Among all the vicissitudes of the 17th plenary of the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem, two things stood out the most. First, the presence of disparate and unknown Diaspora communities – 72 to be exact – all of which were given equal space and importance in the hall of delegates. Second, a very palpable fear for the future of the Jewish people given the rise in antisemitism, the hostility toward Israel, and the “educational warfare” against both.
WJC President Ronald Lauder’s plenary address was defined by his assertion that “never before in my life have I been so concerned regarding the future of the Jewish people.
“I see old threats coming back and new threats emerging,” he added.
It was this fear that defined much of the plenary: the speeches, the small group discussions, the prerecorded videos, and even the questions from the audience members.
October 7 was somewhat used as a springboard for the discussion of antisemitism as the biggest threat. Lauder referenced October 7 for a couple of sentences, before saying that “at this great gathering, I would like to speak to you about another offensive against the Jewish people that is endangering us all.”
This “all” focused on diplomatic and political enemies of Israel and the Jewish people, something Lauder called “our Achilles’ heel.”
“For three decades they have invested billions of dollars in a campaign against Israel and the Jews throughout the entire educational and public relations system,” he continued. “From kindergarten to universities and across the media, they have brainwashed an entire generation and convinced them that Israel is a genocidal, apartheid state.”
The “they” in question was left ambiguous.
“Like the Iron Curtain that descended upon Europe in 1946, an iron curtain has now descended upon the West in the 21st century. But this time it was not made up of watchtowers and barbed wire fences. It is based on the recruitment of intellectuals and teachers to demonize Israel and the Jewish people – and it starts as early as kindergarten, where children are taught that Israel and the Jewish people are evil.”
His speech focused on brainwashing of children, and the failure of Jews and Israel to predict the so-called “all-out offensive on the mindset of the free world.”
Lauder’s solution? Stronger diplomats, better public relations and educational efforts.
His suggestion of a special school for diplomacy named after Abba Eban to train a new generation of articulate and professional diplomats was met with a hum of approval from the audience, a hum that increased in volume when he said that the new generation of diplomats should be based on expertise and not politics.
Similarly, Lauder’s assertion that the “war today is not just on the battlefield; it is being waged throughout social media and the press, and if Israel used just some of its money on public relations, it would make a major difference” was met with agreement.
The Jerusalem Post spoke to several audience members and delegates about Israel’s weak media efforts since the start of the war, the general opinion being that the anti-Israel crew’s vociferous public strategy has been significantly more effective.
Lauder’s third suggestion that “we will have to go school by school to remove the anti-Israel and antisemitic teachers and administrators” seemed admirable although not actionable. “What is needed now is a new project for the Jewish people to educate millions of children, Jewish and non-Jewish,” he suggested, adding that “the World Jewish Congress is the one organization that should be at the forefront of this endeavor.”
This allowed him to segue into praise for the Trump administration and its rather dogmatic approach to tackling educational antisemitism. The last few months have seen swaths of arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, police crackdowns, and the removal of funding across the US’s top institutions.
“I want to thank President Trump for withholding federal funds to colleges and universities that refused to protect Jewish students by condoning antisemitism,” said Lauder.
He then returned to “warning of a new catastrophe.”
“After the annihilation of our people in Europe during the Holocaust, and after the massacre of our people in the western Negev just 20 months ago, we might now become pariahs, outcasts, undesirables.”
Among those the Post spoke to, the general consensus was that, passionate rhetoric aside, there was too much focus on talk and too little focus on strategy.
The future of the Negev
One thing that piqued the audience’s interest was Lauder’s speech after accepting the Presidential Medal of Honor from President Isaac Herzog. A not insignificant part of the speech was dedicated to the role and potential of the Negev.
According to Lauder, “the future of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people lies in the open spaces of the Negev.
“The Negev could be the AI, cyber, and technology center of Israel,” he continued, adding that “the Negev should be a tax-free zone.”
However, while the Negev was mentioned a total of 15 times in the speech, the idea was again not expanded upon.
The Post conferred with some audience members who felt that the ideas were out of touch with reality. Sitting on a huge budget of over $20 million, the WJC has the capacity to make a difference, one audience member said, and yet the speeches did not seem to elucidate how that difference would be made.
Interestingly, this same issue was raised by Israeli activist Ashager Araro during a breakout panel discussion. Araro – who is of Ethiopian heritage – said “the resources in our hands are enormous, but we keep talking about the same issues.”
Adams’s speech
The speech by Sylvan Adams – the president of WJC Israel region – stood out among the WJC speeches for his declaration that the organization would be promoting the aliyah of one million Jews to the State of Israel.
The announcement was met with a standing ovation from much of the audience, who similarly clapped at Adams’s stated objective that the aliyah drive would go “hand in hand with national support systems, new towns, affordable housing, and leisure activities.”
Adams’s aim is that “every Jew who chooses to come home can do so with confidence, dignity, and a sense of belonging.
“I am proud to announce a bold and visionary goal: to promote the aliyah of one million Jews to the State of Israel. Just as we welcomed a million Jews from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, we will once again reinvigorate our homeland. The purest form of Zionism is expressed with one’s feet,” Adams said.
Notable also, and commented on by other observers, was that Adams’s speech was less politically correct than expected. He took a partisan stance on Israel’s enemies – “Qatar is not our friend” – and spoke passionately about the need for Israel to be its own greatest ally. He also spoke of the need for a strong stance on Iran’s nuclear capacity, saying “We must not end up with another Obama-like Iran nuclear deal that leaves this problem to a future American administration.”
“The president [Trump] is very clear. Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon. They are not going to enrich themselves. They are going to have total dismantlement, and those are the words that he has said.”
The tree of Tehran and a rocky marriage
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s speech was replete with analogies. He compared Israel-US relations to those of a long and at times rocky marriage, and Tehran was referred to as a tree.
According to him, the US is the “only true ally of the State of Israel,” and while the two do not always “see things eye to eye, they stay married because they are committed to each other.”
He affirmed Trump’s commitment to the Jewish state, telling the audience: “Please don’t believe that the US is having a divorce with its greatest partner, the State of Israel.
“Your enemies are our enemies.”
In terms of Iran, Huckabee stated that all anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment comes “out of the kitchen of Tehran,” making it essential to “not just cut off the twigs of the tree but go to the trunk of the tree.”
The new ambassador also spoke passionately about Israel, saying that during his first visit he “felt at home in a land he’d never been to,” and calling his new role “a divine appointment that I have, in many ways, been preparing for for 15 years.”
It was evident how connected his love for Israel is to his own religious faith, especially when he said “while your faith can exist without mine, my faith cannot exist without yours.”
Additionally, he raised the point that America is inextricably connected to Israel through the fact that 700,000 Americans (according to him) live in the Jewish state, which is “more Americans living in a different country than anywhere else on the globe except for Mexico.”
Leadership
While some of the ideas presented at the congress were noteworthy and thought-provoking, much of the criticism from audience members centered on the lack of “freshness” in WJC’s leadership. Lauder, who has served as WJC president since 2007, was unanimously reelected by delegates of the plenary. Separately on Wednesday, the European Jewish Congress elected Moshe Kantor as its president, making it his fifth term – he previously served in the role from 2007 to 2022.
While Lauder claimed in his opening address that the audience featured “representatives of 99% of world Jewry,” the Post’s conversations centered on the lack of true representation in the organization.
As Araro questioned at one point, “Is Jewish leadership actually representative of Jewish stories? Is their diversity our diversity?” It seems we will have to wait and see.
