Source: JNS.org Posted on April 21, 2015 by Sean Savage/JNS.org.
The Tennessee General Assembly on Tuesday became the first state legislature in the U.S. to formally condemn the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Senate Joint Resolution 170, initially passed April 9 by the Tennessee Senate in a unanimous 30-0 vote, was approved by the Tennessee House of Representatives in an overwhelming 93-1 vote on Tuesday, with Democratic State Representative G.A. Hardaway the lone dissenter.
The resolution, which is expected to be signed next week by Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, declares that the BDS movement is “one of the main vehicles for spreading anti-Semitism and advocating the elimination of the Jewish state,” adding that BDS activities in Tennessee “undermine the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, which they are fulfilling in the State of Israel.”
Furthermore, the resolution states that the BDS movement and its agenda are “inherently antithetical and deeply damaging to the causes of peace, justice, equality, democracy and human rights for all the peoples in the Middle East.”
The bill was initiated by Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder of the Christian Zionist group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN). Cardoza-Moore worked local Jewish and Christian organizations to bring the resolution to the state legislature.
“With the current climate of increasing anti-Semitism, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist campaigns, Tennesseans and all people of conscience should endorse public statements of support for our Jewish brethren living in Tennessee and pro-Israel students attending colleges and universities in our state,” Cardoza-Moore said.
According to a PJTN press release, “BDS has an active presence in Tennessee, particularly through The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a group that is a leader of BDS. UT (University of Tennessee) Knoxville alumnus Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, a leader in the U.S. Campaign, was this year’s keynote speaker at the national meeting of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a college campus group that has spearheaded anti-Israel demonstrations.”
Tennessee State Senator Dolores Gresham, who co-sponsored the resolution along with State Representative Sheila Butt, said the state’s legislature “chooses to preserve its values by publicly condemning this blatantly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel bigotry, and send a clear message that Tennessee condemns such views.”
Joanne Bregman, a local Jewish activist and attorney who advocated for the resolution’s passage, told JNS.org that the Tennessee General Assembly’s action could serve as a template for other U.S. states to recognize the growing threats of the BDS movement and anti-Semitism. She added that the Christian-initiated bill should be a “wake-up call” for the Jewish community to be the ones “who need to fill the public information void” on BDS and anti-Semitism.
“Given your Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment [from the State of Israel]?” Such was the question posed to Molly Horwitz this month, a junior at Stanford University, as she sought the endorsement of the Students of Color Coalition in her bid for student government. In March at UCLA, sophomore Rachel Beyda faced a similar interrogation, as elected members of the student government expressed concern at a public meeting about her ability to be unbiased given her involvement with Jewish organizations. Questions about bias do not seem to be thrown at students affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group dedicated to divestment and defaming Israel.
From Miami to Madison, from Berkeley to New York, university students are facing an increase in anti-Israel – and anti-Semitic – activity. It takes many forms: divestment resolutions in student government; inflammatory speakers that justify terrorism and express loathing for Israelis; weeklong Israel hate fests masquerading as educational programs.
As the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement sweeps across the country, pro-Israel students are finding themselves up against opponents that are increasingly driven, well funded, and well organized, often at a national level.
Under the umbrella of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and its leading member organizations like American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Solidarity Legal Support (a project of the Center for Constitutional Rights and National Lawyer’s Guild), the International Socialist Organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and others – BDS campaigns on North American campuses have grown increasingly sophisticated since they first began over a decade ago. Anti-Israel activists are sharing best practices and working together to recruit allies to their cause.
“A wide range of radical groups use the same anti-Israel playbook. They coordinate their efforts, staging the same events, with the same messages, and the same speakers on campuses across the country,” said Roz Rothstein, ceo of StandWithUs. “That’s why we need to continue to build a national – and international – network of Pro-Israel, pro-justice advocates in response.”
Each fall, more than 150 university students from across the United States and Canada gather in Los Angeles for the StandWithUs Israel In Focus conference – eager to find tools, training, and solutions. Over the course of a very intense weekend, they work hand-in-hand with professional advocates, communications experts, media analysts, and even a survivor of a terrorist attack. Speakers have included Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, communications consultant Neil Lazarus of AwesomeSeminars, and pollster Frank Luntz, who provide in-depth skills training and strategies to advance pro-Israel activities on campus.
In the face of a nationally organized BDS campaign, a new culture of collaboration between pro-Israel organizations is beginning to emerge. The Israel In Focus Conference – and a subsequent conference that took place this year, specifically centered around countering BDS – brought together professional staff and students affiliated with dozens of different groups beyond StandWithUs, including Hillel, Hasbara Fellowships, Israel on Campus Coalition, AEPi, Chabad, Students Supporting Israel, the Israeli-American Council, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and many more.
This strategy reflects a growing sense among Jewish leaders that the many different pro-Israel organizations active on and off campus need to find better avenues for coordinating their efforts and sharing resources.
“This is not a battle against one particular group or on one particular campus. We are fighting against a coordinated international network of anti-Israel extremists. The Pro-Israel community cannot afford to be segmented. If our organizations are working at cross purposes – or in silos – the other side is going to walk all over us,” said Adam Milstein – the President of the Adam and Gila Milstein Foundation – which provided the financial support to stage the Israel In Focus Conference and turn it into an annual event.
Adam Milstein defines his work in the Pro-Israel community as “Active Philanthropy”, meaning that he not only writes checks, but also works in the trenches with organizations on the implementation of programs to make them successful.
He has used his large Rolodex of contacts in the Pro-Israel world – Milstein’s website lists dozens of organizations that he and his Foundation actively support – to create programs that foster synergies between different groups, building on their unique strengths.
On campuses, Milstein has forged collaborative projects between AIEF (the educational wing of AIPAC), Hasbara Fellowships, StandWithUs, Israel on Campus Coalition, Christians United for Israel, the Israeli-American Council, and Students Supporting Israel. This year, he provided funding for more than 250 students affiliated with StandWithUs, Hasbara Fellowships and the Israeli-American Council to participate in the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC – and for professional staff from other Pro-Israel groups to participate in StandWithUs events.
“Adam Milstein has singlehandedly brought a number of new organizational partners into the orbit of StandWithUs. It’s critically important to have these kinds of connectors —who see the value of getting many different groups around the table to work on the common challenges that we face together,” said Rothstein. “Leadership from the Pro-Israel community’s leading philanthropists in recent years has ensured that our many different organizations are working more effectively and collaboratively than we ever have before, particularly during this last Academic Year. These partnerships make us incredibly proud.”
On the evening of March 1, just before a private Israeli-American Council (IAC) event for college students at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C., it was difficult for two of IAC’s co-founders, Shawn Evenhaim and Adam Milstein, to walk more than a few feet without being approached by attendees.
Some thanked them for their support (both Milstein’s family foundation and the IAC have helped sponsor many students’ trips to AIPAC), others sought advice on Israel advocacy and on their careers, while the rest seemed simply to want to talk.
The post-dinner gathering was an opportunity for various pro-Israel campus activists from across the nation not only to meet one another and share tactics and vision, but also to hear from a few Capitol Hill lawmakers and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens.
Coming less than four months after IAC’s big November inaugural conference just a few miles away, and two days after Milstein and Evenhaim announced that the IAC had decided to launch a Washington, D.C., chapter (its eighth nationally), the message was clear: IAC — the largest, if not the only, national educational group in the nation geared toward Israeli Americans — is entering the Beltway and plans to put some of its resources toward creating a federal advocacy arm.
In a March 2 interview at the 12th-floor M Club at the Marriott adjoining AIPAC’s conference center in downtown Washington, Milstein and Evenhaim said IAC’s D.C.-area branch will play two roles.
First, like its branches in other cities — including ones in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Boston — the D.C. branch will serve as an educational, religious and cultural resource for Israeli Americans in the area. The group says it has reached about 150,000 people through this programming, and its state branches already work with state and local officials on a range of issues.
Second, the D.C. office will be an advocacy arm for Israeli-American interests on Capitol Hill. Evenhaim, the group’s chairman, said IAC’s advocacy activities in Washington will not constitute lobbying. Without elaborating, Milstein and Evenhaim referred to visa laws and education as two issues that particularly concern the nation’s Israeli-American community, which, IAC says on its website, numbers more than 500,000 people.
“Our target is much wider than Congress,” Milstein said, emphasizing that the D.C. branch will be more than just a policy arm for domestic issues important to Israeli Americans. “We feel that we have the natural knowledge to be the ambassadors for Israel.”
And that’s where AIPAC came in. IAC sees its membership as assets for AIPAC, and Israeli Americans who are at AIPAC as assets for IAC. Even when IAC got its start as the Israeli Leadership Council — a group of Israeli-born businessmen formed the group in Los Angeles in 2007 and it was officially renamed the IAC in 2013 — the mission was to bring delegations and sponsor student trips to Washington.
At the March 1 evening event for Mishelanu, IAC’s on-campus arm, pro-Israel college students took the stage one after the other, discussing the challenges they face defending Israel on campus and learning from one another’s successes. Two of the speakers were Jewish students from UC Davis who had successfully appealed to that school’s student judiciary to overturn a recently passed Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) bill, on the grounds that it was primarily political and thus violated the student senate’s obligation to focus on student welfare.
And perhaps most exciting for the students Sunday night — and a second early indicator of IAC’s networking abilities on Capitol Hill — Congressmembers Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and Ed Royce (R-Calif.) stopped by to give remarks.
“I’m here tonight because of the efforts of this organization to rally Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans to support this incredibly decisive effort to stand up on the university campuses,” Royce said.
At IAC’s inaugural conference in November, some of the group’s draws included former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, and billionaire rival political kingmakers Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson, who are both major supporters.
Asked what he anticipates will be the balance in the D.C. branch between its normal work within that region’s Israeli-American community and its advocacy efforts in Washington, Evenhaim didn’t offer specifics but said it will operate similarly to how IAC’s other offices operate.
Evenhaim anticipates the D.C. branch to be “fully operational” within three months.
Philanthropist Adam Milstein thinks there is a problem with the culture of many Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. Because their priority is to raise funds, each one wants to stand out as the most important, effective organization. “Just give us the money, and we can take care of it, is the way they present themselves,” he said. If they work together, they can’t take all the credit, and then they can’t raise as much money.”
Milstein, 63, thinks he has a better solution. It started in Los Angeles, where Milstein and his wife live. He brought big donors together in the council of philanthropists, so that organizations could share ideas and resources. Functioning as a connector, the Adam and Gil Milstein Family Foundation supports a variety of organizations and ensures that programs funded share resources among multiple groups. Included are organizations working in the areas of media accuracy and non-governmental organization monitoring, Jewish and Israel education, youth and young professional engagement and outreach, combating anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity on college and university campuses, health and medical issues, Israeli-American and Jewish community services, connecting non-Israeli Americans with Israel, policy research and democracy think tanks and supporting Israel’s legitimacy.
Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation’s active philanthropy is about connecting organizations, giving financially and getting involved in the cause.
As Milstein told JNS.org, “Everything that I do, I put a few organizations together, I make them work together, make them empower each other and create a force multiplier.” Working with the American-Israel Educational Foundation (AIEF), the educational wing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Milsteins helped to create the Campus Allies Mission to Israel and the Campus Allies delegation to AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference. Both Campus Allies Missions engage African-American, Christian, and Latino student leaders and educate them to become advocates for Israel.
Milstein’s passion is active philanthropy, which means giving money and getting involved in the cause. “The easiest thing is to write a check, and nobody knows where they money goes, Milstein explained. “I wanted to create impact, and I selected programs where I could put my own stamp and connect organizations.”
The Milsteins serve on the board of several organizations; one of them being the board of the Israeli-American Leadership Council whose mission is to build an active and giving Israeli-American Community in order to strengthen the State of Israel and our next generation and to provide a bridge to the Jewish-American community. Through this organization they not only sponsor, but helped create several programs:
Sifriyat Pijama B’America: The Milsteins believe that by learning about Jewish values from a young age, Jewish children are likely to share a strong appreciation and affinity for their shared Jewish culture and retain a strong Jewish identity as they grow older. This is why they were inspired to help fund a program that provides free Hebrew children’s books to Jewish families across the United States in order to promote the use of Hebrew in the home and establish Hebrew as the language of the Jewish people.
Shagririm (The Ambassadors) is a program that trains and educates current college students to help them build coalitions with primarily non-Jewish organizations in an effort to promote Israel advocacy on campus.
The Israeli Fellows (Shlichim) are young people who have served in the Israeli Army, finished their university studies and have agreed to a two-year mission to work on a U.S. campus as the voice and face of Israel. They coordinate all the pro-Israel activities on campus for the local Hillel house. The Milsteins help sponsor many of the Israeli Fellows for the Southern California area and have initiated positions for them at UC Irvine, CSUN, and San Diego State University (SDSU). Adam and Gila Milstein not only sponsor them but provide resources, connections and funding for many of their campus projects and activities. There are more than 50 Israeli Fellows nationwide, and the Milsteins stay in touch with all of them. By introducing them to many organizations, Adam and Gila are able to use them to represent all Jewish organizations on campus.
While Milstein is based in LA, his impact is felt all over California and beyond. Locally, he supports Shalom Family at Jewish Federation & Family Services, Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School and OC Israeli.
Milstein, who left Israel 35 years ago, explained that charity is very different there. It is not tax deductible, and religious and secular organizations go their separate ways. While people volunteer their time and belongings, the culture of monetary philanthropy is lacking, Milstein said. After his modern Orthodox friend and business partner educated him about ma’aser (tithing), the Jewish tradition of giving 10 percent of one’s income to charity, he created the Israeli-American Council to show by example that charitable giving could be a good thing.
“Israelis are always connected to Israelis, but they are not always connected to Jewish life in America,” he said. “In Israel they don’t have to pay for schools, and they don’t come from a culture where they pay for shuls and Federations. We give them some free services, hoping that we connect with them and get them involved. Now that the concept has caught on, a gala in March raised more than $1 million.”
Connection to Judaism and connection in Israel go hand in hand, according to Milstein. “We have religion, history, culture, values, homeland and language in common,” he said. “We are part of one peoplehood.” He is a “major player” in Birthright, as well as Taglit Shelanu, which sends people of Birthright age who have Israeli parents to Israel.
Milstein became more observant when his daughters started to date non-Jews. Motivating them by setting an example, he got involved with Aish HaTorah, which introduced him to advocacy organizations. Believing that the same people who are assimilated are the ones who are disconnected from Israel, he tries to bring people into Jewish life, educating them about philanthropy and connectedness at every stage.
The way philanthropist Adam Milstein sees it, the priorities of fundraising and survival mean that Jewish and pro-Israel organizations are held back by a natural instinct against intimate and robust collaboration.
“Every one of those organizations would like to take all the credit for themselves [and say], ‘The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel) resolution did not pass because we stood there, and we trained the students, and we stood with them all night long, and without us it wouldn’t have happened,’’ Milstein says. “And then you have some organizations trying to take credit and discredit the others. There is no huge interest for them to work together, because if they work together, then they can’t take all the credit, and they have a harder time raising the funds.”
Milstein, however, has decided to intervene and become a connector. His Los Angeles-based Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation supports dozens of organizations, 58 of which are listed on its website, and ensures that every program it funds is shared among multiple groups.
“Everything that I do, I put a few organizations together, I make them work together, make them empower each other, and create a force multiplier,” Milstein, 63, tells JNS.org.
As an example, Milstein cites his work with the American-Israel Educational Foundation (AIEF), the educational wing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Through AIEF, Milstein and his wife helped create the Campus Allies Mission to Israel and the Campus Allies delegation to AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference. Both Campus Allies Missions engage African-American, Christian, and Latino student leaders and educate them to become advocates for Israel.
From left to right: former Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Jewish philanthropist Adam Milstein at the Israeli-American Council national conference in Washington, DC, in November 2014. Credit: Shahar Azran.
Additionally, the Milsteins support many Jewish students seeking to attend the Policy Conference in partnership with other Jewish organizations. The Campus Allies delegations bring together seemingly unlikely partners such as Aish HaTorah, a Jewish religious outreach organization, and the politically focused AIPAC.
Milstein explains that from Aish’s perspective, the organization is able to recruit students who are primarily interested in attending the AIPAC conference, rather than growing religiously or spiritually. But at the same time, he says, Aish is “not only going to connect [those students] to Israel through the AIPAC convention, but you are going to connect them to Judaism because you’re putting the group together, and then you can recruit them [to Aish] and do the follow-up.”
Besides the collaboration aspect, such efforts illustrate an approach Milstein is both practicing and promoting: “active philanthropy.” He says it is “very easy to write a check” and forget about it, but that he gives not only his money, but also about 80 percent of his time to philanthropy—with an emphasis on developing programs that make his donations more powerful.
“It’s not just philanthropy, it’s active,” says Milstein. “I go, I select organizations, I build special plans, special programs, I supervise the implementation, I connect this organization and this program to other organizations and other programs. It’s more much intense what I’m doing compared to regular philanthropy. It takes much more of my time.”
In a way, he adds, it takes “more time to spend your philanthropy money than to make it.”
The Milstein foundation says it supports organizations working in the areas of media accuracy and non-governmental organization monitoring, Jewish and Israel education, youth and young professional engagement and outreach, combating anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity on college and university campuses, health and medical issues, Israeli-American and Jewish community services, connecting non-Israeli Americans with Israel, policy research and democracy think tanks, and supporting Israel’s legitimacy.
“Adam is strategic and he has become a tremendous role model for other philanthropists to follow,” says Roz Rothstein, CEO of the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs, for whom the Milstein foundation funds an annual educational weekend for 200 college students called the StandWithUs Milstein Israel in Focus conference. “He is not only generous and makes good work possible, he is a good listener who recognizes the strengths of each organization and helps bring organizations together for the greater good of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Josh Block—president and CEO of The Israel Project (TIP), an educational organization “dedicated to informing the media and public conversation about Israel and the Middle East”—says the approaches of Milstein and TIP have common ground.
“One of the things we do at TIP is bring partners together so that we can share our unique strategic communications capabilities for the benefit of all, and that kind of devotion to synergy and collaboration across organizations is something Adam shares,” Block says.
Jacob Baime, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, calls Milstein “a passionate and committed champion of the pro-Israel movement” who “always offers fresh and inventive approaches to familiar challenges.”
“Adam is a very astute philanthropist who knows the issues well and works with a lot of groups and individuals to fight the defamation of Israel,” says Andrea Levin, executive director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. “He’s tireless.”
How did Milstein become a philanthropist, and how did his philanthropy become the “active” kind? He moved from Israel to America in 1981 with his wife and two daughters, earned a Master of Business Administration, and started working in commercial real estate. Israelis, he says, are not accustomed to philanthropy. But Milstein’s modern Orthodox friend and business partner educated him about ma’aser (tithing), the Jewish tradition of giving 10 percent of one’s income to charity.
“Whatever we give to charity, God gives us 10 times more,” Milstein says he learned from his business partner.
From there, Milstein says he experienced “a lot events that really showed that the formula works. Whatever you give, you get more. Not necessarily 10 times more, but you just get more.” Accordingly, Milstein found himself following his business partner’s lead on where to donate.
Next came Milstein’s “wake-up call,” when his two daughters started to date non-Jews. Asked by his daughters why they should make a point to date fellow Jews, Milstein found himself without a good answer because he himself was not religiously observant. That prompted him to try to start motivating his family by doing rather than telling. Milstein connected with Aish HaTorah and became more involved with Jewish life. His daughters both married Jews. Aish would introduce him to Israel advocacy organizations such as AIPAC, laying the groundwork for his “active philanthropy.” At that point, Milstein was no longer mimicking his business partner’s giving, but instead, he was putting significant thought into choosing recipient organizations and going even further by crafting programming for those organizations.
In 2007, Milstein co-founded the Israeli-American Council (IAC), a fast-growing organization which in 2014 ran programming that reached more than 100,000 of the estimated 500,000-800,000 Israeli Americans.
“As an Israeli American, [Milstein has] done great work to bring more folks in that growing community into philanthropy and activism, and I’m sure we’ll see him continue to make a really meaningful impact in a variety of areas for years to come,” says TIP’s Block.
As is the case with many advocates for Israel, the growth of Milstein’s public profile has been accompanied by public criticism and what he considers to be defamation. Two anti-Israel websites, The Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss, used a past conviction on tax evasion as a jumping-off point for broader coverage on Milstein. The Electronic Intifada ran with the headline, “Why did Israel intervene for convicted U.S. felon Adam Milstein?” Mondoweiss, meanwhile, routinely labels Milstein as an “Islamophobe,” a “Muslim-basher,” and a “racist.”
Milstein says he takes full accountability for his conviction, which originated when he voluntarily took responsibility for a past violation to help a friend. Ed M. Robbins, Jr., Milstein’s attorney, adds, “In retrospect, Adam finds it hard to explain why he would do it when the amount that he was writing off represented a very small fraction of the taxes that he paid.”
The Electronic Intifada’s headline, according to Milstein, was a manipulation of one of the 100 character reference letters he presented to the judge in his tax case. He says the letter was written by the Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, but was simply a personal letter of support and far from an official Israeli government intervention, as The Electronic Intifada claimed.
“You have to understand the way our enemies operate,” Milstein says. “They try to intimidate, harass, and defame whoever they think is an enemy in order to shut him down. And that’s what [these anti-Israel websites] were trying to do here. They tried to shut me down not by debating me or arguing against my positions, but by shaming me, defaming me, harassing me, and spreading lies about me. They feel that it’s enough for them to throw it out there [on the Internet], because some of it will stick and people will not question if it’s true, and that will discourage me from continuing my activism.”
Milstein says anti-Israel activists use the same strategy to bully Jewish college students, who are looking to build their resumes and determine their career paths. Due to the anti-Israel side’s tactics, he says, “The last thing [a Jewish student] will be interested in doing is being a pro-Israel advocate because you’re being named and harassed, intimidated, and shamed, they’re calling you an ‘Islamophobe,’ and a Muslim-basher, and a racist. For a young person, they just don’t want to be involved. It’s too much harassment, too much of a headache.”
At the same time, the Jewish community is faced with rising assimilation. According to the Pew Research Center’s much-debated October 2013 study on American Jewry, 58 percent of Jews marry outside the faith. Milstein believes the assimilation and Israel challenges operate on parallel tracks.
“The Jews that are assimilating, they’re also the people that feel disconnected from Israel,” he says. “The people that are more connected to their religion, they’re more connected to the homeland of the Jewish people, which is Israel. Both the state of Israel and the Jewish people have existential threats, and for the Jewish people and the state of Israel to survive and continue, their needs to be a stronger relationship between our being part of the Jewish people and having a strong Israel.”
Israel is a vibrant democracy with full rights for women and gays, a free press and independent judiciary. You would think that the United Nations would celebrate such a country. Instead, the UN condemns Israel at every turn to the point of obsession. How did this happen? Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights, explains in five eye-opening minutes.
The content was produced by Prager University and was sponsored by the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.
The annual StandWithUs Israel in Focus conference brings together 150-200 college students from across North America as well as StandWithUs Israel Fellows (shlichim) to a weekend-long conference in Los Angeles. The conference is funded by a generous grant from the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation. Over three days, participants learn the skills and facts that will help them better discuss Israel on campus and beyond as well as network with other student leaders and discuss programming and strategy ideas.
Other StandWithUs student conferences have taken place in various cities across the United States and in the UK, Australia, Israel, and South Africa. For further information, please contact us at[email protected].
More than 700 Israeli-American gathered earlier this month in Washington, DC, for the inaugural Israeli-American Council (IAC) conference. Talks by politicians, deplomats, academics, busdinessmen, philantropists and media personalities, coupled with well-attended sessions on relations between Israel and the U.S. and the role Israelies play in the larger American community, made it clear the IAC intends to be an integral part of the Jewish community and a strong advocate for Israel.
The conference opened with a “shuk” (marketplace) showcasing the numerous cultural programs IAC funds throughout the United States to strengthen Israeli identity: Taglit Shelanu, IAC Machane Kachol Lavan, Sifriyat Pijama, which distributes Hebrew books for free to 15,000 homes, IAC Mishelanu, serving Israeli college students in the U.S., and the Israel Scouts youth movement “Tzofim.”
IAC co-founder Adam Milstein has stated, “We have national programs that are not bound to geographical specifications. [We] want to reach more Israelis nationwide and expand our programming, placing special emphasis on Israeli-American identity, culture and education.”
As Shabbos set in, Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of American Friends of Lubavitch of Washington, opened the kosher dinner by leading the traditional “Shalom Aleichem” song and recitingKiddush. He said he agreed to participate on the condition there would be no chillul Shabbos at the dinner. There were no microphones, all amplifiers in the hall were covered, and dinner invitations requested that everyone refrain from using their electronic devices.
As Rabbi Shemtov stood on the stage and looked out at the attendees, he told them that “Rather than take photos with your cellphones, take a mental photo and keep this Shabbat in your mind and take it with you throughout your life.” He later said the evening was one of the highlights of his career as a Chabad shaliach in Washington. He was surprised that when he asked people to put on a kippot, everyone immediately scrambled to reach for one of the indigo blue suede yarmulkes on each table and spontaneously rose to their feet as he dedicated “Eishet Chayil” to Dr. Miriam Adelson, wife of businessman/philanthropist Sheldon Adelson.
After dinner, elected officials addressed the conference, speaking of the values shared by the United States and Israel and their commitment to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship.
The IAC was founded in 2007 by a group of businessmen in Los Angeles at the request of the then-Israeli consul general of Los Angeles, Ehud Danoch, who was dismayed by the lack of involvement in Jewish and civic affairs on the part of Israelis in the U.S. (There are an estimated 650,000-800,000 Israeli citizens living in America.)
Many Israelis in the U.S. saw themselves as temporary transplants who would soon return to Israel and so were disinclined to become active in the Jewish community. But at the same time there were growing fears among Israelis in America over the rapid assimilation of their children. One IAC leader said this became a reality to him when his own children began dating non-Jews. The need for an organization specifically geared to Israeli-Americans became increasingly apparent.
“Our Israeli-American community,” said Milstein, “consists of people who were born in Israel and reside in America, or are the children of at least one Israeli or Israeli-American parent, or were born in the United States but lived a few years in Israel and identify as Israeli-American.”
Milstein rejects the use of degrading terms such as ex-pats oryordim. “Several reporters and public leaders call us ‘Israelis,’ but in my opinion this isn’t accurate,” he said. “Most of the people in our community come from Israel; however, we are Americans. Our goal is not to create a new Israel or [new] Israelis, but rather to galvanize Israeli-Americans as a leading force within the Jewish American community and the American public.”
When Sheldon and Dr. Miriam Adelson infused the IAC with a $10 million grant in late 2013, the organization began aggressively expanding to major cities with clusters of Israelis, including Las Vegas, Miami, New York, and Boston.
The IAC inaugural conference culminated on Sunday morning with philanthropists Haim Saban, Sheldon Adelson, and IAC Chairman Shawn Evenhaim sharing the stage.
Adelson gave a thorough history lesson on the land of Israel and said, “We aren’t dealing with a real estate issue, we’re not dealing with a grievance, we’re dealing with a religion [Islam] that doesn’t like anybody who isn’t like what they are.” He insisted a two-state solution would be unworkable unless the other side were demilitarized.
Reflecting on the recent snag in the U.S.-Israel relations, Adelson said: “My wife and I are together 26 years. We have never had one serious argument. How many [couples] have [gone through] their lives without having arguments? I would say very few. Fortunately, Miri and I are one of the very few. The relationship between Israel and the United States is like a marriage; there are times there are arguments and you disagree on things, and it’s okay, it doesn’t mean you don’t love each other anymore. The most important thing is that we share the same values…. They see that, we see that, the long-term relationship is what counts, not the short-term ups and downs.”
Asked whether the IAC is a Republican organization that will follow his political leanings, Adelson said the organization is bipartisan. “Between Haim [Saban, a leading supporter of Democrats] and myself, it’s very clear we have a big difference of opinion politically. I think everyone in this room, Republican or Democrat…when it comes to Israel we are on the same side.”
“Ditto,” replied Saban. “If you want, I can repeat everything Sheldon just said.”
At the Israeli-American Council’s (IAC) three-day inaugural conference in Washington, D.C., last weekend, nearly 800 attendees and Washington journalists witnessed the high-profile entrance on to the public stage of what was, until recently, a quietly expanding and well-funded Los Angeles group created with the comparably modest vision of providing educational, cultural and religious resources for Southern California’s large Israeli-American community.
The IAC’s first foray into the national spotlight — and its ability to attract top politicians from both parties and their donors — points to a group on its way to becoming the go-to resource for Israeli Americans across the country and their political voice in Washington.
“We will be a growing community in the United States. We will rise to national recognition and will influence the Jewish community,” said Adam Milstein, an Israeli-American businessman and philanthropist, and a founding IAC board member.
Milstein said that the group’s goal in holding its inaugural conference in the heart of the nation’s capital was to make Israeli Americans a “brand name community in the United States and to make sure that Washington notices.” On the latter point, it undoubtedly succeeded: Political correspondents for top news outlets filled the press section to cover the IAC’s prominent speakers, including former (and possibly future) Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and billionaire rival political kingmakers Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson.
That Friday evening, as a packed ballroom at the Washington Hilton enjoyed Shabbat dinner, Romney told his former foreign policy senior adviser Dan Senor, in an onstage discussion, that President Barack Obama has been “divisive and dictatorial and demeaning to our friends,” and also that Democrats were routed in the recent midterm elections partly because voters felt the Democratic candidates had been disingenuous in distancing themselves from Obama’s policies.
Meanwhile, Senor and former Sen. Joseph Lieberman both strongly suggested they would like to see Romney attempt another presidential run: “It would be doubly refreshing to hear your voice in the public debate going forward,” Senor told Romney as he concluded their discussion.
The following night’s plenary, while modest by comparison, saw Graham threaten to cut off funding to the United Nations if it “turns into the most anti-Semitic force on the planet,” and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer — who was a frequent and vocal guest on cable news during the recent Gaza war — joked that the key to a happy marriage between an American and an Israeli is for the American to “preemptively concede the argument to the Israeli spouse.”
“Then you’ll actually have a chance of having your way,” Dermer said to an admiring crowd. “Now what that means for diplomacy and U.S.-Israel [relations], I’ll leave it to all the sharp reporters in the room to figure out.”
The conference’s first two plenaries, though, were only the starter for the weekend’s highlight: the first-ever public discussion between billionaires Saban and Adelson, two of the country’s most sought-after, and generous, political donors for Democratic and Republican politicians, respectively. While their conversation, which was moderated by IAC Chairman Shawn Evenhaim, at times sounded like a debate, Saban stole the spotlight when Evenhaim asked him what he would do if he were in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shoes and Western powers signed a nuclear agreement with Iran that risked Israel’s security.
“I would bomb the living daylights out of those sons of bitches,” Saban said to thundering applause, striking a tone starkly to the right of Adelson, who only spoke in general terms of Israel needing to “take action” and “not just talk.” Earlier, Saban said that if such a deal is signed, he would come to the “full realization we are screwed, baby.”
Adelson, for his part, provided his own memorable remarks, sharply criticizing journalists in general and particularly The Forward’s Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman. He also cast doubt on the importance of Israel remaining a democracy and called the Palestinians “an invented people.”
Saban, a media mogul, and Adelson, a casino tycoon, then engaged in what sounded like either banter or an impromptu investment strategy session, discussing how to influence mainstream American media outlets when it comes to coverage of Israel, which Saban called “very left-wing” except when it comes to “maybe a bit the Wall Street Journal and definitely Fox News.”
“I wish that [Amazon.com CEO] Jeff Bezos didn’t buy the Washington Post,” Saban said. “It would have been nice if you and I could have bought it, Sheldon.” For $250 million — bupkis!” Saban continued, as the audience laughed. Adelson responded: “I wish I had known it was available,” then asked Saban, again to raucous applause, “Why don’t you and I go after The New York Times?”
Saban said he has tried to purchase the news giant, but that “it’s a family business” and would not sell. Adelson, sharing some corporate takeover advice with the audience, told Saban that the only way to get The New York Times would be to bid more than its worth and count on the family shareholders rejecting the offer, which would give minority, non-family shareholders a right to sue for a sale.
While marquee attractions such as Saban and Adelson provided the bang for IAC’s weekend, mornings and afternoons were filled with speakers from across the Jewish and pro-Israel world who talked about sensitive topics, especially for a group seeking to tow the line between American and Israeli and Jewish identities—such as the dilemmas facing a possible “double identity” and how to integrate Israeli Americans into the American-Jewish community.
Evenhaim, in a telephone interview following the conference, said he wants Israeli Americans to integrate within America’s broader Jewish community, but said that integration has not been a priority of the organized American-Jewish community, in Los Angeles and across the United States. “If the Jewish-American community put that as a priority for them, there probably wouldn’t be an IAC,” Evenhaim said.
At the same time, though, IAC’s goal is to help foster a unique Israeli identity among not just Israeli expats, but their American-born children and grandchildren, too. “We don’t want to become just Jewish Americans,” Evenhaim said. “The Israeli message is important to us, and it’s important to give to the next generation.”
To that end, the IAC runs programs including Celebrate Israel festivals across the country every year and Sifriyat Pijama B’America, which sends free Hebrew-language children’s books and music to Israeli-American families.
“Israel is our homeland,” Milstein said, when asked to discuss the vision of IAC in the context of America’s historical success in assimilating immigrants. “Our relationship with Israel is more unique than Italian Americans, Irish Americans, Chinese Americans — we are different.”
He said the IAC plans to become a “catchall” group for Israeli Americans, focusing not just on Israel advocacy, but eventually seeking to influence national policy on things like access to charter schools and Jewish education. “Our community has issues that are important to them, and it will be our mandate to advocate for those issues in Washington,” Milstein said.
Formed as the Israeli Leadership Council (ILC) in 2007 at the request of Ehud Danoch, the Israeli consul general of Los Angeles at the time, the ILC rebranded itself two years ago as the Israeli-American Council when its leadership realized the need to be viewed not as Israelis or as Americans, but as “Americans of Israeli descent,” as Milstein wrote in the Times of Israel one year ago. Until then, he wrote, “The State of Israel labeled us as yordim [a derisive characterization for Israelis who leave]. Americans saw us as U.S. citizens, and our children definitely didn’t want to be perceived as kids of foreigners.”
Now viewed as a potential asset by top American politicians as well as the Israeli government — as evidenced by the presence last weekend of numerous Israeli politicians and diplomats — the IAC plans to open four to six new regional councils in the next year, in addition to the existing five, and has its eyes on a 2015 conference, which Milstein said will likely again be in Washington, D.C., and, he predicts, will attract two to three times as many people.
When a storm wreaked havoc on East Coast air travel last winter, among the thousands of travelers stranded were several dozen Israeli-American teens from Washington and Philadelphia. But these youths, who were en route to the annual meeting of the Tzofim, the Israeli scouts, were luckier than the many others forced to mill about air terminals.
Soon after their flight was canceled, a private executive jet landed at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to take them directly to their destination in Los Angeles. For most of the excited teens it was their first trip on a private jet. Some told their parents it was the highlight of their winter camp. All they were asked in return was not to take any photos.
The private jet’s owner was billionaire Sheldon Adelson. And it was an act that mirrored, in its small way, the broader goal of Adelson’s philanthropy and high-profile political giving, of which Tzofim is just a part: to be not just supportive, but also transformative.
Thanks to this approach, Adelson now plays a role unlike that of any Jewish philanthropist before him. “The Adelsons tend to go narrow and deep,” said Mark Charendoff, president of the Maimonides Foundation and former president of the Jewish Funders Network. The philanthropic couple, he explained, identifies specific causes near to their hearts, rather than giving to broader-based communal organizations. “They tend to choose a couple of things and go very, very big.”
For many Americans, the name Adelson is synonymous with outsized political donations and the opening of corporate floodgates to back candidates following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010. The Las Vegas-based casino mogul is also known as a prominent backer of often hawkish pro-Israel organizations. But less noisily, he has also established himself as one of the leading donors to purely charitable Jewish and non-Jewish groups, ranging from schools, to elder care, to medical research.
Ranked as the ninth largest donors in America in 2013, Adelson and his Israeli-American wife, Miriam Adelson, split their giving between Jewish and pro-Israel causes, which are funneled mostly through their family foundation, and medical programs funded by the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation.
As with the teens on their way to California, in many of these cases Adelson is not just one among a number of large donors — he’s the donor who changes the destiny of the organization. The growing significance of his giving and, in some cases, of his private investments, has made him into something new in Jewish life: a man with an empire of his own.
“Sheldon is an example of the new kind of philanthropy that is emerging,” said Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation who, as head of a significant fund himself, follows trends in Jewish philanthropy. “It will benefit the community, but the community won’t necessarily have a say.”
In Ruderman’s view, Adelson embodies the new reality of Jewish philanthropy in a gilded age where more and more depends on the wealthiest few. It is a type of charitable and political giving driven by the donor’s agenda, not by communal consensus.
According to the most recent records available, Adelson’s philanthropic and pro-Israel contributions in 2012 amounted to about $44 million. Since its founding in 2007, the family foundation has given out $191 million. This sum does not include gifts given in 2013, and excludes all political donations. It also excludes the huge sums Adelson is sinking into several for-profit ventures with political ramifications, such as Israel Hayom, Israel’s largest newspaper.
A close look at his giving offers two contrasting views of the Vegas billionaire: One is of a political-minded player willing to spend whatever amount it takes to promote his goals and ideology; the other is that of a generous communal funder who provides huge donations to purely charitable enterprises, such as schools and elder care programs, and seeks no influence in return.
On November 7, Adelson’s latest philanthropic investment will take on a newly prominent profile with its first-ever national conference, in Washington. The Israeli American Council was, until several years ago, a sleepy Los Angeles-based group of Israeli expatriates. Thanks to the support it has received from Adelson and his wife, it has been transformed into an increasingly visible domestic presence in support of Israel.
Their donation of an estimated $2.5 million this year has eclipsed the gifts of the group’s previous main funder, Haim Saban, which reached a peak of $400,000 in 2011. The IAC’s Washington conference is intended to broadcast its emergence as a rapidly expanding national organization.
In recent years, the Adelson Family Foundation has supported dozens of Jewish organizations by making seven-figure donations. Such organizations include the Jewish federations of Las Vegas, where Adelson currently resides, and of Boston, where he was raised. Major gifts have also gone to the Newton, Massachusetts, Gateways organization, which helps children with special needs gain Jewish education, and to Hebrew SeniorLife, an innovative elder care organization in Boston.
In 2012, the Adelsons’ medical research fund awarded more than $22 million in grants to advance the development of cures for disabling and life threatening illnesses. Here too, the Adelsons give big, with six and seven figure donations. They also combine this with their passion for Israel in some cases by providing grants to Israeli research institutions, such as the Weizmann Institute and Tel Aviv University.
The donations stand out mainly because of their transformative size. They include a $50 million gift to construct a Jewish day school in Las Vegas; large donations to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, and, most notably, the annual $30 million-plus gift Adelson gives to Taglit-Birthright Israel, the Jewish community’s flagship program for sending Jewish young adults on free 10-day trips to Israel that aim to bind them to the Jewish state.
Adelson was a latecomer to Birthright. The program was initiated and funded by mega-donors Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt. Until Adelson entered the stage, the two men were considered the top Jewish philanthropists, alongside the Schusterman and Mandel families.
Adelson, true to form, joined Birthright in 2007 with a massive cash infusion that eliminated in one fell swoop the program’s waiting list. His unprecedented annual largesse also ensured its sustainability despite a decrease in funding from the Israeli government.
“His donation allowed the participation of many more, but I am not aware of any attempt on his behalf to influence the content of Birthright trips,” said Theodore Sasson, senior research scientist at Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies.
This does not suggest, however, that Adelson refrains from using his wealth to advance his ideology — a mixture of support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sympathy for the settler movement and hostility toward the Palestinian Authority.
Adelson has devoted large sums to supporting a cadre of hawkish pro-Israel scholars who provide intellectual backing for Netanyahu’s policies. Key to this effort is his support for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative think tank headed by Dore Gold, adviser to Netanyahu and former Israeli ambassador the United Nations. Funding to the group is given through Baltimore’s Center for Jewish Community Studies, which Gold also heads. Adelson’s $1 million gift last year represented nearly two-thirds of the think tank’s budget.
In 2007, Adelson gave $4.5 million to establish an institute for strategic affairs carrying his name at the Shalem Center, another Israeli research center known for its hawkish positions and its closeness to Netanyahu. Adelson also recently announced a $25 million contribution to Ariel University, the only Israeli higher education institution in the occupied West Bank.
Another $1 million went last year to the Friends of Israel Initiative, an international pro-Israel platform headed by Spain’s former prime minister José Maria Aznar. Aznar’s group also counts among its leaders former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton and former Democratic New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Adelson’s gift tripled the group’s budget within one year.
Adelson also supported The Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors Arab media, though his donation of $250,000 in 2012 made up less than 5% of the group’s annual income.
In recent years, the 81-year-old Jewish philanthropist, whose $32 billion in net worth has made him the 12th richest man in America, has shifted his support away from mainstream pro-Israel groups. In the past, Adelson was one of the top donors to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the large Washington-based Israel lobby. But in 2007, when AIPAC, following Israel’s lead, expressed support for increased aid to the P.A., Adelson cut his ties to the group.
He now backs much smaller groups to AIPAC’s right. Among these organizations are the Zionist Organization of America, which does not support a two-state solution; the Endowment for Middle East Truth, whose board is made up of neoconservative former American officials, and Christians United for Israel, an evangelical grassroots organization that has voiced support for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“Adelson believes in the right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria and so do we,” said Morton Klein, ZOA’s national president, referring to the territories by their biblical names. “AIPAC has never supported the right of Jews to live there.”
Adelson’s ties with Netanyahu run deep.
In September, Adelson was seated in the front row for Netanyahu’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly. Nevertheless, Adelson made the limits to his support for even Netanyahu clear afterward. “He shouldn’t have talked so much about the peace process,” Adelson said. Then he moved on to dine with Netanyahu at a midtown New York restaurant, drawing media attention in both the United States and Israel.
The most important manifestation of Adelson’s support for Netanyahu is his investment in the daily newspaper Israel Hayom, which is seen widely as strongly supportive of the prime minister. The paper was launched in 2007 with money from Adelson, and it stays afloat, even now, as Israel’s largest circulation daily, thanks to his cash. According to court documents filed in Israel, Adelson is losing nearly $33 million a year on the paper. He nevertheless intends to soon launch a news website that aims to be the largest in the country.
In the United States, alongside his purely charitable giving, Adelson devotes much of his money to supporting the Republican Party. In 2012, he gave the party $93 million through super political action committees, making him the party’s top donor.
He has made a point of channeling some of his political money into the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group of Jewish activists devoted to supporting the GOP. The RJC saw a significant leap in its funding during the 2012 election cycle. Though the group is not required to disclose its donors, estimates are that the lion’s share of the $6.5 million it put into advertisements and campaigns in the previous election cycle came from Adelson.
His support also made the RJC’s annual meeting last March a required destination for Republican candidates vying for the backing of the party’s most generous donor. Hosted by Adelson at his Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, the RJC meeting attracted nearly every person then seen as a possible presidential candidate, leading some in the media to describe it as the “Adelson primary.”
With the midterm congressional elections approaching, Republican activists are once again courting Adelson. His role in 2014 is nowhere near as crucial the part he played in the 2012 presidential election, but it remains significant enough to place him among the top funders of GOP candidates. Recently, Adelson wrote a $5 million check to a Republican super PAC and has reportedly given much more to funds that do not disclose their donors.
