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Last update - 08:30 04/01/2008 ANALYSIS / Deal with Jewish Agency makes IFCJ 'strategic partner' By Anshel Pfeffer Tags: IFCJ, Jewish Agency, IsraeL  The debate over the activities of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) has been raging for at least a decade, but the agreement just signed between it and the Jewish Agency threatens to take that debate to another level. The accord, details of which are still murky, gives the IFCJ the status of a "strategic partner" in the agency's decision-making process through the appointment of IFCJ president and founder Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein as member of the agency's executive committee, with full voting rights. The price is NIS 180 million over the next three years, which IFCJ will funnel to the agency's immigration and absorption projects. This is not just a significant upgrade of IFCJ's standing within Israel and the Jewish world. It is also a sweet victory for Rabbi Eckstein, who can now very justifiably feel vindicated. All those who questioned his methods, tried to besmirch him for taking millions from evangelical Christians and dismissed him as a curious anomaly must now sit up and take notice of the latest addition to the pantheon of Jewish leadership. This does not mean the old questions over Eckstein's actions are no longer valid. We should still ask what exactly are the evangelists trying to achieve with all the money they hand over, seemingly unquestioning, to Eckstein. Should Jewish and Israeli organizations accept any donation, no matter what the source? Does the identification of Israel with one extreme of American society not cause harm in other places? Advertisement But these questions do have to be revised; more than one enterprising journalist has tried to find the hidden hand of the evangelist leadership in the IFCJ's activity in Israel, unsuccessfully so far. That does not mean it does not exist, only that perhaps the spotlight should be moved slightly sideways and trained more intensely on Eckstein himself. I don't mean only his past, though that probably warrants some scrutiny. I think we should all know a bit more about what his personal agenda is. Few will claim that the Jewish Agency executive committee is a shining example of open government, but at least there is a semblance of democratic procedure in the appointment of its members. They are accountable to the Israeli government, the major political parties, the Jewish federations of North America, the central Zionist movements and branches of the United Israel Appeal. In the last few years the agency has improved its decision-making procedures, and in the not so distant future it will have more transparency and better governance. At the same time, however, the agency is welcoming into its fold a new voting member who is unknown to us. We do not know how he became president of his organization or to whom he is accountable. All we know is that he can sign hefty checks, but who authorizes them, and why? Eckstein is not simply a conduit who passes the evangelists' money to worthy causes in Israel; he is the IFCJ. Every charitable foundation has its own privacy policy. Some are basically ego trips for philanthropists; others will never disclose the identities of their benefactors. But the IFCJ is completely a one-man show. In Israel, its official Hebrew name translates to "The Fellowship Foundation headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein." No press release on the organization's work is ever without lengthy mention of the rabbi's thoughts and deeds, and television ads and billboards always feature his smiling visage prominently. Whatever one's thoughts on the source of its finances, the causes IFCJ contributes to are generally worthy, but it's hard to escape the feeling that one of the fellowship's main objectives is to boost its president's image as one of the great Jewish men of the generation. Is Eckstein simply limelight-hungry, satisfied simply by being the center of attention, or is there a hidden agenda somewhere? Unlike a similar attention seeker, Arcadi Gaydamak, Eckstein has yet to try and parlay his media stature into political power, but he obviously wields considerable influence behind the scenes. It could not be otherwise, as he's the one paying the piper. There is another interesting distinction between the two: Gaydamak has bought his power using his own personal fortune, Eckstein is doing so with other people's money. By the way, only half a year ago a similar agreement between Gaydamak and the Jewish Agency fell through, with the oligarch accusing the agency of not supplying him with any serious account of what was being done with his money. Eckstein learned the lesson and received an ironclad guarantee that he will be privy to the organization's most innermost deliberations. So should the Jewish Agency have agreed to sign the accord with the IFCJ? Can we realistically expect JA chairman Zeev Bielsky to turn his nose up at Eckstein's funny money? With a deficit that by some accounts is as much as $40 million, created by a combination of a top-heavy budget, plunging contributions from the Jewish federations in the U.S. and the weak dollar, the cash infusion was a godsend. Perhaps the fact that so far the criticism from the federation leaders has remained mainly off-record is at least in part an admission that their donations are continuingly declining. One might say also that since the Jewish Agency is gradually becoming an irrelevancy to many Jews in Israel and around the world, the fact that Eckstein has landed a key position in its executive is nothing to lose sleep over. I am not so sure. It's still not clear who was behind the first leak to the media last week of the fact that 40 Iranian Jews were on their way to Israel. I couldn't say, because - regretfully - I wasn't the recipient of that leak, but I do know that Eckstein's PR operation was extremely quick to inform all reporters that each of the new olim had received $10,000 dollars from the fellowship. Since then, Jewish Agency officials have admitted that the publicity was counterproductive and might have even caused increased surveillance and persecution of the 28,000 Jews still living in Iran. Perhaps now that Eckstein is a full member of its executive committee he should subordinate his own PR machine to the Jewish Agency's communications department. Just a thought. 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