1/7/97

Save 'IBA News' -- or else!

    A few weeks before The Assassination, Yitzhak Rabin was speaking at The Event, a Jerusalem Post-organized happening at Wingate Institute. Rabin's appearance became an event unto itself: to the shock of many, he was booed and jeered and heckled by that most democratic and temperate sector: us. 
    Later that day, he dismissed the experience with a disdainful flick of his hand. "Ah, who cares," he said, "they're just a bunch of Americans."
    Harumph.
    We -- the wider implication of "a bunch of Americans" -- have never enjoyed political or social influence in this country. Maybe it's our numbers. Maybe our wretched accents. Possibly it's because we're the irritating voice of moral conscience, ever scolding others for dropping litter in the streets, pawing bread in the supermarkets, smoking where prohibited.  
    When the English-speakers get mad, the Knesset shrugs.
    Ruby Ray Karzen, chairwoman for AACI's Jerusalem region, doesn't need much time to formulate a response to the charge of influential ineptitude. Putting together forefinger-tip to thumb, she could be saying either "delicious!" in Italian or "phht!" in American. It is the latter.
    "Zilch," she says. "The politicians don't really care about us. It's not as if we could put together a bloc in the Knesset."
    "The attitude is that American Jews are wonderful -- in America," adds her husband, Rabbi Jay Karzen.
    AACI -- for you baffled tourists, that's the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel -- is testing community muscle with a petition to save English-language IBA News and English-language radio. Never mind that IBA News was recently reprieved (again).  
    "We don't want a reprieve so that every three and four years [it comes up again], and we have to waste time and effort showing the powers that be the error of their thinking," says Ruby. 
    They've already collected some 6,000-7,000 names. AACI is giving it one more big push -- tomorrow at the "July 4th" picnic in Jerusalem's Sacher Park -- before they present the petition to Communications Minister Limor Livnat.
    Really now, who are we kidding? They're going to listen to "a bunch of Americans"?
    Ruby doesn't think the effort will change "the government's low opinion" of IBA News, but without making a lot of noise about it, the program is as good as doomed. 
    There's another benefit to kicking up a stink: to show the authorities that the next time they think of tweaking the Anglo nose, they may face some resistance. 
    In fact, we haven't been total shlemiels, Ruby points out. "The best achievement to our credit was the changing of the electoral system," which AACI can claim to have  largely instigated. And we can all take chauvinistic pride in the recognizable accent of many of the Women in Green: never mind your political bent -- jeez, they're one of us! 
    AACI has become feistier in recent years, adopting activism without compromising its apoliticism. It has ballooned to 15,000 household-members (half of them in the Jerusalem region), and claims credit for stimulating aliya from North America, which now numbers about 140,000. "It used to be, back in the first half of the 1970s, that 70 percent of North American immigrants went back; now, 70 percent remain in Israel," Ruby says. "The Jewish Agency told us that AACI is the reason."
    AACI has begun a new venture that so far has been a resounding success. Job Net, an Internet site that brings together Israeli employers and Diaspora job-seekers, lists some 270 jobs. Job Net has already rung up 100,000 "hits" in its first three weeks. 
    If they got that many hits on their petition, they could demand IBA News be moved to prime time. 
    Let's show 'em: y'all get out tomorrow and sign your John Hancock to a petition. 
    And if that doesn't work, then dammit, we'll start a hunger strike, throw dirty diapers at policemen, burn tires, block traffic, threaten, coerce, boycott, blackmail ....