Radical Muslims are focused on destroying and delegitimizing Israel – the historic homeland of the Jewish People — and they fan the flames of antisemitism wherever they can.
Vicious antisemitism has long been present on the radical Right. It has been growing also on the radical Left. And it’s a cornerstone of radical Muslim movements. Although these three sources of antisemitism in our world today come from very different traditions, they are increasingly sharing ideas and tactics, reinforcing a wave of hate, bigotry, and racism.
In recent years, North America has joined Europe to witness a growing alliance between radical Muslims and radical leftists. Radical Muslims stone women, execute gays, trample on minority and human rights and abhor feminism. On paper, the far Left should be appalled by this ideology, but these unlikely allies happily cast aside their differences because they share a common hatred for Western influence in the world, pluralistic nationalism, freedom of speech, tolerance, and vile antisemitism.
How does the radical Left turn a blind eye to radical Islam’s very bigoted ideas, such as its treatment of women and minorities? How can it ignore radical Muslims’ conviction as to the superiority of Islamic morals and culture? It infantilizes Muslims and portrays Islam as a monolithic block. In doing so, it fails to distinguish between mainstream Muslims and radicals, and tokenizes them as a “people oppressed by the West.”
In the radical Left’s warped and ahistorical worldview, Israel is a colonialist oppressor targeting Muslims and – straight from the Elders of Zion itself – Jews are an all-powerful group who are at fault for every problem in the Middle East and in the world.
This alliance is typified by political activist Linda Sarsour, one of the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, who is now hailed on the Left as a feminist leader, despite her admiration for the vile misogyny of Sharia law. She called a Jewish journalist a member of the antisemitic alt-right. She opened her “jihad against Trump” speech by thanking Siraj Wajjah, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She has praised Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women. Yet, she is held up as a role model for women on the Left.
And this alliance is growing. Last month, leftist students at Tufts University published a “Disorientation Guide,” which attacked the university’s Hillel and called Israel a “white supremacist” state. It exposed the depth of antisemitism among leftists on college campuses and demonstrated how these groups use the same rhetoric as radical Muslim groups that call Israel a colonial occupier. One of the guide’s writers claimed this was not antisemitic because she was Jewish.
A similar guide at New York University myopically condemns Israel, referencing the country 55 times – more than the number of references to “Trump,” “alt-right,” “racism,” “fascism,” “white supremacy” and “socialism” combined.
Two recent rally events in Chicago further illustrate this trend: one, the Chicago Dyke March earlier this year – an event created to celebrate the LGBT community – expelled three people for having Stars of David on their pride flags, combining two symbols central to their identity. A few months later, at the Chicago SlutWalk – an event intended to oppose sexual assault – Zionists who marched were derided for trying to participate and condemned by organizers. The organizers then encouraged the walkers to attend a speech by Rasmea Odeh – a Palestinian terrorist convicted of killing two Jewish students, still believes her actions were justified and who was recently deported from the US.
This strange allegiance between Islamic radicals and radical leftists was famously on display during the Iranian revolution of the late Seventies – where the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the moderate shah with the support of leftists and Islamists, and in turn was quick to empower the radical Muslims and decimate the radical Left.
The 3,000-old Jewish population of Iran, some 100,000 Jews, could sense the inherent antisemitism of the radical leftists and their hatred of the West, before and during the Iranian revolution and emigrated in large numbers as fast as they could – mostly to the US and Israel.
Just as the far Left has a history of vilifying the nation-state of the Jewish People (and the Jews who support it), the Right has colluded with radical Muslims to spread its pure hatred of Jews and the desire to brutally subjugate – or murder – the Jewish People.
Radical Islamic nationalists also have a history of collaborating with the Right when they can – the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem told Adolf Hitler that Germans and Arabs have the same enemies – “the English, the Jews, and the Communists” – and the prime minister of Iraq initiated the Farhud, a horrific pogrom, under Nazi influence and allegiance. Today, the rhetoric of neo-Nazis is rife with conspiracy theories and centuries-old stereotypes about blood libel, and echoes the rhetoric of radical Islamist terrorists – and even radical Muslims.
What’s most concerning about the rise of antisemitism is how the ideology has entered the mainstream.
For instance, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders recently campaigned for UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has worked closely with antisemitic conspiracy theorist Paul Eisen, author of a blog titled “My Life as a Holocaust Denier.” Sanders wouldn’t campaign for a socialist who was a sexist, a racist, a homophobe, or Islamophobe, but he was willing to campaign for an antisemite because leftist organizations encourage antisemitism.
Radical Muslims are focused on destroying and delegitimizing Israel – the historic homeland of the Jewish People — and they fan the flames of antisemitism wherever they can to reach that goal – whether among those working to stop racism in present-day America or working to grab power in 1940s Iraq, or boycotting Israel through the BDS movement. By allying with the radical Left, they are building a coalition that seeks to destroy Western values of freedom, democracy, and tolerance – the foundational principles of America and of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
The growth of this alliance and the mainstreaming of antisemitic leftism – especially on college campuses – threatens not only our way of life in America but the future of the Jewish People around the world.
The author is an Israeli-American philanthropist, national chairman of the Israeli-American Council, real estate entrepreneur and president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.
Today, the collective strength of the Jewish people may be greater than at any other time in our history. We have an independent Jewish state with a booming economy and one of the world’s most powerful militaries. The American Jewish community has reached the heights of success in politics, business, arts and culture, and science, becoming perhaps the most influential Jewish diaspora community in history.
Yet, despite our strength, the challenges facing global Jewry are growing and multifaceted—in some cases posing an existential danger to our future as a people. Anti-Semitism is rapidly rising on the right and the left. Assimilation and intermarriage threaten to dramatically shrink the global Jewish population in the diaspora. The now infamous Pew Study, titled “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” found that approximately two-thirds of American Jewish millennials do not feel a strong connection to Israel, and a recent Brandeis University found that fewer than half of Jewish college students could correctly answer even the most basic questions about Israel. The American Jewish community and Israel—the two great centers of global Jewish life—face an increasingly complex and in some cases, strained relationship.
In the last decade, a new force has come roaring into the Jewish world that has shown the potential to be a game-changer in advancing solutions to each of these challenges: the Israeli-American community. As an American organization rooted in a profound and rich connection to Israel, the Israeli-American Council (IAC) is able to unlock many of the doors that separate Jewish Americans from their connection to Israel, through a multifaceted and rich concept we call “Israeliness.”
Israeliness incorporates many elements. It’s Israeli culture, Jewish values, and Hebrew, the language of our religion for thousands of years. It’s tremendous pride in Jewish tradition, our history, and Israel’s ability to overcome overwhelming odds—from wars and political conflicts, to a lack of wealth and natural resources. It’s the courage to take risks, learn from failures, and move on to success. It’s a deep belief in Zionism. And it’s a commitment to the idea “Kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh,” “All the people of Israel are responsible for one another.” Sharing our rich tradition with the next generation will further help them connect to Israel.
How can Israeli-Americans and the broader idea of Israeliness be leveraged to advance solutions for the Jewish people? This is the question that Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Jewish Journal/Tribe Media President David Suissa, and I will discuss at an upcoming panel on Sept. 6.
There are at least three ways that Israeli-Americans and Israeliness can be—and already are—game-changers.
First, Israeli-Americans can be leveraged as a bridge—both within the American Jewish community and between Israel and the American Jewish Community. The fact that we speak both “Israeli” and “American” has positioned us as a translator and facilitator of dialogue between the two communities. A prime example of this is the IAC National conference in Washington, D.C., an event where top civic, political, and business leaders from both countries come together every year.
Too many within the Jewish community take news media about Israel at face value— internalizing the negative stereotypes about our homeland and the Israeli people—which often leads to an inability to see the necessity of a Jewish state. Israelis then react to Jewish Americans’ disregard in a typically Israeli way: declaring that they do not need Jewish Americans and stubbornly refusing to engage in a gentler, American-style discourse. Israeli-Americans can bridge the gap.
Second, Israeliness can be used as a tool for the crucial task of engaging the next generation. Israeliness opens up a whole new world for young American Jews, many of whom have been conditioned to believe that Jewish identity must be centered on attending Jewish schools and synagogues. In discovering the people and culture of their homeland, young Jews are able to discover a piece of themselves.
The great success of many programs, such as Masa Israel, Gap Year, and in particular, Birthright—with its half a million alumni—illustrate how visiting, exploring and experiencing the people Israel makes a transformative difference in their lives. The best possible follow-up for these programs is to help their alumni reconnect with Israeliness through integration with the Israeli-American community.
Furthermore, Israel’s success is rooted in the young country’s willingness to take risks—in an understanding that failure is nothing shameful, but merely an opportunity to learn and move on to your next success. Being able to bounce back after failures is a crucial skill for young people to develop to handle life’s many challenges. The next generation can learn much from Israeliness.
Third, Israeli-Americans and Israeliness can be a powerful tool in fighting anti-Semitism and the BDS Movement. Israeli-Americans defend Israel by drawing on personal experience. Moreover, Israeliness means being proud to be who we are—and having the courage to stand up for what we believe in. We must communicate to the next generation that tremendous pride and willingness to stand up, speak out, and when necessary, fight back to protect ourselves when our faith, our values, and our homeland are under attack.
The challenges facing the Jewish community are complex. Israeliness is a secret sauce that can help ensure that our people will not only survive but continue to thrive.
Adam Milstein is the Chairman of the Israeli-American Council, a real estate entrepreneur, and the president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.
On Sept. 6, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, David Suissa, and Adam Milstein will discuss the untapped potential of Israeliness on September 6, 2017 at 7:00pm at the IAC. This event is free for IAC Supporters and those registered to attend the IAC National Conference. The general public can buy pre-sale tickets for $10 at israeliamerican.org/israeliness, or pay $15 at the door.
The 20th century began with a series of pogroms targeting Jews that swept across Eastern Europe and Latin America, the most infamous of which was in Kishinev, Russia. A poisonous anti-Jewish campaign culminated on Easter 1903, as gangs of men, 10 to 20 apiece, stormed through the Jewish areas of the city armed with hatchets and knives. They went block to block and house to house, slaughtering every Jew and raping every woman in sight. Over the next two days they wrought a path of destruction that would be heard around the world, with 49 Jews murdered, thousands wounded and untold number of rapes, and more than 1,500 homes damaged.
For some outside observers, the event was made even more disturbing by the passivity of thousands of Jewish men in the face of a relatively small group of peasants.
After traveling to Kishinev in the wake of the pogrom, the famous Hayim Nahman Bialik penned a poem, “The Slaughter,” lamenting the fact that the “Sons of Maccabees” were “concealed and cowering,” as their mothers, wives, daughters, sisters and other family members were raped and killed.
What was the lesson that Bialik and others took from Kishinev? The Jewish People can’t rely on others to protect us. We must fight antisemitism head-on. This became a guiding philosophy of the Zionist Movement, which sought to fashion a “new Jew” that would be able to defend themselves in a self-governed Jewish homeland.
In the wake of the pogroms and the Holocaust, the majority of Jewish People settled in the United States and Israel. In Israel, Jews learned how to defend themselves and fight back with courage and determination. In 1948, against all odds, the Israeli people defeated six fully equipped Arab armies, and today the Jewish People have a state that can defend itself, and provide a shield of defense for Jews throughout the Diaspora.
During the same period, the Jews that immigrated to America became one of the country’s most affluent, influential and accomplished communities. Yet, with all the strength of the Jewish American community and the benefits of a strong and independent Jewish state, we have not been able to stop the growth of antisemitism in our time.
Today antisemites work to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish People and the State of Israel in the media, political institutions, academia, on college campuses and elsewhere, often bleeding from the court of public opinion to physical assaults on Jewish communities.
How can we apply the lessons of the past century for the fight against antisemitism today? Clearly, we must fight the disease head-on, and we must start by understanding who is behind it.
Antisemitism now has three distinct sources: We face antisemitism on the radical Right. This is the heir of traditional Christian antisemitism, rooted in our alleged killing of Jesus, with a legacy extends from the Spanish Inquisition to the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
We face antisemitism from radical Islam – which draws on a tradition of hatred against the infidel, led by the Jews, stretching back centuries. Since the 19th century with Jews started immigrating to Israel, radical Islam has been determined to eradicate the State of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants, as they occupy a land that the Islamists believe belongs to the Islamic caliphate.
We face antisemitism on the radical Left – which sees Jews and Israel as emblematic of America and Western imperialism and despises us for it.
Too many in the Jewish community don’t recognize this reality. In particular, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the growing alliance between the radical Left and radical Islamists – two groups with seemingly incompatible worldviews.
This strange alliance is encompassed by a new theory called intersectionality – embraced by many on the Left – which calls for the unification of all groups facing discrimination, whether they are Native American, Latino, African-American, LGBT, Arab or Muslim.
Radical Islamists have been able to link their hatred toward Israel, presented as their genuine concern for the Palestinian cause, to the idea of intersectionality, painting Israel as an oppressor that all progressives must fight. In doing so, they work to spread the vilest antisemitic ideas into mainstream discourse.
College students and young professionals in many circles now face a clear choice: exclusion, or joining anti-Israel and antisemitic campaigns.
Working together, radical Islamists and radical leftists have successfully created an alternate reality in which Jews have no rights to self-determination, in which Israel is the greatest violator of human rights in the world, and in which people with extreme regressive views, like Linda Sarsour, are championed as progressive heroes.
Sarsour has a long running association with Muslim Brotherhood, publicly expressed her admiration for the Sharia of Saudi Arabia and for terrorists like Siraj Wajjah, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and recently said that she wants to “take the vagina away” from female genital mutilation victim and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Despite these regressive views and statements, Sarsour is a darling among many who claim to hold progressive ideas.
History shows that antisemites gain power not only by creating more antisemites, but also by getting others to tolerate their ideology.
As extremists like Sarsour build a platform and gain broad acceptance in our communities, we have no choice but to fight them tooth and nail. We must expose the fundamental incongruence between radical Islamic ideas and the progressive movements that they are trying to hijack.
We must make clear that antisemitic ideology is now often masquerading in a more politically correct form of anti-Israel hatred. We must push antisemitism out of the mainstream and into the shadows where it belongs.
The lessons of Kishinev hang over our time. When given the choice to fight back or sit back, I pray that the Jews around the world will take heed of history – and have the courage and determination to act before it is too late.
The author is an Israeli-American philanthropist, national chairman of the Israeli-American Council, real estate entrepreneur and president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.
After decades of involvement with more than 100 non-profit organizations, I have learned that philanthropy is about much more than writing checks. In fact, I found that it is actually much harder to give away money as a philanthropist and obtain a high return on your investment than it was to make money as a real estate investor.
There are a range of practices that you must employ to ensure that your philanthropic investments are making an impact. Here are three principles I have learned over the years about being an effective philanthropist.
1.Philanthropic work is a lifetime labor of love
I am often asked what motivates me to work so hard at philanthropy. I always answer, “I don’t work at all.” Philanthropy should not feel like “work.” If you do what you love and love what you do, you’ll get satisfaction out of your charitable endeavors and feel motivated to do even more. Philanthropic work is a blessing, and the more involved you get, the more satisfied you feel.
Once you’ve decided where to focus your energy, stick with it. By developing a lifelong relationship as a donor, you grow with organizations and allow them to focus on the work they do best, instead of having to dedicate all their time and energy to fundraising.
2.Stay focused, but find synergies
With so many organizations doing great work all around the world, it’s easy to spread yourself thin. Instead of dedicating partial attention to many different causes, it’s important to identify the issues that you feel most passionate about and focus your attention there. Whether it is strengthening the State of Israel and/or cultivating your own local community, by picking few primary causes, successful philanthropists are able to develop an expertise that allows us to have an even greater impact on the organizations that we support.
Philanthropists shouldn’t feel as if they need to choose any one single organization to support and treat it like an exclusive “social club.” Effective nonprofits don’t compete with each other. You should look to help them develop synergies to amplify the impact and effect of their joint efforts beyond what any one organization could achieve on its own. By working with multiple like-minded organizations, such as the Israeli-American Council (IAC), AIPAC, StandWithUs, ACT.il and Taglit-Birthright, I have been able to see my time and money make an outsized impact as a result of cooperation between the organizations that I support.
3.Put your mouth where your money is
The best philanthropists do more than write a check and move on. They roll up their sleeves and contribute their time, talent, connections, and expertise to actively advance the non-profit’s mission.
This is called “active philanthropy”—and it is a philosophy that I embrace fully. At the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation, this means our entire team lends time, energy, vision, and connections to each of our partner organizations. This also ties into finding synergies—bringing like-minded organizations together to create a force multiplier effect.
Philanthropy isn’t an exact science. Every organization is different; every cause is unique. By finding something you love, staying focused, and getting involved, you can make a bigger impact than you could ever imagine.
To view a moderated conversation with Adam Milstein on his philanthropic philosophy, watch the above video or click here.
Over the past several years, the harassment and intimidation that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) groups have brought to America’s college campuses have grown by leaps and bounds. For years, many worthy Jewish and pro-Israel organizations worked to counter this hate, but the problem has only seemed to grow worse.
At UCLA, a Jewish student was almost prevented from joining the student government’s Judicial Board following accusations that her Jewish identity meant she had dual loyalties. At Stanford, a young Jewish woman running for the Student Senate was subjected to a barrage of hostility due to her open support for Israel. At Harvard, Israel’s former foreign minister was derided as “smelly” by a student in a public lecture.
Incidents of physical assaults on AEPI Houses and Jewish students across campuses continue to increase.
On campus and off, we would hear about massive, nationally coordinated, well-funded and professionally organized anti-Israel hate groups staging events and demonstrations, which easily outmatched the small counter-protests organized by local pro-Israel activists.
While many praise the few activists who bravely stood up for Israel, no one seemed to ask why more courageous students didn’t show up to counter BDS.
The fact is that our pro-Israel students are often David against Goliath. The BDS groups are organized by professional agitators on campus – most often doctoral students who are paid to stay on campus for decades for the sole purpose of running anti-Israel campaigns and local Student for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters. They are supported by a national SJP organization with close to 200 chapters, and support organizations flooded with outside and international funds, such as Palestine Legal.
The problem has not been a lack of support for Israel in America. Pro-Israel conferences and events draw tens of thousands of attendees from all over the country, and millions of Americans are supportive of the State of Israel. Rather, it has been a lack of organizations with a national reach and a grassroots presence on campus with the courage, motivation, know-how, and boots on the ground to be effective.
Some of that changed five years ago, with the founding of a then-small group of pro-Israel student activists at the University of Minnesota: Students Supporting Israel (SSI). SSI was created organically by students who were sick and tired standing idly by as Israel was demonized on their campus. Some of the students were not Jewish, but they all shared unwavering support for the Jewish state and a unique courage to defend it.
Their plan was simple: create a grassroots group that could bring together all the supporters of Israel, of all races and religions, by connecting them on the most basic level with the pure idea of Zionism – that the Jewish People have the right to sovereignty and self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
An idea that – regardless of one’s political camp or cultural background – is hard to object to if not for bias and double standards.
And so, with a dedicated army of advocates, SSI began operating on the University of Minnesota campus. Members of the group became so involved with campus activism that from time to time, 10% of those in student government were also members of SSI. A major turning point came when, for the first time, the student government passed a pro-Israel resolution suggested by its members. This move was revolutionary in light of the many BDS bills that were being considered around the country, and in an environment where pro-Israel groups traditionally worked on reactive campaigns, rather than proactive ones.
Following that first groundbreaking resolution, SSI started adding more chapters across the country, replicating the Minnesota model for proactive grassroots work on campus. With its unapologetically pro-Israel message and committed members who proudly engaged in conversation and build coalitions outside their comfort zone, SSI rapidly grew to include nearly 20 chapters nationwide in only its second year of operation.
When SJP erected an apartheid wall at Columbia University, for example, SSI was there with a taller display right across the street. Returning the following year with its own new campaign, “Hebrew Liberation Week,” SSI completely took the attention from SJP.
Coming into existence during a time when the traditional pro-Israel camp often avoided pressing topics and opted instead to simply showcase Israel’s culture with some hummus and Israeli music, SSI brought forth programs about critical issues, including Jewish refugees from Arab lands, the significance of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, and Israel’s fight against terrorism and its standing with the American people, just to name a few.
SSI celebrated its fifth anniversary this spring. The organization’s achievements are too numerous to list in one article but include hundreds of events, thousands of students reached two national conferences and nearly 50 active chapters nationwide. SSI has put together many programs that pushed the limit of what the pro-Israel camp felt comfortable doing before.
Perhaps most telling is the relative success (or lack thereof) of the BDS campaign on college campuses where an SSI group is present. In four of these situations – each at different universities – every proposed BDS bill was defeated in student government. Even more, all eight pro-Israel resolutions that were introduced by SSI activists at these institutions passed.
With bold messaging, national coordination, a clear vision, effective leadership and passionate activists, SSI in the past five years has emerged as the organization that puts boots on the ground – and the true special forces of pro-Israel leadership.
The author is an Israeli-American philanthropist, national chairman of the Israeli- American Council, real estate entrepreneur and president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.
A vicious sickness known as anti-Semitism has infected people with hate across centuries, cultures, and continents — and Jewish communities have often paid the price for it. In the U.S., after decades of historic declines in anti-Semitic attitudes and incidents, the disease has come roaring back at an exponential rate over the last seven years. According to the ADL, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. grew by more than one-third in 2016 and have jumped 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017. Nowhere has this rise in incidents been more pronounced than on America’s college campuses.
How do we explain this astronomical rise?
In no small part, it is the result of a systematic campaign to demonize the Jewish state using the same tactics that have long been used to demonize the Jewish people: the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS).
In my work as a pro-Israel activist and philanthropist, I’m often asked: is BDS really anti-Semitic? Does it really lead to an increase in anti-Semitism?
If you look at the evidence — and examine the roots, goals, and strategy of BDS — you see that the answer is an unequivocal yes!
Let’s start with the evidence, which shows that anti-Semitism spikes when BDS strikes. One recent report found that on 64 campuses with a large presence of BDS activists, 287 anti-Semitic incidents occurred, compared to 198 occurrences that took place during the same time last year, reflecting a 45 percent increase.
The student governments at 10 of these schools took up anti-Israel divestment resolutions. Of these 10 schools, eight showed the largest increase in anti-Semitism from 2015 to 2016. BDS activity does not merely encourage, but also causes anti-Semitism: at 7 of the 9 schools in the 2015 study that considered or voted on divestment resolutions, there was a drastic decrease in anti-Semitic activity the following year, when no divestment resolution was considered.
Despite this evidence, for the past seven years, many in the Jewish-American community ignored or downplayed the threat of BDS. In opinion pages across the Jewish and Israeli press, you continue to find claims that BDS is not connected to anti-Semitism and arguments that BDS has been beaten or is fading away. When you take the time to learn about BDS and its expansion into mainstream America, you understand how dangerous it is and why we need to fight it.
This movement has roots in anti-Semitic boycotts that began long before Israel was even a country. From the Romans to the Nazis to the anti-Semitic leaders of the Soviet Union, organized boycotts of Jews have a long history. An official, organized boycott of the Jewish community in the area that is now Israel started as early as 1922, more than 25 years before the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948. An official boycott was adopted by the Arab League in December 1945, which became an official boycott against the country of Israel when it was founded three years later, with the goal of isolating the Jewish state from the international community.
Boycott policies have continued to this day, taking different forms over the years. While the strategy hasn’t changed, those behind these today’s anti-Israel boycotts have gotten much more sophisticated.
Over the past 15 years, BDS has effectively branded itself as a human rights movement, hiding its true intentions from the public and obscuring the role of the extremists, racists, terrorists, and radicals behind the Movement.
By 2006, BDS had developed a robust model of operating in Europe, particularly the United Kingdom. They focused on a few areas where their movement can enjoy structural advantages, such as the judiciary, academia, churches, and trade unions. They formed alliances with social justice and minority groups, speaking out on totally unrelated issues — from prison reform to global warming — so that they could ingratiate themselves with these new allies and indoctrinate them with their lies about the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
The result? Anti-Israel hate that was once on the margins has entered the mainstream, becoming accepted as a legitimate voice in too much of our political discourse.
How did this happen? The BDS playbook developed in the UK has been exported to the rest of Europe and to America, and its success here has followed like clockwork (I’ll speak more about this in my next op-ed).
Many in the American Jewish community ignored this threat when it first emerged. Some have even accepted BDS’ claims that it was simply a human rights movement and had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
Anyone who spends the time to dig a little deeper discovers the truth. BDS has made clear time and again that their goal isn’t to exert international pressure to change Israeli policies: it is to destroy Israel and demonize any that support it.
The maps that BDS groups publish of the region make clear that they seek Israel’s elimination, depicting a single Palestinian state that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with no trace of the Jewish state. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has said publicly that he’s working for Israel’s “euthanasia.” Hatem Bazian — the other major co-founder of BDS in America — has called for an armed struggle, an “intifada,” against the United States and spouted anti-Semitic stereotypes from his pulpit as a lecturer at UC Berkeley.
Those who see BDS for what it is — a sophisticated hate movement committed to the destruction of the Jewish people — are the only ones equipped to defeat it. The time has come to put the delusions behind us, but we cannot be successful without courage, conviction, and unity. We must stand up and fight BDS now — with all the tools and all the strength that our community can muster — before it’s too late.
Whether you’re a would-be Philanthropist/Social-Entrepreneur or have spent decades being one. You could be worse-off than to read the short biographies of those who’ve been through the journey before.
So we’ve compiled a list of top Philanthropists and Social-Entrepreneurs. It’s a list of influential people at effectively having soft-power and being pro-active, particularly at being socially concerned.
Our Philanthropists and Social-Entrepreneurs list is an automatic algorithm based on social media influence, Klout scores and a secret recipe.
We take into account various metrics from Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. This list gets updated once a year. All entries are considered by our admins, and Richtopia reserves the right to accept or forbid people from the list as it deems fit. Please bear in mind we do not measure net-worth, but rather social-worth. This list is not about how rich these people are, but rather how influential they are.
Follow these Philanthropists and Social-Entrepreneurs to keep up with trends. You will also learn what resources they use to stay in the know.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” This quote, attributed to Winston Churchill, has been a secret of the Jewish people for 5,000 years.
Through ups and downs, through unbelievable triumph and unimaginable persecution, Jewish men and women in each generation have found the courage and strength to continue our traditions, protect our values and keep our faith.
Alarm bells have been ringing in Jewish communities about rising antisemitism throughout the US and Europe.
In academia, radical left-wing organizations have launched a vicious campaign of intimidation, discrimination, and attacks against Jewish students, organizations and even professors who identify as pro-Israel.
On the radical Right, Jewish and pro-Israel journalists are targeted and harassed by neo-Nazis. In the international arena, Iran, with P5+1 approval, continues to develop the very nuclear weapons it has threatened to use to eradicate the State of Israel.
How should the Jewish people respond? First, we need to foster the sense of courage in our current and future generations of Jews that we have shown before and still possess.
Yet, building courage begins by instilling pride. The Jewish People have only had the courage to persevere because our predecessors were proud of our history, our heritage, our land, our values and our achievements. If you are proud of your Jewish identity and heritage, you will be willing to fight and defend it. We must empower our children with the perspective to go out and fight for their dreams and contribute solutions to the challenges facing Jews worldwide.
This is why our family foundation invests in Jewish leadership programs that bring the young generations together around Jewish “pride of ownership” and foster a deep connection to the State of Israel. Strong families, and strong educational, cultural and social communal institutions are critical for educating the next generation with pride and confidence.
We must teach our children to be proud of their Jewish heritage and the history of the Jewish People, who, despite our tiny numbers have been able to contribute extraordinary things to the world, such as monotheism, Judeo-Christian values, modern economic theory, the foundations of psychology, the theory of relativity and more modern inventions such as Google, Facebook, Waze, Checkpoint and Mobileye.
Although we are less than 0.2% of mankind, 22% of Nobel Prize laureates are Jews. Jews constitute 12% of the US Senate, three of the nine US Supreme Court Justices are Jewish as are a large percentage of leaders in arts, business, entertainment and many other fields.
We must teach our children to be proud of the State of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, which has not just survived but thrived in the face of constant threats. With no natural resources, Israel has become start-up nation, a high-tech hub, a global water technology powerhouse and a beacon of hope and innovation.
Israel is the living, breathing embodiment of courage. It is the homeland of a people who achieved miraculous military victories in 1948, 1967, 1973, launched the daring Entebbe operation that rescued Jewish hostages from terrorists in Uganda and oversaw Operation Solomon to airlift 14,500 Ethiopian Jews out of harm’s way to Israel.
It is the place where a brave and determined people formed a new identity, revived an ancient language, turned swampland into farmland, seawater into drinking water and built a thriving knowledge- based economy – against all odds.
Israel’s success is rooted in the young country’s willingness to take risks – in an understanding that failure is nothing shameful, but merely an opportunity to learn and move on to your next success.
With all the challenges Israelis face – wars, political conflicts, lack of wealth and natural resources – they respond with courage and tremendous pride in their history, heritage, culture and society.
It’s no wonder then, with such a strong sense of pride and courage, that Israelis are known to be some of the happiest people in the world – ranking extraordinarily high, year after year, in the annual World Happiness Report.
What can the history of the Jewish People and the Jewish state teach us? The most powerful antidote to antisemitism will come from within our own community. As pro-boycott and anti-Israel groups seek to intimidate supporters of Israel to remain silent – and drive a wedge between the State of Israel and the Jewish People – we must remember that pride and courage are the only productive response.
So, just as we instill the value of education and Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), let’s also remember to take action to inspire courage and pride in our heritage, in our history, in our culture, in our land, and in our people.
We must communicate to the next generation that tremendous pride and willingness to stand up, speak out, and when necessary, fight back to protect ourselves when our faith, our values, and our homeland are under attack.
Nothing less than the future of the Jewish People is at stake.
The author is an Israeli-American philanthropist, national chairman of the Israeli- American Council, real estate entrepreneur and president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.
Jewish leaders and philanthropists are currently engaged in an intense and crucial debate. There is growing concern that Jews, particularly the next generation, are disconnecting from their Jewish heritage and from the state of Israel.
The now infamous Pew Study, titled “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” found that approximately two-thirds of American Jewish millennials do not feel a strong connection to Israel. In another recent study, published by Brandeis University, fewer than half of Jewish college students could correctly answer even the most basic questions about Israel.
In the face of these trends, how can we invest our philanthropic dollars more effectively to strengthen the US-Israel alliance, and ensure that future Jewish generations maintain their special affinity with Israel?
To respond to this challenge, there are two important principles that we must embrace.
First, we must better understand our target audience.
Millions of philanthropic dollars are currently invested under the assumption that today’s Jewish community is the same one that existed 40 years ago.
Changing this mindset begins with recognizing that there is not a single, homogeneous American Jewish community — but rather a cluster of communities that have changed rapidly over the past 40 years because of three big trends: assimilation, intermarriage and immigration.
Furthermore, we have seen significant waves of Jewish immigration from Israel, Iran and Russia. These people are not properly represented in recent studies of the Jewish community.
Interestingly, the declining number of people who identify as Jewish by religion is correlated with the declining affinity to Israel. Among those who say that they are Jewish by culture, 55 percent say they aren’t very attached to Israel (and only 12% say that they are very attached to Israel). For those who have completely left the faith, these numbers are much lower.
By contrast, among those who say they are Jewish by religion, 86% feel somewhat or very attached to Israel.
So, what should we do with this information? How can we use these insights about our changing Jewish community to make more strategic decisions about where to invest our limited resources?
This question brings me to my second principle: We need to look for low-hanging fruit, and invest in programs most likely to reach those who will be receptive to our message.
Here are some criteria that we should consider as we allocate resources:
Age: We’ll have the most success influencing the minds’ of younger audiences. Moreover, by increasing the Jewish knowledge and connection to Israel among the younger generation, we can reach not only these individuals, but also their children and grandchildren.
Affiliation: The data shows that those who define themselves as Jewish by religion are more likely to have a strong connection to Israel. But the Orthodox community already has many structures in place to engage its members on Israel. We need to focus on innovative programs to connect non-Orthodox Jews with Israel.
Support for Israel as the state of the Jewish people:We should seek to identify those people who support Israel, but who are not religiously engaged. It is important to attract Jews who have a marginal connection to Israel, but it is even more important to reach those with a deep passion for Israel, and help them become and remain involved with Judaism.
American Jewish immigrant communities:We should reach out to Jewish immigrants, specifically Russians, Iranians and Israeli-Americans. These groups are already committed Zionists, but they are new to the American diaspora, and as a result, don’t always have the tools to pass on their Jewish and pro-Israel values to their children. Each dollar invested in them can go a long way.
To see how this might work in practice, let’s examine the work of the Israeli-American Council (IAC), which has shown how investing funds in Israeli-Americans can unleash an extraordinary untapped resource to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
By systematically identifying and investing in target groups that are uniquely suited to advance our philanthropic priorities, we can make progress on a wide range of issues, such as Israel advocacy, global diplomacy and Jewish education.
Our Jewish community faces rapid changes, enormous challenges and exciting opportunities. To overcome the obstacles in our path and realize our full potential as a people, we need to invest smarter.
The return on our investment will be nothing less than a vibrant Jewish future.
The author is an Israeli-American philanthropist, national chairman of the Israeli-American Council, real estate entrepreneur and president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation. A version of this article was originally published by The Jerusalem Post.
THE DAYS OF SHAME ABOUT LIVING IN AMERICA ARE OVER. BUT CAN THIS DIVERSE GROUP OF IMMIGRANTS HOLD ONTO THEIR CULTURE? AND IS THERE A CHANCE THAT THEY CAN BECOME A UNIFIED POLITICAL VOICE?
ByEllenWexler
When she moved to New York in 2003, Shelly Oria did her best to imitate Americans. She learned to hold doors, to be less aggressive in conversation, to smile at people she passed on the street. The rhythms of American life were new and lovely, but they did not come naturally. Then there were the day-to-day challenges: opening a bank account, getting a cellphone plan, signing a lease, learning that “credit history” really means “American credit history.” When you’re new in America, she says, everything goes wrong, and everything gets stuck.
But her stint in the United States was only temporary, she told herself. She would get her MFA, become a writer and then return to Israel, where her family had moved when she was a few weeks old, and where she had grown up and served in the military. If she were really an Israeli, she would go home. After earning her degree, Oria did just that, only to discover that Israel no longer felt like home. She had thought she was more Israeli than American, but maybe she had it backwards. She landed back in New York in 2009, this time for good.
These days, Oria is drawn to the idea of living in the gray. “It’s a Western culture disease, that sort of black-and-white, either-or way of thinking,” she says. “On some level I’ve always been both, and I think will forever be both.” Her first book, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, is full of Israeli characters living in America, exploring the either-or and neither and both. “There are two Mes,” Pie, one of her characters, explains. “Me No. 1 is the Israeli who was taught that being tough and being strong are the same thing,” while “Me No. 2 is a woman who successfully impersonates an American.”
In recent years, Oria, now 38, has found a new term to describe herself: She is not an American or an Israeli, but an Israeli American. She’s not sure whether it’s an official term, but it’s a word she’s glad she has. When she fills out paperwork, she checks “other” and writes it in.
It’s not a new designation: As early as the 1960s, The New York Times was using it as an adjective, as in an “Israeli-American construction engineer” or a gallery of “Israeli-American artists.” But in the past few years, its usage has exploded. It’s a progression that seems natural to Ira Sheskin, an expert on Jewish demography at the University of Miami and director of the Jewish Demography Project, which published an extensive study on Israeli Americans in 2010. “We have Serbian Americans, black Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc.,” he says. “So, now we have Israeli Americans.”
In the early years of statehood, many Jews flocked to Israel and few left. Those who did leave were generally not Israeli-born, says Lilach Lev Ari, director of research and evaluation theory at Oranim College in northern Israel who studies Israeli immigration patterns. They had few ties to the new state, and people understood when they left in search of better lives. But in the 1970s, when the Israeli-born started departing in large numbers, they were almost universally condemned. The reality of Israeli emigration—that after such a long struggle, Israeli citizens would actually leave—was jarring. “They betrayed all the values they were raised upon,” says Lev Ari. In 1976, Yitzhak Rabin went on national television and called these immigrants “nefolet shel nemushot”—which translates roughly to “leftover weaklings.”
The stigma stuck. It even had its own name: yerida, or “descent,” as opposed to aliyah, or “ascent,” the term reserved for those who move to Israel. Israeli expats felt this shame and often kept their status vague: In a survey from the early 1980s, half of Israelis planning to move to America described their decision as “temporary” or “commuting,” rather than “emigration.” But as years passed and many of them stayed, the stigma began to weaken. In a 1991 interview, Rabin retracted his “leftover weaklings” comment. “What I said then doesn’t apply today,” he said, adding that “there is no point in talking about ostracism.”
Why the change? “The idea was people were leaving anyway, so why act in a hostile manner toward them to discourage them from returning?” says Steve Gold, a sociologist at Michigan State University and an expert on the Israeli diaspora. In the 1990s, the Israeli government developed benefits and services for those who chose to return, and it encouraged those who didn’t to continue to be involved in Israeli life.
Fiction writer Shelly Oria says the term “Israeli American” describes her best
Still, old resentments linger. In 2011, Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption created a now-infamous ad campaign, hoping to guilt Israelis abroad into coming home. In one of the ads, a little boy, done with coloring, turns to his father. But Dad is asleep in an easy chair, an Economist draped over his chest. “Daddy?” the boy calls, to no avail. A pause. He tries again, this time in a whisper: “Abba?” Dad’s eyes open at once. The artwork is admired; hair is affectionately ruffled. The scene fades, and a narrator says in Hebrew: “They will always remain Israelis. Their children won’t. Help them return to the land.”
When the ads aired, they were met with immediate backlash. “The idea, communicated in these ads, that America is no place for a proper Jew, and that a Jew who is concerned about the Jewish future should live in Israel, is archaic,” journalist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote at the time. The ministry pulled the campaign—and even offered an apology.
The flow of Israelis to the United States has continued. Today, the majority are highly skilled: 43 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree. They come to move up the socioeconomic ladder, and they generally succeed. Of those between 24 and 64, half are employed as managers or professionals. Compared to immigrants from economically similar countries, Israeli immigrants thrive in America.
Still, immigration is isolating. Israelis generally cluster together in areas such as New York, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, where they organize their own community centers, Hebrew schools and cultural activities. They often feel out of place in American Jewish life, where Jewish identity is usually built around a religion, not a state. In Israel, Judaism and Jewish culture are the backdrop, and it’s not necessary to actively maintain a Jewish identity. “To work with Israelis, you kind of have to be an Israeli,” says Brocha Yemini, who assists Israeli emigrants at the Chabad Israel Center in Los Angeles. She sees many young, ambitious Israelis who come to America on their own, and she knows the experience can be lonely. For the first few weeks, they get by on adrenaline, and then suddenly, it hits them. When they reach out, they want a support system and a home away from home.
For many years, Israelis in the U.S. showed little interest in joining American Jewish organizations. But with time, some of these groups have developed a deeper understanding of Israeli Americans. In 2009, for example, the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto opened a new division called Israeli Cultural Connection, which offers Israeli-style holiday celebrations, career workshops and after-school Hebrew programs. “What we do is first try and make a home away from home for them,” says director Ronit Jacobs. Once they’re drawn in by programs designed specifically for them, “we’re able to open up a gateway to the Jewish American community,” Jacobs says. Jay Sanderson, CEO and president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, has a similar strategy: “We meet you where you are; we don’t expect you to go where we are.”
For these groups, the goal is helping a fragmented population find its footing. But now, an ambitious national organization hopes to transform the immigrant community—which one of the organization’s cofounders has called “the greatest untapped resource for telling the story of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in the United States.”
Israeli-American Council cofounder and CEO Shoham Nicolet speaks at the group’s 2016 conference in Washington, DC.
In 2006, Ehud Danoch, then the Israeli consul general in Los Angeles, organized a rally to demonstrate support for Israel during its war with Lebanon. But even though Los Angeles has one of the largest Israeli populations in the country, very few Israelis showed up. Danoch was disappointed. “You would have thought 30,000 Israelis would have been on the streets,” he said at the time. “I thought to myself that there is no correlation between the number of Israelis that live in Los Angeles and the actions that are being taken by them.”
Hoping to brainstorm a way to bring Israelis together, Danoch assembled a group of Israeli business leaders, which included real estate investor Adam Milstein and tech entrepreneur Shoham Nicolet. In 2007, this group established the Israeli Leadership Club, with $30,000 in seed funding and big dreams for the future. In 2013, the group made the strategic decision to add “Israeli-American” to its name. “The minute that you call yourself American means you need to start building a community here, because you’re not going to go back tomorrow,” says Nicolet, the group’s CEO.
The name change worked, and today the Israeli-American Council is the largest Israeli-American group in the U.S. Ten years in, it has regional branches in cities across the country, including Washington, DC, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. Since 2014, it has hosted an annual conference in Washington, which in 2016 attracted more than 2,000 people and an array of political and cultural luminaries. Through cultural events, youth groups and language lessons, the group hopes to help Israeli Americans cultivate a distinctive sense of identity—and a voice in the global Jewish community. The IAC believes that Israeli Americans can strengthen the American Jewish community and Israel by serving as a bridge between the two. “We have a lot to give,” says Milstein, the group’s national chairman. “By organizing around our new Israeli-American identity, we believe that we can be a gamechanger here in America.”
Ilan Sinelnikov, the founder and president of Students Supporting Israel, says that pro-Israel advocacy is bipartisan.
Judea Pearl, who was born in Tel Aviv in 1936 and teaches computer science at UCLA, says that the IAC plays a critical role in the Jewish world. “IAC provides the institutional umbrella and the intellectual and cultural expression of the many contributions that Israeli Americans can make to Israel and to American Jews,” he says. “More importantly, it is an invaluable resource of a community of committed individuals who are well informed about the Jewish state and the Jewish people, and who care unabashedly about the future of both.”
One reason for the IAC’s phenomenal growth has been the largesse of its donors. Haim Saban, a major Democratic donor, helped support the group in the early years but pulled away from it in 2015 over political disagreements. These days, the IAC is largely funded by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has so far donated as much as $50 million. One of the Republican party’s biggest donors, he is a divisive political player. In recent presidential elections, candidates have traveled to Las Vegas to compete in what’s known as the “Adelson primary,” and in the 2012 election, he spent nearly $100 million in support of Republican candidates. He spent less in 2016, but his newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was one of the only American publications to endorse Donald Trump. He also owns and subsidizes the free Israeli newspaper Yisrael Hayom, which is considered to strongly favor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s positions.
Adelson’s support has fed suspicions that the IAC has political motives. At first, Yehudah Mirsky, an associate professor of Near Eastern and Judaic studies at Brandeis University’s Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, was concerned. Although the group was ostensibly focused on Israeli culture, he says, the political dimension was hard to miss. “One got the sense that this is an organization by and for people who support the Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu.” But over the past year or so, Mirsky, who lived in Israel for ten years and has attended IAC activities with his Israeli wife, says he no longer feels like he’s participating in something political. “It’s an anecdotal observation from someone who thinks about these things for a living,” he says.
When Ranit Mishori, a professor of family medicine at Georgetown University, first heard about the IAC, she was intrigued. She grew up in Israel and moved to the U.S. in her 20s. But after learning that the group was funded by Adelson, she decided it was not the place for her. “I am pretty certain that it has a political agenda to support the current Israeli government,” she says. “For many Jews, supporting Israel means supporting the current government, and I don’t subscribe to that.”
Officially, the IAC is bipartisan. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and it cannot make political endorsements. “I have no chance to succeed if it’s leaning to the right or left,” Nicolet says. “And my board feels the same. We need to be very inclusive.” Milstein says that the council is meant to complement AIPAC, not compete with it. The IAC’s partner advocacy group, called the Israeli-American Coalition for Action, however, plays by different rules. As a 501(c)(4), it is still bipartisan, but it is allowed to lobby more directly for pro-Israel policies.
The idea is that supporting Israel should be a bipartisan issue. “There is no left or right,” says Ilan Sinelnikov, president and founder of Students Supporting Israel, a pro-Israel campus group. “It’s about, do you think that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state?” Sinelnikov moved from Israel to America in 2008, and he believes that Israelis abroad have a responsibility to fight for their country. At the Israeli airport, he remembers signs on some Israeli planes that read: When you leave the country, you become Israel’s ambassador. Sinelnikov takes that message to heart. “We are the face of Israel here, and people see us that way,” he says. “The Israeli-American Council of course answers a lot of cultural needs, but at the same time, as Israelis, it is our responsibility that we defend our country.”
Nathan Guttman, an Israeli American who has reported for Haaretz and the Forward, has been observing the IAC since its inception. “You can see two forces of this organization,” he says. On one hand, it’s trying to be “a grassroots communal organization that’s basically out there to give Israeli Americans a cultural home within the Jewish community.” On the other hand, “there’s another force trying to harness them for political goals.” Without the political dimension, says Guttman, he’s not sure that donors would be as enthusiastic about supporting the group.
Central to any discussion of Israeli-American identity and power is a simple question: How many Israeli Americans are there?
“It depends,” says demographer Ira Sheskin, “on how you define Israelis.”Personal identity, he says, can be notoriously hard to define and makes a poor topic for objective analysis. For example, Sheskin once knew a woman who moved to Israel from Miami Beach. After raising three children, she moved back to the U.S. Six years later, she returned to Israel with her daughter and then came back to the U.S. to take care of her elderly parents. Is she an Israeli? It depends on whom you ask. As of 2008, Sheskin estimates there were 136,000 people living in the U.S. who were born in Israel. When you add in people born elsewhere, but who either speak Hebrew at home or claim Israeli ancestry, that number jumps to 329,000. Sheskin admits his numbers may be off by a few thousand. But even when “Israeli American” is defined liberally, it would be tough to convince him of a number higher than 450,000.
Other estimates, based on broader definitions, are higher. The IAC counts anyone who emigrated from Israel, American-born children with at least one Israeli parent and Americans born to American parents who visit Israel and feel as if it’s a part of their identity.Adelson himself suggested a wide range during an address at the 2016 IAC conference. “Nobody really knows how many [Israeli Americans] there are, but there are estimates of 600,000 to a million,” he said. “That is a very big number that has not been patched together to work for their true interest.”
Analysts know even less about Israeli Americans’ political leanings. They are rarely acknowledged as a discrete group in American political data sets, and even examining overlapping data yields little. In the 2016 presidential election, 71 percent of American Jewish voters cast ballots for Hillary Clinton and 24 percent for Donald Trump. American Jews living in Israel, however, preferred Trump (49 percent) to Clinton (44 percent), according to a poll from iVote Israel and Keevoon Global Research. But because most of these absentee American voters had lived in Israel for more than 15 years, they might have little in common with Israelis who left Israel decades ago.
What analysts do know is unreliable. When Uzi Rebhun, head of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, analyzed data from the 2013 Pew Research Center study, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” he found that 29 percent of Israelis in America are Republicans, 39 percent are Democrats and 32 percent are Independents. At the same time, 31 percent are conservative, 37 percent are moderate and 31 percent are liberal. But these numbers are based on a sample of only 56 respondents, making them statistically inconclusive. Adelson has his own method of determining the political leanings of Israeli Americans, which he mentioned offhandedly at the 2016 IAC conference. He measures the applause he hears when speakers discuss liberal positions: “From what I hear in the crowd,” he said, “the applause represents about 25 percent of the people, or a third.”
IAC cofounder and national chairman Adam Milstein speaks with donor Sheldon Adelson at the 2016 conference.
There is a reason why the voting patterns of Israeli Americans are of interest. In the U.S., Israeli Americans have the potential to become an influential minority, but in Israel, should they vote in large numbers, they could sway election outcomes. Currently, most expats are not allowed to vote by absentee ballot in Israeli elections and must fly back to vote in person. Most don’t, but if they did, some believe they would vote for Netanyahu. Netanyahu likely thinks this too, since he has consistently pushed for absentee voting in Knesset elections. Legislation to change the absentee voting law appears every few years but has not passed. These initiatives have been controversial in Israel, where critics argue that they are an attempt to strengthen the Likud, says Lev Ari, the Oranim College sociologist. But the underlying assumption that Israeli expats support Netanyahu isn’t supported by evidence. “It’s just a rumor,” she says. “It’s based on nothing.”
In reality, Israeli Americans’ politics—and their connection to Israel—depend on many factors, including what their political views were in Israel, how old they were when they moved and how long they have lived in the U.S. Those who emigrate as children—Lev Ari calls it the one-and-a-half generation—have a particularly complex ethnic identity. Second-generation immigrants tend to have stronger ties to America, while their parents, who arrive as adults, are likely to feel a greater connection to their Israeli identity, even after many years in their new home.
Tamar Biala does not like the term “Israeli American.” She doesn’t see herself as someone with a split identity but as an old-fashioned Zionist, who thinks Israelis should stay in Israel to make it better. But then she wonders: “What right do I have to say this when I am here? I’m so confused.”
Biala is married to Brandeis professor Yehudah Mirsky, and the couple came to the U.S. four years ago for his job. When the IAC first asked her to teach a weekly Torah study class for Israeli Americans, she didn’t want any part of it. She didn’t want to participate in what she thought of as normalizing the yerida. In her mind, Israelis who left Israel were angry with their country and in search of easy lives, and she didn’t consider herself one of them. But when she got to know the members of her study group, she found that it wasn’t quite so simple. “They’re all brokenhearted for being in America,” she says, “and they all have complex stories.”
As time passes, her views evolve, and she now acknowledges that a dual identity is better, at least, than becoming wholly American. Nor does she judge Israeli Americans as harshly as she once did, though she makes it clear that they aren’t her people. “I can’t believe I’m here, and I hope it won’t be for long,” she says. “I want to raise my children to be as Israeli as possible.”
But as she spends more time in America, she’ll be statistically more likely to change her mind and adopt a hybrid identity. Of those who have been in the U.S. for less than five years, only 17 percent self-identify as Israeli Americans, according to the IAC. But after 20 years, that number jumps to 73 percent.
Even Israeli Americans who are here for life remain inextricably connected to their homeland, and many want to pass on their Israeliness to their children. Fiction writer Shelly Oria does not have children, but if she does one day, she would want them to visit Israel, to build a strong relationship with their Israeli relatives and to understand what living in Israel is all about.
Oria is less concerned with the larger mission of keeping Israeli identity alive for future generations. Her interest is more personal. “You want to be known by your kids,” she says, “and I don’t think anyone can know me without knowing Israel.”
