Manitoba Conservative Party leader Stuart Murray joked at the final dinner about how well he and MaryAnn Mihychuk, NDP minister of industry, trade and mines, were getting along.
And Mihychuk jokingly snapped back: "Until we get on the plane!"
Those three prominent elected officials were part of the 59-member Jewish Federation of Winnipeg Community Solidarity Mission to Israel October 26 to November 1.
Designed to broaden participants' knowledge of life in Israel and key issues facing Israelis, and bolster support for the Jewish state, the six-day mission was "the biggest ever, except for a mission with the Chai Folk Ensemble in 1998," Dr. Ian Goldstine, Jewish Federation of Winnipeg/ Combined Jewish Appeal President noted. "But many of those people were in Chai."
Goldstine also took part in a mission last fall that included Premier Gary Doer, Manitoba Health Minister Dave Chomiak and several senior provincial health officials.
Bob Freedman, Federation/CJA executive vice-president and a mission participant, said last year's mission was so successful, organizers decided to invite senior elected officials again.
"We're one of the few federations to that," he claimed last Monday. "Israel needs friends and advocates - people who can influence public opinion."
Ray Kives, chair of this latest mission, noted that 14 participants were non-Jews.
"I felt it was important not only to bring committed Jews to Israel, but to bring a mixture of gentile friends who could be ambassadors to Israel," he explained, as the mission's two buses headed back to Jerusalem from a day trip to Massada and the Dead Sea. "My goal for future missions should be that they should be 50 per cent Jews, 50 per cent gentiles."
Once they're "committed to Israel", Kives hopes, such non-Jewish friends might be more likely to support causes ranging from the Asper Jewish Community Campus to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, now planned for The Forks - a project of the late Israel Asper.
Stuart Murray and Mihychuk opted out of some mission events to meet separately with Israeli experts in areas ranging from trade to technology. Mayor Murray met with some Israeli architects at the request of Gail Asper, managing director of the Asper Foundation, as organizers of Winnipeg's human rights museum, slated to open five years from now, look for a designer for the $270-million complex.
Mayor Murray also took part in a signing ceremony with Beersheva Mayor Yacov Terner renewing the City of Winnipeg's "twinning" arrangement with that fastgrowing metropolis in the northern Negev Desert. Murray and Terner also dedicated the Winnipeg Community Action Centre, a Beersheva drop-in centre heavily used by children of the thousands of Ethiopian Jews living in that city, which the late Israel Asper played a key role in founding and funding.
