Last week, mayors and municipal leaders from 15 countries gathered in Jerusalem for the 34th International Mayors Conference, organized by the American Jewish Congress (AJC) and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The five-day trip, taking place across Israel, provided the more than 20 members of the US delegation with the chance to engage in civil diplomacy, discuss shared urban challenges, and take a look at Israel’s latest technical innovations.
For Dan Cohen, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Leeds in the UK, the experience proved transformative. Leading a city of 800,000 residents with a £75 billion local economy, Cohen joined mayors from Europe, Africa, the United States, and Central America.
“It’s really been an international mayor’s conference,” Cohen told The Jerusalem Post, describing how the AJC brings mayors “with this really beautiful idea of doing two things. One, strengthening international cooperation between cities – discussing common challenges, building partnerships, things that can benefit your local community, your local city – but doing that in Israel, in this modern, dynamic, vibrant country.”
The impact on participants proved immediate and profound. Cohen recounted the transformation of the mayor of Entebbe, Uganda, who arrived with preconceptions shaped by mainstream media coverage. The mayor, who has connections to incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani through shared Ugandan heritage, experienced a dramatic shift in perspective.
'You’ve turned me from a pessimist into an ambassador'
“As we were leaving Jerusalem, before we’d even gotten to Tel Aviv, he goes, ‘Let me tell you, you’ve changed me. You have changed me wholly and completely,’” Cohen recalled. “He said: ‘I am distraught,’ is the word he used, ‘to learn that the narrative I have been given is just not true.’ He goes, ‘You’ve turned me from a pessimist into an ambassador.’”
AJC President Daniel Rosen emphasized to the Post that this reaction was reflective of a broader pattern among participants, many of whom only experience Israel through the international media.
“I think many of the mayors, even some of the ones from the bigger cities, when I asked them to reflect backwards, they were very clear that the stories that they are hearing on social media, and some of the press, do not tell the true story,” Rosen explained.
“When we bring people here, our view is ‘Let’s show them the real facts and let them decide what they want to take from it.’”
One mayor from a larger city told Rosen that “Israel’s got to do a better job telling its story. It’s such a special place inside, but it’s not using public diplomacy well enough to tell the story on the outside.”
The AJC is a 100-year-plus-old organization founded on fighting all forms of hatred by being active in the political sphere, building bridges with other communities, and empowering young people.
“The reason we bring mayors is that they are the ones who touch the lives of people, their citizens,” Rosen said. “They understand how to get the buses rolling and understand what technology really means for the lives of their citizens.”
One of the conference’s aims was to showcase Israel’s unique approach to technological development, an innovation driven by necessity.
Over the five days, participants were exposed to what Cohen described as “some of Israel’s most advanced tech firms, particularly within the AI space,” in examining community safety, smart mobility, and citizen services, while meeting with senior political leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
One presentation that particularly resonated with Cohen featured an AI-powered emergency municipal response system. “It takes streams of information, and making sure that your response room is getting good information at the right time in the right place was a major challenge,” Cohen explained.
The system integrates camera feeds, drones, traffic data, social media, and news reporting. “It essentially builds a picture of exactly what is happening on the ground, what people’s movements look like,” providing incident responders with comprehensive real-time data.
For Leeds, a city that experienced major flooding several years ago, such technology could offer practical solutions to any future crisis.
In Sderot, a city that has experienced regular rocket attacks and was directly invaded on October 7, mayors witnessed innovation developed under the most challenging circumstances. Rosen highlighted how the city’s innovation center created “AI technology for alert systems, explaining how it takes 15 seconds for people to get to rocket shelters. How do you do that quickly, efficiently?”
Cohen observed that “the tragedy is that Israel has become world-leading at dealing with major challenges that if any other city had to deal with it in the world, there would be the most phenomenal pushback from residents.”
As Cohen noted, “Heaven forfend there was – and let’s face it, we know from our neighbors in Manchester, there tragically can be terrorist attacks in our city – that you’ve got the resilience.”
Beyond Israeli innovation, the conference facilitated crucial city-to-city connections.
Leeds, home to over 3,000 tech companies with Microsoft about to open a major campus, aims to grow its economy by 30% and create over 100,000 new jobs in the next decade. Cohen told the Post that these international connections, facilitated by the AJC conference, offered mutual benefits.
“Every city going has had something that we can learn, either in terms of expertise from Israel, that we can look to bring in, or something that we can export in terms of our expertise in our particular area of specialism,” he explained.
The roster of past participants helps highlight the conference’s significance. As Rosen said, past attendees have included future leaders of Taiwan, El Salvador, Argentina, and Italy, all of whom have helped build Israel’s reputation abroad amongst the highest echelons of political power.
Rosen also emphasized what he called “the special sauce of Israel,” its young people. “These mayors saw young kids, starting from teenagers, who are pitching ideas, Jewish kids, Muslim kids, Bedouin kids, pitching ideas of AI.”
The most emotionally challenging part of the 2025 conference involved visits to sites affected by the October 7 attacks. For the first time since the war began, the AJC brought mayors to the Supernova music festival site and Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
“[The visit] was an incredibly tough day for people,” Cohen said. “It’s like a raw wound. And we felt the raw wound. It was heartbreaking.”
As a father of daughters aged 18 and 19, Cohen found the experience particularly visceral. “[My daughters] could and absolutely might have been at something like Nova,” he reflected.
At Kfar Aza, a young woman who grew up in the kibbutz and lost multiple family members guided the delegation through destroyed homes. Cohen described her showing them houses where entire families were murdered.
Rosen agreed that this was likely the most emotional voyage the organization has ever conducted. “I don’t think there was as emotional a trip as we’ve had,” he said, observing that participants’ faces revealed “a deeper understanding of the pain that Israel has gone through over the last two years.”
Yet even in Sderot, the message remained hopeful. Cohen recalled the mayor’s words when he told the delegation, “We want to build a future not of conflict, but of creativity and coexistence... We are going to be an international center for resilience.”
For Cohen, who has visited Israel many times, the trip proved uniquely powerful. “It’s opened my eyes,” he said. “For me, it summarizes Israel’s approach, and every mayor has said this essentially... This is how the country is building back. Not with conflict, but creativity, coexistence, start-ups – using the power of AI to benefit our residents in our own cities.”
“I think after the journey that we took them on, they have a much bigger appreciation for Israel,” Rosen said. “We, as leaders in the Jewish community, need to understand that we need to start at the basics.”
As participants returned home and to their cities, they carried with them a new understanding of Israel’s resilience and its innovation.