Simcha Rothman Heckled at JFNA Conference
Representatives of the American Jewish communities are meeting in Israel this week for the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly (JNFA GA) Conference. The conference is being held in the country to honor its 75th Independence Day celebrations on Wednesday. However, not all Israelis seem to be welcome there as some of the country’s politicians were heckled at the event and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself declined to attend the conference.
All of this is because of the current political divisions in Israel that are also affecting the American Jewish community due to the Netanyahu government’s planned judicial reforms which the country’s political opposition says will harm the country’s democratic identity.
JFNA Conference organizers released a statement saying, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has informed us that he is not able to appear at tonight’s event sponsored by Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), The Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Hayesod, and the World Zionist Organization celebrating the last 75 years of our communities’ investment and support in the state of Israel’s growth and development.”
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“We thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for his message of friendship between our communities and his acknowledgment of the important role North American Jewry has played in building and developing the state of Israel,” added the JNFA GA organizers. “We look forward to hearing from President Isaac Herzog tonight and wish him continued luck in advancing a compromise agreement on judicial reforms that will be acceptable to the broad majority of Israelis and strengthen Israel’s democratic institutions.”
One member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government did attend a JNFA GA Conference event and may be regretting it. Sunday night Knesset member and chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Simcha Rothman spoke at a panel that discussed Israel’s Law of Return, the law that grants every Jew in the world the right to move to Israel and become a citizen there.
But Simcha Rothman is a member of the right-wing Religious Zionism Party and one of the architects behind the government’s judicial reform plan.
Five people disrupted the plenum and had to be forcibly removed. One shouted, “Rothman is destroying Israel, destroying our future! My kids! My kids!” and called him a criminal.
A few days earlier Simcha Rothman was also accosted by protestors when he spoke at an event hosted by the World Zionist Congress. Protestors demonstrated outside the room where he spoke and prevented Rothman from leaving until the police were called in.
American Jews are not happy with the reform plan because most are liberal and affiliated with non-orthodox Jewish groups. The biggest criticism of the judicial program is that it would allow an absolute majority vote of 61 members of the 120 seat Knesset to override any Supreme Court ruling that nullified a law passed by the Knesset, no matter what the reason. This would, in effect, end judicial review in Israel.
Secular and non-orthodox people fear the ultra-orthodox parties, which already hold great sway over Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, will use this to push through new religious laws in Israel that the courts would be powerless to overturn.
