By Yuval Pais for Sofhashavua (The Weekend)
“We have become defeatist in this war. We no longer claim victory as our goal, but merely hope for a draw. I argue that Israel can win. It is a war for two or three decades, not an easy victory for tomorrow morning, but just as we were able to overcome the Arab armies and the Arab boycott, we can overcome here, too. I have no doubt of that.”
And indeed, in the past nine months, Wilf, a PhD in political science and international relations is busy, besides raising her three children that were born in the last three years, explaining Israel and Zionism abroad, and it has becomes her main profession.
“I am an ambassador without the embassy. I speak frequently to foreign delegations that come to Israel, travel abroad to speak about Israel, appear in international media, write – anything in the defense of Israel and Zionism,” she says.
Wilf became a member of the 18th Knesset a year into the term, following the resignation of her party colleague, Ofir Pines-Paz. During her three years in office, she was Chair of the Education, Culture and Sports committee, and is known mainly for three reasons: splitting the Labor party to create the Independence party headed by former Defense Minister Ehud Barak, her activism against the concentration of economic control in the Israeli economy, and, of course, her work to strengthen Israel’s public diplomacy.
“We need to remember that the budget of the Ministry of Defense is 60 billion shekels and the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is 1.6 billion shekels, which the ministry staff calls an ‘international ministry with a municipal budget’. This demonstrates the extent to which Israel’s defense policy is still about the military,” she emphasizes.
“In the past two years, especially after the Mavi Marmara events, there is the beginning of change. There is a new understanding that the battlefield is changing. But you still don’t see different budget priorities between tanks and embassies.”
What drives you?
“This is what I love doing, and have loved doing ever since I was 15: to be the voice of Israel in different contexts. I did so as a Member of Knesset and I’m continuing to do so outside the Knesset, and I hope to be back in the Knesset one day and to continue doing it there again. To me, this is a life motif. Today I do it on my own and in partnership with many organizations. For example, the delegations I speak to are often organized by a variety of pro-Israel organizations.
“In addition, when I travel abroad to speak, I am often invited by a wide variety of organizations that organize these events. Since I am independent and not an official spokesperson, it provides me credibility when I speak about Israel and Zionism.”
Between Gaza and Ashkelon
One of the projects that Wilf has been taking part in for nearly a decade are lectures to young Canadian leaders.
“This kind of public diplomacy work is very effective,” she says, “Often we think that defending Israel’s image is going on CNN and ‘sticking it’ to the Palestinian spokesperson’ and that’s it. That’s OK, I can do that too. But much of the work of public diplomacy is ongoing field work that is rarely seen in the public eye.
“It means repeating fundamental messages, speaking with people in person and answering their questions. In means bringing them to Israel. The amazing thing is that when you do this work over many years, you see how things change. For example, people take it for granted that Canada is pro-Israel today, but this was inconceivable ten years ago. A lot of groundwork needs to take place to achieve these outcomes.”
So what are your messages, how are they different from those of other national public diplomats?
“I raise issues that help highlight what is the true core of the conflict. For example, one of the issues that I started raising in the Knesset is the issue of UNRWA and the manner in which the western world contributes to preventing a peace agreement by perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem, especially in inflating their number. The true refugees number is no more than a few thousand today. The five million that are counted as having official refugee status by UNRWA are actually their descendants.
“They were born in Gaza. Their parents were born in Gaza and so have their great and great grandparents. And yet, they still call themselves refugees from Ashkelon, which is a city in Israel.” The western world funds UNRWA in excess of a billion dollars a year, and this organization supports the transference of the refugee status from one generation to another generation, even though the war that has caused their forebears to flee is no longer raging. If you ask people in the world what is the greatest obstacle to peace, they will tell you – Israel’s settlement policy. No one will say the inflation in the number of Palestinian refugees. I argue that this is an equally, if not more, powerful obstacle, than the settlements, and it makes resolving the conflict nearly impossible.
“When I speak to governments and politicians who officially support a two-state solution I tell them, ‘if this is truly your policy and the reason why you’re on Israel’s case regarding settlement building you cannot ignore the equal need to stop the inflation in the number of Palestinians who are termed refugees.’ The Europeans don’t like this message but when I meet with them they grudgingly accept it is true.”
The former MK claims that officially, Israel doesn’t take the initiative, “Israel is too often on the defensive when it comes to public diplomacy. We stop UN votes, we prevent appeals to the International Criminal Court, and only rarely do we initiate. So how do we initiate? Expose the weak spots of the other side that demonstrate that they are not truly interested in peace. Those who argue that a child born in Gaza, fifth generation, is still a refugee from Ashkelon, does not want peace.
“Rather than us standing in the line of fire, let us work to expose the fact that the other side still refuses to recognize the equal and legitimate right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state of their own in the region. Another initiative that I proposed is the IIDF, the Israeli Intellectual Defense Forces. If this is the new war and Israel intends to win it, it has to have something that is as powerful as the IDF to do so.”
Wilf adds that public diplomacy does not have to be complicated and for it to be effective it is better to go back to the basics, “I spoke to a very senior delegation of senior members of the US Congress about the history of Zionism – the basic building block. At the end of my talk, the chair of the delegation tells me: ‘Listening to you, Zionism sounds positive and inspirational. Why does it have such a bad name in the world?’ I explained that this is precisely the outcome of the battle waged against Israel for quite some time, to equate Zionism with all that is evil in our world: Apartheid, Nazism, Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing – and that’s the problem.”
How many more people are doing what you do?
“I don’t know. I do know that I belong to a type of public diplomacy that is disappearing from the scene. Today you find mostly two types of people who speak for Israel: the national religious right that defend Zionism and Israel, but on religious grounds, and while this works with some audiences, it’s a disaster with others, especially secular liberal ones. So those who believe in our just cause are increasingly from the religious right. On the other hand, there are those who speak from the liberal left, and that is related to my splitting the Labor party, who are engaged in endless self-flagellation.
“We have sinned, we are at fault, we are to blame, this is all on us, if only we had been nicer, different, everything would be OK. I admit that I’ve had enough with this self-flagellation. The problem is that most of the secular speakers abroad on Israel come from the “self-flagellation” camp, which is not particularly helpful, since they mostly go out with messages such as “Israel doesn’t want peace”. What Israel used to have an abundance of – secular liberals who are able to speak for Zionism from within liberal progressive values – is quickly disappearing.”
Between Barak and Meridor
Your splitting the Labor party is related to the “self-flagellation” of some of its members?
“When I entered the Knesset, I was horrified to discover the depths to which the Labor party and the Knesset faction had sunk. Every single member of the party did whatever she or he wanted, not to mention that, in my view some of our members belonged in extreme radical left wing parties and not in Labor. It was no longer Ben-Gurion’s Labor party, not even Rabin’s. During one of the faction meetings we discussed legislation that included the term Zionism, and some MK’s of the party said they were uncomfortable with the term. I said to myself that this couldn’t be the Labor party.
“To me, this is the reason that the Labor party no longer leads the country. The party was not split along random lines. All those who went with us clearly belonged to the old style Labor party, the more hawkish defense oriented one, those who have no illusions about the jungle that is our neighborhood. I felt more comfortable in this old-new home.”
You believe the split was justified?
“Of course. I would have preferred if we could have built the old Labor party without it, though. But there was no choice. We wanted to rebuild the old Ben Gurion style Labor party. Right now, I don’t see it in the political map. It’s a shame that because Barak decided to resign prior to the elections, people think that the party failed. It didn’t. It never got the chance.
“I believe we could have, at least, maintained our strength of five seats from which we could have rebuilt liberal Zionism, liberal defense hawkishness; what has been lost to the Labor party. At the time, I thought that Dan Meridor could have lead the party in Barak’s stead because I always viewed us as a liberal Zionist party, especially after the Likud party lost its liberal wing.”
Even if the Independence party didn’t fail, the feeling is that the public doesn’t like Ehud Barak. Today people care about who heads the party, not its members.
“Don’t like Barak is an understatement. I was personally shocked by the intensity of the negative feelings towards him. I knew it existed, but only after the split did I realize the extent of it. Partially, because it was also directed at me. People asked me how I could go into a new party with that kind of man. It remains a puzzle to me why people hate Barak so much.
“Many people have tried to explain it to me, but these explanations failed to account for the intensity of feeling. It seems irrational. I was never party to the intense feelings towards Barak, not the positive, not the negative – not to the boundless adulation, and not to the bottomless hatred – I found him a smart thinking man, with whom I was comfortable working, someone who is committed to the State of Israel, who believes in similar ideals to mine. I admit that I failed to assess the extent to which people had visceral negative feelings towards him. Undoubtedly, those who hate him today are those who worshipped him in the past.”
And still, many people are angry with you.
“I know, but I don’t see it as me having taken votes and gone elsewhere with them, but an equal split between two parts of an old party: the more dovish wing and the more hawkish one. I think we were more Labor party than the Labor party itself, and we would have proven it if we had put ourselves up for elections. I understand the anger, but I did it out of honest ideological motives.”
How does the public react to you today?
“By and large – people tell me they are sorry that I’m not in the Knesset. Even if there was anger, it fades, and then people go back to the substance. I have many letters from people who tell me that they are sorry that I’m no longer in the Knesset. They wrote to me that they didn’t like the split, but they did like the work that I did as a member of Knesset in public diplomacy and economic activism.”
The feeling is that despite the work you did in the Knesset, the public didn’t know you enough.
“That’s true. It seems that for those who know my work through my regular updates on Facebook, Twitter and my newsletter, I’m kind of a well-kept secret. They knew of my work and deeply appreciated it, but it did not make headlines. By the way, this is a permanent frustration. You do and you do, but it is rarely acknowledged, or only in a limited fashion.
“But what’s the alternative? Various PR firms approached me with ideas to increase my exposure with all kinds of cheap gimmicks, including participating in reality TV shows, or telling me to come out fiercely against this or that politician. But that’s not me. I do want my work to be known and acknowledged, but I’m also not willingly to sell it on the cheap. So I guess, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing. I guess if I do it for several decades, it will ultimately be known.”
So you’re saying that it’s easier for you to represent Israel than yourself and your achievements?
“There seems to be a bit of ‘the cobbler’s children have no shoes’ aspect going on here. I never thought of it this way, but I guess it is more difficult for me to do this for myself than for the State of Israel. But it’s better this way, no? I would like to have both, but if I have to choose, it’s better this way.”
Between “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and “Der Sturmer”
What do you think about the negotiations with the Palestinians?
“There’s no doubt that I moved in the past decade, from someone who believed that the conflict can be resolved through partition of the land into two states to two peoples, to someone who has become far more skeptical of that possibility. My public diplomacy work changed me as well, because I came directly into contact with the attacks on Israel. I have participated in many meetings with supposedly moderate Palestinian leaders, and what shocked me is that they all said that the Jewish people are not a people, but only a religion and therefore we have no right of self-determination.
“I said to myself that if this is the position of the moderates, that they don’t even accept the fundamental reason due to which we are asked to share the land, then the problem is deep and there will not be peace. When and if they support the sharing of the land, it is because we are strong, not because our cause is just.”
What’s the alternative?
“That’s the reason I’m highlighting the problem of UNRWA. I argue that even if we can’t reach an agreement that puts an end to all issues, we have a responsibility to ensure that the next generation has an easier path to an agreement. That is, in the absence of an agreement, I support neither the expansion of settlements nor the inflation in the number of Palestinian refugees. But few people are noticing that, in the meantime, we are almost not killing and being killed.
“This can’t be a coincidence that Netanyahu is a Prime Minister for nearly five years, in this round, and almost no one from both sides has been killed as a result of violent conflict. You can say that this is not heroic and this is not peace, but after the bloody mayhem that was called the Second Intifada, then that’s something, too. Maybe in the next generation, geopolitical changes will make an agreement possible.”
You suggest waiting for the next generation, but if you look at the other side – they are teaching their children that Jews are bad, that they are oppressors, and are calling for Jihad. So how will things get better?
“I would go even further – what you see and hear today in the Arab world regarding Israel and Zionism was not even in Der Sturmer. The cartoons, the movies, the television shows, these are horrendous stuff that uses all the anti-Semitic tropes. To them, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is history, and the use of children’s blood to make Matzo’s is a proven scientific fact.
“If you can say that in Europe some of the anti-Semitism has mutated into the Anti-Zionism and revolting anti-Israelism, then the Arab world is peddling the most overt medieval anti-Semitism. Which is why I say this again – Israel is in a war of ideas. Even in the Arab world, we have to fight this war and we should at least wage battle. We can’t leave the arena unattended.
“Ultimately, I believe that this is a small conflict that is impacted by far greater forces and that the chance to reach a resolution is constricted by these forces,” says Wilf.,“The reason that we came close to an agreement in the 1990’s has nothing to do with Rabin and Arafat and everything to do with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of Soviet backing for Arab countries. The only real peace can come through massive changes of this nature, such as the rise of true liberal democracies in the Middle East.
“It’s going to be a while before that happens, more than a generation. Perhaps the changes in the Arab world, and given the Palestinians’ sense of isolation in the surrounding chaos, might create an opening. Not for a final agreement, but for a mini-agreement.”
It seems that you have appreciation for Netanyahu.
“We spoke of good work that goes unacknowledged, and under Netanyahu there have been no wars, and people have not been killed in violent conflict. The Middle East is going up in flames all around us, and Israel feels like a calm island in the Pacific. This is not by coincidence. I saw Netanyahu and Barak work, and their partnership has been good for the country. They conducted themselves carefully and responsibly and prevented any provocations from turning into conflagrations. They realized that as the Middle East was going through turmoil, Israel has to remain neutral and, as much as possible, out of sight.
“I witnessed careful and prudent conduct in matters of state, but because it was mostly about avoiding being dragged into violence, it often went unacknowledged. So, I do think that when it comes to matters of foreign and defense, where Netanyahu has taken the lead, he has conducted himself, and guided Israel, wisely.”
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