Groups to Help Emigres Fly to Israel for Elections

In the eight years since opera singer Hila Plitmann left Israel, she has been back to her native land many times, visiting family and friends or performing in concerts. This time, the 25-year-old Valley Village resident is adding a trip to the ballot box to her itinerary.

Plitmann is one of thousands of Israeli citizens living abroad who are flying back to vote in closely fought elections widely viewed as pivotal to the Jewish state’s future. And some, including Plitmann, are making their own arrangements. But many others are signing up for bargain flights arranged by two competing political factions, with each expecting to send at least 5,000 voters to the polls, either for the first round of balloting May 17 or for the expected runoff election June 1.

Chai L’Israel, organized by supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is offering round-trip fares to Tel Aviv from several cities, including Los Angeles, for $180. Their flights leave May 15 and 16 so that people can vote for members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, as well as for prime minister. Return flights are scheduled for May 23.

The founders of left-leaning KesherUSA, on the other hand, are planning their push for the second round, when they expect Labor Party candidate Ehud Barak to be in a runoff with Netanyahu. (There are five candidates for prime minister, but polls indicate that the contest is narrowing into a tight two-way race.) Kesher prices vary among cities; from Los Angeles, it is offering $649 round-trip fares ($549 for students). Los Angeles passengers will depart May 27 and return June 3 or June 6.

Both groups are using private donations to subsidize the tickets. El Al, the Israeli airline, offered an $815 round-trip fare from Los Angeles for advance tickets purchased by mid-April. That is roughly $200 off its lowest regular fares, according to an El Al spokeswoman.

The practice of flying in voters, many of whom hold dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, was employed with great success by right-wing factions in the 1996 elections. It is now employed as a counterthrust by moderates and leftists, and is heightening debate about whether emigrants should be allowed to help make decisions affecting a homeland they have left.

Israel has no provisions for absentee voting, except for diplomats and others living abroad in government service. But any Israeli citizen is legally entitled to go to the polls, no matter how long he or she has been away.

“Some Israelis have a problem” with emigres going back to vote, said UCLA political science professor Steven L. Spiegel, “but that is something for the Knesset to deal with if they want to. They have never been able to figure out just the right approach. For now, it is completely legal.”

Spiegel said groups on the right have been flying into Israel to vote for some time. The practice was especially important three years ago when it contributed to Likud Party leader Netanyahu’s narrow defeat of Labor’s Shimon Peres.

“Now the left is doing the same thing to balance off the right,” Spiegel said.

The fly-ins, dubbed “airlifts” by one of the several Jewish publications that have written about the practice, are an indication of the worldwide interest in the elections.

“People feel these elections are very important, that they are really determining the direction of Israel, with all sorts of implications for Jews everywhere,” Spiegel said. “It’s a reflection of the intensity of Israeli politics and of the perception, based on the closeness of the last election, that every vote counts.”

Even some who are going back for the elections admit to some initial ambivalence about their decision.

“It raised kind of a moral question for me. Even though I am a citizen, I am no longer a part of the life there anymore,” said Plitmann, who is married to an American. “But the problem is that I have friends and family there, and it is a place that I care about very much. I just decided that if others are doing things to decide its future, and it’s something I don’t like . . . then I should do something, too.”

Retired Los Angeles businessman Dan Sandel said he, too, struggled with his decision to go back to vote for the first time since leaving Israel 38 years ago.

“I have a lot of mixed feelings. I live here and consider myself an American, but I have very strong feelings about the present [Israeli] government,” said Sandel. He decided to sit out the first round and fly back on his own if there is a runoff for prime minister and “if it looks like my vote will make a difference.”

Others said they felt no ambivalence about going to Israel to vote.

“I hope one day to go back there and live,” said Orlit Arfa, a student at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and a part-time correspondent for the Jewish Journal newspaper.

“I decided to go [vote] as soon as I saw a flier” on campus about Kesher’s flight offer, Arfa said.

The Israeli government neither advocates nor discourages the fly-ins, but Yoram Ben-Ze’ev, the Israeli consul general in Los Angeles, said he applauds all Israelis living abroad who make the effort to participate in its democracy.

“I think it is a very good thing that Israelis can live abroad for many years but still be involved in the life of Israel. . . . I am very encouraged that they are motivated to go to Israel to vote, to go to the time and expense to be part of the process,” Ben-Ze’ev said.

He spoke during an interview last week after voting at the Israeli Consulate with other government emissaries, who came from throughout the Southwest to write their preferences on white and yellow slips of paper behind a cardboard tabletop “booth” decorated with Israeli flags.

“I encourage people to bring their children with them when they vote so they can see the democratic process,” said Ben-Ze’ev, who noted that with voter turnouts regularly exceeding 80%, Israelis take their privileges seriously.

Chai L’Israel and Kesher have used Web sites and organizations sympathetic to their respective sides to marshal voters via the discount fares. Under their nonprofit organization status in the United States, neither can legally “screen” flight applicants for political views.

A Chai L’Israel spokesman said the group screens would-be travelers for voting eligibility (by examining citizenship identification numbers and passports) but would not comment on allegations raised in some publications that it was denying tickets to people it suspected would vote for leftists.

The spokesman, who agreed to discuss Chai L’Israel’s program only if he would not be identified, said the group is concentrating on next week’s primary elections.

“We don’t believe there will be a second round. . . . We think this will be a one-shot deal” and that Israelis “will wake up on the 18th and have Netanyahu as our prime minister once again,” the spokesman said.

A recorded telephone message at the organization’s New York City headquarters informs callers that because of an “overwhelming response” there are no more tickets available.

The group has organized flights, totaling more than 5,000 passengers, from Toronto, New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. The response from Los Angeles has been “excellent,” even though this city “has been a somewhat difficult community to break into,” the spokesman said.

Kesher officials said they have booked space on flights from Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami and San Francisco in addition to Los Angeles. Kesher co-founder Udi Behr, a jewelry designer in New York, said the group expects to meet its goal of sending 3,000 to 5,000 voters to Israel from North America.

Both organizations also are appealing to smaller numbers of voters in some European cities.

Behr said Kesher was founded less than a year ago to give voice to Israelis not affiliated with conservative or religious factions.

“I thought of the many lobbies in Israel, there was nobody who represented just regular Israelis,” Behr said.

He added that the upcoming elections gave impetus to the new group, which he said will continue to be active after the ballots are cast. He said Kesher appeals to many younger, well-educated, nonreligious Israelis who have served in the army or demonstrated their commitment to Israel in other ways and who want a say in its future.

The group has met its strongest welcome on the East Coast and in the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly in the high-tech Silicon Valley, he said. The response in Los Angeles is “not major,” he acknowledged. He estimated that the group will attract 200 to 600 passengers from the Southland with its discount election fares for the June 1 runoff. (Estimates put the Los Angeles Israeli community at upward of 50,000.)

Tom Tugend, a Los Angeles-based journalist who writes for several Jewish publications and recently did a story for the Jewish Journal about the fly-in campaigns, said there “doesn’t seem to be a lot of activity” on either side among Los Angeles Israelis regarding plans to vote.

“I’m not sure why, other than some somewhat vague notions I’ve heard that Los Angeles is a little more laid back and a little less politically involved than places like the Silicon Valley,” he said.