Earlier this month, my wife Sharon and I were privileged to attend Tikvah’s annual Jewish Leadership Conference. It was a star-studded event that attracted more than 1,000 leaders in the Jewish community.
Professor Ruth Wisse was the first speaker, who emphasized the shared values of Israel and America. (“The Jews are the white and blue in the red, white and blue.”) Other prominent speakers included Melanie Phillips, Ambassador Michael Oren, the Hon. Dr. Ben Sasse, Shabbos Kestenbaum, Dr. Jonathan Haidt and Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik, each of them sharing a perspective on the theme of the conference: “The Jewish Fight for America.”
However, the main attraction (and the reason, I think, why the conference attracted such a large crowd) was Ambassador Nikki Haley, who answered questions from the Hon. Elliot Abrams. And the former ambassador to the United Nations did not disappoint.
Asked about the fall of Assad in Syria, which had happened less than 48 hours before the conference started, Haley made it clear that the events occurred because of Israel. Hezbollah and Iran had been seriously weakened, said Haley, and had Israel not been so strong, the events in Syria could not have happened.
However, Haley warned that we must be careful. Today the news about Syria is positive for Israel. But the situation has created other potentially dangerous opportunities that might occur. We certainly do not want ISIS to have a presence again in Syria. America should reach out to Turkey to prevent the Iranian influence from growing any stronger. Overall, said Haley, the fall of Assad represents a great opportunity for both America and Israel.
Asked about U.S. President Biden’s approach during Israel’s war against Hamas and Hezbollah, Haley believes that Biden said all the right things but he didn’t always do the right things. He repeatedly emphasized that Israel is our friend. But being a friend doesn’t always mean telling your friend what to do. Israel knows what it needs to do to survive, said Haley, and the day that it becomes political is when relations get messy.
Haley certainly is intimately familiar with the United Nations given her former position as United States ambassador. When she was asked about the U.N.’s role in the current war in Gaza, Haley did not mince words. “The United Nations is such a farce. It’s a ridiculous organization,” said Haley. Asked how things could change, Haley said that the 193 nations in the U.N. need to recognize Israel’s intelligence and innovation. She felt that Israel must do a better job to tell its story to the rest of the countries in the United Nations in order to change the perception.
She also said that the United States needs to send a clear message to all the other countries of the world: “If you are going to mess with Israel, you are also going to mess with the United States.” This needs to be a clear and consistent message to the rest of the world, said Haley.
Haley was asked about the current climate of antisemitism on our college campuses. Our universities must stop taking foreign money, said Haley. If they don’t, we should pull their tax exemption. And if they cannot keep Jewish students safe, we should not be funding them anymore.
Haley believes that Iranian money has been the source of the virulent antisemitism on campuses that reared its ugly head after Oct. 7. And she believes that we need to make sure there are consequences for universities being funded in this way.
As to the general climate of antisemitism in America, Haley believes it’s mostly a generational issue, with younger people being more prone to criticize Israel and blame the Jews for problems. “There is still a lot of love and support for Israel,” said Haley. “I personally witnessed a huge outpouring of support for Israel from Americans across the country after Oct. 7.”
Haley blames much of the antisemitic rhetoric on foreign influence on social media, where huge amounts of misinformation and outright lies about the Palestinian side have been distributed online and spread virally on various platforms. TikTok is not available in China, even though it was created there, said Haley. Why should it be available in America? She also said that we should be able to see the algorithms that are used by social media platforms. Foreign influence is dividing us, she said, and Russia, China and Iran are engaging in a very clever and inexpensive form of warfare. That’s a big part of what is causing so much chaos.
Asked specifically about Iran, Haley said that President Trump got it right during his first administration when he got out of the Iran nuclear deal and placed sanctions on Iran to hold them more accountable for their actions. Iran was not keeping their promises in the deal, and it would have been irresponsible for America not to get out of this deal. We must do everything we can to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear capability and avoid a potential nuclear war, said Haley.
Haley also praised Trump for having the courage to move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Sometimes, said Haley, you need to have the strength and the fortitude to do things, even when everyone else says no.
To the many folks at Tikvah who were responsible for the leadership conference, thank you for organizing such an important educational event.
Michael Feldstein, who lives in Stamford, is the author of “Meet Me in the Middle” (meet-me-in-the-middle-book.com), a collection of essays on contemporary Jewish life. He can be reached at [email protected].
