Prove Israel Cares About World Jewry, by Michael Freund
Excerpts;
For a country that is supposed to be concerned with safeguarding Jewish interests around the globe, Israel sure has a funny way of showing it. To get a sense of how the government views this issue, I decided to take a look at the Web site of the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, which seemed like the natural place to start.
As it turns out, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry does not even have its own Web site, which speaks volumes about the role this body plays in serving as a bridge to world Jewry. Instead, it gets a whopping total of one – count ’em, one! – Web page that is static and bereft of any useful data, and which is, moreover, buried away deep within the confines of the Prime Minister’s Office site.
Worse yet, it has not been updated since last year, as it still lists Knesset Member Rabbi Michael Melchior as heading the office, even though he left the post at the end of November, when the Labor Party quit the government.
Perhaps, I thought, somewhat naively, Israel’s venerable Foreign Ministry will demonstrate a slightly more sophisticated approach. After all, Israel’s embassies and consulates maintain regular contact with Jewish communities and organizations worldwide. Surely, as the primary interface abroad between the State of Israel and Diaspora Jewry, the Foreign Ministry would give pride of place to the subject, on a par with its importance and centrality to the future of the Jewish people.
WRONG AGAIN. The Foreign Ministry’s World Jewish Affairs Division gets a measly page of its own, with the date at the top currently listed as “4 Feb 2004.”
By contrast, the Foreign Ministry devotes more Web pages to Israel’s development aid to Bulgaria and Vietnam than it does to the country’s ties with world Jewry.
Commentary;
This author went through something similar when asked to contact the Tourism Ministry on behalf of a Outreach Group in the US. The Tourism Minister is Avraham Hirshson. But low and behold, when I went to the Tourism Ministry site, it was dated 2004 and still showed the Minister as Benny Elon and had all of his contact information. Luckily, this author remembered that Hirshson was wearing two hats, the second being that of Communications Minister. Upon calling the Communications Ministry, we were put in touch with the Tourism Ministry. MB