Learn From Alinskyites

As a student of Saul Alinsky (Free University of Madison, Wisconsin, 1969) whose Master’s degree in community organization social work is dedicated to Alinsky’s memory, it is vital to respond to Caroline Glick’s piece, DEFEAT THE JEWISH ALINSKYITES that ran in the Jerusalem Post of June 8, 2012.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=273110

Alinsky’s universalizing, humanizing and empowering a cause can be used by any side of the political spectrum. One of Alinsky’s key organizational principles was that when you represent a small minority, you must align your cause with other minorities also affected, since the establishment cannot deal with you when you “go outside of their experience” and when you build disparate coalitions.

The tragedy of the approach applied by Israel’s national camp is that they do not apply Alinsky’s approach.

Israel’s national camp could become heroes of the country if they were to lead the battle against police brutality, police abuse of women, police violence against minors, police destruction of private possessions, police removal of badges, police bullying of reporters, police smashing of cameras, police use of horses, police forced strip searches, and more. Israel’s national camp could seek out others whose civil liberties and human rights have been violated and form a wide base of support for an Israel civilian review board of the police. Imagine what would happen in Israel’s national camp held a “teach in” at Dizengoff Circle to hear every group attest to how there must be civilian oversight of the police in Israel.

Such a use of the Alinsky “universalize the issue” principle would work.

And since one of the cardinal principles of Israel’s national camp is that Israel must annex all of the national homeland west of the Jordan River, promised by the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent San Remo Treaty, it behooves Israel’s national camp to invoke the Alinsky principle of “teaching self interest” to the whole of Israel as to the vital importance it is to Israel’s coastal region for it is hold on to Israel’s mountainous region.

In other words, an effective Alinsky approach would be to disband the Yesha council and to melt among the masses, since 95% of Israel’s Jewish population do not live in Judea and Samaria and have little idea as to where the “west bank” is located. After all, polls showed that one of the failures of the Katif campaign was that more than half of the population had no idea of where Gush Katif was situated.

Now that one million citizens in Israel have lived though the traumatic experience of living under aerial attacks from Gaza, time has come for the national camp to invoke the Alinsky approach of asking everyone if they would like to live that way

The stubborn refusal of Israel’s national camp to coalesce with anyone outside of their closed circles causes them to fail. Instead of denouncing the Alinskyites, learn from them.