[Interview conducted by Sharona eshet-Kohen]
Sharona Eshet-Kohen (SEK): Let’s start with your background. Where did you grow up and how did you grow up?
Yishai Fleisher (YF): I grew up with Russian refusenik parents. We lived in Israel until I was eight and then we moved to New Jersey. I lived there until I was 17, when I moved back to Israel by myself and went to Yeshiva and the army. At 21, I returned to the U.S. for undergrad and law school - I went to Cordozo Law School in NYC. I began my Zionist activities while I was in college, when I started Kumah - an organization to help students transition from being pro-Israel to wanting to participate in building the Land by making Aliyah - which ultimately led to my making Aliyah after law school.
We marched in the Israel Day Parade with Aliyah posters. We had several rabbis sign a document urging students to make Aliyah after graduating. It was a very successful organization because all my friends made Aliyah! But because all the leadership left, the movement had to change. Today Kumah still operates but Aliyah is just one component of it. It’s also about connecting people and their lives to Israel.
SEK: Can you tell me more about your parents? They sound very interesting.
YF: My parents were involved in fighting for Soviet Jewry and trying to get out. They had heard about the Six Day War and took all kinds of actions to break out of the regime that was jailing them and get to Israel, which they eventually did.
When we lived in Israel we weren’t religious, but when we came to the U.S., the first people who “caught” us was the Haredi Jewish community. Subsequently, my parents sent me to Jewish schools, and several different forces - great rabbis and people who loved to bequeath Yiddishkeit - impacted our family and helped us see the light of Torah. And the light of Torah is such that when you start to see it even a little, its beauty and depth and truth begin to draw you in.
SEK: Why did you decide to make your life in Israel as opposed to the U.S.?
YF: America is a wonderful country, and if Zionism didn’t burn within me, then I’d probably be living in New York. But I’ve always felt that we’re living in a great time of our nation, and we have the option to walk in the footsteps of our forefathers and foremothers who all their lives yearned to live in the Land of Israel, and to receive the spiritual benefits - personally and nationally - of developing this Third Commonwealth of the Jewish People. It is the most exciting project of the Jewish People in the last 2,000 years.
SEK: You’ve been a radio talk show host, you’re involved in politics, you’re the spokesperson for Hevron…tell me about some of your best experiences and some of your most challenging experiences in the various fields you’ve worked in.
YF: Some of the best experiences I’ve had is when I really witnessed change. In Hevron I’ve been able to help get things built - artwork, a current giant building project, putting up flags, helping people make Aliyah. What really excites me is seeing real change that I’ve been involved in. I love to see things get built, to grow - another new home and another new building.
Barukh HaShem [thank G-d], I have been involved in lots of tangible change. Now, I’m involved in the first building project in Hevron since 2005 - we got permission and money to build in the Hizkiyahu Quarter /Nahalat Chabad and are hopefully breaking ground soon.
The worst thing I’ve experienced was the expulsion from Gaza and the grave error that our own beloved country undertook. To see such a regression and abdication of our Land and our responsibilities - it was heartbreaking to see our own courts make such an egregious and heart rending error. I was down there, in Gush Katif, with Israel National News Radio, living there for a month and a half, reporting until the full expulsion took place. I dragged a huge ISBN broadcasting box to broadcast from the municipality. They gave me a house and a room to broadcast in. We were the only station covering the expulsion in English that was against it and giving warnings. Sadly, I also had to report on the evacuation itself.
Arutz Sheva was one of the lone voices standing against this tragedy and every prediction of ours turned out to be true and worse.Those were the hardest and worst things in I've seen in my whole life. It was so intense, impossible to describe seeing our beloved polity that we’ve been establishing for 2,000 years take such absurdly mistaken steps that were soon proven to be exactly that.
SEK: So you were down in Gaza reporting for Israel National News. Tell me about your time at Arutz Sheva.
YF: I spent six and a half years at Arutz Sheva as the Director of Programming at Israel National Radio. It was my job to create 30 hours of radio programming every week. We had three basic messages in our programs - Aliyah, the rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, and connection to Torah. We had a show about the Temple, another about Aliyah, one for kids, etc.
I used to convince people to join the team by asking them “Have you ever thought about going on shlichut [bringing Judaism and Zionism to Diaspora communities]?” And when they answered yes, I would ask them if they’d like to give a class to a thousand people every week. I told them I couldn’t pay them but I could give them a platform on radio to broadcast to the world. And many people were inspired by that!
We would also get thousands of emails from all over the world with people who expressed such appreciation for our broadcasting. We were really on the cutting edge of technology. I was working there way before the podcast revolution, and were broadcasting from Israel both in live stream and in downloadable podcast format. We even had a live global chat room.
And I can’t talk about my time at Arutz Sheva without mentioning my boss. Our whole team was led by one of the greatest bosses and teachers I’ve ever had, a great manager and a great visionary - Baruch Gordon.
SEK: While you worked at Arutz Sheva you were living on the Artis outpost of Bet El, right? What was your experience like there?
YF: I lived in a caravan [trailer], very close to the site where Jacob dreamed of angels climbing up and down the ladder. It was a beautiful time with beautiful views. On clear days I could see the Mediterranean Sea. I was part of many initiatives up there - we put up a beautiful Hannukiah on top of the shul, we did regular tours almost every shabbat, I made sure we had a regular minyan [quorum for prayer] on the mountain, and we loved doing community barbecues. Bet El is a beautiful place and a strategic place, close to Ramallah. Living there I felt that I was participating in establishing a stronghold of Am Yisrael.
SEK: And after the Artis you lived in East Jerusalem, also strategic location for the Jewish community. What was that like?
YF: I lived on the Mount of Olives for seven years - another mountain filled with Jewish history. There is 3,000 years of Jewish burial there, it’s across from the Temple Mount, and it’s also a very strategic spot. There are several Jewish families living there in a mostly Arab neighborhood called Ras al-Amud.
It was one of the important positions that enabled Jews to walk freely and fearlessly on the Mount of Olives. When Jews live in these places, security, access, and transportation follow - now there’s a direct bus line to the Mount of Olives, protection for tourists, and access from the eastern gates of the Old City, including the Lions Gate. Not to mention, it normalizes life in the ancestral burial grounds of such a historic mountain for the Jewish People.
SEK: What is your family life like? How did you meet your wife?
YF: I met my wife, Malka, at law school. We were both active in pro-Israel work, and we organized the first Birthright trip for Cordozo Law School together. When we started going out I told her I was only interested in dating women who would make Aliyah. She had never considered it before but was enamored by the idea.
We got married at the Ma’arat HaMahpela [Cave of the Patriarchs] in 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada. No one was getting married in Hevron then, but we helped restart the practice. Because our wedding was there, I have remained very connected to Hevron, and it feels very natural to be working there now. Today, Malka and I live in Efrat with our three children.
SEK: Tell me about little more about your current job in Hevron.
YF: I have the great honor of working for the Jewish community of Hevron, which is constantly being battered by all kinds of forces that want to slander these great people as being violent, and are even calling for the ousting of all Jews from Hevron. This is a 3,500 year old Jewish community that was ethnically cleansed in the 1929 riots, and we are also the community that started the resettlement movement. This community also guards the tombs of the forefathers and foremothers and gives access to them (as opposed to the tomb of Joseph, for example, which was destroyed and which we don’t have access to anymore). And I have the great honor to serve as their spokesperson.
I invite everyone reading this to come visit us here - we have weekly English language tours, which people can find out more about on our website. I’m also in involved in The Land of Israel Network, which broadcasts every day the life and importance of the Land of Israel.
SEK: Last year, you received a lot of media attention when you published an op-ed in the New York Times where you stated unequivocally that the Two-state Solution will never and should never be realized. Has your ideology developed further in any way or any direction since publishing that piece?
YF: That article was developed from talk I gave. It not only discussed why the Two-state Solution cannot and should not ever work, it also provided five alternatives, because one of the critiques of the Israeli Right is that they do not provide any alternative. Getting published in the New York Times was not easy; later, in the Huffington Post, there was an article about the internal debate in the Times office over whether or not to publish the article.
But I believe it was a timely piece for the Right that has been trying to change the tragic policy decision to create a Palestinian Authority and give away our land to it. I am part of that effort and it is not easy. It’s one thing to fight enemies; it’s another thing to fight decisions made by our own country, to try to turn around our own policy. The current generation is turning away from Oslo, and this article was another effort to show policymakers that there is another way, and that we are ready to make that turn, to turn away from Hamas and from the disastrous Land for Peace formula, which does not bring peace and only empowers our enemies.
The biggest development is that we are taking steps to expose what the Iran deal really is, to expose the U.N. as an anti-Israel force, and to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Now that there is support for making a policy turn, the time is ripe even more so - there’s a window we have to use. It’s helpful when powerful friends think like us - Bolton, Friedman, etc. A stronger Israel and a bigger Israel means more rights for more people. Since then there have been more conferences on alternatives to the Two-state Solution.
I’m often asked, “What’s your preferred solution?” I always answer, “I may have one, but the time now is to discuss options, to get an intellectual force behind this, to identify the Palestinians who are not pro-PA or pro-Jihad, and to defend their voices. There are many voices like this on the other side, but they are often neutralized by jihadists and tyrannical elements. We need to help these voices be heard, both from our political Right and from within the Arab world. They certainly have what to say, but they’ve been stymied, not just by the tyrannical regime, but also by the Jewish Left who doesn’t want to hear that there are Arabs and Palestinians who are not for this war against Israel, and who want to accept the fact we’re here, and may even accept that Allah gave us this land. A voice that calls for a reversal of Oslo and a stronger Israel and more rights for more people.
SEK: What do you think right-wing Israeli activists from America bring to the table?
YF: Jews from the U.S. are in a unique position in Israel, coming from ostensibly superior countries, economically-speaking. They’re not running away from the Soviet Union or Ethiopia or Arab countries. Most are choosing Israel because of plain full on Judaism/Zionism/love of Israel. They’re choosing it and therefore they’re not content to see things as they are when they come here. They feel in themselves the power to make change.
And that comes from their can-do American ideology and their very robust sense of Zionism. Jews from America are a small fraction of Israel, but they are influential, and they also have connections to what is still the world’s sole superpower and funding opportunities. All of those things together render Jews from America to be an influential lot.
We have an excellent cadre of American-born activists in Judea and Samaria - many of whom have actually also been broadcasters at Israel National News. Together there are many people making noise, who are connected to Jewry in America and to the U.S. Administration and who are pushing hard for change.
SEK: Last question: What Torah parsha is most personally inspiring to you and why?
YF: I’m very connected to Parshat Shlach, which is about the spies and rejection of the Land of Israel. But another way of looking at it is a focus on Kalev ben Yefuneh and Yehoshua bin Nun. Kalev went to pray in Hevron and Yehoshua got Sarah’s yud on his name [See Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 2:6 cited by the Torah Temima].They came back with a positive report ,and in the end, they were also the two people who led the Jewish People into Israel 40 years later and led them in battle and the conquest of Israel. The parsha is about rejection or embrace for the Land of Israel.
Today, we’re living in a time where G-d has fulfilled a promise given to Abraham 3,800 years ago and to our forefathers who were exiled 2,000 years ago. And we’re living in a time when we need that passion for Israel because it’s been given to us, and I really think this is the issue of our time. This Torah portion really illustrates those points. I try to make Kalev ben Yefuneh my personal role model.