In partnership with the Hanns Seidel Foundation, and in collaboration with the Heschel Center, Shacharit, the Social Economic Academy and the Social Guard (Mishmar Hevrati), Shatil is implementing a training program geared at building the capacities of activists to get involved in the upcoming 2013 local elections. Four training programs – taking place in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beer Sheva – have been developed, with each including seven sessions as well as a two day seminar.

The innovative trainings focus on issues of relevance in the run-up to the elections period – building a campaign, establishing headquarters, recruiting supporters and more. It incorporates workshops on topics such as decision making and consensus building, public speaking, organizing and mobilizing a community – as well as the role and challenges of elected local council members – understanding the municipal budget, ethical, legal and political issues and a range of other practical concerns. Sessions on environmental and social justice issues will be incorporated as well. The trainings are creating of a cadre of leaders committed to advancing social justice and democracy at the local level across the country.

April 2013

Israel’s new political reality gives progressive forces hope that issues of religion and state will finally get the attention they deserve. With Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid’s strong support for civil marriage increasingly echoed by other prominent and rising political figures and a poll showing that 86% of Israel’s secular Jewish public supports civil marriage, the time is ripe for sustained and vigorous action.

SHATIL is turning to new populations including students and Mizrachi and Orthodox women in three initiatives this spring. A course run in conjunction with Bet Hillel and Be Free Israel trained select religious and secular Hebrew University students in the ins and outs of religion and state. In addition to gaining knowledge and activism tools, the students came up with two innovative projects. They are working to launch a “marriage guide compass” which will enable Israelis to map their preferences regarding types of marriage as well as the limitations of their implementation in Israel. The students also plan to create a photo exhibition on issues relating to religion and state to be exhibited at a Jerusalem pub and other locations.

“The course was very meaningful, especially its practical aspect,” said Reut Klinberger, a Hebrew University law student. “We were really directed toward action and met so many people who can help us make progress in this area.”

In addition to the Hebrew University course, this spring SHATIL is running two other initiatives aimed at promoting religious pluralism: a second support and action group for Orthodox women leaders seeking change, which gives them a safe place to share and discuss the daily dilemmas they encounter in their work as orthodox feminists; and Tidreshi, a course for 18 traditional Sephardic and Mizrachi women in collaboration with Memizrach Shemesh. The training aims to stem recent trends of religious radicalization within Mizrahi communities, in particular with regards to the phenomenon of the exclusion of women from the public sphere. Based on the study of classic Jewish texts relating to social justice and practical training in creating social change, the course recently was covered in Haaretz in Hebrew) as well as on Israeli television.

Kamla El Hawahsle, a Bedouin woman from Israel’s Negev, was having a hard time. She finished high school after having six children and went on to complete courses in computers, cooking and running a home day care, as well as volunteering with women in the well baby clinics – but she was not able to find work.

Kamla’s luck began to change four years ago when she became part of Israel’s first community kitchen, set up by AJEEC and the Hura Local Council in partnership with the Hura Women’s Council and the Hura Community Center in the Negev Bedouin town.

“Before I worked, I felt like a weak woman,” says El Hawahsle, now 46 and a mother of eight and grandmother of three. “My husband is on disability and I could not provide properly for my kids. Since I started working in the kitchen, I feel like a strong woman. I can help my children. My daughter is studying math at Kaye College and I’m paying her fees. I am so happy that she is getting educated so she will not suffer in life as I did. It’s my wish that kitchens like ours be established all over the country so women can earn money for their children and thus keep them on the right path.”

Shatil and AJEEC, together with the Hura Local Council, are working to make El Hawashle’s wish come true. On Thursday, March 7, on the eve of International Women’s Day, they sponsored a seminar in Hura called Community Kitchens: From Idea to Recipe, in which about 80 activists, government and local authority officials and representatives of foundations got a first-hand look at the Hura Community Kitchen and heard the theories and values behind such kitchens. In a series of roundtable discussions, they gained practical tools for establishing other kitchens based on this successful model and thought together about how to promote policies that use local resources to provide healthy food in school lunch and other public nutrition programs. Food for the day was provided by the Hura Community Kitchen.

A community kitchen is a local, sustainable business that provides meals for local school lunch programs, thus leveraging a government program to create local jobs and benefit the local economy. It is an elegant solution to three social challenges: food security (and within this promotion of nutritious food); local economic development – especially in weaker areas; and the creation of sources of income that are fair and accessible. Shatil Community Organizer Shirley Karavani explains that community kitchens can have a positive effect on a community at many levels. “It enables public money to be used in a smarter way,” she says.

The Hura Community Kitchen provides 5,600 meals per day to qualifying elementary and kindergarten children and employs 11 local women. The kitchen connected with Shatil’s local sustainable economic development project which encourages local procurement. Thus, local businesses are benefiting as the project prefers to use local providers, keeping money in the community for the benefit of local residents and the local economy.

Beyond the kitchen’s impact on these local women, children, and businesses, Shatil is working to ensure that it can become a model and inspiration for other initiatives around the country. Before the conference, further to extensive Shatil outreach to women’s groups in many towns and cities to encourage and guide establishing such a model, Shatil and AJEEC published a handbook on how to start a community kitchen, and many of the attendees came to learn about the model and see how to implement it in their home communities. They included representatives of local governments and NGOs in Jaffa, Tira, Jisr a-Zarqa, the Galil, Yerucham, Beer Sheva, and more, as well as Hadassah Hospital and the national Center for Food Security.

Ghadir Hani, Coordinator in the Economic Development Department at AJEEC, says the participants were impressed (and surprised) by the size and orderliness of the kitchen and the self-confidence of the women working there. “The tour took them to a place where it’s possible to realize a dream like that,” she says.

Those involved in the community kitchen emphasize that the success of the model depends not only on individual initiatives but on government policies. Ran Melamed, deputy director of Yedid, which is partnering on advocacy efforts with Shatil and AJEEC, spoke at the conference about the drive to get laws passed that would give preference in government contracts to community enterprises like this one, especially those dealing with food.

The government-mandated school lunch program provides needy elementary school pupils and kindergartners with one hot meal a day. In 2011, 170,000 children received hot meals at a cost of NIS200 million. One of the recommendations of the post-protest Trachtenberg Committee was to double the size of the program and so this school year, 350,000 elementary school and kindergarten pupils are receiving these meals.

Approximately 80 Palestinian Israeli women and men demonstrated February 12 in identification and solidarity with Egyptian women demonstrators suffering sexual harassment and gang rapes in Tahrir Square, Cairo.

The Egyptian women’s call asking feminists and activists throughout the world to put pressure on Egyptian embassies in the wake of a Salafi preacher’s justification of sexual attacks against the women reached activists in Israel. His words evoked rage in the social networks after 25 female demonstrators were sexually attacked or raped during demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the revolution in Egypt.

The SHATIL-coordinated Women in the Center Forum, together with national Israeli-Palestinian  women’s organizations, initiated and organized the solidarity demonstration in Jaffa’s central square under the famous clock tower. The demonstrators also expressed opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood’s domination, and support of egalitarian legislation that reflects the interests of Egypt’s women.

“Our Women in the Center Forum takes seriously the oppression of women – whether in Jaffa, Lod, Ramle or around the world — and it’s important for us to take a stand,” says Joumana Salem, coordinator of SHATIL’s Women in the Center Forum. “Arab women everywhere look up to Egyptian women who came out to protest, as a model. It was our initiative that the demonstration be in Jaffa as part of our goal to encourage local women’s activism and to get women activists from around the country to come to Jaffa.”

Women in the Center includes the Jaffa Women’s Forum and the Lod-Ramle Women’s Forum and was established last year by SHATIL to address the lack of Palestinian Israeli women’s activism in the center of the country, particularly as compared to the Negev and the Galilee. This gap was especially significant because women in the center suffer from high rates of juvenile marriage, high school drop out, domestic violence, polygamy and “honor killings”. The Forum is working to create a space for belonging, partnership, and support for the women; to cultivate local women’s leadership to advance social and political change; and to create a pressure group to promote action on issues related to women.

February 2013

Three…two…one…blastoff! On January 28th, NASA chief administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden, Jr. and 200 guests launched Moona – a Space for Change in the Arab Israeli town of Sakhnin. Moona (“wish” in Arabic) will be the world’s first Jewish-Arab center for the development of scientific, environmental, and space-related social and business initiatives.

The project began when entrepreneur and shared society activist Asaf Brimer approached SHATIL. Brimer proposed a cooperative project with the Towns Association for Environmental Quality (TAEQ). Dr. Hussein Tarabeih, who heads TAEQ, also had a dream of creating a hub for science education and socio-economic initiatives. SHATIL facilitated the development of the project as well as collaboration among the different parties.

At the launch, Bolden told the Jewish and Arab science students in attendance: “They [space shuttle astronauts of different races, cultures, and nationalities] all connect, which means that we can also do that on the ground and in this way, you can act and succeed.”

Housed in TAEQ’s unique green building in Sakhnin, Moona will be an interdisciplinary center for research and implementation of solar energy technologies and will house advanced astrophysics laboratories as well as community digital labs for research into environmental and water issues. The Center will develop activities and courses for Jewish and Arab children, teens, and adults in the fields of education, community, business, and environmental sustainability, and will provide practical tools for the development of local sustainable economic initiatives.

Moona is a partnership of the Towns Association for Environmental Quality, the Galilee Development Authority, Zionism 2000, SHATIL and, of course, Asaf Brimer.

The event received wide press coverage, including English language articles in the Huffington Post and Ynet

January 2013

The residents of Harish celebrated a huge success last month when a government decision ensured that the town will remain pluralistic rather than becoming Haredi-dominated with all that means for residents’ way of life. The decision follows a long and intensive citizens’ campaign to preserve the nature of the northern town.

On January 16, the Israel Land Administration (ILA) Tender Committee disqualified 12 bids submitted by the United Haredi Housing Committee, a company seeking to establish a Haredi city adjacent to Harish’s existing neighborhoods. Simultaneously, the Committee awarded building lots to a multitude of bidders representing the full breadth of Israeli society, including groups representing the Arab community and those promoting affordable housing.

This landmark decision guarantees the future of Harish as a pluralistic and multi-cultural city. It followed an intense multiple-year struggle led by Green Harish, a SHATIL-guided group composed of local residents dedicated to preserving their community’s environmentally friendly and inclusive character. The struggle climaxed over the final months of 2012, as Green Harish asked to disqualify the Haredi bids, on the grounds that by coordinating between the bids the United Haredi Housing Committee acted as an illegal cartel.

During this crucial period, NIF provided an emergency grant to Green Harish that enabled it to intensify its campaign. The campaign is a prime example of what can happen when citizen strength is harnessed to preserve democracy and create change even in the face of powerful opposing forces.

The original government plan meant to change Harish, a town of several thousand, into Israel’s first planned Haredi city with nearly 5000 new housing units and a master plan geared toward a Haredi lifestyle to the dismay of the local population.

January 2013

A survey commissioned by the Social Budget Forum released January 15^th reveals that the vast majority (87%) of Israelis oppose cuts in the state’s health, welfare and education budgets.

The survey is part of an intensive SHATIL initiative to place socioeconomic issues high on the national agenda, especially during the current election campaign.

To accomplish this SHATIL together with other civil society organizations, established the Forum to press for a more socially just 2013 state budget. The Social Budget Forum includes more than 20 organizations, from established ones such as Yedid and Rabbis for Human rights to groups of activists that emerged from the 2011 summer social protests such as Bet Ha’am.

“The multi-faceted activities of the Social Budget Forum give citizens the tools to ask the candidates how they will deal with the deficit and what their plans are for the 2013 state budget – and they are doing just that,” says SHATIL Forum Coordinator, Odeya Shabtai.

As a result of this and other forces, socioeconomic issues have been a major focus of the election campaign. Several parties have publicized detailed budget programs.

The Social Budget Campaign includes meet-the-candidate gatherings with underrepresented populations throughout the country – including a conference in Russian this week; a social media campaign with an active Facebook page, a just released film clip on the newly announced NIS39 billion deficit  which received more than 500 “shares” on its first day (and hundreds more since) and an infograph campaign on education, health, employment, the deficit and more, illustrating in an eye-catching manner the current social and economic disparities.

The campaign also includes “One Action a Day” – targeted online media work to recruit users to contact one candidate each day to clarify his or her positions on the national budget; production of opinion pieces in major media outlets; information sessions/parlor meetings in Jerusalem, Bat Yam, Ashdod, Tel Hai College, and Beer Sheva and more; and a High Court of Justice petition led by Forum member the Movement for Freedom of Information, to force the government to publicize a draft budget after it refused to do so. Forum advocacy specialists also approached leaders of all the main political parties with the request to clearly articulate their budget plans.

Leading academics/former public officials such as Prof. Joseph Zeira and Ronen Regev are providing assistance to the forum.

The social budget campaign will continue to press for recognition of social needs until the budget of the next government is approved in the spring of 2013.

“We are sewing seeds of hope, and pray that many of them will flourish,” was SHATIL Program Director Avi Dabush’s way of summarizing the effort.

January 2013

More than 250 contract workers and activists came together on December 31 to demand that Israel’s decision-makers take concrete steps to ensure their direct and fair employment.

The high level Knesset members in attendance at the tempestuous gathering were themselves quite direct.

“I will not be a part of a governing coalition that does not commit to solving the problem of indirect employment,” stated Labor party MK Eitan Cabel.

“The issue must be a part of any coalition negotiations,” said Meir Cohen, mayor of Dimona and number four of Yair Lapidls Yesh Atid’s (There is a Future) list. “We will not allow employment by contract.”

And former Defense Minister and Labor Party head, Amir Peretz: “Whatever position I’m in, I will protect the fate of the workers.”

Contract work in Israel is a growing phenomenon and a major contributor to social gaps and injustice. The goal of the gathering was to ensure that the issue of indirect employment – which affects more than 300,000 workers in Israel – be high on the agenda in the upcoming elections. It took place at the Seminar Hakkubutzim College, one of Israel’s premier teacher-training institutions, where students may be surprised to discover they will most likely be contract workers when they begin teaching.

Five of the seven current and future MKs promised to recommend that their party platforms endorse the recommendations of the Coalition for Direct Employment, among them the gradual direct employment of the majority public sector workers and an increase in salaries for those who will remain contract workers.

The Coalition, of which SHATIL is a leading member, organized the gathering with support from the NIF.

Four workers who led campaigns for better working conditions addressed the gathering, including a social worker, two teachers and a preschool assistant.

“There are professions in which you don’t have a chance of being directly employed – care giving, kindergarten assistants, guards, cleaners, and many teachers and social workers,” said Yael Wolfenson, a SHATIL representative to the Coalition.

The presence at the conference of Shira Cohen, the Knesset cafeteria worker who, with the Coalition’s and SHATIL’s help won a precedent-setting case that will benefit many other contract workers (see NIF News August 30, 2012) generated excitement.

So did Shuli Moalem, a future MK from the Jewish Home party, when she said that new public sector workers cannot be directly employed at first because they need a trial period.

“Do you want to be given a trial period as a Knesset member?” a social worker employed by contract called out, reflecting the audience’s anger.

The Coalition for Direct Employment is composed of 34 social organizations, among them ACRI, Worker’s Hotline, the Israeli Students’ Union and SHATIL, which work to influence government policy in favor of direct and fair employment, in part through the creation of a major Knesset direct employment lobby.

Photo Credit: Noam Revkin Fenton (SHATIL)

December 2012

The SHATIL-led Coalition against the Exclusion of Women launched a public campaign against the troubling phenomenon of gender exclusion in the public sphere.

“An End to the Exclusion of Women under Government’s Auspices,” is a new media campaign aimed at encouraging the Israeli public to express their views to the government, Knesset members, and to political candidates in the current election cycle.

What started with ultra-Orthodox pressure to enforce gender-segregated buses has spread to many realms of public life including healthcare, government functions, conferences, grocery checkout lanes and even sidewalks.

In response, SHATIL organized a coalition of more than 20 women’s and Jewish pluralism organizations (many of them NIF grantees), including WIZO, Women of the Wall, Be Free Israel, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

“We are demanding that each of the parties running in the upcoming elections denounce the policy of excluding women and take steps to stop this phenomenon here and now,” said Coalition coordinator, Tammy Katsabian.

The Coalition is demanding that party platforms commit to: stopping government funding to public bodies that exclude or discriminate against women; preventing municipalities from holding events in which women are excluded; acting to ensure that each government ministry publish official notices forbidding such exclusion; and more.

The campaign’s Facebook page enables supporters to send letters to Knesset members and candidates asking them to adopt the Coalition’s recommendations and to insert them into their party platforms.

“There are many laws on the books preventing discrimination against women and many court rulings against the exclusion of women that are not being enforced,” said Katsabian. “We are calling for the enforcement of these laws.”

The Coalition’s detailed report, submitted to political parties and Knesset factions, outlines incidents of exclusion of and discrimination against women on public busses and in the media; separation and/or exclusion of women under the auspices of government bodies, funeral homes, local authorities, and in private businesses. The report points out that this is a relatively new phenomenon in Israel and has been growing since the late 1990’s, spilling over from ultra-Orthodox circles to general society, and that it deviates even from accepted halachic practices.

In addition to the campaign, the Coalition continues to intensively lobby government officials and political party representatives.

In an email to his staff, SHATIL Be’er Sheva director Sultan Abu Abeid wrote in part: “How similar today is to yesterday… We have the Iron Dome which greatly reduces injury to life and property, but still there are dead and wounded, each of whom is a whole world…and the Air Force’s surgical strikes reduce casualties but there are still dead and wounded, each of whom is an entire world. All the discourse we hear is of war…We’ve been here before…”

Like many in Israel, we at SHATIL are feeling the escalation in the south in a very personal way, given our SHATIL Be’er Sheva office and many staff who have been in and out of shelters and hearing bombardments for the past few days. It may be hard to grasp for those who live outside Israel, but we Israelis try as much as possible to continue with our daily routines during times of increased tension. In that spirit, we are happy to share with our readers two recent developments that emerged from SHATIL’s and other organizations’ efforts to ensure that the public has a say in what happens in their immediate environment.

Women from El Amal meeting with Tamra's mayor and city engineer

One clear success: The unofficial garbage dump in the city of Tamra in the lower Galilee will be transformed into a public park with a breathtaking panoramic view that includes the Mediterranean coast, due to the efforts of a determined group of local women. The 20 women, a combination of two of three neighborhood-based groups organized by the Arab-Israeli environmental, community empowerment and co-existence NGO, El Amal, worked closely with SHATIL consultants and a SHATIL urban planner to define the issue they wanted to work on, articulate a vision and goals, develop a work plan and recruit city officials to their vision. In addition to meetings with the mayor and city engineer, the women organized a tour for city officials and volunteer clean up days in collaboration with the municipality during which dozens of women and school children cleaned the site. As a result of the group’s determination and professional approach, the municipality last month decided to approve their plan and turn the city eyesore into an urban park for the enjoyment of all.

“There is a feeling of great joy when a group learns and grows and has a success,” says Abed Namarneh, El Amal’s coordinator. (He doesn’t like the word director.) “This success demonstrates the community’s feeling of ownership of and belonging to its environment – something new in the Arab sector. SHATIL had a great part in this achievement; we thank them for years of dedicated guidance to El Amal.”

Activist Na’amah Higazi says the group is ecstatic about its success but is not resting on its laurels. “We are working seriously now with the mayor and city engineer to establish the park,” said the political science student and mother of six who “loves” being active for the good of her community. “Next we have plans to involve the community in turning the dangerous road at the northern entrance to the city into a promenade. We have a strong will for a good future for the residents of Tamra.”

In the South, a more complex effort is involving residents of Arad in a government decision to build 10 settlements around the Negev town. The decision was reached without the involvement of local residents and a forum of social and environmental organizations that grew out of a SHATIL initiative to encourage collaborative action between environmental and social organizations, decided to take action. After choosing this as their first action issue and studying the matter in depth, the forum organized a public conference earlier this month in Arad to inform local residents about the plan’s social and environmental impact and to get their input.

More than 100 Arad residents attended the conference, called, “The Plan to Establish 10 Communities around Arad: Development of the Negev or a Blow to the Periphery” – a significant number in a town of 23,000. While the 10 communities are to be built on the land of four Bedouin villages, there was disagreement among the forum’s organizations about the place of the Bedouin issue in this struggle. After much discussion, the organizations agreed that the issue needed to be addressed and indeed, one of the speakers at the conference was Salim Abu Elkayan, head of the local council of the Bedouin village, Um Alkhiran. Other speakers included former Meretz head and chair of the governing council of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, Chaim Oron, representatives of Arad, lawyers and planners from ACRI and SPNI and more. SHATIL Program Director, Avi Dabush, moderated.

Arad residents expressed opposition to the government’s plan and asked the forum to help them come up with a plan for the development of Arad that is socially and environmentally responsible.

“Social and environmental activists often complain that the public isn’t with them,” said Omer Cohen, SHATIL’s environmental justice coordinator. “This is an opportunity for us to collaborate with the public in Arad and make public participation in planning a reality. “