Someh Hai, lawyer, businessman, blogger
Round table and meeting of the organizing committee
Bloggers’ discussion platform “Israel: neutrality and consent“, created on July 28, 2023. The decision was made at a roundtable discussion: “Humanitarian Aid, Military Neutrality and Peacemaking: the Role of Bloggers and LOMs in Ensuring Harmony in Israeli Society”.
The roundtable was held in Tel Aviv, as part of the Haifa Formatproject. The nongovernmental organization Dor Moria started the project in 2018. Dor Moria members and activists sought to create a negotiating platform to facilitate a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. And, naturally, to help reduce socio-political tensions within Israel. The new bloggers’ platform “Israel: Neutrality and Consent” also pursues exactly these goals. The round table turned into a meeting of the Platform organizing committee. And this session included experts from the NGO Dor Moriah and Tik-Tok bloggers from all over Israel. Bloggers who gather a significant number of participants from all over the world for their streamings.
Strength in diversity
These bloggers often hold opposing views on events in both Ukraine and Israel. Arthur Rosen from Ashkelon, Irina Tinkoff from Krayot, Alexander Kartun from Rishon LeZion, Eduard Batkis from Holon, etc. All of them have different views and the more interesting were the discussions and attempts to develop common principles to combat the destructive hype so popular in social networks. It was all the more important for them to participate together in the meeting and engage in constructive discussion rather than inflaming passions.
As Arthur Rosen noted: “Bloggers know that saying something nice to a person is fun, sure, but there is no hype. It is much easier to insult people than to promote reconciliation between people. So initially bloggers should realize what they are aiming for. To hard professional work with people or to cheap hype”
Despite differences in political views, including on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, all participants supported the idea of Israel’s military neutrality.
Little Israel’s big problems
Alexander Kartun noted that even though Israel is a fairly independent country, we are very small. And we can’t act like elephants in a china shop. We have a lot of well-wishers around us. U.S. on one side, Russia on the other.
Huge powers both economically and militarily. And we have Iran next door. And that means that our every move, our every word is weighed, literally on a scale, by the major geopolitical players.
Experts political scientist Michael Finkel and Reichman University researcher Lev Mashin assessed the importance of dialog platforms in ensuring constructive discussion when addressing socially significant issues within Israel.
As part of the session, the participants familiarized themselves with the main results of the sociological surveys conducted within the framework of the “Haifa Format”. Sociological surveys are conducted by the famous sociological center מאגר מוחות at the request of Dor Moria . And it is hard to pick on the results of the polls, since they fully meet the requirements of sociology as a science. If there is public opposition, it needs to be studied, not hyped up with false statistics.
The meeting reviewed the main results and general conclusions of the following studies:
- “The Security Challenges of the State of Israel in the Shadow of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict.”
- “Israeli attitudes toward judicial reform.”
- “The theme of neutrality in Israeli socio-political discourse.”
Sociology or hype
The Israeli Internet has been flooded with rather controversial results of opinion polls conducted by politically biased media outlets. Often, these figures can be seen as a tool to make sense of a crisis situation, rather than a tool to make sense of a crisis situation. The purpose of such “research” is not to help constructive resolution of social conflicts. In my opinion, the goal is to further inflame passions around Israel’s objective development problems. And prevent them from doing so.
As Eduard Batkis, one of the organizers of the roundtable and initiator of the bloggers’ platform, noted, we are creating tools to influence political decision-making. And these instruments, above all, must strengthen Israel, and provide a decent life for its citizens.
The following decisions were made as a result of the meeting:
- on the establishment of the Platform “Israel: Neutrality and Accord”;
- on the preparation of the Platform’s operating regulations and the procedure for its expansion;
- Preparation of documents for registration of the “Neutrality and Consent” public lobby in the Knesset
The next Haifa Format session is already planned to be a live stream of several bloggers coming together.