As Jewish communal organizations throughout the U.S. struggle to maintain membership levels and hefty annual budgets, a rapidly growing group with the energy of a well-funded Israeli start-up is challenging the Jewish communal world and its relationship to the state of Israel.

Earlier this month, the Israeli-American Council (IAC) hosted its fourth annual national conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center—the D.C. venue known well to many pro-Israel Jewish and Christian advocates for hosting the larger annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conferences. While IAC’s 2,700 participants are dwarfed by the numbers that attend the AIPAC and CUFI gatherings, it is IAC’s rapid growth that has major Jewish organizations and philanthropists, as well as the Israeli government, taking notice.

IAC caters to the nearly 1-million-strong population of Israelis that have emigrated to the U.S.—many of them in the 1990s. It is a population that came to America primarily seeking financial opportunities, but like many immigrant communities, the majority of Israelis living in the U.S. never stopped speaking their native language, Hebrew, and never stopped loving their mother country.

For the Israeli-born co-founder and chairman of IAC, Adam Milstein, the organization seeks to take advantage of the best qualities that Israelis have to offer, and use them to strengthen the Israeli-American relationship.

“The focus of this organization and this convention is about the identity of the Israeli community living in the United States. Most of the lectures are about our identity, what is unique about us, all the benefits we are giving to the American people, to the American economy,” Milstein told JNS.org.

Regarding IAC’s rapid growth, Milstein said, “I think we have two secrets. One is our character, our ‘Israeliness,’ which means that we are very similar to the character of the people in Israel.  We have the same culture, we have the same language. We are proud Jews. We have special values of family and friendship, and we are willing to stand up for each other.”

“The second thing that is unique about us is our love for the state of Israel,” said Milstein. “We are not only accepting Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, but we view Israel as the source of our history, the source of our culture and the source of our strength. And we accept and support Israel without any preconditions.”

During the past several years, members of the American Jewish community have become increasingly critical of Israeli policies. This past year, U.S. Jewry has taken issue with Israeli social and domestic policies as they relate to issues of religious observance.

In particular, the Israeli government’s insistence on only officially recognizing conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis, and the government’s unwillingness to change the access point to an egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall plaza, have recently become wedge issues for many Jewish Americans.

The American Jewish community may well be at a crossroads with the state of Israel, and detractors of Israeli policies in America—including Jewish communal leaders and clergy—tend to be vocal with their criticism. The growing rift is an issue that both the state of Israel and the U.S. Jewish communal structure are struggling to solve.

“It is very important to understand. Any organization that is taking Israel, and instead of making Israel the glue is making it the wedge, they are losing everything. Basically, they are making us fight each other, and weakening the Jewish community. By doing that, they are actually increasing anti-Semitism,” Milstein said.

Referring to the open dialogue, where many Jewish organizations suggest that criticizing Israel is actually a form of support, Milstein contends, “Once you allow Israeli detractors into your big tent or into your small tent, it’s over.”

“What we believe as an organization is exactly the antidote,” Milstein counters. “What we believe is that Israel is in our heart. Israel is not perfect, and nobody claims that it is, but we support the state of Israel officially. We encourage, we cherish the state of Israel, and we believe the source of power of the Jewish people is the state of Israel.”

Due to this unflinching support, the IAC has been surprised to see growth also come from Jewish Americans who were not born in Israel.

“We are able now to attract a lot of Jewish Americans,” said Milstein. “We are the pro-Israel family community in the United States. We welcome anyone who is pro-Israel into our home.”

The American Jewish community has seen stagnating growth, and rampant assimilation, while the Israeli Jewish community is growing rapidly due to low intermarriage rates, exceptionally high birthrates and immigration from Jewish communities around the world—which outpaces the emigration that has made the IAC possible.

Now, just 70 years after the creation of the fledgling state of Israel, there are two Jewish strongholds with similar populations. It is a historical moment that neither the Israeli nor American Jewish communities anticipated coming so quickly, and it has arrived with some tension. Israel’s government has had a difficult time of late explaining and bridging the growing gaps between American and Israeli Jewry.

Sam Grundwerg, Israel’s consul general to Los Angeles, told JNS.org that the IAC is “ensuring that the Israel-American alliance will continue to thrive.”

Grundwerg was a participant on a panel at the IAC conference specifically geared toward bridging the gaps between Jews in Israel and the diaspora. A week later, the consulate co-hosted an event with IAC, featuring an address by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

Noting that the IAC “provides important programs” and “keeps the community connected with Israel,” Grundwerg said that the organization “is extremely instrumental to the Israeli-American community nationwide.”

Yet IAC is also pushing its members to participate in the existing Jewish communal structure, in the hopes that the “Israeliness” of IAC participants will positively impact their American-born neighbors.

“We encourage our members to get involved in the federations, in the JCCs, in the schools, in national organizations,” Milstein said. “We have people that are on the board of their federations, we have people that are on the board of Birthright. We definitely encourage synergy in Jewish life and Jewish institutions, with us and with everybody else.”

At the annual conference’s opening plenary, IAC co-founder and CEO Shoham Nicolet told the audience, “I see the power of Israeliness all over the United States of America and in everything the IAC does. We came all the way to DC not to discuss gaps, but to go back to the basics of togetherness. We are here to demonstrate what one family looks like, which transcends religious denomination, political affiliation, and nationality.”

Milstein said of the conference’s growing participation, “You can see the warmth.  Everyone you meet here, they hug you, they say, ‘It’s so great to be here.’ You don’t see this type of excitement and electricity from the Jewish American community.”

Original article in JNS

Radical Muslims are focused on destroying and delegitimizing Israel – the historic homeland of the Jewish People — and they fan the flames of antisemitism wherever they can.

Vicious antisemitism has long been present on the radical Right. It has been growing also on the radical Left. And it’s a cornerstone of radical Muslim movements. Although these three sources of antisemitism in our world today come from very different traditions, they are increasingly sharing ideas and tactics, reinforcing a wave of hate, bigotry, and racism.

In recent years, North America has joined Europe to witness a growing alliance between radical Muslims and radical leftists. Radical Muslims stone women, execute gays, trample on minority and human rights and abhor feminism. On paper, the far Left should be appalled by this ideology, but these unlikely allies happily cast aside their differences because they share a common hatred for Western influence in the world, pluralistic nationalism, freedom of speech, tolerance, and vile antisemitism.

How does the radical Left turn a blind eye to radical Islam’s very bigoted ideas, such as its treatment of women and minorities? How can it ignore radical Muslims’ conviction as to the superiority of Islamic morals and culture? It infantilizes Muslims and portrays Islam as a monolithic block. In doing so, it fails to distinguish between mainstream Muslims and radicals, and tokenizes them as a “people oppressed by the West.”

In the radical Left’s warped and ahistorical worldview, Israel is a colonialist oppressor targeting Muslims and – straight from the Elders of Zion itself – Jews are an all-powerful group who are at fault for every problem in the Middle East and in the world.

This alliance is typified by political activist Linda Sarsour, one of the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, who is now hailed on the Left as a feminist leader, despite her admiration for the vile misogyny of Sharia law. She called a Jewish journalist a member of the antisemitic alt-right. She opened her “jihad against Trump” speech by thanking Siraj Wajjah, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She has praised Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women. Yet, she is held up as a role model for women on the Left.

And this alliance is growing. Last month, leftist students at Tufts University published a “Disorientation Guide,” which attacked the university’s Hillel and called Israel a “white supremacist” state. It exposed the depth of antisemitism among leftists on college campuses and demonstrated how these groups use the same rhetoric as radical Muslim groups that call Israel a colonial occupier. One of the guide’s writers claimed this was not antisemitic because she was Jewish.

A similar guide at New York University myopically condemns Israel, referencing the country 55 times – more than the number of references to “Trump,” “alt-right,” “racism,” “fascism,” “white supremacy” and “socialism” combined.

Two recent rally events in Chicago further illustrate this trend: one, the Chicago Dyke March earlier this year – an event created to celebrate the LGBT community – expelled three people for having Stars of David on their pride flags, combining two symbols central to their identity. A few months later, at the Chicago SlutWalk – an event intended to oppose sexual assault – Zionists who marched were derided for trying to participate and condemned by organizers. The organizers then encouraged the walkers to attend a speech by Rasmea Odeh – a Palestinian terrorist convicted of killing two Jewish students, still believes her actions were justified and who was recently deported from the US.

This strange allegiance between Islamic radicals and radical leftists was famously on display during the Iranian revolution of the late Seventies – where the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the moderate shah with the support of leftists and Islamists, and in turn was quick to empower the radical Muslims and decimate the radical Left.

The 3,000-old Jewish population of Iran, some 100,000 Jews, could sense the inherent antisemitism of the radical leftists and their hatred of the West, before and during the Iranian revolution and emigrated in large numbers as fast as they could – mostly to the US and Israel.

Just as the far Left has a history of vilifying the nation-state of the Jewish People (and the Jews who support it), the Right has colluded with radical Muslims to spread its pure hatred of Jews and the desire to brutally subjugate – or murder – the Jewish People.

Radical Islamic nationalists also have a history of collaborating with the Right when they can – the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem told Adolf Hitler that Germans and Arabs have the same enemies – “the English, the Jews, and the Communists” – and the prime minister of Iraq initiated the Farhud, a horrific pogrom, under Nazi influence and allegiance. Today, the rhetoric of neo-Nazis is rife with conspiracy theories and centuries-old stereotypes about blood libel, and echoes the rhetoric of radical Islamist terrorists – and even radical Muslims.

What’s most concerning about the rise of antisemitism is how the ideology has entered the mainstream.

For instance, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders recently campaigned for UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has worked closely with antisemitic conspiracy theorist Paul Eisen, author of a blog titled “My Life as a Holocaust Denier.” Sanders wouldn’t campaign for a socialist who was a sexist, a racist, a homophobe, or Islamophobe, but he was willing to campaign for an antisemite because leftist organizations encourage antisemitism.

Radical Muslims are focused on destroying and delegitimizing Israel – the historic homeland of the Jewish People — and they fan the flames of antisemitism wherever they can to reach that goal – whether among those working to stop racism in present-day America or working to grab power in 1940s Iraq, or boycotting Israel through the BDS movement. By allying with the radical Left, they are building a coalition that seeks to destroy Western values of freedom, democracy, and tolerance – the foundational principles of America and of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

The growth of this alliance and the mainstreaming of antisemitic leftism – especially on college campuses – threatens not only our way of life in America but the future of the Jewish People around the world.

The author is an Israeli-American philanthropist, national chairman of the Israeli-American Council, real estate entrepreneur and president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.

Originally published to the Jerusalem Post.