Ofir Akunis’s entry into New York this week as Israel’s new consul general will be a baptism by fire, as he arrives in a city rocked by anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war, particularly on the campuses of Columbia and New York University.
“It’s a wake-up call,” said Akunis, a veteran Likud politician who has left his job as Science and Technology minister to take up his first diplomatic post in a city with the highest number of Jews in the United States and the world.
For Akunis, who was born in Tel Aviv and is of mixed Jewish Greek and Polish heritage, his first experience living in the United States will place him literally in the crosshairs of rising American antisemitism.
The challenges of US antisemitism awaiting Ofir Akunis in New York
He leaves a country that has undergone waves of attacks and threats in 2023 and 2024, weakened first by intense internal division over the government’s judicial reform program before facing, since October 7, a physical existential battle against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
He will arrive in a city where US Jews felt most at home in the US but now view themselves as under assault from antisemitism fueled by the Gaza war. Those targeting American Jews have supported Hamas despite its massacre of 1,200 people and seizure of 253 hostages on October 7, arguing that Jews globally are complicit in the “genocide” of Palestinians.
Among the videos circulating on social media in the past days, one showed anti-Israel protesters waving a large Palestinian flag and cursing the Jewish state. “We are seeing the pictures from Columbia’s campus,” said a stunned Akunis.
The issue here, he stressed, is not free speech but rather incitement to violence with expressions that he called “the most extreme messages against Israel and against the United States.”
“We all support democracy. But we do not support the fact that people shout ‘Death to America,’ and ‘Death to Israel,” Akunis said as he described a situation in which pro-Palestinian protestors in New York have called for an intifada and chanted about bombing Tel Aviv.
He was particularly struck by the experience of Israeli Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia. The university deactivated his ID last week to prevent him from entering and holding a pro-Israeli protest in a campus building.
“We just want to be Jewish in public, let us in,” Davidai said in a statement to cameras which caught the moment his ID failed to work last Tuesday.
It’s been surprising, Akunis said, that such a venerable US educational institution has elements of its campus body that reflect the most extreme messages against Israel and the United States.
“It’s a wake-up call to the whole Western world. My suggestion is not to behave like they did in the 1930s,” Akunis said, as he referenced the appeasement diplomacy against the growing Nazi threat.
He called on the US political and academic leadership to issue a strong response to such violent calls against Jews and Israelis.
“I’m calling from here” for the academic and American leadership to take a strong stand against such hatred and to enforce the law, he said.
“I want them to defend the Jewish and Israeli students and to condemn the violence and to stop it, now, before it will be too late.”
The response must be “strong and loud” with an understanding that what is happening is about antisemitism and not about Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Even before the events in Columbia, Akunis understood that dealing with the antisemitic backlash to the war by helping spread Israel’s “truth” to a divided community would be one of his central tasks in which he would stand firm, like an iron wall on behalf of the state.
It’s a stand that will be made particularly challenging because, much like one of his predecessors Yad Vashem directorate chair Dani Dayan, who held the consul general post from 2016-2022, Akunis’ right-wing beliefs put him at odds with many in the New York Jewish community and in the larger American Jewish one, that oppose the politics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Akunis, who began his political life as a media advisor and spokesperson for the Likud party and Netanyahu himself, is closely aligned with the prime minister’s policies, particularly as they relate to judicial reform and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – two contentious issues for many New York Jews.
He has been, in the past, a strong opponent of Palestinian statehood and a vocal proponent of the application of Israeli sovereignty to Area C of the West Bank, which he refers to as Judea and Samaria in all his political speeches on the topic.
His immediate predecessor, Asaf Zamir, who has been affiliated with Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s former Blue and White party, was a critic of Netanyahu’s government, resigning in March 2023, just months after its creation, to protest its judicial reform plan.
During the first nine months of 2023, New York was a central arena for protests against government ministers and coalition members, over judicial reform. Many liberal Jews in the Northeast in general and New York in particular vehemently opposed the reform, which they feared would destroy Israeli democracy.
Akunis said that he did not believe his support of judicial change would affect his ability to succeed in the post, now vacant for over a year, nor, he said, was it even relevant.
“All of us – me, the government, and the opposition, and all [those involved in] public discourse in Israel – have a duty to change how we talk and argue” to prevent the kind of deep divisions within society that existed before the war.
The judicial reform itself will not continue, he said, and in any case, his focus will be to speak to the “broadest possible consensus” amongst the Jewish communities – that Israel was not the aggressor in the current war and is one of the world’s forces of good.
“WE DIDN’T start the fire,” Akunis said, explaining that Hamas broke the ceasefire under which an uneasy calm had existed.
“That is the basis” of every conversation about this war, he said.
Hamas is the one that cut through Israel’s security fence protecting its border, he explained. “Israel is defending itself” against the most cruel and vicious attack against Jews since the Holocaust and against Israel in the history of the state, he said.
Still, as a sign of how difficult it might be to put forward this argument to the American-Jewish community and to rally it around the government’s policies, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Jewish Democrat representing New York, took to the Senate floor in March calling for Netanyahu to be replaced because he believed he was a danger to the state of Israel.
“I respect the decision of the American public” when they chose their elected officials “and I expect that American elected politicians would do likewise,” he said.
There has always been a strong bi-partisan bond between the US and Israel, including that the Jewish state is the most moderate democracy in the Middle East, Akunis said.
“Tactical disagreements have occurred and will occur,” he stated.
On the large things, there is an agreement, including on the necessity of destroying Hamas in Gaza.
“Is there a disagreement on how to do it? Yes, but among friends there are disagreements at times.” The present and past history of US-Israel relations are filled with such disputes, he said.
But in the next election, the Israeli public will decide who its leaders will be, such as was done in February 1949, and that is how it was in November 2022. “This will be how it will be moving forward,” Akunis said.
“Governments here are chosen at the ballot box, that is how it happens here and that it happens in any democracy.”
When Israel battles Hamas, it is doing so not just to ensure its own survival but also that of Western democracies that are engaged in a global battle against terror, he said as he linked the October 7 attack with the Al-Qaida destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, both in scope and impact.
The US responded militarily to destroy Al-Qaida, just as Israel is doing against Hamas, he stated.
The global nature of Israel’s war against Hamas, from its existential necessity for the state of Israel, has created an opportunity to help reunify the Jewish people around the issue of Israel, he explained.
“I think October 7 united American Jewish communities who put aside decades-old divisions to stand with Israel.” He pointed to the large showing at the pro-Israel rally in Washington in November.
“One can argue, I am not against criticism, but under no circumstances can we resort back to how it was expressed until October 6,” Akunis said.
“I am a big believer in the national unity of the Jewish people.”
Israel needs to do a better job of presenting its side in the war, with the hope that this will lower the animosity towards Jews, he said. With his new role in New York, he will be part of building international public support for the country among Jews and non-Jews.
One has to “repeat, repeat, repeat the truth,” he said, stressing that he vehemently rejected the “false accusations” against Israel of genocide and starvation” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Akunis said he would stand strong against all such “lies.”
“They [Palestinians in Gaza] came with fuel, to light live people on fire” to say nothing of the rape of their victims, particularly at the Nova music festival, he said.
Hamas “broke all the rules” here, he said. “And people are arguing with us about our defensive actions.”
“The truth is that Hamas came to carry out barbaric acts,” he said.
“Why do I have to apologize when dealing with an organization, Hamas, that calls for Israel’s destruction and the establishment of a Muslim statehood in the first section of its charter?”
One of the central lessons from World War II has to be that when someone says “they want to kill all the Jews, you’d better believe him,” Akunis stated.
“The more you reflect the truth about the State of Israel, and the facts and not the lies,” the more pro-Israel sentiment and less antisemitism there will be, he said.
“I am setting out on this mission as a Jew, a Zionist, and an Israeli, in that order. Zionism comes from Judaism, and being Israeli comes from Zionism, and that is the correct order,” Akunis said.
He will be open, he said, to all conversation, including with younger American Jews who are especially critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, concerned in particular by the high Palestinian casualty count and reports by United Nations and US officials of starvation in Gaza.
Hamas has reported that over 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war. Israel has said that over 13,000 of those were combatants.
“There is truth and fact. If you talk to populations that unfortunately do not always have all of the facts in front of them, and you reflect to them the most basic facts both about October 7 and events in our region before October 7 – I will try to convince them as much as possible,” he said, stressing also that he will meet with all denominations of Jews.
“Any group, any denomination that supports and stands on Israel’s side, especially at this time, there will be very deep and thorough discourse, they will come to me, I will come to them... I see this as a central part of my mission, to bring about the broadest possible unity” among Jewish Americans and Israeli expats, Akunis said.
“If at the end of my term I can say that I was able to create unity as much as possible, and decrease arguments between Jewish communities, then I can say that by and large I succeeded in my role.”
“I THINK that justice is on our side, we are the good that needs to defeat evil, we are the speakers of truth who need to defeat falsehoods,” he said, adding that in the short term, he planned to focus on the goals of the war which nearly all Jews support – bringing back the hostages and defeating Hamas.
Akunis said that the dilemma between the wish to bring back the hostages at any price, versus the necessity of defeating Hamas was “very difficult,” which he felt most acutely during meetings with families of hostages.
“I have a son in the army and a daughter who is supposed to join the army in the coming months,” he said.
“I told them that I viewed their son as my own, and their daughter as my own, this is an insurmountable human tragedy and I suggest that no one attempt to place himself in the shoes of the parents of the hostages.
“I met them, I hugged them, and I want to tell you something – I also cried with them,” Akunis said. He added that he visited some 60 bereaved families and attended many funerals as the representative of the government.
The efforts to bring back the hostages – both those who are alive and dead – have not ceased for a minute and he will continue to work towards this goal, he said.
He was hesitant, within the context of his new role, to comment on foreign policies, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the “day after” for Gaza, short of the destruction of Hamas and the return of the hostages.
“Hamas won’t be in Gaza,” he stated.
Akunis said he was a strong supporter of the multi-partisan Israeli vote in the Knesset against unilateral Palestinian statehood and in support of dialogue with the Palestinians, which was approved by 99 out of 120 members of parliament.
“Anything that happens must be done through dialogue,” he said, adding that it was not even clear the Palestinians would want to negotiate with Israel and might refuse to do as they had done in the past.
“You want to come, you want to talk, you will put your idea on the table, we will put down our ideas,” he said, but once this is clear, nothing will happen “unilaterally.”
As a former regional cooperation minister, Akunis said, he has long been in favor of Israeli peace treaties with its neighbors and supported the 2020 Abraham Accords that led to normalization agreements with four Arab countries.
“I am a big supporter of the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties,” he said, adding that he welcomed any peace treaty with the Arab world.
The Middle East has the potential to be an important economic hub linking India and the Far East with Europe and is in everyone’s interest to put aside the enmity so they can participate together in the regional economic benefits, Akunis explained.
Akunis blessed and welcomed, he said, all initiatives for peace, adding that “This is the prayer of the Jewish people.”■