ROLL UP, ROLL UP, BUT LET'S NOT FORGET THE ENVIRONMENT

"I want to represent all the people who feel that this country is
disappearing through our fingers and has lost its direction," says Green
Leaf party candidate Dan Goldenblatt. He still looks a little bemused to be
told he is the Anglo most likely to end up in the next Knesset - most polls
suggest the party will get a minimum of two seats.

At 32, the Canadian-born lawyer has no parliamentary experience - but then
neither does anyone in his party, which has placed him second on their
slate for the Knesset. "No one is born an MK," says Goldenblatt. "If we get
in "we'll just have to go through a very intensive learning period and get
straight to work - and there's a lot of work to be done."

Unlike its popular image, the Green Leaf party is about much more than
legalizing cannabis, Goldenblatt says. It was formed just three months
before the elections in May 1999 and Goldenblatt says since then it has
developed a more sophisticated ideological platform to incorporate a
stronger environmental agenda, positions on civil liberties and social
justice, in addition to drug reform.

Goldenblatt is aware that some view the party's focus on legalizing
marijuana as offensive in such difficult times, but it is a view he totally
rejects. "The agenda in Israel has been manipulated and devoted only to the
issue of peace and security for too long, with a total neglect of all other
issues - and without any peace or security coming. We're seeing a total
breakdown of our education system. The environment is killing 12,000 people
a year in Israel, against 350 in terror attacks; 580,000 children go to bed
hungry and a third of the children in Tel Aviv are born with asthma."

Goldenblatt links Israel's deepening social and environmental problems and
its "fixation" with dealing with the conflict. He also links environmental
neglect and poverty - a position borrowed from the German Green party,
which the party has links with.

On the Palestinian issue, party members hold "a range of views," says
Goldenblatt, but the collective stance is to call for a referendum on the
final borders of the State of Israel. "But if tomorrow, Israel was to pull
back from all settlements without a plan for repatriation," he says, "we
would have to house and find jobs for 200,000 settlers. It runs against the
most basic principle we're trying to promote - long term planning. The
policies of the state today are based on putting out fires."

In the 1999 elections, Green Leaf just missed out on the 1.5 percent of the
threshold vote required to enter the Knesset. Now Goldenblatt, who joined
the party shortly after the last elections, believes his chances for a
Knesset seat are "good," especially as he believes Green Leaf voters are
under-represented in polls as they are reluctant to admit their intentions.

He believes the party is competing for voters against Shinui and Meretz,
but perhaps, most of all, they are trying to attract the "many
disillusioned people" who are considering not voting or spoiling their
ballot. Dispelling another myth about the party, he says its activists are
concentrated in Jerusalem, Haifa, Be'er Sheva and Eilat, rather than Tel Aviv.

Combat medic

Born in Montreal, Goldenblatt immigrated to Haifa with his parents when he
was two years old and spent another couple of years in Montreal during his
childhood. As a youth, he was active in Ratz, the forerunner of Meretz, and
was chairman of the student council at the Reali high school where he studied.

After his three-year stint in the IDF as a combat medic in the
paratroopers, he worked as a diving instructor on a therapeutic program for
disabled people in Eilat. After studying law in Cardiff, Goldenblatt passed
his bar exams in Israel. He spent 18 months working as a lawyer for the
Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland, which he
describes as "very formative."

"I saw the tremendous power that international corporations and banks
wield, their greed, their lack of care for the small person on the street.
Since the job entailed taking money from the banks and giving it to the
heirs [of Holocaust victims and survivors], it felt like pure justice -
almost Robin Hood. On a personal level, it was a pinnacle of feeling
justice and satisfaction."

It was during his time in Switzerland that Goldenblatt opened his eyes to
environmental issues. And, he recalls, it was the first time he saw hemp
shops selling environmentally-sound clothing and accessories made from the
cannabis plant.

On his return to Israel with his German wife Ulrike, he opened a shop
selling hemp products on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv. While the hemp
products were "environmentally sound," they were "not economically viable,"
and the shop closed within two years.

Hemp clothing is not the future of hemp, he concludes. During his "hemp
period," Goldenblatt says he made a proposal to the Ministry of the
Environment about examing the economic and environmental viability of
growing industrial cannabis in Israel and as a result, an experiment is
being undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Green Leaf party members have also succeeded in organizing various
environmental protests and gaining permits for people with degenerative
diseases to grow, possess and use cannabis. "All this without an office,
salaried employees or an outgoing phone line," Goldenblatt says proudly.

"It really demonstrates our power, which is compassion-based, loved- based
- - words we're not shy to use even in the political world." Goldenblatt
packed in his most recent job at the Zionist Majority - Israel's Freedom of
Religious Choice when the elections were announced, but the issue is still
one he feels strongly about.

"I think it is extremely important for the State of Israel to recognize the
Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jewish streams. We must end the
Orthodox monopoly and introduce civil marriage."

However, he decries the "hate-based message" coming out of the Shinui party
as wrong. "It's not the fault of the Orthodox. The power they wield is a
result of secular shortcomings in dealing with the issue."

So, with platforms on all these other issues, is calling for the
legalization of cannabis just a gimmick? "Not at all," says Goldenblatt.
"Cannabis is a metaphor for the injustice and the ludicrous way this
country is run. Our solution on the issue of cannabis is just the first
step toward a more compassion-based society with non-wasteful policies."

As for his personal drug use, Goldenblatt pauses for the first time in the
interview: "I can't answer without incriminating myself."