American Jewish Committee hosts impromptu meeting with anti-overhaul protesters

Ted Deutch, the head of the American Jewish Committee, spoke with representatives of the protest movement against the government’s judicial overhaul in Israel on Wednesday, in an unplanned meeting on the margins of the AJC’s Global Forum meeting.

Deutch and several other AJC leaders met at the David InterContinental hotel in Tel Aviv with Tamir Pardo, a former head of the Mossad spy agency, and other vocal opponents of the overhaul plan, which aims to severely curb the powers of the judiciary.

Critics of the overhaul — currently frozen amid negotiations over the form it will take — say it endangers democracy by removing crucial checks on the executive. Overhaul advocates deny this, arguing the plan enhances democratic principles by introducing limitations to a judiciary they say has gradually overstepped its purview.

During the meeting, which was set up Tuesday and was not part of the official Global Forum program, Pardo and fellow critics of the plan urged the AJC to take a firmer stance against it. The AJC in a statement in March said that the overhaul “falls short both substantively and procedurally” of the standards that the AJC believes should apply to any change in the status quo of the Israeli government. Such change needs to happen through a “deliberative, inclusive process,” wrote the group, which is one of the world’s most influential Jewish advocacy groups with dozens of offices worldwide.

The meeting was not open to the body of the AJC Global Forum but only to a few select leaders, according to Yiftach Golov, an activist in the Brothers in Arms protest movement who attended the meeting.

Some protesters demanded that the AJC rescind its invitation to Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, who addressed the Global Forum on Wednesday.

Former Mossad director Tamir Pardo participates in the Meir Dagan Conference for Strategy and Defense at the Netanya Academic College, March 21, 2018. (Meir Vaaknin/Flash90)

On Sunday, Deutch held an on-stage Q&A with opposition leader Yair Lapid, one of the leading critics of the overhaul.

Deutch, a former US Democratic congressman who last year became the head of the AJC, used “diplomatic, neutral language” during the meeting, Golov said, but other AJC leaders later said they were open to “cooperating under the radar and unofficially.”

Contacted by The Times of Israel, a spokesperson for the AJC said: “Because AJC Global Forum took place in Israel, we met with Israelis to hear their concerns. It certainly wasn’t under the radar. Any suggestion that AJC committed to cooperate with protest leaders is categorically false.”