From February 27-29 delegates of Masorti and MERCAZ Olami participated in the WZO’s 38th Zionist General Council (Va'ad HaPoel) with the theme The Zionist Movement – The Day After – Diaspora, Aliya, Israel. The Zionist General Council (ZGC), the supreme institution of the Zionist movement, was established in 1921 following a decision reached at the 11th World Zionist Congress.

The Masorti/Conservative movement brought 12 delegates from Argentina, Canada, France, Israel, UK and USA and the group participated in many plenary and committee discussions and a one-day conference called “The Challenges of the Jewish People – Post October 7th Global Leadership Meeting”.

For this 38th session of the ZGC the Masorti/Conservative movement proposed resolutions promoting equality for the LGBT community; strengthening the status of women and the principle of equality after the current war against Hamas; the correction at once of all aspects of discrimination between streams within Judaism; and redress discrimination in the Nationality Law against the Druze sector and amendments to the World Zionist Organization constitution.

The WZO constitution’s amendments are aimed to establish that the Jerusalem Program includes both the foundation of Zionism and the Nature of Zionism, which includes a commitment to the Declaration of Independence, democracy, non-discrimination on grounds of gender, etc. In addition, our amendments focused on transparency in the Zionist federations' work, membership issues in the Zionist Federations voting rights in the elections, admitting new federations, etc.

MERCAZ Olami Director of Organizational Development and Zionist Projects Nilli Glick Asaf shared: Thanks to the continuous and hard work of the representatives of our movement in the National Institutions, we managed to achieve some of our objectives, the result of a broad coalition that we promoted. This success encourages us to continue working on promoting our values".

During the conference two of our representatives were awarded with the Honorary Fellows recognition: Alan Silberman, representative and board member of Mercaz USA and former president of Masorti Olami (2006 to 2013), and Emily Levy Shochat current co-Chair and Treasurer of MERCAZ Olami.

Cover image: Guy Sidi

Images 2, 3: Noam Feiner