GiliGold/VAD_KnessetCorpus huggingface dataset:
קולט אביטל:
I remember very well the crisis in  of the seventies and how  he was impotent to deal with it.
קולט אביטל:
Being one of the fathers of the defeat.
קולט אביטל:
A defeatist in the highest sense of the free world before the world of the militant and radical Islam I have not seen the proper offensive of the Jewish people.
קולט אביטל:
My last remark will be of course we in  are facing many dangers.
קולט אביטל:
We are not so feared.
קולט אביטל:
But the danger is because there is a question of country, people, IDF and the hand of god and many – I see where we are mistaken, we had a very important post of minister of diaspora affairs and we lost this post in this government.
קולט אביטל:
I do think that cooperation and finding the new coalition …
קולט אביטל:
because I don’t understand how American Jewry is voting.
קולט אביטל:
Campuses have political power.
קולט אביטל:
You are voting for the political color who seems to be very far from the Jewish world and Jewish affairs.
קולט אביטל:
Thank you.
קולט אביטל:
MORRIS SILKA:		Collette, thank you very, very much and sir, we thank you for real information and your presentation.
קולט אביטל:
I agree hundred percent what you just said.
קולט אביטל:
I am lucky that I had the opportunity that every year I do travel for three months each year to the .
קולט אביטל:
I came back at the end of March after three months visiting close to about fifty six communities all over the  in the three months.
קולט אביטל:
I had the opportunity to be in  and  and other places.
קולט אביטל:
I told the students over there and I was on the same platform with Daniel Falk in  when the demonstration took over over there.
קולט אביטל:
He could not actually open his mouth because of so many Moslems who appeared and attended the meeting.
קולט אביטל:
What I am trying to say is that my concern is that students and the youngsters which I had the opportunity to speak to them.
קולט אביטל:
I think that we are not doing enough.
קולט אביטל:
From the point of view what I said that I had the opportunity of travelling every year and I see the differences from the sixties uphill today.
קולט אביטל:
What is taking place.
קולט אביטל:
In some Jewish communities the debate if they will raise the Israeli flag on Yom HaAtzmaut or they don’t raise the Israeli flag on Yom HaAtzmaut, things that I think in the last few years I did not see like in the last year.
קולט אביטל:
Many things are actually changing.
קולט אביטל:
The question is what we are doing.
קולט אביטל:
We are going backwards especially when it comes from the students’ point of view compared to the seventies and definitely among the high school students.
קולט אביטל:
I am very, very much concerned.
קולט אביטל:
What I am saying is that for example regarding what you mentioned the Carter book, by the way,    he is using Goebbel’s tactics.
קולט אביטל:
He is talking about Ezer Weizmann in his book quite a few times, that he is a friend, he is a brother, whatever it is.
קולט אביטל:
On the other hand what he is actually attacking, and that’s the way to do it, because you squeeze certain types of things.
קולט אביטל:
What I am saying is, that my concern is the students.
קולט אביטל:
My concern is the high school kids, what we are doing and how we are going to push.
קולט אביטל:
Because certain things are …
קולט אביטל:
Bernard Lewis said that from the eighties and before that and others as well.
קולט אביטל:
So the question is, what we are doing to the students and what we are doing to the high school kids.
קולט אביטל:
ANAT HOFFMAN:		I am Anat Hoffman.
קולט אביטל:
I run the    of the Reform Movement here in .
קולט אביטל:
Sometimes our enemies are the glue that keeps reminds us of our common denominator.
קולט אביטל:
I applaud you for saying in the world arena and supporting us and speaking for .
קולט אביטל:
But I want to have you address not the enemies from outside, but the enemies from within.
קולט אביטל:
Today Yom Yerushalayim is a very appropriate day to talk about pluralism.
קולט אביטל:
In fact, the    in Hebrew is called HaMerkaz lePluralism Yehudit and as ex city councilor in this town, I must tell you that just as we are losing  because of its intolerance and its portrait –  ten percent of  – we might lose  to this intolerance.
קולט אביטל:
I want you to address the issues of religious tolerance in .
קולט אביטל:
It says, לעולם מתפלל אדם בבית שיש בו חלונות – we should always pray in a house that has windows so we could look outside.
קולט אביטל:
Look outside in this country.
קולט אביטל:
A chief rabbi, this is a …
קולט אביטל:
Shoah, blames the reform Jews for the Shoah.
קולט אביטל:
He says it is no coincidence that the Shoah started in  and so did the reform movement.
קולט אביטל:
This should rock the Jewish world.
קולט אביטל:
The fact that women can get arrested for wearing a talit reading Torah and praying out loud at the women’s side of the Western Wall.
קולט אביטל:
The fact agunot and mesoravot get are rising in Batei HaDin haRabbanim.
קולט אביטל:
The fact that the reform and conservative movements are not recognized in .
קולט אביטל:
The fact that you are talking about lecturers not given tenure and not being advanced in the universities.
קולט אביטל:
Look what happens with Bar Ilan.
קולט אביטל:
If you are a secular lecturer you have got a problem in getting tenure.
קולט אביטל:
That is a government supported private university, just like the one  you were outraged at.
קולט אביטל:
Or the  of  right on top of a Muslim cemetery in the heart of  and the incitement against minorities that comes from a religious perspective by chief rabbis, neighborhood rabbis, city rabbis.
קולט אביטל:
I believe nothing is too wonderful to be true.
קולט אביטל:
I believe that  could be a wonderful place and I want to suggest to you that when I talk to youngsters in  and I am an old hand in American summer camps.
קולט אביטל:
I have a stand up comedy act about social action in .
קולט אביטל:
I find that we can have an inoculation of that, if we talk to youngsters about our own wars.
קולט אביטל:
You can love  through dealing with its wars.
קולט אביטל:
At least with reform as the server of youngsters, when I share with them some of the issues we are fighting for they get involved, they get engaged.
קולט אביטל:
I’d like us to think about tikun   around together here inside  as the joint effort.
קולט אביטל:
I’d like to hear your comments on that.
קולט אביטל:
ODED ARAN:		I think this was a very important beginning of a debate.
קולט אביטל:
I think this debate should have been taken today together or in conjunction with the Foreign Affairs Committee because the issues that we are discussing are very much …
קולט אביטל:
But I certainly commend you for taking the initiative to hold this discussion.
קולט אביטל:
I fully agree with the threats, the dangers.
קולט אביטל:
Some of them are existential to the State of Israel and indeed to world Jewry.
קולט אביטל:
But I a bit worried because this is an agenda which is basically defensive which is basically in response to threats.
קולט אביטל:
It is not a positive agenda and it’s not a proactive agenda.
קולט אביטל:
Yes, we do need to respond to Ahmadinejad, whether it is on the nuclear issue or the anti-Semitic issue.
קולט אביטל:
We do need to respond to Carter.
קולט אביטל:
By the way, to the best of my knowledge, the only one who responded to him are Jews.
קולט אביטל:
This is something which should worry us more than Carter himself, or the book that he published.
קולט אביטל:
Where are all our friends in the , if we are the only ones to respond to this.
קולט אביטל:
Which brings me to the other issue.
קולט אביטל:
That is that we do need to create coalition.
קולט אביטל:
Of course it’s our responsibility to stand up for these issues and defend ourselves as Jews, as Israelis, as the Jewish people.
קולט אביטל:
But we can’t do it if we honor the political coalitions that are necessary and that is something which goes beyond what we need to do with the young generation, Jewish or not.
קולט אביטל:
We do have, I think, allies both in the .
קולט אביטל:
You referred to one group, but they are not the only ones.
קולט אביטל:
We do have potential members or partners in .
קולט אביטל:
There is anti-Semitism in Europe, all  is not anti-Semitic.
קולט אביטל:
I think that the new leaders, even in western Europe, are natural allies that we need to have a dialogue with them on these issues.
קולט אביטל:
Certainly this is the case in eastern Europe.
קולט אביטל:
I am afraid that we don’t have a dialogue.
קולט אביטל:
We have a some sort of sporadic discussion, but not a strategic discussion.
קולט אביטל:
The strategic diaspora,  a partnership between the diaspora and  is absolutely necessary.
קולט אביטל:
I think the sixtieth anniversary should be the launching pad for a new partnership between the two parts of the Jewish people, and for a positive strategy.
קולט אביטל:
I am not going to refer to what Anat said, although this may be part of it, but there are wider issues which we need resurface in the partnership between  and the diaspora to create a positive agenda.
קולט אביטל:
We cannot just say there is an Iranian threat, or there is an anti-Semitic threat or is a neo-…
קולט אביטל:
in the .
קולט אביטל:
We need to create a positive agenda.
קולט אביטל:
Take the more high ground on certain issues.
קולט אביטל:
is one of them, but it could be other issues.
קולט אביטל:
I will stop at that.
קולט אביטל:
ERAN LEHRMAN:		Collette, first of all I would say I am commending you for taking this mission.
קולט אביטל:
It should, I believe, be constantly on the minds, on the agenda of this House.
קולט אביטל:
It is only too rare in this House that questions relating to  diaspora relations are put on the table.
קולט אביטל:
I am going to go very quickly through the five points.
קולט אביטל:
Let us be very frank.
קולט אביטל:
Malcolm, you have made a point about the friendship of the Bush administration towards .
קולט אביטל:
We are all profoundly grateful for many things.
קולט אביטל:
We have also to recognize the Bush administration has had a powerful dividing effect on western elite.
קולט אביטל:
We end up sometimes, I think even in the case of Walt and Mearsheimer, the we …
קולט אביטל:
by a brush that was meant for an internal debate either in the  or beyond.
קולט אביטל:
It certainly would be on the borders of the .
קולט אביטל:
We have to start putting together a strategy that addresses 2009 and beyond.
קולט אביטל:
In this respect my second point is, as has already been said, we do have friends.
קולט אביטל:
In the United States certainly we            have to remember that it so happens by accidents of history that the Jews vote as the old sociological observation by …
קולט אביטל:
…
קולט אביטל:
live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.
קולט אביטל:
We have to also celebrate what happens on the other side of the roster.
קולט אביטל:
Sociologically, economically they belong to the upper crust, but they continue to vote as if they are persecuted for minority.
קולט אביטל:
We have to celebrate the fact that the chair of the House - the International Relations Committee - is a holocaust survivor, two key sub-committee members are people who are our friends and as they say in good modern American, unsere.
קולט אביטל:
But we have friends also beyond these votes.
קולט אביטל:
I want to mention just two aspects.
קולט אביטל:
Recently when I spoke in  at a conference on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism two organizations in recent years made very powerful statements against anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism.
קולט אביטל:
One was actually a British organization.
קולט אביטל:
Signatories of the  Manifesto.
קולט אביטל:
The other one was the Catholic church, which is officially committed to anti-Zionism being defined as a form of anti-Semitism in the  statement.
קולט אביטל:
I could go on.
קולט אביטל:
So we do have friends.
קולט אביטל:
What you don’t always have is a strategy of how to unify in working with conflicts.
קולט אביטל:
In practical terms and here I come to budgetary items.
קולט אביטל:
There are two things that must do to let American Jews who no longer feel they have to carry the burden uphill.
קולט אביטל:
One is to increase the effort, scope and budget for hasbara.
קולט אביטל:
People don’t always understand that the first casualties from the Israeli decision to put such meager amounts and capacities into hasbara are the Jewish people out there who feel that they are in an isolated outpost and nobody is coming up with the ammunition.
קולט אביטל:
So they have to go down and shlepp it up themselves to a fighting position.
קולט אביטל:
is not doing enough.
קולט אביטל:
COLLETTE AVITAL:
קולט אביטל:
Probably Menachem Begin would have reacted faster.
קולט אביטל:
AVINOAM BAR-JOSEPH: I’ll try to be very brief.
קולט אביטל:
My points were well taken by Oded and Eran.
קולט אביטל:
I think I’ll just try to stress a couple things.
קולט אביטל:
The entire demographics in the , the Spanic and Asian communities were growing and a lot of efforts were made to build better coalitions with them.
קולט אביטל:
To take more advantage today on the perception that the Judeo-Christian base for American civilization … is a huge achievement of the Jewish community.
קולט אביטל:
BORIS LOREN: … I really don’t want to repeat.
קולט אביטל:
The only thing I do want to repeat is a thank you to both Malcolm and Collette for having this discussion.
קולט אביטל:
I think that basically if you look at the struggle going on and divide it into three different pieces, we are lacking in all three.
קולט אביטל:
That’s tactics, leadership and finance – tactics and strategy.
קולט אביטל:
I don’t obviously blame the people who are holding up the weight, Malcolm and others who are in that fight, but if you compare to what’s happening across the Jewish community in and the , rabbis don’t come out forward in public, not orthodox, not conservatives and not reform.
קולט אביטל:
Israeli leaders, political, military and otherwise do not when they go to the forget going specifically to address various audiences.
קולט אביטל:
They do not address audiences.
קולט אביטל:
They do not meet the people.
קולט אביטל:
They do not have any kind of a mission or any kind of a priority for developing the kind of connections we have.
קולט אביטל:
The last point I wanted to make is, if you look at the successful struggles that we have had, things like Soviet Jewry, restitution, and to some extent even anti-Semitism, they all were a strategy of coming forward.
קולט אביטל:
Not of trying to build the fences around our immediate Jewish neighborhoods in the hope that no one is going to come in.
קולט אביטל:
They went out.
קולט אביטל:
Something like the Jackson Vanik Amendment created an entire direction that never stopped.
קולט אביטל:
The fact that Jews were always in the streets and others, where we grabbed them all high ground and fought.
קולט אביטל:
Even on the issues that we have talked about today, we are talking about how not to have our position crumble.
קולט אביטל:
I think we have to go way beyond that into an aggressive mode, but we need the tools to be able to do.
קולט אביטל:
COLLETTE AVITAL: I should actually respond very quickly.
קולט אביטל:
Oded, you are right.
קולט אביטל:
The Foreign Affairs and Security Committee should have also been, but you have here two people, Prof.
קולט אביטל:
…, who belongs to the subcommittee on foreign affairs.
קולט אביטל:
We’ll definitely take this up with the chairperson of our committee, Amira Dotan, and we’ll try to work together some kind of a joint meeting where you may be able to come and present these plans.
קולט אביטל:
I think it’s a good opportunity to see how we can help you put it through including.
קולט אביטל:
We had a very important discussion yesterday at a professional level in the ministry with Ken Jacobsen about a very specific problem that he senses in the United States right now and that is that we cannot, it is his feeling, that we cannot get the general public to listen to us about Iran, not because our arguments are not right, not because they don’t agree with our arguments, but because of emotional tiredness and weariness given the war in Iraq and the results of that war.
קולט אביטל:
It is on this point where I want to take a slight issue with some of the other people who made comments here.
קולט אביטל:
I would like to suggest that perhaps at this moment we have to be casting our net not quite as wide as you and some of the other speakers suggested, but that we have to be in our strategic thinking, certainly narrow.
קולט אביטל:
We have to think very, very hard how in the coming years, coming one, two, three, four years, how we get the general public in the and Europe to be able to hear us on our concerns vis-a-vis .
קולט אביטל:
I think what happened to the Israeli song at Eurovision, it may not have been a great song, but one thing is certain that the European public was not able to hear it.
קולט אביטל:
They don’t want to hear it.
קולט אביטל:
That song said something I think in an artistic – it expressed something true, very true about how the Israeli public feels and it has to – In fact the song, they didn’t like it, it was too political.
קולט אביטל:
They don’t understand why we want to mess Eurovision with existential issues, shows the kind of problems that we are facing I think not only but everywhere.
קולט אביטל:
AVINOAM BAR-JOSEPH: There is one thing that we missed here.
קולט אביטל:
That is coordination and cooperation between all the Jewish bodies and organizations which is really very important if we want to move forward.
קולט אביטל:
I think that strategy and narrow don’t go together.
קולט אביטל:
You need to see the broad picture and to look forward not only you need stages but you need to look forward to a longer period of time.
קולט אביטל:
I just want to thank you both for having us here and organizing the meeting.
קולט אביטל:
I would like to turn to you to ask you if you think and if you have some kind of a team that already thinks strategically and how we can come into that into the thinking and how it can be useful to you and certainly I maintain my invitation and we’ll do that in some kind of a joint session.
קולט אביטל:
We have talked about Carter’s role in , but frankly there is no audience for it.
קולט אביטל:
Nobody gives a damn about what happened in 1979 and what Carter did or didn’t do then.
קולט אביטל:
Carter has this image which is very hard to challenge.
קולט אביטל:
What we have to do is purely on a factual basis answer him, yes, there are demonstrations where he appears.
קולט אביטל:
Are they effective?
קולט אביטל:
Generally no.
קולט אביטל:
The problem is that he has the imprimatur of former president of the .
קולט אביטל:
That is a powerful logo to carry with you.
קולט אביטל:
As I said, it creates a dilemma for us about how you respond to win the audiences.
קולט אביטל:
You have to think about the target audience, not just about yourselves, that we can feel good about – you know, during Soviet Jewry, throwing a brick through a window was the easiest thing in the world to do.
קולט אביטל:
The question is did you win people and did you free Soviet Jews with that?
קולט אביטל:
I see the Jewish community -
קולט אביטל:
M.
קולט אביטל:
HOENLEIN: I still have the scars to prove it.
קולט אביטל:
Even when you talk about …, the Jewish community with the exception of a few, did not endorse … in the beginning and we had to fight a lot of resistance till we got our community to back .
קולט אביטל:
I can tell you in many of the discussions was – he could not comprehend why the Jewish community wasn’t there.
קולט אביטל:
For all of us who are on different parts of this frontline – you know, Disraeli once said there is no faith more ghastly than a stupid Jew.
קולט אביטל:
He meant Jews who don’t get it.
קולט אביטל:
Jews who don’t understand the world as it is.
קולט אביטל:
We don’t have the luxury of trying to deal in a world that is not reality.
קולט אביטל:
thought it could.
קולט אביטל:
For many years we reacted to events.
קולט אביטל:
We weren’t proactive.
קולט אביטל:
We didn’t anticipate.
קולט אביטל:
We always waited till we needed a huge coalition, etc.
קולט אביטל:
, etc.
קולט אביטל:
Now even can’t do it.
קולט אביטל:
Achdus, failing to recognize the importance, and frankly here the Israeli media has a responsibility, where they always focus on the differences.
קולט אביטל:
There is very little education about the diaspora’s role.
קולט אביטל:
The schools don’t teach it.
קולט אביטל:
The kids don’t know.
קולט אביטל:
The people don’t know about it.
קולט אביטל:
There really is a lack.
קולט אביטל:
I encountered it here several times.
קולט אביטל:
When we had two hundred thousand people in , where all the organizations played such a key role, people here didn’t even know about it.
קולט אביטל:
What was the purpose of doing it, to show solidarity with the people of .
קולט אביטל:
In it was on the front pages of the newspapers.
קולט אביטל:
Here in some papers it hardly made a couple of paragraphs.
קולט אביטל:
There is something wrong with that picture.
קולט אביטל:
We live in a really strange world.
קולט אביטל:
We talked about singing Hatikva.
קולט אביטל:
It isn’t even a debate any more, because they don’t do it.
קולט אביטל:
There is no Jewish organization in that starts a meeting singing Hatikva any more.
קולט אביטל:
Christians do it.
קולט אביטל:
I went to a couple of these events.
קולט אביטל:
It’s amazing.
קולט אביטל:
They sing there.
קולט אביטל:
And more importantly, they know the words.
קולט אביטל:
You go to a Jewish audience and see how many people know the words of Hatikva today – the original words.
קולט אביטל:
HOENLEIN: At how many meetings during the year do they sing Hatikva.
קולט אביטל:
I am just saying that it is a principle that today – when I was growing up every meeting started with the Star Spangled Banner and Hatikva.
קולט אביטל:
They don’t sing the Star Spangled Banner either, which is a statement about the condition.
קולט אביטל:
I want to talk about Bush, about Eran said about President Bush.
קולט אביטל:
You are quite right.
קולט אביטל:
In a degree, the more pro he is, the more of a liability sometimes it is.
קולט אביטל:
It does create a divisiveness.
קולט אביטל:
But Walt and Meadesheimer did not.
קולט אביטל:
This was before the reaction.
קולט אביטל:
Walt and Meadesheimer were not motivated because of the Bush factor.
קולט אביטל:
But you are right about the balance on this and many people, especially in Europe and others, because he is … for Israel, so they hate Bush so much that it becomes an issue we have to learn to finance and prepare for 2009.
קולט אביטל:
I am not particularly concerned.
קולט אביטל:
You know when people were yelling off the democrats, the Congress, how legislation changed, I said there is no evidence to back that charge.
קולט אביטל:
We have a strong support in the democratic party as we have in the republican party.
קולט אביטל:
You see the votes in Congress.
קולט אביטל:
Did any transformation take place because the democrats took control?
קולט אביטל:
The answer is no.
קולט אביטל:
But you are absolutely right that the question of how we carried that … You don’t reject a president who is pro just because people criticize him.
קולט אביטל:
On the other hand we have to I think sometimes be more sophisticated in the way we approach these issues and understanding how we become the lever because it is easier to attack Jews in Israel than it is in the United States.
קולט אביטל:
I don’t mean physical attacks in this case.
קולט אביטל:
Hasbara, it has to be a joint front.
קולט אביטל:
I don’t think it is the responsibility of to fund our efforts.
קולט אביטל:
I think diaspora communities have to do much more to make it a priority.
קולט אביטל:
This is our battle front.
קולט אביטל:
We don’t send our kids to be on the front line.
קולט אביטל:
Our front line is the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people or Canadian citizens, or European citizens.
קולט אביטל:
We frankly have to do much more.
קולט אביטל:
We brought together at the Conference of the Presidents, together with some other organizations represented there, the top PR political strategists, advertising agency presidents, major publishers and lock them in a room, honestly, for three hours.
קולט אביטל:
I said no one is leaving.
קולט אביטל:
At two you come up with a way that we can begin to address it.
קולט אביטל:
They came up with very creative ideas.