In International City, Moshe Lion Struggles with English
Moshe Lion, running for mayor of Jerusalem against incumbent Nir Barkat, narrowly avoided an uproar at an Orthodox Jewish community center here, where he explained his four-part plan to fix the city. Elections will take place on Oct. 22.
The event at the Orthodox Union’s Israel Center, where Barkat will speak later this week was Lion’s first public speech in English — though it didn’t start out that way.
Advertisements said the talk would be in “easy Hebrew,” but for the crowd of about 50 people, predominantly older, religious Jews originally from America, the language barrier was sizable.
“If he shows up here and speaks in Hebrew, not only will he lose our votes, but we’re gonna be mad,” Madalyn Schaeffer, 74, who’s been living in Israel’s capital for 18 years, said before Lion arrived. “
Another elderly Anglo, who’s been in Israel for 24 years, came simply to learn about the candidate.
“To my chagrin, I find out he can’t speak English, which is a major major problem for the mayor of a city like Jerusalem,” said Toby Willig. Other than Washington, D.C., she believes her hometown is the most important city in the world, and the mayor represents that city.
“The fact is, the international language is English,” Willig told The Media Line. “He’s got to learn.”
Before Lion arrived, Willig said she would wait to hear whatever he presented. She likes the current mayor because he’s brought tourists and culture, but sees weakness is his lack of control over contractors and developers in the city.
“I have an open mind,” she said.
Lion is the candidate of Likud- Beytenu, the joint party headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with the hardline party of former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is currently under investigation for fraud. Lion, an accountant who only moved to Jerusalem a few months ago, has won the support of Jerusalem’s sizable ultra-Orthodox population. He is a former director general of the Prime Minister’s office in the 1990’s during Binyamin Netanyahu’s first term. For the past five years, he has also been the chairman of the Jerusalem Development Authority.
The incumbent, Nir Barkat, is a self-made internet millionaire worth more than $120 milllion, according to Forbes, who has declined a salary as mayor. He has angered the ultra-Orthodox by opening some of Jerusalem’s cultural venues on the Jewish Sabbath.
East Jerusalem Palestinians, who make up about one-third of the city’s population, traditionally boycott municipal elections to protest Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem in 1967.
A spokesperson for the Lion campaign acknowledged that Jerusalem is an international issue, but insisted that local needs are paramount: “Our campaign is focusing on improving the city for its residents in areas such as education, sanitation, housing and employment, all of which have led tens of thousands of Jerusalem residents to leave the city during the current term.”
At the nearly hour-long event, Lion explained that his term as mayor would focus on four issues — sanitation, housing, education and transportation — and fielded questions for the audience.
“I prefer to do it in Hebrew because it’s more easy for me,” Lion began, and then launched into his stump speech, describing 15 years of service in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Avi Berman, the OU Israel Center’s executive director, attempted to translate Lion’s initial Hebrew autobiography, but several in the crowd yelled that he’d forgotten to explain a point or two. Lion grew visibly frustrated, and spoke in often halting English through the rest of the presentation, with audience members shouting suggestions when he stopped to search for words.
During the question and answer segment, Harvey Schwartz thanked Lion for speaking in English, but challenged his seemingly narrow platform.
“Jerusalem consists of not just the little streets and stores,” he said.
Schwartz is a chairman for the International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim, which seeks to provide security and restoration to the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world on the Mount of Olives. He said tourists have been attacked there and at the Temple Mount, and that police have done nothing about it.
“The issues that he raised, clearly, are all local issues. But here there are international issues,” Schwartz said. “You have to have a much broader view.”
Eytan Gilboa, the Director of the School of Communication at Bar-Ilan University, agrees.
“Moshe Lion seems to be a little bit narrow minded, and I don’t think he can do as well as Nir Barkat,” he told The Media Line. “I don’t think he will be able to represent Jerusalem inside and outside of Israel the way past mayors have.”
Audience members at the OU Center, as well as political analysts, questioned Lion’s relation to the city. Trying to waylay vocal concern that he doesn’t have a connection, the candidate assured the crowd that he lives in town with his family and enjoys it very much, adding that he’s worked in and with Jerusalem for 15 years.
Hirsh Goodman, who’s been a resident of the capital for 40 years and is the author of “The Anatomy of Israel's Survival,” doesn’t buy it.
“He’s never lived in Jerusalem and he knows nothing about Jerusalem. It’s absurd for him to run in this race,” Goodman said. “I really feel it’s a chutzpah for this foreign implant to come here and say he cares about the city.”
Serving as mayor here is a huge challenge because there or so many distinct segments of society with conflicting demands. Gilboa suggested that Nir Barkat’s term has been successful and that he will be re-elected because he’s able to talk to many audiences, a trait that goes a long way on the world stage.
“When you are presented as The Mayor of Jerusalem, then it carries with it some kind of mysticism — it goes much beyond politics,” he said.
The Lion campaign spokesperson defended the candidate’s experience.
“Jerusalem needs unity and not division, so each community needs to work in harmony with the others and we have to find compromises to any disagreements,” the spokesperson told The Media Line. “Moshe Lion knows each community in Jerusalem well and has worked over the years as a unifier rather than a divider.”
But as community members shuffled out of the OU Center following the event, many felt Lion avoided responding directly their questions.
“I’m not so impressed. I asked him how he was going to raise money, and I didn’t hear an answer,” Madalyn Schaeffer said, as unclaimed pamphlets explaining Lion’s platform — all in Hebrew — blanketed the room. “It would be nice if they gave something out in English.”