Malcolm in the middle

‘There’s a general condemnation of the West that you hear in many places: Is America withdrawing, is the West withdrawing?’

For 30 years, Malcolm Hoenlein has run the American Jewish community’s most influential organization. He meets with presidents and prime ministers, security chiefs and business leaders, kings and princes. In a rare, lengthy and outspoken interview, he sets out his world view

BY DAVID HOROVITZ, TOI

For five days at Jerusalem’s Inbal Hotel last week, a parade of Israel’s most prominent politicians, analysts, defense heads, high-tech innovators and more took their turns to address a room filled with over 100 American Jewish leaders from the 52 member groups and the Leadership Council of the grandly titled Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

The American leaders, for whom this was a 42nd such consecutive annual gathering, came to Israel directly from Turkey and Egypt, where they were hosted in turn by presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

Presiding over the “leadership mission,” as he has been presiding over the Conference for the past 30 years, was Malcolm Hoenlein, its executive vice chairman. A fast-talking, Orthodox, no-nonsense Philadelphia native, former Soviet Jewry activist and self-styled “activist executive,” Hoenlein is an endlessly fascinating interviewee, forever throwing out tantalizing tidbits of information about meetings with presidents and prime ministers and security chiefs and kings. He seems to have met most everyone — including Syria’s Bashar Assad — and been most everywhere — though not Iran. If Benjamin Netanyahu is Time magazine’s king of Israel, then Hoenlein is, at the very least, Mr. American Jewry, arguably the most influential American Jew in the world (until or unless Bernie Sanders says different). He’s a key bridge between Israel and the American Jewish leadership; he’s also been a central player in relations between US administrations and Israel. He’s able to meet with world leaders who have no ties with Israel, some of whom doubtless see him, too, as an entrée to American corridors of power.

Comfortable in the company of Netanyahu, Hoenlein has shared many of the prime minister’s reservations about the Obama administration-led deal with Iran on its nuclear program. In this interview, Hoenlein also clearly empathizes with his various unnamed interlocutors in this part of the world who feel that the US-led West has gone soft and is failing to tackle terrorism and terror-supporting regimes effectively. His umbrella organization, which includes Americans for Peace Now but not J Street, is widely regarded as small c conservative. But he says nothing about his personal politics; to do so would only have closed some of those innumerable doors thrown open to him in the US, Israel, this region and worldwide.

The Times of Israel spoke to Hoenlein in the Inbal as last week’s conference was in full swing. The conversation, frequently interrupted by phone calls and colleagues coming over to say hello, was marked by his sense of frustration at a free world that he feels is still reluctant to internalize the scope of the threat posed by Islamist extremism and violence. So much of the terrorism that is afflicting the West was “predictable,” he says more than once. So much could have been tackled earlier, had the common sense and political will been there. If there was a central message in his cry of gevalt over Islamic State brutality, Iranian global ambition, and other such dangers, it was: Open your ears. “Dictators tell the truth,” he said. “They tell you what they’re going to do; we just don’t listen.”

The Times of Israel: If you look at these Islamic State videos, they are horrifying. You immediately realize that they are meant to deter enemies. But they’re not just a deterrent, correct?

Malcolm Hoenlein: It’s recruitment. They discovered that the more extreme, the more appeal. The major recruitment tool today — not just by Islamic State; others are copying — is engagement in these horrendous acts that by every standard should revolt people, should drive them away. Some young people find it an attraction.

Toulouse terrorist Mohamed Merah (photo credit: AP/France 2)
Toulouse terrorist Mohamed Merah (photo credit: AP/France 2)

You actually see the implementation of a death cult. But it evidently has an appeal to some western minds, to Europeans, to Canadians, to Americans, to others. Young women. Young men. Many of them not from poverty-stricken families, but from middle class families.

A doctor from Medicins sans Frontiers one time called me — he was working in Syria. He told me about this influx of young French guys, and they called themselves Mohammed Merah fighters. Now Mohammed Merah [who gunned down three Jewish children and a teacher in Toulouse in 2012] becomes a model? This is not a guy who engaged in a military act, a war hero, protecting people, did something amazing that would make him a hero. He murdered little children. And three hundred guys find that a motivation to go to Syria?

CONTINUE