage in cooperation with fifteen NGOs committed to its objectives and vision. Read more about Kulanana

The initiative - based on the core concepts of citizenship, diversity and fairness - aims to measurably improve the relations between the different groups in Israeli society by forming a significant shared civic identity which includes all Israel's citizens. The partnering organizations will implement projects to advance Kulanana within their respective field of action.

Projects

Fifteen partner NGO projects promoting Kulanana will run concurrently this year. The following are three examples:

Media Campaign, Website and Social Networks

In order to create awareness of the initiative's concepts among Israeli citizens, the Kulanana public media campaign will be launched next month on a major Israeli TV platform.

An interactive website and social networking capacity will provide information about Kulanana and will serve as a meeting place for all those who wish to take part in Kulanana's growing range of activities , etc.

Reinforcing Partnerships between Organizations

Two major partnership-building events have recently been conducted - with excellent evaluation:

A three day workshop in Ma'ale Ha'Hamisha with the executive director and coordinator of each partner organization took place in January 2011, funded by the U.S. Department of State - Public Affairs Office, Tel Aviv Embassy.

A three-day study tour in England for 15 NGO partner organizations funded by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Kulanana Pertners - March 2011

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MERCHAVIM Perspectives

Interviewing Mrs. Sari Rivkin
executive director of YEDID- the Association for Community Empowerment

1. Tell us about yourself and what brought you to Yedid? As a little girl, growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1950's and 60's, my father, who was an activist in the labor union, would take me every Sunday to protest demonstrations in our neighborhood park, where Afro-Americans were not allowed to play in the baseball league.

Following my walk-in clinic experience I decided to do my MSW in community social work, called social strategy in those days. I did my internship in an organization which sought to promote the rights of women who lived on subsistence allowance and provide them with information and assistance getting their rights. I was the only white woman in this organization, the only one with an academic degree, the only Jew, and the first Jew these women had ever met. That's how I learned what it means to be a minority (in comparison to the sheltered Jewish world I had lived in, until then, attending Jewish orthodox and conservative schools up to my high school graduation).

My practical work in the walk-in clinic taught me to see things through the eyes of my "clients" which helped me understand that it's not what one does but rather who one is that matters.

In 1983 I made Aliyah and founded and headed Shatil. After 14 years in Shatil and working with population living in central Israel, I felt that the time has come to reach disadvantaged populations in Israel's periphery. From there, it was a short leap to the founding of Yedid.

2. What is the main focus of Yedid's activities, and how is it unique?

We help people understand and realize their rights. Usually low-income and vulnerable Israelis receive help by doing charity, not justice, while we at Yedid empower them in a way that makes it possible for them to move from dependency to self-sufficiency. This is achieved through three strategies:

The combination of individual, community and policy-changing action expresses Yedid's uniqueness and enables us to make a difference and lead change.

3. As the executive director of YEDID – what trends do you currently identify in social-economic gaps in Israel?

The main trend one can identify is the "crumbling" of the middle class. People who have worked their whole lives and lost their livelihood due to shut down factories or loss of working capacity cannot make ends meet and maintain a decent standard of living. Even people who do work can't keep up with the cost living.

In The Spirit Level, recently published by Picket Wilkinson he writes that there's a tight connection between not accepting the "other" and social-economic gaps. How true is it in general and in Israel in particular?

One of the characteristics of low social-economic status is low self-esteem. People are not happy with themselves tend to exercise intolerance towards others. For example, in times of tension, whether security or social-economic the YEDID centers witness a proliferation of cases in which applicants from a certain background become more extreme in their attitudes toward others. For example the way Russian immigrants treat Ethiopian immigrants, Sephardic Jews treat immigrants from the FSU, Jews towards Arabs, etc. We, at YEDID, emphasize the importance of diversity in our staff meetings and learn to draw essential lines of proper conduct.

YEDID has joined the Kulanana initiative. As an NGO which works on issue of social-economic gaps in society and their connection to the initiative's three core concepts – diversity, citizenship and fairness, what lead you to make this decision?

Joining kulanana means going back to our roots. The kulanana initiative gives us a chance to work with the same people we ordinarily work with, and deal with the collective aspect of fairness and justice rather than the personal one.

In the first few years we mostly engaged in education for democracy and the significance this subject has for us as an NGO and in general. With time, we naturally allocated more and more of our resources to working with social challenges such as providing meals for children, needy populations etc. Kulanana takes us back to the value-based sphere, hence its major importance.

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Further Activities ...

"There's More to it than Art" – Paths of Identity and Dialogue

A training program for art teachers from the Jewish-secular and Arab-Israeli school streams.

We are currently conducting a 30-hour training program for art teachers from Jewish and Arab schools in the northern district in cooperation with the Ministry of Education's Civics Education Department– Education for Shared Living, the northern district and the inspectorate of art education in the district.

The training program entitled, 'There's More to it than Art – Paths of Identity and Dialogue', is part of Merchavim's comprehensive approach to integrating shared citizenship education into various subject disciplines, for example, training programs for teachers of civics, arts, English, Arabic, Islam, etc.

The training program is facilitated by Abir Halabi and Orna Kano from Merchavim in cooperation with Yusef Elias, the northern district's Arts Instructor.

During the training program, the teachers undergo a personal and professional process which reinforces their acquaintance with, awareness of, and openness to the "other"; it enriches their knowledge of other cultures and links it to the discipline of teaching art. The teachers also receive tools for dealing with this subject such as various teaching materials and activities for integrating shared citizenship topics into the teaching of art.

The training program includes the following main components:

• Personal stories shape identity – a workshop combining group discussions and creative expression
• From the personal to the social – the artist as a mouthpiece for social identity
• Identity, social criticism and art – using art for creative expression
• A visit to the Umm al-Fahm Gallery – a presentation by Said Abu Shakra and a tour of the exhibition
• A dialogue between historical narratives – scenes from the play 'The Return to Haifa', adapted from Ghassan Kanafani's book, followed by a talk with the Director – Sinai Peter
• There's More to it than Art – social activism in art – lecture
• Joint work of art as an expression of shared living –  workshop.

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