Malcolm Hoenlein is the executive vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Hoenlein, 81, has been involved in US politics since the 1950s, when he joined the presidential campaign of Adlai Stevenson, who lost to Dwight Eisenhower. In those years he experienced a significant amount of antisemitism, and in recent years he has warned that what happened in Europe would eventually happen in the US. His warning has, unfortunately, come true.
Video: Malcolm Hoenlein at the Israel Hayom summit
"For the past twenty years I have been warning about this trend, yet even now people do not want to confront reality. The problem is that we lack a systemic and comprehensive approach to the community. More than two hundred organizations have been founded in the past two years to fight antisemitism and they have received massive funding, but the truth is that we win a few battles yet we are losing the war. There is no coordinated financial effort, and it is time for the community and its leaders to work together. The elections in New York showed what is really at stake. There are now more Muslims than Italians, Poles and others in New York, and their numbers will continue to grow."
Hoenlein was asked whether reports that roughly 30 percent of Jews voted for Mamdani were accurate. He replied, "They did not vote for him. No one truly measures the Jewish community. Pollsters use separate sampling clusters to assess it, but it doesn't matter even if the figure is 20 percent. We need to understand what drove those people to vote for him. He talked about the cost of living. He energized them. We are not energizing young people, and this is not only a rebellion against Israel. Israel is only a symbol. It is a rebellion against their own families. We are not growing demographically and we are not building the future. We are the ones carrying this message. We always have, and now is the time to focus on the future."
When asked whether it is possible to win this struggle, Hoenlein said, "Ten years ago I said, 'Do not run away, prepare,' because you can argue about politics and policy but you cannot argue about demography. The same thing is happening here. Fewer meetings, more babies. We need to create a new generation, more educated and more connected to Israel, but we must do it in a different way."
