Sharansky slams Arab MK’s refusal to enter Jewish Agency building

Natan Sharansky rapped Joint (Arab) List chief Ayman Odeh for refusing to attend a meeting with American Jewish leaders in New York this week on the grounds that it was being held in the same building as the Jewish Agency.

Sharansky, who is the chairman of the Jewish Agency, branded the move an attempt to “score political points.”

“It is unfortunate that members of Knesset from the Joint List are more interested in scoring cheap and expedient political points than they are in advancing the well-being of their communities,” Sharansky said, according to a statement from the Jewish Agency.

“Along with our core mission of ingathering the exiles of the Jewish people via aliyah [immigration of Jews to Israel], the Jewish Agency is proud to serve all the citizens of Israel, regardless of religion or ethnicity, which we view as an integral part of our Zionist vision,” he added.

Sharansky said that thousands of Arab Israeli families enjoy a “range of Jewish Agency programs,” including some that place the emphasis on their communities. The Youth Futures mentor program, Masa Israel Journey and Project TEN are all programs focused on Arab-Jewish coexistence and on serving underprivileged Arab citizens of Israel, Sharansky said. He said a Jewish Agency high school opened “just this year” for Bedouin youth in the Negev.

“Thousands of Arab Israelis have already found their way to the Jewish Agency’s programs and to the dedicated professionals and volunteers who run them. It is high time MK Odeh and his colleagues did the same,” Sharansky said.

On Thursday, Odeh declined to address the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, protesting the fact that the building also housed the Jewish Agency and other Zionist organizations.

According to the meeting’s organizers, Odeh went into the lobby, but refused to enter the building, citing the fact that the floor housing the Conference of Presidents offices was shared with the Jewish Agency — a quasi-governmental organization that the Joint List claims participates in discriminatory practices against Arab Israelis and Palestinians.

“I came here to represent the Arab public in Israel to American audiences,” Odeh later recounted in a statement. “As their representative, I cannot in good conscience participate in meetings in the offices of organizations whose work displaces Arab citizens, just as in the Knesset, we do not participate in the Ministry of Defense, the Foreign Ministry, and the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption.”

With some two dozen representatives of organizations that participate in the Conference of Presidents sitting and waiting upstairs, Conference of Presidents Executive Vice President Malcolm Hoenlein came downstairs to try to find a solution. Zionist Union MK Merav Michaeli also attempted to deescalate the situation — and a suggestion was floated to hold the meeting on a different floor of the building, which houses the offices of the Reform Movement.

But that facility, Hoenlein said, was occupied — and he emphasized that even if it had been available, he thought the demand to hold the meeting anywhere but in the organization’s offices was unacceptable.

“To move it because I should acknowledge that a member of Knesset wouldn’t come a floor as if there is some contamination there because there is a Zionist presence?” he asked. The meeting room where they were supposed to meet, Hoenlein stressed, had no signs from the Jewish Agency.

Rebecca Shimon Stoil contributed to this report.