Establish a way for Americans, especially Jews, to support the Joint List

OPINION ARTICLE

The following piece was first published by Barnett R. Rubin as part of his regular column, Appointed Times, on Substack, where you can subscribe directly.

I apologize to my subscribers and followers for my lengthy silence. I have become a co-author of a book on the failure of attempts to find a political settlement in Afghanistan, and I have been working on it constantly. Starting in January 2027 I will be working on it at the American Academy of Berlin for four months.

I don’t know if it is encouraging or discouraging, but since I stopped posting, the number of subscribers has continued to climb. It is now at 2,101 subscribers. I will be interested to see if resuming posting increases or decreases the growth of my audience.

I just had an idea which I do not have the knowledge or expertise to develop, let alone implement, so I will just toss my bread upon the waters. It is two days until the election in Israel. In practical terms, there are three blocks of parties: the far-right genocidal extremist Jewish supremacist parties, the slightly less right-wing “moderate” Jewish supremacist parties, and the two Arab parties, the Joint List and Raam.

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A couple of years ago, I had the honor of meeting Gideon Levy of Ha’Aretz at a conference in Dubai. As a joke, as we were parting, I said to him that the Joint List was the only political party in Israel that fit the definition of Zionist that I learned growing up among liberal Jews in Philadelphia.

Now I notice that two Israeli Jewish analysts I greatly esteem, Shaul Magid and Avrum Burg, have both written articles on substack observing that an increasing number of Israeli Jews are planning to vote for the Joint List. In the Israeli system, the use of proportional representation by party in the Knesset with a minimum vote of 3.25% to win a seat, and the control by the leadership of each party of the list it presents, means that there is virtually no way for small groups like the Jewish Israeli left to exercise influence.

By voting for the Joint List, these voters have the potential to increase the share of seats held by representatives who support civic equality for all citizens of Israel and the end of the denial of citizenship rights to Palestinians living under occupation.

I started wondering what American Jews could do to support this trend. Right-wing American Jews already exert tremendous influence over Israeli politics by funding media, by supporting American candidates who support Israel’s supremacist policies, and, I am sure, many other ways that I don’t know.

There is very little opportunity for foreigners to support Israeli political parties directly - nearly all of their finance comes from the state. Nor are there PACs and super-PACs that can influence elections with funding that is not explicitly coordinated with candidates.

I don’t know enough about the Israeli system to suggest a specific way to do it: but why not start by founding an organization like “Americans for the Joint List,” or even “Americans for civic equality in Israel,” which could collaborate with likeminded Israeli Jews and Palestinians on this project?

Considering the success that the Adelsons have had with the Times of Israel, couldn’t like-minded donors get together to turn Ha’Aretz or +972 into multi-media powerhouses? Couldn’t they sponsor advocacy for the inclusion of so-called Arab parties in the formation of governments?

Please don’t respond by telling me how entrenched Jewish supremacy is in Israel and how unlikely it is that such efforts would succeed. Believe me, I know. But there are people out there who will know much better than I do how to try to make this a reality. Let’s hear from you.

Barnett R. Rubin is a political scientist who has worked at Yale, Columbia, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center on International Cooperation at NYU, the U.N. and the U.S. State .Department. He now writes on Gaza and related matters.