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An Israel analyst’s best- and worst-case scenarios for the new right-wing government
(JTA) — The recent Israeli elections, the fifth in less than four years, returned Benjamin Netanyahu to the driver’s seat for the third time.
The twice and future prime minister appears able to cobble together a coalition that has been called the most right-wing in Israeli history. It will include three far-right and two haredi Orthodox parties, and his partners include the far-right Religious Zionism party and its leader Bezalel Smotrich, who has sucessfully pushed for a heavier hand in controlling Israeli policies in the West Bank; Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the extremist Otzma Yehudit party, who is due to head a new National Security Ministry that will be given authority over Border Police in the West Bank; and far-right Knesset member Avi Maoz, whose Noam party campaigned on a homophobic and anti-pluralistic platform.
These developments have cheered the American Jewish right, which has long called for Israel to consolidate its power in — if not outright annex — the disputed territories of the West Bank that are home to 480,000 Israeli settlers and 2.7 million Palestinians, of whom 220,000 live in East Jerusalem.
For Jews on the center and left, however, the results have prompted anxiety. If the two-state solution has long looked out of reach, many were at least hoping Israel would stay on a centrist path and maintain the status quo until Israelis and Palestinians seem ready for their long-delayed divorce. American Jewish leaders are worried — privately and in public — that Jewish support for Israel will erode further than it has if Jews become convinced Israel doesn’t share their democratic and pluralistic values.
I spoke this past week about these issues and more with Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum and a senior research fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. The IPF supports a viable two-state solution, and Koplow acknowledges that he agrees with “almost nothing that I’m going to see from this Israeli government.” But he remains one of the most articulate analysts I know of the high stakes on all sides.
Our conversation was presented as a Zoom event sponsored by Congregation Beth Sholom, my own synagogue in Teaneck, New Jersey. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: What are the far right’s big asks, and what might we expect to see going forward?
Michael Koplow: There are a few issues that are really coming to the fore. The first is judicial reform. There’s a longstanding complaint among the Israeli right that the Israeli Supreme Court is perceived to be left-leaning — the mirror image of what we have here in the United States. Secondly, the Supreme Court is perceived by many Israelis to be an undemocratic institution, because it is an appointed body. In Israel, you have a selection committee for the Supreme Court that is actually composed mostly of sitting Supreme Court justices and members of the Israeli Bar Association. A common complaint is that the Knesset is a democratic body selected by the people and it’s hampered by this undemocratic body that gets to dictate to the Knesset what is legal and what is not.
And so for a long time on the Israeli right there has been a call to have a bill passed that would allow the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions. At the moment, there’s no recourse. The ultra-Orthodox parties in Israel have long sought exemptions for haredi Israelis to serve in the IDF and the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that ultra-Orthodox members of Israeli society can’t get a blanket exemption. A Supreme Court override bill would allow the Knesset to exempt the ultra-Orthodox from serving in the IDF. For the more right-wing nationalist parties, particularly Religious Zionism, the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled on multiple occasions that settlements cannot be established on private Palestinian land in the West Bank. Their main interest in a Supreme Court override is so that they can pass laws that will effectively allow settlements anywhere in [the West Bank’s Israeli-controlled] Area C, whether it’s state land or private Palestinian land.
Is Netanyahu interested for these same reasons?
Netanyahu is to a lesser extent interested in these things, but right now he’s on trial for three different counts, all for fraud and breach of trust, which is the crime that Israeli politicians get charged with in matters of corruption. He’s also in trouble for bribery. One of the things that he wants to do is to pass something called the “French law,” which would bar sitting Israeli prime ministers from being investigated and indicted. And in order to do that, he almost certainly will have to get around the Supreme Court.
The second thing that I think we can expect to see from this prospective coalition has to do with the West Bank. In late 2019 and early 2020, there was a lot of talk in the Israeli political sphere about either applying sovereignty to the West Bank or annexing the West Bank. This happened also in conjunction with the release of the Trump plan in January 2020, which envisioned upfront 30% of the West Bank being annexed to Israel.
This all got shelved in the summer of 2020, with the Abraham Accords, when the Emirati ambassador to the United States wrote an op-ed where he said to Israelis, “You can have normalization with the UAE or you can have annexation, but you can’t have both.” Israelis overwhelmingly wanted normalization versus West Bank annexation. Between 10% and 15% of Israeli Jews want annexation, so this annexation plan was dropped. In the new coalition, annexation is back, but it’s back in a different way. Bezalel Smotrich is a particularly smart and savvy politician, and understands that if you talk about annexation or application of sovereignty on day one, he’d likely run into some of the same problems — from the United States and potentially from other countries in the region. And so the way they’re going about it now is by instituting a piecemeal plan that will add up to what is effectively annexation.
How would that work?
For starters, there is a plan to legalize illegal Israeli settlements, and when I say illegal, I mean illegal under Israeli law. There are 127 settlements in the West Bank that are legal under Israeli law, because they had been built on what is called state land inside of the West Bank, and because they’ve gone through the planning and permitting process. In addition, there are about 205 illegal Israeli outposts and illegal Israeli farms, containing somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 Israelis. And what makes them illegal under Israeli law is that they were all built without any type of Israeli government approval. In many of these cases, they’re also built on private Palestinian land.
The first part of this plan is to legalize retroactively these illegal outposts. The coalition agreement that has already been signed between Likud and Religious Zionism, Smotrich’s party, calls for, within 60 days of the formation of the government, the state paying for water and electricity to these illegal outposts. I should note there already is water and electricity to these illegal outposts, but it’s paid for by the regional settlement councils. This would have water and electricity paid for by the Israeli government, and then within a year to retroactively legalize all of them. That’s step number one.
Step number two has to do with the legal settlements inside the West Bank. There is a body called the Civil Administration, which is the body that is in charge of all construction for both Israelis and Palestinians in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank that is controlled entirely by Israel. As part of the agreement between Likud and Religious Zionism, Smotrich is going to be finance minister, but also appointed as a junior minister in the Defense Ministry, and he will control the Civil Administration and will be in charge of all settlement construction in the West Bank. He will also have the power to decide whether Palestinians can build in Area C and whether Palestinian structures in Area C that were built without a permit can be demolished. And so this will almost certainly be increasing at a very rapid rate. The Supreme Planning Committee that plans West Bank settlement construction normally would meet about four times a year, and under the [current] Bennett/Lapid government it only met twice, but Smotrich said in the past that he would like to convene it every single month. So the pace of settlement construction is almost certainly going to grow at a pretty rapid pace.
What will Itamar Ben-Gvir, an acolyte of Meir Kahane, the American rabbi barred from Israel’s parliament in the 1980s because of his racism, gain in the government?
Itamar Ben-Gvir is the head of Otzma Yehudit, the Jewish supremacist party that now has six seats in the Knesset. As part of his negotiations with Netanyahu, he is going to be appointed to a new position known as the “national security minister,” which is currently called the public security minister, but they’ve increased its powers and renamed it. They’ve also given this new ministry control over the West Bank border police, who operate in the West Bank. And they’re also giving this minister power over the police that normally belongs to the police commissioner. And so Ben-Gvir, who I should note has seven criminal convictions on his record, including one for support of a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, is going to be the minister who’s in charge of the police — not only inside of Israel, but he’ll be in charge of the police who operate in the West Bank and who operate on the Temple Mount.
Michael Koplow is the chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum and a senior research fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. (Courtesy IPF)
And this is important because Ben-Gvir is one of the figures in Israel who has talked a lot about changing the status quo on the Temple Mount, probably the most sensitive spot in the entire world, and certainly the most sensitive spot anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Which is why Israeli governments, including very right-wing governments, have not changed the status quo [allowing Jews to enter the Muslim-administered mount, but pray there], certainly not formally. He’s also talked about increasing his own visits to the Temple Mount.
And he’s also talked about changing the rules of engagement for Israeli police, whereby they would be allowed to shoot anybody on sight, for instance, who’s holding a stone or holding a Molotov cocktail. Right now the current rules of engagement are that people like that can only be shot if they present an imminent and serious threat to a soldier or police. Changing that is certainly going to have an effect on relations between Israelis and Palestinians and likely lead to the types of clashes we’ve seen in Jerusalem over the past few years.
This is all very good news for folks who want to solidify Israeli control in the West Bank. It’s not such good news for people who support more autonomy for the Palestinians and certainly support the two-state solution — and I think I can include the Israel Policy Forum in the latter camp. I want to hear your thoughts on what you’ve called the best-case scenarios and the worst-case scenarios, and on where Netanyahu fits in.
When I say best-case scenario, I mean in terms of preserving the status quo, because a best-case scenario where you’d actually have an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is nowhere. It’s not in any conceivable future.
I think the best-case scenario would be that Netanyahu understands Israel’s place in the international system and he understands how issues inside the West Bank impact Israel’s foreign relations. This is somebody who has served as Israeli prime minister longer than anybody else. He was prime minister when the Abraham Accords came into being, and that accomplishment is rightfully his. Netanyahu understands these factors and has a long history of being very cautious as prime minister. He’s not a prime minister that uses force. He’s not a prime minister under whom Israel has undertaken any major military operations outside of Gaza. I think that it’s not unreasonable to think that his history of relative caution isn’t just going to go away. And that means doing things to make sure that the fundamental situation in the West Bank doesn’t get overturned.
Netanyahu is operating in a political context in which his voters and voters for the other parties in his coalition do expect some real radical changes. Interestingly, however, part of this agreement with Religious Zionism is that everything has to be approved by [Netanyahu], and so there will be a mechanism for Netanyahu to slow some things down. I think that there is a situation in which he lets things proceed at an increased pace, but doesn’t do anything to really fundamentally alter the status of the West Bank.
I also think that voters voted for Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit not because they’re looking for big, massive changes in the West Bank or an explosion in settlement construction, but because they were voting on law and order issues. Many Israelis are still very shell-shocked, literally and figuratively, by the events of May 2021, particularly the riots that broke out in mixed Israeli cities. And despite the fact that Itamar Ben-Gvir was blamed by the police commissioner at the time for instigating some of the violence in mixed cities, he ran a very effective campaign where he said, “Vote for me and effectively I will restore order.”
That leads to the reasonable best-case scenario of plenty of things happening that will cause friction with the United States and plenty of things that will cause friction with the Palestinians, but nothing that can necessarily be undone by a different government down the road.
And the worst-case scenario, from your perspective?
The worst-case scenario is all of these things that Smotrich, in particular, wants to carry out leads to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority. Based on my own experience in the West Bank in recent months, the Palestinian Authority has fundamentally lost control of much of the northern West Bank. In many places they have chosen not to engage in many ways. They effectively operate in and around Ramallah, and have a token presence in other spots, but don’t really have the power to enforce law and order. They’re under enormous political strain.
As a very quick refresher, the West Bank is divided into three areas, A, B and C. In theory, Area A is supposed to be entirely under the PA control and where you have between 1.3 and 1.5 million Palestinians. If the Palestinian Authority collapses, that means that Israel must go in and literally be the day to day governor and mayor of Area A and all its cities, providing services to 1.3 million Palestinians. It means acting as traffic cops, dealing with all sorts of housing and construction and literally everything that municipal governments do that Israel has not done in Area A in almost 30 years.
Does Israel even have that capability?
The standard is that 55% of all active-duty IDF soldiers are currently stationed in the West Bank. If the Palestinian Authority collapses it’s not hyperbole to say that every single active-duty IDF soldier will have to be stationed in the West Bank just to run things, just to maintain basic law and order. That means not having IDF soldiers on the border with Egypt, on the borders with Syria and Lebanon. It will effectively have turned into nothing but a full-time occupation force. And that’s Option A.
Option B is that Israel elects not to do that. And then Hamas or Islamic Jihad steps into the vacuum, and they become the new government in the West Bank. And at that point, everything that you have in Gaza, you have in the West Bank, except for the fact that the West Bank is a much larger territory. It cannot be sealed off completely. This is literally the nightmare scenario not only for Israeli security officials, but for Israeli civilians. And that’s even before we talk about the impact that will have on terrorism and violence inside of Israeli cities inside the green line, let alone what happens in the West Bank.
The United States and the European Union, and the U.N., presumably, won’t stand idly by through a lot of these changes. What leverage do they have and can they use to maintain the status quo?
The U.S. and E.U. are going to have some pretty clear, very well-defined red lines. I think it’s reasonable to expect that the Biden administration and many members of Congress will put the formal declaration of annexation as a red line. The same goes for European countries. But certainly the Biden administration doesn’t want to be in a position where they are getting into constant fights with the Israeli government. The administration rightly views Israel as an ally and an important partner and wants to maintain military and security and intelligence cooperation with Israel in the region. All those things benefit U.S. foreign policy. This is not an administration and certainly there isn’t support in Congress for things like conditioning security assistance to Israel or placing new usage restrictions on the type of weapons that we sell to Israel. And so there isn’t a huge amount of leverage in that department.
But I do think we’re going to see more diplomatic and political-type measures. People remember the controversy that ensued in December 2016 at the United Nations when the Obama administration abstained from a Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements. I think that if some of these measures go ahead, on the Israeli side, there’s a good chance that we will see the United States once again abstain from some measures in the Security Council. At the moment, the Israeli government has been working very hard to get the United States to help with [thwarting] investigations into Israeli activity in the West Bank in the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. I think that those sorts of things become a lot harder if Israel has fundamentally changed the status of the situation in the West Bank.
There are probably all sorts of trade relationships with the European Union that may be at risk. One big factor here is the other states in the region, the Abraham Accords states. There’s reason to think that they may act as a check on the Israeli government, given the popularity of normalization among Israelis, and given the fact that the UAE was the party that really stepped in and prevented annexation from taking place in the summer of 2020. In a country like Saudi Arabia, where you have a population of between 25 and 30 million, or Iraq or Kuwait, [the far right’s agenda] makes normalizing relations with those countries very, very difficult, if not impossible, and it’s possible that Netanyahu will use that also as a way to try and appeal to some of his coalition partners.
Another outside partner is Diaspora Jewry. A vocal minority of American Jewry supports the right-wing government, but a majority would support a two-state solution. They connect to Israel with what they see as a shared sense of democracy and liberal values. Does Netanyahu and his coalition partners think at all about them and their concerns? Do those Diaspora Jews have any leverage at all in terms of moderating any of these trends?
The short answer is not really. The parties in a prospective coalition are not ones that historically have cared very much about the relationship with the Diaspora. Haredi parties are not concerned about the erosion of liberal values inside of Israel or the situation in the West Bank for the most part. And parties like Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit really don’t care what American Jewry thinks about much of anything. We’ve already seen demands in some of these coalition agreements to amend the Law of Return, where right now, anybody who has one Jewish grandparent is eligible to be an Israeli citizen. These parties have been requesting that it be amended so that you are only eligible if you are halachically Jewish, meaning you have a Jewish mother [or have converted formally].
North American Jewry is a real asset to the State of Israel given its role traditionally in supporting the state economically and politically. And yet over the past decade and a half there have been repeated comments [among Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer] that it’s more important to be making inroads with evangelical Christians than with North American Jews, given the politics of evangelical Christians and given their size.
Many American Jews, particularly from the Reform and Conservative denominations, have already been angry that Israel doesn’t fully recognize the authenticity of non-Orthodox Judaism, and that an agreement to create a permanent egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall has been repeatedly shelved under pressure from Israel’s religious right.
We are in for a tough time in terms of Diaspora-Israel relations. You know, it’s not just about the issues that have been on the table over the past few years that have been disappointing to Diaspora Jewry, whether it be the Western Wall arrangement, whether it be recognition of Conservative and Reform Judaism inside of Israel, whether it be things like the Law of Return, which now seems to be under threat. In general, this question of values, which has been a big deal, is going to be even more front and center. Many American Jews have looked at Israel and thought of it as a place that shares liberal values with the United States. To some extent, that’s been historically accurate. But that picture, whether it’s accurate or not, is going to be under incredible strain.
What about within Israel? Are there any countervailing powers that might moderate the far right — professional military leadership, major business leaders, other opinion-makers outside the political process?
Thankfully, there is no history of IDF leadership interfering in the political decisions of elected civilian leaders in Israel. I hope that will continue. The way the security establishment has generally dealt with these sorts of things is by presenting a united front when they speak to the political leadership and give their opinions and advice and warnings about what might happen. They tend to be very savvy at leaking those opinions to the media. I’m certain that that sort of thing will continue. We already saw some discord over the past week between IDF leadership and some of the members of the prospective new coalition over disciplinary measures that were taken against soldiers who were serving in Hebron, one of whom punched a [Palestinian] protester, another who verbally assaulted a protester. And that can be a moderating influence, but I actually do not expect to see the military leadership stepping in any way in preventing something that the government may want to do.
The biggest check will be Israelis themselves. There was something else interesting that happened [last] week: Avi Maoz, who was the single member of Knesset from Noam, which is one of these three very, very radical right-wing parties, was appointed as a deputy minister in the prime minister’s office, and he was given control over effectively everything in education that is not part of the core curriculum and Israeli schools — like culture and Jewish identity issues. And that led to a revolt from Israeli mayors. You’ve had over 100 mayors of over 100 municipalities signing a letter saying that they are not going to be bound by Maoz’s dictates on curriculum. And this includes right-wing cities. I think that the most effective check is going to be government overreach, which leads to a backlash like this among Israeli citizens and among Israeli politicians who are not members of Knesset.
We’ve covered a lot of ground. Is there something we haven’t touched upon?
It’s really important that people don’t look at what’s taking place in Israel, throw up their hands and say, “You know, there’s nothing we can do to change this and Israelis are increasingly uninterested in what we think and so we’re going to disengage.” To my mind, the relationship that American Jews have to Israel is too important to just throw up our hands and say it doesn’t matter.
If we take American Jewish identity seriously, and we take the American Jewish project seriously, we have to think about two things. First, how we build an American Jewish identity that’s uniquely American. But second, how we preserve some sort of relationship with Israel, even when we see things coming from Israel that don’t speak to our Jewish values. We’re living in a time where we have an independent Jewish state with Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland. This is a historical anomaly. If we turn our backs on that, despite all of the difficulties, it really would be a tragedy and catastrophic for American Jewish identity.
If you don’t like what you see going on in Israel, try to figure out what your relationship with Israel will look like and how to have a productive one. And that doesn’t have to mean supporting everything the Israeli government does. I consider myself you know, somebody who is a strong Zionist, strongly pro-Israel. It’s a place that I love. I agree with almost nothing that I’m going to see from this Israeli government. But I’m still able to have a strong, meaningful relationship with the State of Israel, and I hope that people are able to do the same, irrespective of the day-to-day of Israeli politics.
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Regan Katz manages not just one, but two different – and successful baseball teams in two different cities
By BERNIE BELLAN About three months ago I wrote a story about an up and coming local football star by the name of Gavin Katz – who, although only 14 years old, had already received widespread recognition for his defensive abilities on the football field. (You can read that story at “Gavin Katz: ‘The next great Jewish football player’.”)
Gavin had been both a linebacker and defensive lineman for his pee-wee Fort Garry Lions Bantam football team – and he was voted most outstanding defensive player on his team by his coach, John Makie.
One thing that stood Gavin in especially good stead as a football player was that, in his 14th year, he grew 4 inches to 5’8″ and added 35 pounds to weigh 170 pounds at the time I spoke to him in July.
With him graduating from Ecole River Heights last June and moving on to Kelvin High School this September, Gavin had hopes to make the Kelvin football team, but he was realistic about his chances, saying that he thought he would probably “end up on the practice roster” for the Clippers varsity team “where he will be fighting for a playing role,” because if he did make the team he’d be among the youngest players on the team (which is usually made up predominantly of players from Grades 11 & 12).
Well, as I noted in my introduction to my story about Gavin Katz, the idea for doing that story came from sportswriter Scott Taylor. Recently, Scott sent me another email about a story, but this time the idea he suggested was to do a story about Gavin’s father, Regan.
I had mentioned Gavin’s parents’ names in my story about Gavin – also that Regan is former Mayor Sam Katz’s nephew (His father is Sam’s older brother, David), but other than adding Gavin’s mother’s name (Mandy), I didn’t go into any detail about Regan Katz and his own very successful career.
Then I received another email from Scott Taylor, this time about Regan (with a photo attached):
“Here’s a photo of the best baseball executive in Canada — Regan Katz.
“He runs both the Goldeyes and the Ottawa Titans. He helped get the Goldeyes to the playoffs, just won a championship with the Ottawa Titans and also set the affiliated minor league attendance record in Ottawa with more than 10,000 fans for the Frontier League opener and again for the Championship series.
“This guy has his shit together.”
And so, since my story about Gavin Katz was one of the most widely read stories on this website this past summer (It was also very widely read in the print Jewish Post newspaper.), I decided that, if Scott Taylor sends me a story idea, it’s an idea worth following up.
Which led me to contacting Regan Katz again. (The last time I contacted him it was to see whether he could wake Gavin up to talk to me. After all, like most teenagers, Gavin likes to sleep in when he can, but it was already 11 am on a Saturday morning when I was calling, so I figured: “Dad, go wake up your son. There’s a not-so-important journalist who wants to talk to him.”
Which is how I ended up having a very enjoyable interview with a very personable and unassuming young man – who did seem a little bit drowsy as I talked to him.
This time though, when I spoke with Gavin’s father, Regan was very much alert. Considering the hectic schedule he maintains though during baseball season, I could have forgiven him for sounding just a wee bit tired himself. But, at the time we did our phone interview, Regan’s baseball season had wound up. He sounded quite relaxed – still very much enjoying the accolades he had received for his work running not just one, but two different minor league baseball teams.
Before I began to ask Regan about his life in baseball, however, I wanted to touch base with him about Gavin’s football career. By now, the high school football season was in full tilt, and I was curious to know whether Gavin had made the Kelvin football team?
Regan told me that Gavin was one of only three “freshmen” to make the team and “Gavin’s the only one who started every game, and, yesterday got defensive player of the game” (which would have been played Thursday, Oct. 1, as our interview was conducted Friday, Oct. 2.)
I asked Regan whether Gavin was still playing linebacker (which, Gavin had told me, was his preferred position on defense)?
Regan responded that “they moved him to defensive tackle, so he’s right in the front line instead of at the back, but he’s breaking through the offense and helping the linebackers take down the tackles. He got two sacks yesterday and two running back tackles, which is not his job, but he’s breaking (through) kids larger than him and making his way through.”
At some point, as we follow Gavin’s football career, I hope to provide further updates as to his success on the “gridiron.” (By the way, the term “gridiron” – which refers to a football field and which used to be used quite often by sportswriters in the past “comes from the historical layout of the field, which was marked with intersecting lines every few yards that made it look like a metal cooking grate (or gridiron) used for broiling food over an open fire.”)
Enough about Gavin. Now, here’s the main point of why I wanted to do this story, which was to write about Regan.
I asked him how long he’s been involved with organized baseball?
He answered: “I’m in my 28th year.” As Regan observed, although he was born in Winnipeg, “when I was three, my dad decided he was allergic to snow and moved the family west (to Victoria). I came back in my late teens and joined up with the Winnipeg Goldeyes.”
Even before Regan moved back to Winnipeg, however, he had already embarked on a business career in his early teens, working for Westfair Foods (owners of Superstore and Wholesale Club) in British Columbia, helping to build grocery stores all over the province.
As he explained it, “So, when they would open up a new store, I would be the regional person who would go in and ensure that the setup and the staff was on plan.”
Regan was also responsible for training the staff and making “sure that everyone was ready” – traits that were to prove indispensable to what was to come during his current career in baseball. ”I was part of seven store openings in a two-year span, in that role” (with Westfair), Regan added.
He noted that when he left, he told them he was taking a “two-year sabbatical from the job.”
Regan added though, that “since I haven’t gone back, I assume they figured out I’m not returning.”
I asked: “Well, have they sent you a message saying, ‘Hey, the door’s still open?’ “
Regan answered: “No, but every year I get my superannuation for the time I served with them.”
He went on to note that he got married in 2010, “to a wonderful Manitoba woman, ” (Mandy, whose maiden name Gavin had told me, was Falk.)
Sam Katz actually revived the Winnipeg Goldeyes as a baseball franchise in 1994, when the team played out of the north end of what was then Winnipeg Stadium – in what was a very oddly shaped baseball field.
Regan, who came on board full-time with the Goldeyes in early 1999, says that he had spent some time with the team during a few previous summers spent in Winnipeg and had been able to see the Goldeyes play on that field which, he says, was affectionately known as “Deformity Field.”
(The left field fence was only 225 feet from home plate. It was a hitter’s dream – knocking easy home runs over that very short distance to the fence.)
Regan arrived in Winnipeg, however, just in time for what was to be the first season in what was to become the Goldeyes’ new home – what was then called CanwWest Park (now Blue Cross Park), in 1998.
His first title with the Goldeyes, he said, was “account executive, but I was truly a ‘gofer,” he observed.
“At the time construction was on full throttle at the new ballpark – downtown. And so, we were commuting from our offices on Maroons Road (where Winnipeg Stadium was located), and on McDermot – at Sam’s offices for Nite Out (Entertainment), as well as the ballpark trying to get things set up.
“So, when I wasn’t hauling or setting things up, I was making calls off a list to try and convince people to buy tickets.”
In those early years with the Goldeyes, as Regan noted, he was mostly involved in ticket sales, and in “2003, I moved to director of group sales and looked after all of our group sales, which are the outings where people are coming out (for things like) birthday parties, baseball teams, family gatherings, that kind of thing.”
In 2005, Regan moved up from director of group sales to assistant general manager, then in 2016 to vice president and chief operating officer – which are the positions he holds to this day.
In March 2020, however, Regan and his uncle Sam Katz took a trip to Ottawa – just as Covid was beginning to shut down things everywhere – including sporting venues.
There was a baseball park in Ottawa – called Ottawa Stadium, owned by the city, that was sitting empty.
As Regan explained, the city was “taking RFPs for an operator. (It had) sat empty for a year and a bit, and its previous occupant had left all kinds of turmoil and unpaid bills and whatnot.
“So they were looking for a team, trying to decide what to do with the venue. So we went out to tour – just as COVID shutdowns were starting in late March. We toured the venue, contemplated for a bit. And so, we went back and forth for a while, trying to decide if this was something we wanted to take on.
“In September of 2020, we agreed to terms with the city on a lease for the venue. We couldn’t travel across the border, so we started the team in 2022.”
The Ottawa team, known at the Titans, play in what is called the “Frontier League (which will be rebranding in 2027 to become the “National Association.” The Goldeyes, by the way, are in a league known as the “American Association.”)
There is a difference in the calibre of baseball players in the two leagues, as Regan explained to me: Players in the Frontier League would move up to Single A baseball, while players in the American Association would move up either to Double A or Triple A. (The level of baseball in the American Association is at a level wherein you can often see former major leaguers playing on teams.)
As vice-president and chief operating officer for both the Winnipeg Goldeyes and the Ottawa Titans, Regan said that he oversees general operations for both teams, but is not involved with the day to day management of players or coaches of the teams. That is the responsibility of the teams’ general managers and field managers, he clarified.
While there is no specific award for executive of the year in either the Frontier League or the American Association, when Scott Taylor wrote to me that Regan Katz is “the best baseball executive in Canada,” he didn’t say that he was referring only to minor league baseball.
As Regan noted, the Goldeyes received an award for “Game Presentation of the Year” this year, while the “Ottawa Titans received the Commissioner’s Award of Excellence.”
“When we started the (Ottawa) team five years ago,” he observed, “we were averaging about 1,200 fans. This year we were in excess of 2,600. We set attendance records, both for the ballpark in Ottawa, as well as for the league. We also sold 10,278 tickets to our opener, which is a record that will probably stand true for the rest of time.”
As far as the Winnipeg Goldeyes’ season went, not only did the team perform well on the field, making it to the first round of the playoffs, average attendance was the highest it’s been since before Covid, with games averaging over 4,000 fans.
Not only that, but the Goldeyes received a number of accolades for how they produce their games.
“Our broadcaster got Broadcaster of the Year,” Regan noted. (The games are broadcast on Nostalgia Radio Station CJNU. The play by play announcer is Trevor Curl.)
“We (also) received Game Presentation of the Year, which, you know is a big one because that’s what we work so hard on. What we’re selling – it’s all about fan experience.”
Regan continued: “Obviously, we try to put together a winning team, but to us, it’s all about having fun at the ballpark, win or lose – even if you don’t like baseball. So that one meant the most to us.
“We also won Social Media Team of the Year – for Winnipeg. All three of (those awards) are big ones to us because they’re pieces that we choose and work hard on.
“The essence of what I do (is) we’re trying to put on family entertainment that happens to have a baseball game in the background. ..and that’s what we built in Winnipeg.”
I asked Regan whether “in terms of, of how you rate in in Minor League Baseball – without trying to blow your own horn, I know the Goldeyes have always been considered a top-notch operation. Have the Goldeyes received any particular awards from organizations that look at all of minor league baseball and compare all teams?”
“ ‘Baseball Digest’ has acknowledged us a number of times over our 33 years for various pieces of what we do,” Regan answered, “whether it be attendance or game experience or most creative promotion. We’ve certainly received many, many mentions in ‘Baseball Digest,’ which is probably the most well-known for all of Minor League Baseball and independent leagues for sharing what’s out there.”
I asked Regan – and it was based on everything he had told me to that point: “Has anyone in a much more senior league tried to recruit you?”
He responded: “Are there headhunters out there who have called me? Absolutely, yes. Many, many teams call me to consult all the time, but I do keep my advice and recommendations to those within our league because I want to see the leagues that we’re in succeed.”
Regan added: “I have a young family. (In addition to Gavin, the Katz’s have a daughter, Brynlee, who is nine). I like where I’m at. I don’t think any other team is going to come to Winnipeg, so I’m well-planted here.”
My final question was about how difficult it is to run two separate teams that are so far apart?
He answered: “Anybody else who has overlap between two teams has a much shorter commute than I do – with a three-hour flight each way. It’s incredibly challenging. Fortunately, technology’s made it a lot easier with virtual meetings and things like that. I speak with my staff in Ottawa every single day. I’m in constant contact with at least some of them, if not all of them. All of our meetings are virtual so that I can be part of them.”
Only 47 years old, Regan Katz has been working full time since he was a young teenager. I didn’t even mention that, while he was working for the Goldeyes here after he had just moved to Winnipeg, he managed to finish university, where he studied business administration. If anyone would be interested in learning about business administration, with everything he has accomplished so far, Regan Katz could be the perfect teacher.
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Mamdani faces growing pressure over Jewish NYPD Commissioner Tisch and over Israel from left flank
(JTA) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing increasing pressure from some on the leftmost flank of his voting coalition, and an ICE shooting Thursday led democratic socialist allies to add their voices to a major demand: dump police commissioner Jessica Tisch.
“The NYPD’s Strategic Response Group must be disbanded as quickly as possible, and Commissioner Tisch must step down,” said Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won her Democratic primary with Mamdani’s endorsement. The democratic socialist, who is expected to join Congress next year representing Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, was referring to the heavily armed police department unit that often responds to protests.
The calls for Tisch’s removal follow strident criticism of the mayor from pro-Palestinian activists on Wednesday night who called him names, including “traitor” and “Ziohran,” when he showed up at an Oct. 7 Israeli peace vigil mourning the loss of both Jewish and Palestinian lives. The demonstrators assailed him for not doing more to advance the pro-Palestinian agenda that has long been central to his political beliefs, raising questions over whether he could lose parts of his base as he pledges to be a mayor for all New Yorkers.
The demand for Tisch’s removal came after an ICE agent shot and wounded a Dominican man in his car on Thursday afternoon while his 5-year-old son was in the back seat. Avila Chevalier, who joined protests against ICE on Thursday, wrote on X that the NYPD “spent more time protecting a militia that just shot someone than protecting New Yorkers.”
Mamdani’s decision last year to retain Tisch — a self-described “proud Zionist” who comes from a prominent Jewish family — was seen as a reassuring move by moderates and establishment Jewish organizations including UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council. (70 Faces Media, the parent company of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and New York Jewish Week, receives UJA funding.)
A number of progressives were skeptical of the decision at the time, citing her background as an appointee of Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, and her past criticism of campus pro-Palestinian protests. Some viewed her as an impediment to criminal justice reform.
Meanwhile, some on the left have dinged him for not yet following through on campaign promises 10 months into his term, including dissolving the Strategic Response Group, or backing down from his vow to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a plan which he later said he did not have the power to execute.
Anti-Zionist groups including Pal-Awda, Within Our Lifetime and a number of student organizations who rallied against Mamdani at the Oct. 7 vigil accused him of succumbing “to Zionist pressure.” Protesters called him a “traitor” and a number of chants rang out including, “Mayor Mamdani you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” drowning out speakers at the vigil and forcing the organizers to move it behind police barricades to keep the protesters from overrunning the event.
Among those protesters’ many gripes with the mayor was his decision to retain Tisch. One sign at the demonstration depicted Mamdani with the text, “Chief Executive of the NYPD SRG” with a Star of David in the middle, and a name tag on the mayor’s chest reading, “Ziohran.”
Criticism was also directed at Mamdani for not stopping Israeli real estate events at synagogues, and for his strategy to combat antisemitism, released last week, which allocates funds to a number of community-based organizations aimed at preventing hate crimes. Some critics have charged that some of the funding will aid Zionist organizations.
“The Jewish community is a large part of New York and it should be cherished. But you cannot fund these Anti-Defamation Leagues that prioritize Zionism over Judaism,” a John Jay College student protester, who declined to be named, told JTA during the demonstration.
On Thursday, the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter — which Mamdani has called his “political home” — wrote that Tisch “must end NYPD complicity with ICE” and that if she “cannot put a stop to these injustices, she must be fired.”
“Abolish ICE. Disband the SRG. Fire Tisch,” wrote Illapa Sairitupac, a fellow democratic socialist who won the Democratic nomination for a Lower Manhattan State Assembly district. Mamdani endorsed both Sairitupac and Avila Chevalier this past year.
While some protesters at the vigil said they were Mamdani voters — and one speaker even identified herself as a former intern for the now-mayor — some of the mayor’s allies have stressed that the crowd protesting him was not representative of his base.
“If I had to gamble, I would gamble that the vast majority of them were people who never supported him,” activist Abby Stein told JTA on Thursday night, during the Mazals gala held by left-wing group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. Mamdani was due to attend the JFREJ event, but because of the ICE shooting was instead in the Bronx, where he denounced the federal agency and demanded that it cease its operations in New York City.
Many of the signs excoriating Mamdani at Wednesday’s protest outside of City Hall were signed with the name of the Maoist Communist Union, an organization that opposed Mamdani before he took office. Some protesters were handing out copies of Spartacist, the Trotskyist International Communist League’s journal.
“We certainly didn’t support Mamdani or vote for him,” said Erica Jones, among the Trotskyist protesters. “We knew he was running as a Democrat and he would be as big of a sellout as AOC and Bernie Sanders and all the rest of those who claim to have, at one time, stood for socialism but in reality, stand for the capitalist masters who are oppressing us all.”
Stein, a member of the DSA in addition to JFREJ, called out some of the protesters’ rhetoric and the choice to crash the Israelis for Peace Oct. 7 vigil. But she also acknowledged that there was overlap between their demands and her views, including over the police commissioner.
“There are things that people are upset over that I think are legit — like keeping Jessica Tisch on, for example,” Stein said. “A lot of us were not very happy about it.”
Ultimately, Stein said there is “always going to be something to protest” with any politician, and pointed to a quote from New York’s mayor in the 1970s and ‘80s, Ed Koch: “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Mamdani faces growing pressure over Jewish NYPD Commissioner Tisch and over Israel from left flank appeared first on The Forward.
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A planned non-Zionist Jewish school in Boston hopes to ride the momentum of the left
(JTA) — BOSTON — In the middle of a conversation about her future children, it dawned on Leah Robbins that the school she imagined for them did not exist.
Robbins envisioned a Jewish school where children studied Jewish texts, history and observance, as she did at the school run out of her Conservative synagogue in northern Florida. But having long ago rejected the allegiance to Israel that was entwined with her education, she could not fathom sending her children to a school that promoted Zionism — which ruled out all the Jewish day schools she knew.
“I was just overwhelmed with a sense of grief that my kids could be less Jewishly educated than I was,” Robbins, who has lived in Boston for 10 years, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I would never ever consider sending my kids to any of the local day schools because of total values misalignment.”
Four years after that conversation, Robbins is building her own institution for the children she hopes to have. She plans to open Achvat Olam, a “diasporist” day school whose name translates to “global solidarity” in Hebrew, in the Boston area in fall 2029. The school aims to launch with eight to 10 families, starting with a kindergarten and adding grade levels until ultimately becoming a K-8 school.
Achvat Olam is fiscally sponsored by Beloved Builders, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that supports progressive Jewish projects. Robbins, who has a background in fundraising for Jewish nonprofits, hopes to raise $625,000 for the launch. She said she has met about 20 local families who expressed interest, and will start formal recruitment efforts, including focus groups and open houses, next year.
Achvat Olam will teach about Jewish history, cultures and languages outside of Israel, while engaging with Hebrew and Israel’s history from a non-Zionist perspective. The school’s website includes a page on “Israel/Palestine,” saying its community will share a belief that “the pursuit of justice, dignity, and thriving for all people is a Jewish moral imperative.”
“This includes an age-appropriate, honest confrontation with Zionism and the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people,” the website says, using the Arabic word for the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians at the time of the State of Israel’s founding. The school also says that students will consider “the complicity and support of the US government and Diaspora Jews.”
Micah-Shalom Kesselman is the parent of a 4-year-old in Medford, Massachusetts, and participates in local left-wing Jewish groups such as the Boston Workers Circle. He’s disappointed that his son Oren will age out of Achvat Olam by the time it is scheduled to open as a kindergarten. “I would super want Oren to attend something like what Achvat Olam is shaping up to be,” he said.
Kesselman, who studies Yiddish with his son, explained that he would like Oren to be steeped in Jewish traditions and culture. But as a parent who is “not a supporter of Zionism,” he said he has found few Jewish educational opportunities that match his beliefs.
Diverse day school histories
Jewish day schools have historically encompassed a range of orientations toward Israel, according to Jonathan Krasner, a historian of American Jewish education at Brandeis University. The modern day school movement was born in the 1920s and initially dominated by orthodox schools, some of which did not emphasize Zionism. In the 1950s, secular Yiddishist schools taught varied attitudes toward Israel. Some yeshivas in the orthodox Haredi movement still today oppose Zionism on religious grounds, believing that Jewish sovereignty should only be established through the coming of the Messiah.
But Krasner could not name another day school that has Achvat Olam’s goal: education for Jewish families who disavow the current-day political realities of Israel and Zionism. In the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, many day schools went the opposite direction, adding curricula to strengthen solidarity between Diaspora Jews and Israel.
“The initial response of the organized Jewish community was, understandably, to circle the wagons and to reinforce their connections to Israel and to the Israeli people,” Krasner said.
Jack Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, isn’t convinced that Achvat Olam will change that trend. He said he was “highly skeptical” that Robbins could attract enough families to sustain a school. According to historical data, he said, Jews who lean more politically left tend to be less engaged in Jewish life.
“From what I know, the overwhelming majority of parents who are interested in sending their children to Jewish day schools are pro-Israel,” said Wertheimer.
Nonetheless, Robbins believes that the market for her school is growing. Survey after survey has captured a drop in Americans’ support for Israel since the Gaza war, and Jews are not an exception to the trend. After decades of being treated as fringe in many of their communities, left-wing Jews who are anti-Zionist — or simply do not see Israel as part of their identity — say that instead of adapting to their congregations and Jewish schools, the institutions should adapt to them.
There are signs that this group makes up a substantial portion of Jews in the United States. About 30% of Jewish adults believe that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, according to a June poll of 1,022 Jews from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which had a 5% error margin. Less than 40% said that “supporting Israel” was crucial to their Jewish identity.
Younger Jews emphasize traditions
At the same time, among adults who identified as religiously Jewish, younger people said they emphasized Jewish traditions more than their older counterparts. Younger Jews were more likely than older ones to say that “celebrating Jewish holidays” and “celebrating or marking Shabbat” were important to them, while Jews over 45 placed more emphasis on “remembering the Holocaust” and “supporting Israel” than younger ones.
This finding could reflect the growing share of younger Jews who are Orthodox. It also comes amid a boom in Jewish leftist organizations that explicitly ground their activism in religious tradition. IfNotNow, an anti-occupation group that has grown from 1,000 dues-paying members in 2023 to 7,000 this year, says it is “growing a community rooted in Jewish values and ritual.” The anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, which has amassed 32,000 dues-paying members, often frames its protests through Jewish holidays, texts and prayer.
Robbins is betting that a significant pool of younger Jews, many of them now parents to young children, are seeking avenues to both protect their Jewish traditions and reset their community’s relationship with Israel for the next generation. Instead of supporting Israel, Achvat Olam says that its students will learn a curriculum of “collective liberation at home, globally, and in Israel/Palestine.”
“This is a very experimental moment in Jewish history. The Jewish left is growing by leaps and bounds,” said Robbins, referencing estimates of dozens of anti-Zionist congregations and prayer groups sprouting across the country. “There is hunger for this.”
Boston is a hub for such new organizations. Since 2024, the city has hosted the Conference on the Jewish Left at Boston University, a gathering of left-wing Jewish scholars, students, activists and faith leaders. The first annual meeting drew 300 people, the second 700, and the third in February saw more than 900 participants. A poll of Greater Boston by Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the central fundraising arm of Boston’s Jewish community, found earlier this year that 38% of Jews aged 18 to 29 identified as “anti-Zionist,” and another 30% said they were “uncommitted” to Zionism or anti-Zionism.
Rabbi Greg Hersh left his congregation at Temple Emmanuel in Wakefield, north of Boston, in 2024. He said he became increasingly alienated from his congregants after Oct. 7. Hersh felt that the congregation, focused on supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism locally, did not share his anguish about the deaths of Palestinians.
Last year, Hersh founded V’ahavtah, a mostly Cambridge-based congregation devoted to “practicing Judaism beyond Zionism.” V’ahavtah joined Jews, like him, who felt uncomfortable with the norm of Israeli flags flying inside synagogues. Their Shabbat services regularly draw 30 to 40 people, numbers he said he never saw in Wakefield. He believes that is proof of growing demand for non-Zionist Jewish institutions.
“You take Israel out of the equation and the Jews will show up, and that’s what happened with V’ahavtah,” said Hersh. “My expectation is Achvat Olam is going to be very well poised to fill that void.”
On the ground, Robbins faces formidable obstacles to funding Achvat Olam. Jewish day schools struggle across the country to attract enrollment in the face of tuition that many families can’t afford, along with budgets strained by economic uncertainty and heightened spending to ward off security threats. Earlier this year, MetroWest Jewish Day School in Framingham, a suburb of Boston, shuttered and said that its “model of highly individualized Jewish day school education is no longer sustainable.”
Heavy investments from local philanthropies have helped day schools offset high costs. Prizmah, a national network of 305 day schools, recently reported that it saw enrollment rise across denominations for the first time last year, thanks in large part to philanthropy.
But many groups that fund Jewish education hold values that are antithetical to Robbins’ — including CJP, which calls itself a “pro-Israel, Zionist organization.” Prizmah and CJP declined requests for comment from JTA.
The individual donors who fund Jewish schools also tend to be older, more conservative than Robbins and more motivated by support for Israel, according to Krasner.
“The people who are most likely to be in a financial position to support day schools with generous philanthropic gifts are demographically very different from the population that Leah is trying to attract,” he said.
Robbins admitted that funding challenges meant the success of Achvat Olam was not “any sort of inevitability.” But she believes there is inevitability to the political momentum that could drive families toward such a school. “Something I want to convey to people is that the train has already left the station,” she said. “There is no stemming the tide of the growth of the Jewish left.”
Robbins has turned to funding from left-wing organizations, which already siphon much of their resources to grassroots activism, legal defense and awareness campaigns.
“It can be hard to get in the face of people to make the case for something that requires long-game thinking,” she said. “I’m trying to make the case, when the last fire has been put out, what’s going to be left if we’re not building it right now?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A planned non-Zionist Jewish school in Boston hopes to ride the momentum of the left appeared first on The Forward.
