A billion dollars can build another institution — or it can build the largest network of Jewish and Israeli creators, storytellers, and influencers the world has ever seen.
Great ideas Joshua, though we should have thought about them long ago:
Our enemies have effectively understood and prepared these strategies long ago.
They even hired some of the best Jewish and Israeli public relations people to advance their narratives. Below are just a few examples.
Hopefully some of our leading economic players will pick up your ideas to enter this global market of ideas and narratives.
"America faces a silent invasion. Not of armies or navies, but of capital. Qatar, a tiny Gulf emirate with just 300,000 citizens, has deployed nearly $40 billion across our nation’s institutions since 2012. This is not mere investment. It is calculated influence.
Benjamin Baird’s meticulous investigation exposes the full scope of Qatar’s American enterprise. The numbers speak plainly: $33.4 billion into businesses and real estate; $6.25 billion to universities; $72 million to lobbyists. Qatar purchases access to our corridors of power while simultaneously funding Hamas terrorists who seek our destruction."
Qatar invested over $65 million to manipulate US education, new report reveals
"According to the report, the funds were funneled through Qatar Foundation International, which worked with schools, universities, teacher-training programs, and national education networks."
The influence starts with youngsters. Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent, gave an interview in 1984 where he discussed the four stages of ideological subversion used by the Soviet Union to undermine societies. Qatar followed it using current communication and it worked. We have to do the same but with a moral objective. It will take time and it requires patience.
Thank you, thank you. Finally, something productive to wake up to. The old Jewish organizations are dead, they just don’t know how to respond to today’s world. I can’t even stomach anymore the grovelling and polite thanks when sympathies are offered. I like in Montreal and we have a vibrant, mostly conservative Jewish community. At least 30% Sephardic. Everyone here has become more visibly Jewish since October 7th. There is a whole community here that you can start your project with. In more than two years I can’t think of any Jewish leader who has risen to the challenge. What’s going on here, where are our leaders? Please try to do whatever you can to have Mr. Lauder read your proposal. Thank you.
100%! I've been so turned off to legacy Jewish organizations in the US I won't have anything to do with them anymore. Our local Federation wouldn't send out an email about our weekly rallies to release the hostages because "it's too political." Last year they sent $1 million to GAZA for humanitarian aid!!!!!!!!! Talk about groveling, pandering to their political tribe, tone deafness, I don't even know what to call it. Our people war battered for 2 1/2 years, the trauma, the financial stress, the unfathomable loss and agonizing grief, and they send $1 million to the enemy!!!!!!!!!! I can't bear to drive by the building, I will never again hand them so much as $15 to get on a bus to a rally in the city. Not only has world culture and mechanisms of communication changed, but one more thing we absolutely do not need is another institution of failed Jewish leadership. I love this article!!! I hope Ronald Lauder and other empowered Jews like him are as inspired by this as I am.
Thank you for writing this piece, you are exactly describing what is going on in Canada today. Not one mainstream Jewish organization has risen to the challenge , not one person has emerged as a leader. The Prime Minister of Canada decided to try and appease us last week by addressing the “horrible scourge of antisemitism “. Of course, it was Holy Blossom Temple that handed him the platform. He lamented and cried, “this is not Canada “ while failing to mention the over 1.2 million Muslims who have been let into Canada over the past fifteen years (Liberal Government). Oh, and he also firmly announced the creation of yet another committee to study why this is happening. Four people on the committee, two vocal Muslim Israel haters, a retired Jewish Senator and an athlete. It was actually refreshing to see him say it live. Also interesting was that only certain Jewish organizations were invited and the press was restricted. For the first time in THREE YEARS, every Jewish organization denounced the Prime Minister, finally. That doesn’t change anything but a small step forward has been taken. We need the world to see us as the warriors that we are. It’s way past time!
We can’t win the information war because you will never convince two billion Muslims and two billion leftists about the rightness of our cause. They are blinded with fanatical Jewhatred and their primary goal is to exterminate us.
The best thing he could do with a billion dollars is use it to relocate European, Canadian and Australian Jews out of their Islamo-Marxist shitholes. Get funding from other billionaires as well. Moving half a million Jews to Israel and giving them $25,000 each would cost $12.5 billion. There is enough money among Jews in the Forbes 400 to accommodate this.
Excellent approach, and that is exactly what I wrote one of the directors of the AJC about 4 years ago. Hit the big pocket contributors to set up relocation funds to move our brothers and sisters out of Europe, Canada and Australia (and perhaps even the US if things keep going the way they are). Allocate funds to set up martial arts and small arms training for all Jews by hiring ex LEOs and IDF. Set up courses in emergency medical response like 'stop the bleed' offered by the Red Cross. Set up legal action groups to hit all these Jew haters in the pocket book and to defend Jews who defend themselves. Know the response I got? 'Thanks but no thanks'. That tells you all you need to know about 'Jewish Leadership'
Excellent essay Josh. May I suggest something more. Our enemies have, so far, been more successful in the information war. Study their tactics and strategy as if it is a War College assignment. Innovate, improve, and then attack. In the first major engagement between the Germans and Americans in North Africa after Gen. Patton took over command, the U.S. Army prevailed in part because Patton was a serious student of history and read Rommel's (the German commander) book on tank warfare. The rest, as they say, is history.
Non Jew here who supports the Jewish community because it feels like an absolute no brainer. I obviously can’t get my head around what’s happened the world since Oct 7th. personally i feel your years behind in an information war. I read a great article on Honest Reporting which was the first time in years I saw something productive for the Jewish community - fighting the lies online
I’m Irish and why is Ireland still peddling the Genocide lie? Why didn’t Irish media report on recent Oct 7th report? Why don’t they know how rotten and corrupt UN is and NGOs which Irish trust so much?
Regarding creators, I recently listened to a well known American pro Israel rabbi have an interesting talk with a young American pro Israel activist..on YouTube. 90% of the comments section were anti Israel, anti Zionist, antisemitic. Where the Jewish viewers at? Watching the Knicks?
This is a great piece and the most important thing you wrote is that we need to stop having our audience be those who agree with us. I don't even read the endless articles and posts explaining why we are right and they are vile. We all know that. Our talents MUST be turned outward. We have our allies but there are as you say potentially billions of other allies. They aren't going to be turned by a substack article whose subscribers are 99 percent committed Zionists.
First, a correction. The Qatar number being cited is wrong. It's not $40 billion spent since 2010. It's $400 billion. Read that again. Four hundred billion dollars deliberately and systematically deployed to purchase American universities, think tanks, media influence, political access, and cultural narrative. The Free Press documented it. The number matters because it reframes everything—including what an adequate response actually looks like.
Which brings us to the $1 billion proposal.
With respect to Ronald Lauder—a great man and a genuine lifelong fighter for the Jewish people—suggesting $1 billion as an answer to $400 billion isn't bold. It's naiveté. That's not a strategy. That's a rounding error on Qatar's spreadsheet.
And then there's the centralization question. We have nearly 13,000 American Jewish nonprofits in the United States alone, all pulling in different directions, all protecting their own turf, all answering to their own donor bases. That's not a network. That's chaos with a tax exemption.
Nobody is suggesting—or expecting—that 13,000 organizations suddenly merge and sing from the same songbook. That's fantasy. But a governing body. A unified strategic direction. A shared resource pool with coordinated deployment. That is not fantasy—that is basic organizational competence, and it's exactly what we lack and exactly what our enemies have.
Qatar doesn't have thousands of competing foundations arguing over messaging. They have a sovereign wealth fund, a strategy, and a chain of command.
Meanwhile our organizations are fiefdoms. Run by executives more focused on their seat at the right dinner table than on actually winning. They network with elites. They attend the galas. They collect the honorary degrees. And we write the checks—out of guilt—because deep down we know we aren't doing anything ourselves either.
The book Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership documented it before October 7th made it undeniable. The ADL. The AJC. The Federations. Sitting on billions. Holding galas. Issuing statements. And failing at the one job that actually matters—defending the Jewish people and the Jewish state in the court of public opinion and in the halls of power.
And yet we are not without assets. We have the expertise. We have the people. We have world-class cyber capability and some of the most sophisticated communicators, entrepreneurs, and operators on the planet. The talent exists. The resources exist. The infrastructure exists.
Consider this: we were out-PRed. By Palestinian terrorists. We—the people who wrote the Bible. Who gave the world the concept of a benevolent singular God. Who built the moral architecture that Western civilization stands on. We lost the communications war to people who specialize in choreographed victimhood and have a $400 billion state sponsor behind them.
That humiliation should be clarifying.
The answer is not another organization. It is not another report, another committee, another gala, or another well-produced PowerPoint sitting on someone's laptop for two and a half years. The answer is coordination. A governing body—not to merge or control every Jewish organization, but to align resources, set strategic direction, and deploy unified force where it is needed.
Unification of all organizations is not going to happen. Nobody should waste energy on that fantasy. But connection—shared resources, shared intelligence, shared direction—is entirely achievable. It is what any serious fighting force does. And that is what this moment demands.
We are not too late. The talent is here. The money is here. The technology is here. What's missing is the will to stop competing with each other long enough to fight the people who are actually trying to destroy us.
Here is the problem with your well intentioned and intelligent model. It will still result in "preaching to the choir". We don't need to spend money reinforcing Jews and others who are already on our side. The real challenge is to convert others towards our side. This can only be done using the "Qatar model". Look at Tucker Carlson. Totally "bought" by Qatar to the extent that he is now basically a well paid employee of Al- Jazeera. And it appears that he has introduced his friend Meghan Kelly to the same financial honeypot. She is more subtle about her "change of attitude" towards Israel than is Tucker "Qatarlson", but I am sure that this was part of her "contract' with the Al- Thani family of Doha, so she can continue to appear somewhat sophisticated. Basically what I am saying is that a certain part of this proposed Billion dollar campaign will need to go towards "influencing" certain people out so that non Jews who are sitting on the fence or presently on the other side of the narrative can be educated. Example: "Influencing" Joe Rogan to have some of our people on his podcast. That will reach millions who can be influenced in a pro Israeli/ pro Jewish direction. Then we must also "support" those non Jewish influencers out there who have large and growing audiences such as Erin Molan, the popular and almost universally loved Australian podcaster (formerly of Sky News). People watch her for her intelligence and wardrobe. She is very personable and believable. She loves to travel to Israel. Think "The Erin from Israel Show". Combining the beauty of the country with subtly introduced lessons such as the "Jewish Nakba" about how 850,000 ethnically cleansed Jews from Muslim countries never get the same attention as the so called " Palestinian Nakba." Alternate with "Erin goes on a date with an Israeli" episode. I believe she is a single mom. Whatever. Her influence may have a positive ripple effect orders of magnitude larger than Jewish influencers who are already preaching to the choir. There are many others. You get my drift. Qatar and the Soros family are not he only ones who can play this game.
Count me in. Ronald Lauder's speech at the 80th anniversary commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau was extremely powerful. I wrote a piece 2 weeks ago saying that Jewish Organizations must adapt. The legacy organizations are not the ones making a difference. It's ones like you and us 'accidental' writers since October 7 who have emerged. The Australian Jewish Organisation (AJA) is making headway for speaking up and calling out what we all think. I am now part of them. we need more of it. Get Ronald in touch with us!
"Judaism did not create these problems. Zionism did not create these problems."
and "For decades, anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives have been spreading . . ."
The assumption underlying these statements is that Zionism and Judaism are two completely distinct and separate categories.
The error lies the failure to recognize that Zionism has never just been the desire of the Jewish people for self-determination. That is political Zionism, one of many expressions it has taken over the centuries.
At root, Zionism is the achingly heartfelt longing expressed in Psalm 137 and repeated many times over by the Prophets — the longing to recover our ancestral homeland.
No one condemns the struggles of current ethno-nationalist peoples like the Irish or the Ukrainians for ownership over their traditional territory. However, they self-righteously denounce the right of only one other religeo-ethnic national peoples, the Jews, to their ancestral homeland. This is Jew-hatred pure and simple sanitized under the euphemism of anti-Zionism and wrapped in the self-righteous moral flag of anti-settler colonialism. Orwell would be proud.
"Most of it reaches people who already agree. Most of it is distributed through channels with limited influence over broader culture.
Meanwhile, our opponents have built decentralized systems."
Brilliant you have defined the problem with excellent concision.
Solution: " We [sh]ould [as in must] spend it building a decentralized global ecosystem."
"The objective should be simple: Build the largest, most sophisticated, most influential global network of Jewish and Israeli storytellers, creators, thinkers, entrepreneurs, educators, activists, entertainers, and community builders in history."
Yay!!! Right on bro.
If we substitute "ecosystems" for "media environment," we more precisley define where as well has how to focus our energies to combat the 30's-40's botoxed propaganda.
"The goal is rebuilding confidence. The goal is restoring identity."
And the goal must be to reverse the tide of Jewish assimilationism fueled by the 17th and 18th century philosophers who made Individualism the cornerstone of the European Enlightenment. It led directly to Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement where Jews enthusiastically abandoned their Jewish identity the better to integrate into the dominant culture.
We need to recharge the individual's sense of intimate belonging to an out and proud Peoplehood which sustains and nourishes us through a profound sense of meaningfulness and purpose. Thus armed, we can dive into the fray to assert our right as Jews to the same rights granted every other religious, ethnic, national peoples.
Can you send me a copy of your slide deck? My friend and I in Europe are looking for a way to start the resistance and would be happy to be a node in the decentralized network or get the ball rolling.
Equally as frustrated with the fund raisers and inward looking Jewish communal organisations. With our combined assets we should not find ourselves on the back foot, even with the apparent US$400 billion investment by Qatar. The peoplehood who came up with the concept of kibbutz, Iron Dome, bleepers for Hezbollah are better than that. No more organisations that react rather than lead.
Great ideas Joshua, though we should have thought about them long ago:
Our enemies have effectively understood and prepared these strategies long ago.
They even hired some of the best Jewish and Israeli public relations people to advance their narratives. Below are just a few examples.
Hopefully some of our leading economic players will pick up your ideas to enter this global market of ideas and narratives.
"America faces a silent invasion. Not of armies or navies, but of capital. Qatar, a tiny Gulf emirate with just 300,000 citizens, has deployed nearly $40 billion across our nation’s institutions since 2012. This is not mere investment. It is calculated influence.
Benjamin Baird’s meticulous investigation exposes the full scope of Qatar’s American enterprise. The numbers speak plainly: $33.4 billion into businesses and real estate; $6.25 billion to universities; $72 million to lobbyists. Qatar purchases access to our corridors of power while simultaneously funding Hamas terrorists who seek our destruction."
https://www.meforum.org/mef-reports/america-for-sale-qatars-40-billion-spending-spree-buys-influence-and-control-of-elite-institutions
Qatar invested over $65 million to manipulate US education, new report reveals
"According to the report, the funds were funneled through Qatar Foundation International, which worked with schools, universities, teacher-training programs, and national education networks."
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-897723
The influence starts with youngsters. Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent, gave an interview in 1984 where he discussed the four stages of ideological subversion used by the Soviet Union to undermine societies. Qatar followed it using current communication and it worked. We have to do the same but with a moral objective. It will take time and it requires patience.
https://youtu.be/yErKTVdETpw
Yes, I have the link and I use it to inform people who are interested to understand these strategies.
Another excellent source is the book: Red Horizons by Ion Michai Pacepa.
Thank you, thank you. Finally, something productive to wake up to. The old Jewish organizations are dead, they just don’t know how to respond to today’s world. I can’t even stomach anymore the grovelling and polite thanks when sympathies are offered. I like in Montreal and we have a vibrant, mostly conservative Jewish community. At least 30% Sephardic. Everyone here has become more visibly Jewish since October 7th. There is a whole community here that you can start your project with. In more than two years I can’t think of any Jewish leader who has risen to the challenge. What’s going on here, where are our leaders? Please try to do whatever you can to have Mr. Lauder read your proposal. Thank you.
100%! I've been so turned off to legacy Jewish organizations in the US I won't have anything to do with them anymore. Our local Federation wouldn't send out an email about our weekly rallies to release the hostages because "it's too political." Last year they sent $1 million to GAZA for humanitarian aid!!!!!!!!! Talk about groveling, pandering to their political tribe, tone deafness, I don't even know what to call it. Our people war battered for 2 1/2 years, the trauma, the financial stress, the unfathomable loss and agonizing grief, and they send $1 million to the enemy!!!!!!!!!! I can't bear to drive by the building, I will never again hand them so much as $15 to get on a bus to a rally in the city. Not only has world culture and mechanisms of communication changed, but one more thing we absolutely do not need is another institution of failed Jewish leadership. I love this article!!! I hope Ronald Lauder and other empowered Jews like him are as inspired by this as I am.
You might find this piece interesting: https://shaneshmuel.substack.com/p/jewish-organizations-must-adapt-because?r=1gdkw0&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Thank you for writing this piece, you are exactly describing what is going on in Canada today. Not one mainstream Jewish organization has risen to the challenge , not one person has emerged as a leader. The Prime Minister of Canada decided to try and appease us last week by addressing the “horrible scourge of antisemitism “. Of course, it was Holy Blossom Temple that handed him the platform. He lamented and cried, “this is not Canada “ while failing to mention the over 1.2 million Muslims who have been let into Canada over the past fifteen years (Liberal Government). Oh, and he also firmly announced the creation of yet another committee to study why this is happening. Four people on the committee, two vocal Muslim Israel haters, a retired Jewish Senator and an athlete. It was actually refreshing to see him say it live. Also interesting was that only certain Jewish organizations were invited and the press was restricted. For the first time in THREE YEARS, every Jewish organization denounced the Prime Minister, finally. That doesn’t change anything but a small step forward has been taken. We need the world to see us as the warriors that we are. It’s way past time!
We can’t win the information war because you will never convince two billion Muslims and two billion leftists about the rightness of our cause. They are blinded with fanatical Jewhatred and their primary goal is to exterminate us.
The best thing he could do with a billion dollars is use it to relocate European, Canadian and Australian Jews out of their Islamo-Marxist shitholes. Get funding from other billionaires as well. Moving half a million Jews to Israel and giving them $25,000 each would cost $12.5 billion. There is enough money among Jews in the Forbes 400 to accommodate this.
Excellent approach, and that is exactly what I wrote one of the directors of the AJC about 4 years ago. Hit the big pocket contributors to set up relocation funds to move our brothers and sisters out of Europe, Canada and Australia (and perhaps even the US if things keep going the way they are). Allocate funds to set up martial arts and small arms training for all Jews by hiring ex LEOs and IDF. Set up courses in emergency medical response like 'stop the bleed' offered by the Red Cross. Set up legal action groups to hit all these Jew haters in the pocket book and to defend Jews who defend themselves. Know the response I got? 'Thanks but no thanks'. That tells you all you need to know about 'Jewish Leadership'
Excellent essay Josh. May I suggest something more. Our enemies have, so far, been more successful in the information war. Study their tactics and strategy as if it is a War College assignment. Innovate, improve, and then attack. In the first major engagement between the Germans and Americans in North Africa after Gen. Patton took over command, the U.S. Army prevailed in part because Patton was a serious student of history and read Rommel's (the German commander) book on tank warfare. The rest, as they say, is history.
Non Jew here who supports the Jewish community because it feels like an absolute no brainer. I obviously can’t get my head around what’s happened the world since Oct 7th. personally i feel your years behind in an information war. I read a great article on Honest Reporting which was the first time in years I saw something productive for the Jewish community - fighting the lies online
https://share.google/jHIRd40xFJ1OoLsJN
I’m Irish and why is Ireland still peddling the Genocide lie? Why didn’t Irish media report on recent Oct 7th report? Why don’t they know how rotten and corrupt UN is and NGOs which Irish trust so much?
thank you for your moral clarity just because it is what you see
Regarding creators, I recently listened to a well known American pro Israel rabbi have an interesting talk with a young American pro Israel activist..on YouTube. 90% of the comments section were anti Israel, anti Zionist, antisemitic. Where the Jewish viewers at? Watching the Knicks?
This is a great piece and the most important thing you wrote is that we need to stop having our audience be those who agree with us. I don't even read the endless articles and posts explaining why we are right and they are vile. We all know that. Our talents MUST be turned outward. We have our allies but there are as you say potentially billions of other allies. They aren't going to be turned by a substack article whose subscribers are 99 percent committed Zionists.
First, a correction. The Qatar number being cited is wrong. It's not $40 billion spent since 2010. It's $400 billion. Read that again. Four hundred billion dollars deliberately and systematically deployed to purchase American universities, think tanks, media influence, political access, and cultural narrative. The Free Press documented it. The number matters because it reframes everything—including what an adequate response actually looks like.
Which brings us to the $1 billion proposal.
With respect to Ronald Lauder—a great man and a genuine lifelong fighter for the Jewish people—suggesting $1 billion as an answer to $400 billion isn't bold. It's naiveté. That's not a strategy. That's a rounding error on Qatar's spreadsheet.
And then there's the centralization question. We have nearly 13,000 American Jewish nonprofits in the United States alone, all pulling in different directions, all protecting their own turf, all answering to their own donor bases. That's not a network. That's chaos with a tax exemption.
Nobody is suggesting—or expecting—that 13,000 organizations suddenly merge and sing from the same songbook. That's fantasy. But a governing body. A unified strategic direction. A shared resource pool with coordinated deployment. That is not fantasy—that is basic organizational competence, and it's exactly what we lack and exactly what our enemies have.
Qatar doesn't have thousands of competing foundations arguing over messaging. They have a sovereign wealth fund, a strategy, and a chain of command.
Meanwhile our organizations are fiefdoms. Run by executives more focused on their seat at the right dinner table than on actually winning. They network with elites. They attend the galas. They collect the honorary degrees. And we write the checks—out of guilt—because deep down we know we aren't doing anything ourselves either.
The book Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership documented it before October 7th made it undeniable. The ADL. The AJC. The Federations. Sitting on billions. Holding galas. Issuing statements. And failing at the one job that actually matters—defending the Jewish people and the Jewish state in the court of public opinion and in the halls of power.
And yet we are not without assets. We have the expertise. We have the people. We have world-class cyber capability and some of the most sophisticated communicators, entrepreneurs, and operators on the planet. The talent exists. The resources exist. The infrastructure exists.
Consider this: we were out-PRed. By Palestinian terrorists. We—the people who wrote the Bible. Who gave the world the concept of a benevolent singular God. Who built the moral architecture that Western civilization stands on. We lost the communications war to people who specialize in choreographed victimhood and have a $400 billion state sponsor behind them.
That humiliation should be clarifying.
The answer is not another organization. It is not another report, another committee, another gala, or another well-produced PowerPoint sitting on someone's laptop for two and a half years. The answer is coordination. A governing body—not to merge or control every Jewish organization, but to align resources, set strategic direction, and deploy unified force where it is needed.
Unification of all organizations is not going to happen. Nobody should waste energy on that fantasy. But connection—shared resources, shared intelligence, shared direction—is entirely achievable. It is what any serious fighting force does. And that is what this moment demands.
We are not too late. The talent is here. The money is here. The technology is here. What's missing is the will to stop competing with each other long enough to fight the people who are actually trying to destroy us.
So what are we waiting for?
Here is the problem with your well intentioned and intelligent model. It will still result in "preaching to the choir". We don't need to spend money reinforcing Jews and others who are already on our side. The real challenge is to convert others towards our side. This can only be done using the "Qatar model". Look at Tucker Carlson. Totally "bought" by Qatar to the extent that he is now basically a well paid employee of Al- Jazeera. And it appears that he has introduced his friend Meghan Kelly to the same financial honeypot. She is more subtle about her "change of attitude" towards Israel than is Tucker "Qatarlson", but I am sure that this was part of her "contract' with the Al- Thani family of Doha, so she can continue to appear somewhat sophisticated. Basically what I am saying is that a certain part of this proposed Billion dollar campaign will need to go towards "influencing" certain people out so that non Jews who are sitting on the fence or presently on the other side of the narrative can be educated. Example: "Influencing" Joe Rogan to have some of our people on his podcast. That will reach millions who can be influenced in a pro Israeli/ pro Jewish direction. Then we must also "support" those non Jewish influencers out there who have large and growing audiences such as Erin Molan, the popular and almost universally loved Australian podcaster (formerly of Sky News). People watch her for her intelligence and wardrobe. She is very personable and believable. She loves to travel to Israel. Think "The Erin from Israel Show". Combining the beauty of the country with subtly introduced lessons such as the "Jewish Nakba" about how 850,000 ethnically cleansed Jews from Muslim countries never get the same attention as the so called " Palestinian Nakba." Alternate with "Erin goes on a date with an Israeli" episode. I believe she is a single mom. Whatever. Her influence may have a positive ripple effect orders of magnitude larger than Jewish influencers who are already preaching to the choir. There are many others. You get my drift. Qatar and the Soros family are not he only ones who can play this game.
Just wanted to add this Algemeiner article to the convo. Also, loved this piece and the ideas.
https://substack.com/@thealgemeiner/note/p-200357545?r=2q93jc&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Sounds great
Count me in. Ronald Lauder's speech at the 80th anniversary commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau was extremely powerful. I wrote a piece 2 weeks ago saying that Jewish Organizations must adapt. The legacy organizations are not the ones making a difference. It's ones like you and us 'accidental' writers since October 7 who have emerged. The Australian Jewish Organisation (AJA) is making headway for speaking up and calling out what we all think. I am now part of them. we need more of it. Get Ronald in touch with us!
"Judaism did not create these problems. Zionism did not create these problems."
and "For decades, anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives have been spreading . . ."
The assumption underlying these statements is that Zionism and Judaism are two completely distinct and separate categories.
The error lies the failure to recognize that Zionism has never just been the desire of the Jewish people for self-determination. That is political Zionism, one of many expressions it has taken over the centuries.
At root, Zionism is the achingly heartfelt longing expressed in Psalm 137 and repeated many times over by the Prophets — the longing to recover our ancestral homeland.
No one condemns the struggles of current ethno-nationalist peoples like the Irish or the Ukrainians for ownership over their traditional territory. However, they self-righteously denounce the right of only one other religeo-ethnic national peoples, the Jews, to their ancestral homeland. This is Jew-hatred pure and simple sanitized under the euphemism of anti-Zionism and wrapped in the self-righteous moral flag of anti-settler colonialism. Orwell would be proud.
"Most of it reaches people who already agree. Most of it is distributed through channels with limited influence over broader culture.
Meanwhile, our opponents have built decentralized systems."
Brilliant you have defined the problem with excellent concision.
Solution: " We [sh]ould [as in must] spend it building a decentralized global ecosystem."
"The objective should be simple: Build the largest, most sophisticated, most influential global network of Jewish and Israeli storytellers, creators, thinkers, entrepreneurs, educators, activists, entertainers, and community builders in history."
Yay!!! Right on bro.
If we substitute "ecosystems" for "media environment," we more precisley define where as well has how to focus our energies to combat the 30's-40's botoxed propaganda.
"The goal is rebuilding confidence. The goal is restoring identity."
And the goal must be to reverse the tide of Jewish assimilationism fueled by the 17th and 18th century philosophers who made Individualism the cornerstone of the European Enlightenment. It led directly to Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement where Jews enthusiastically abandoned their Jewish identity the better to integrate into the dominant culture.
We need to recharge the individual's sense of intimate belonging to an out and proud Peoplehood which sustains and nourishes us through a profound sense of meaningfulness and purpose. Thus armed, we can dive into the fray to assert our right as Jews to the same rights granted every other religious, ethnic, national peoples.
Can you send me a copy of your slide deck? My friend and I in Europe are looking for a way to start the resistance and would be happy to be a node in the decentralized network or get the ball rolling.
I truly hope this message gets through to Lauder and whoever else is going to lead this...ASAP.
Equally as frustrated with the fund raisers and inward looking Jewish communal organisations. With our combined assets we should not find ourselves on the back foot, even with the apparent US$400 billion investment by Qatar. The peoplehood who came up with the concept of kibbutz, Iron Dome, bleepers for Hezbollah are better than that. No more organisations that react rather than lead.