J Street Joins Push Against Israel Separate Bus Policy
Three American Jewish organizations responded to an appeal by an Israeli Labor party affiliate to press Israel’s government to distance itself from a plan to keep Palestinians off some Israeli buses.
“Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has decided to forbid Palestinian workers, who work in Israel, to ride buses which also serve Jewish civil population in the West Bank,” said the letter sent Wednesday by Young Israeli Labor to a number of U.S. pro-Israel groups.
“This unfortunate decision is a disastrous one in any respect,” said the letter. “Apart from being a severely miserable decision in every moral aspect, it also adds a very powerful weapon to the arsenal of those seeking to undermine Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Ya’alon has said he favors such a plan to prevent terrorist attacks, although Israeli military officials say the risk of attacks by vetted workers is low.
Ya’alon has also said he has yet to give the order for the segregation.
Of the addressees, three groups have responded positively: the Anti Defamation League, which said it was making private overtures to Israel’s government; J Street, the dovish Middle East policy group, with a Twitter campaign run by its university affiliate, JSteetU called “Pray With Your Tweet,” or #PWYT; and the Reform movement through a statement from the Union for Reform Judaism President, Rabbi Rick Jacob, who noted that Israel’s attorney general opposes the proposal.
“Israel’s democracy is one of her greatest strengths and we fear that Minister Ya’alon’s proposal threatens that democracy,” Jacobs said.
Another of the organizations addressed in Young Israeli Labor’s letter, Hillel, said it did not receive the letter.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO