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About this special Iton edition:

Approximately two months ago, Prime Minister Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, in an attempt to hoodwink the
Israeli public, hid a land reform bill that would completely upend land ownership laws in the State of
Israel inside a sub-clause of a budgetary law. The land reform bill would change the way the State of
Israel relates to the land it physically resides on – quite a significant maneuver. The proposed bill would
allow land to be privately bought and sold as a commodity, instead of the current system where land is a
public asset, owned jointly by the State of Israel and the entire Jewish People (via the JNF). In order
for this bill to be profitable for the real estate tycoons, Bibi initiated a simultaneous process with the
JNF directorate, to trade expensive JNF-owned land in the center of Israel with State-owned
undeveloped land in the Negev and the Galilee. After this trade, the Israeli government would be able to
sell off the expensive Tel Aviv area real estate to the highest bidder.

The blue-shirt movements in Israel (Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, Machanot Haolim, Habonim Dror, and
Hashomer Hatzair) have been very active over the two few months to draw public attention to the
ramifications of this land reform to all sectors of Israeli society, as well as to Diaspora Zionist leaders
around the world. We will not allow Bibi to completely undermine 100 years of the Zionist enterprise
using cleverly worded statements and backhanded political maneuvering. So far, our attempts to halt this
land reform have been successful. However, the experience has raised a lot of interesting dilemmas, and
brings a lot of Zionist questions to light.

The purpose of this special edition of the Habonim Dror Iton is to bring an in-depth explanation of this
issue, as well as several of the dilemmas it raises, to the Habonim Dror youth movement madrichim
around the world. In addition, we want this to help start a world-wide sicha about what we want to do
about this, as a youth movement that is active in a tremendous number of Diaspora Jewish communities
around the world.

Background: How does the proposed land reform affect
Israeli society and Diaspora Jews?

Theodore Binyamin
Herzl Netanyahu

To understand the wide-ranging affects of the proposed land reform, we have to start with
Theodore Herzl. Herzl is often misunderstood as fighting only for political recognition for a
Jewish state by the world. However, for Herzl, acquiring the land for a state was just a start – only
by owning land could the Jewish People create an ideal society upon it. So he turned to the well-
known Jewish philanthropists of his day to find the money to start buying land. A fascinating
exchange of letters followed between him and Baron Rothschild. At the end of this exchange,
Herzl understood that if he wanted this idea of a Jewish state to work, he would need to give up