By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent
Make no mistake: Dr. Einat Wilf is on the forefront of an intellectual war to recapture the global zeitgeist of her home country, Israel, and wrench it back from those who’ve hijacked its image by using political epithets as their weapons, looking to ultimately destroy the Jewish State.
When the self-described Zionist and political liberal speaks to the 2014 StandWithUs Community Reception honoring Rabbi James Mirel at Town Hall on Dec. 14, Wilf, the senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute in Jerusalem and adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy will take aim at what she calls the “placard campaign” against Israel — those reliable phrases that appear at most anti-Israel events — Zionism equals colonialism, Zionism equals ethnic cleansing, Zionism equals apartheid, and Zionism equals genocide.
The former Knesset member for Israel’s Labor and Independent parties and former foreign policy adviser to Shimon Peres told the Jewish Sound that it’s a war the Jewish people have got to win.
“It is a nonviolent war waged for violent ends,” said Wilf, “and that is ultimately to turn Zionism and Israel into something that is so associated with the greatest evil in the world that it almost becomes imperative that it no longer exists.”
Wilf is looking to enlist dedicated storytellers to recover the Israel’s narrative, both its history and the role of Zionism in it.
“I try to bring it back to the issues, to tell the story,” she said, “but I also talk about what I call the IIDF, the Israeli Intellectual Defense Forces. We will need those who will ‘self-enlist’ and turn themselves into intellectual warriors.”
As she speaks around the world, Wilf is trying to wake up the Jewish community and set the record straight by stressing that the images and words that dominate the media are not just “bad Israeli P.R.”
“The danger is real, and people are correct to be worried,” said Wilf, “which is why we need to fight back and which is why we will win. We will win because we have no choice.”
StandWithUs regional director Rob Jacobs told the Jewish Sound that Wilf is the right speaker at the right moment because her warning echoes the organization’s mission.
“Dr. Wilf’s message is that we cannot just ignore these anti-Israel campaigns,” wrote Jacobs in an email. “Whether they’re protests downtown, bus and billboard ads, over-the-top anti-Israel speakers talking on campuses or at churches, or divestment campaigns at UW, a lie repeated often enough without a response becomes someone’s truth.”
Wilf’s mission and her work’s purpose are to expose the false narrative that she said now overlays the original Zionist history. According to Wilf, it goes like this:
“There was a Holocaust,” she said, “the Europeans failed to annihilate all the Jews, so they took the leftover Jews and threw them in some random piece of land in the empires they controlled, and because it happened to be in an area where there happened to be an independent and prosperous state of Palestine, the Jews went from victims to perpetrators, occupied that state, drove the Arabs out and have been occupying it ever since for their own pleasure. That’s the dominant story today.”
At the same time, explained Wilf, Jews need to tell what she has coined “the big story.”
“No one threw them there,” she said. “It’s not a random piece of land. How many people know that Zionism is a secular movement of people who wanted to take fate into their own hands, who looked to finally liberate the Jewish people and have self-determination and sovereignty, and do it in their ancient homeland? It’s a piece of land to which they have an historic connection which has shaped their identity.”
The lack of knowledge about Israel’s history, both ancient and modern, is a problem among young adults, said Wilf, but is not limited to them. People of all ages and even those who claim they know a lot about Israel, she said, need to review the basics.
“We’ve taken for granted that Jews will support Israel,” said Jacobs, “and, too often, the only things they hear about Israel in our broader community and within our Jewish community, including at our synagogues, is what we would like to “fix” in Israel.
“Unless we provide the connection,” he continued, “unless we put the anti-Israel campaign’s claims into context, and unless we work to show the next generation why they should be emotionally connected to Israel, they too often buy into the negative imagery and are embarrassed by their connection as Jews to Israel.”
If you go: StandWithUs Northwest’s 2014 annual community reception takes place Sunday, December 14 at 6 p.m. at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., Seattle. Kosher, Israeli-style hors d‘oeuvres and wines served. $36. Formal program begins at 7 p.m. For tickets, visit www.standwithus.com/ppsc/northwest_gala_2014.asp.