In 1897, the same year that the World Zionist Organization was founded, the United States had a president who was elected a second time but not in consecutive terms. Some 128 years after Grover Cleveland left the White House, America has another non-consecutive, second-term president in Donald Trump.
But everything else in the world changed long ago. So why does the WZO still exist?
The WZO is a Jewish organizational behemoth that is as redundant and ineffectual nowadays as the electrical telegraph machine that was used for communication back when it was first founded.
But you can have an antique in the room without causing any harm.
Not so with the WZO, which wastes hundreds of millions of the Jewish world’s dollars on pork-barrel projects of Jewish interest groups. It is no wonder that a record number of lists ran in this spring’s WZO election, whose voting ended on May 4.
Even ultra-Orthodox groups have joined the WZO race, despite some of their greatest rabbis and poskim (arbiters of Jewish law) telling them it is forbidden. They aim to stop Reform and Conservative groups from having too much power.
It has been painful to watch the infighting inside the Orthodox world over this election. First, current rabbis started attacking each other, and then rabbis who passed away were brought back from the dead with newfound letters taking sides.
The rest of the Jewish world is watching and has seen the tremendous chilul Hashem (a “desecration of God’s name”) that the entire process has become. Anti-Haredi agitators reportedly even paid Haredim to create artificial controversies.
It is expected to take months to count the results, followed by months of lawsuits contesting them. Even when the results are announced, there are so many right-wing and religious lists running that their vote is expected to be splintered, which will strengthen the left and non-Orthodox movements when both are on the decline in Israel and the United States.
The philosophical battle among ideologies involved in the WZO’s first race is ancient history. What is left is a new assortment of mercenaries from all corners of the Jewish ideological world, fighting over money that should have never been allocated in the first place. A relic of socialism, the WZO has made money an obsession. It flows with no proper oversight or transparency. Ostensibly, the purpose of the vote is to elect representatives to national institutions of the Jewish people.
The wealthiest by far is Keren Kayemet LeIsrael, which controls an enormous war chest of land. The KKL is so unbeholden to any proper financial procedures that the Jewish National Fund-USA and other former partners have broken off and distanced themselves.
The reason the WZO and KKL keep going is because people don’t have the courage to call for them to be shut down. Too many gain personally in their pocketbooks from the current corrupt system to call a spade a spade.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have headed organizations that benefit from the WZO, but that has only reinforced my belief that it needs to be shut down.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood up to the American Jewish leadership when he came to the United States by not meeting with them, even though he met with Christian evangelicals. He should follow that up by announcing that the WZO election is canceled, the organization will fold, and all of its funds will be nationalized.
There is no better time for him to take that step than amid the current multifront war. Ordinary Jews around the world, who do not benefit from the WZO’s continued existence, will completely understand.
The money could still be used to bring Diaspora Jews to Israel and build connections with Jewish youth worldwide. Plenty of organizations do that without such bureaucracy and waste.
Jewish federations can go back to their bread and butter of supporting Israel. The focus should go back to giving to Israel, not taking from Israel.
Diaspora communities should no longer influence policy in Israel, as they have tried unsuccessfully to do, for instance, with facilitating nontraditional prayer services at the Western Wall.
Decisions about Israel should be made by people who live in Israel and are part of its political system. They are elected in real elections, ones that are very different from the online chicanery facilitated by the WZO.
The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, proved how unprepared American Jewish organizations were for times of crisis. Their leadership mistakes are blatantly clear, but none have paid a price, and the WZO election could empower them even more.
Has anyone considered at least postponing the election until necessary soul-searching takes place? Or how about hiring an outside firm to review its business practices and cut costs? Is there no Elon Musk wannabe out there who could do for the WZO what he is doing for the American government?
A case in point of what is wrong with the WZO occurred when a group of Likud hacks led by Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar tried to take over the World Likud ahead of the WZO election to obtain its allocations.
If Theodor Herzl came back from the dead and saw the current state of the WZO and KKL, he might jump from his hotel porch in Basel and dissolve it all right away. The delegates of the first WZO convention, over which he presided, came on their own with no money to waste.
There is no accountability at the WZO and KKL, and 128 years is way too long. The time has come for this to end.