The name Sylvan Adams didn't mean much to most Israelis until the summer of 2018, when the Canadian-Jewish-Israeli philanthropist and diehard Zionist brought the Giro d'Italia, the famous annual multiple-stage bicycle race, to Israel.
With that race, in one fell swoop, Adams managed to put Israel on the map.
But above all, the hosting of the race gave new meaning to concepts that are usually discussed at length at various academic conferences on how to improve Israel's standing, concepts such as "Israel advocacy," "branding," and "the winning the hearts and minds."
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As far as Adams is concerned, Israel advocates are doing it all wrong. He believes people don't want to be told what to think; people lose you as soon as you start preaching to them.
"You know, 85% percent of the world doesn't really care about Israel, and isn't particularly political. So we have the extremists, who hate us; we have of course our followers, who love us; but as for the massive numbers of people in the middle, if we show off this normal Israel to them they would get a favorable impression of the country," Adams said in an interview with Israel Hayom.
Adams brought the Giro d'Italia to Israel in part because he is a cycling enthusiast himself; and he has even assembled the first professional cycling team in Israel, The Israel Cycling Academy, which recently won a race similar to the Giro in Hungary.
He believes that by showing Israel to the world through the lens of the Giro, and through other major spectacles, he can transform Israel's image abroad.
That is why he has been heavily involved in other major projects to showcase Israel around the world: He took part in funding Beresheet, the first Israeli spacecraft to the moon, and although it crashed, it still managed to reach the moon bearing an Israeli flag; he runs a special fellowship program to promote Israeli research; and just recently, he turned the Eurovision Song Contest, hosted in Israel this year, into an epic production.
He hopes that by engaging in these nonstop efforts he can brand Israel as a normal country and make people curious about it, and ultimately to disabuse them of the negative perceptions they have been fed by the media.
"I don't believe that hasbara [Israel advocacy] by itself is effective, it doesn't reach the massive majority of people who don't really care about us. In the case of the Giro, we reached almost a billion television viewers and sports fans and they got to see Israel for four days, including three days of helicopter footage showing the beauty of the country," Adams said.
Adams was an advocate for Israel for many years before he made aliyah in late 2015. He is a well-known figure in the business community and heads Iberville Developments, the real estate empire founded by his parents. He was appointed as CEO and president of the company more than 20 years ago, when he was just 35, and has run it with great success ever since.
His father, Marcel, was taken into a Nazi forced-labor camp in Romania during World War II but managed to escape in 1944 and reach British-controlled Palestine. After Israel declared statehood, he fought in the War of Independence and later moved to Canada.
It was there that Marcel met his future wife, Annie, who had also made a similar journey from Romania to then-British Mandate of Palestine and then finally to Canada (at one point, she was even held in a British internment camp in Cyprus).
The company Marcel and Annie founded owns and manages countless shopping centers, office buildings, and houses, but the real home for their son Sylvan has always been in Israel. Upon making aliyah he even had the title "Self-appointed ambassador-at-large for the State of Israel" printed on his business card.
Q: What does it mean being an ambassador-at-large for Israel? Does it include being an ambassador in your native country's capital, Ottawa?
"Of course. It means representing Israel, period. The reason I call myself an ambassador is because all of my projects relate to the promotion of Israel. When I made aliyah, I decided that the next chapter of my life would be devoted to the promotion of Israel, the promotion of what I call 'normal Israel,' the Israel that we experience as residents every day: the open, the tolerant, fiercely democratic, diverse, free, and – importantly – the safe country that Israel is, and to project that message on the world stage in a massive way with projects that reach massive numbers of people.
"The usual news about Israel is very monochromatic and frankly gives a very distorted picture of what the country is all about. It is not a true portrait if all you talk about is rockets in Gaza and things like that. People have this impression that Israel is not a safe country. I am referring to the regular folk that is not that tuned in and don't have a dog in the fight but if asked, they would have a slightly negative impression of Israel and certainly don't understand that it is a diverse country and a free and open and tolerant country. The Giro is a great example that proves the case. It lifts the morale of the entire country, it unifies us and brings us together … nobody wants to miss a party, we are the most enthusiastic and energetic people I have ever seen."
Q: Are you going to bring the Giro back to Israel?
"We brought it for the first time in 101 years; we managed to take it out of Europe for the first time and bring it to Israel. So what I like to say is that it won't take 101 years to bring it back."
Q: What is your next big project in Israel?
"What I'd like to do is set up a fund, an endowment, that would provide funding to bring these kinds of events [here] on a regular basis. I would like to have a fund that is proactive and out seeking major events to bring them to Israel. And I am certainly prepared to invest heavily myself in this fund. I think the government should invest with us, but I think it should be predominantly private funds that contribute to this because I think we need to stand up for our country and provide resources for our country. The Giro is proof of this concept, Eurovision is proof of this concept that shows Israel in a very positive way. We proved that we reached a massive majority who don't care about us, those who are not interested in lecturing. Of course, I am not suggesting that we shouldn't continue to argue for our rights and our righteousness, but I think that if we want to reach masses of people we have to do this a little differently, and hasbara will not work. We need to reach people in a non-lecturing, non-polemical way and show the reality of normal Israel, show it to people. My experience with first-time visitors to Israel is that they are almost universally impressed and surprised. They say, 'We didn't know this.'"
Q: You made aliyah in late 2015 and by September you will have already seen two Israeli elections. This makes you an official Israeli. What can you tell Israelis, as a Canadian, about how to take things in perspective, in light of Israel's ongoing political drama?
"Canada is also a parliamentary democracy, but Canada is a British parliamentary democracy. And Israel has gone to proportional representation, which is a much more democratic system. Israel has one of the most democratic systems in the world. There is a counterplay: The more democracy you have, the less order you have and the more chaos you have, because every vote counts, unlike in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got a dominant majority for his party with only 39% of the vote. In Israel, Likud and Blue and White got about 27% each, and they have to go shopping for coalition parties. It's a very democratic system and the result of democracy is that you have a little bit more chaos. So it's interesting; we are living in interesting times."
Q: Do you miss the calm of Canadian politics?
"No country thinks it has calm politics. In Canada, although Trudeau has a constant majority, there is constant opposition and criticism, and every country faces political debates, which seems to be important to that specific country. And the only difference is that in Israel, we live in a much tougher neighborhood and the consequences are very serious. With all of that, Israel has a thriving economy, [which is] the envy of Canada, to tell you the truth. Where Canada will grow at 1% this year, Israel will grow at 3.5%, so Israel has caught up with all of the Western countries. Every place in the world has something to complain about; we are no different. In Israel, people complain about the weather. I never understood this. You know, every day is perfect, but no, Israelis say, 'It's too hot' in the summer, 'It's too cold' in the winter, 'We had rain today', 'We had wind.' And I don't know why the weather is even a subject of conversation in Israel. Come to Canada in February and tell me about the weather in Israel."
Q: So Canada and Israel share the same mission?
"I would say they share the same small country status. Because you know, Canada is at the end of the day a small country, a small player on the world stage. Israel is a much bigger player on the world stage, even though we are a small country. Because of the region that we live in and because of our history and because we are Jews, we make noise. We tend to make noise."
Q: A lot of people don't think of Canada's Jews as part of the general narrative of Israeli Zionism, unlike American Jews, who are at least recognized as having taken part in the Zionist movement's history. How would you change that?
"First of all, I think it's a wrong impression, in the sense that the Canadian Jewish community is much more traditional than the American [one]. We have much less issues with assimilation. Canadian Jews tend to be very Zionistic, and very traditional and family oriented. So I think we are a little more folksy and we certainly identify with Israel, and Canada is the fourth largest Jewish community in the world and very supportive of Israel. The US is 25% of the world's economy, and the US has a high proportion of Jews, relatively speaking. [About] 2% of the population is Jewish in the US. In Canada, it is about 1% of the population. It's a different dynamic."
Adams has a message for Israelis: Patience and the pursuit of victory are worth it. He believes Canada and Israel have been successful precisely because they had their share of failures and because they have long been considered underdogs. One of his goals is to make Israel an Olympic powerhouse, just like Canada.
"When we win medals, like every other country, we are very very proud. We [Israel] have won 9 cumulative medals … I have made a declaration that I would like us to win nine medals in a single Olympic game and this is something I am going to work on. In Canada, when we hosted the Montreal Olympics in 1976, we won zero medals. In the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, we set the record for the number of gold medals ever won by a country. So it shows that it's possible to build it up if you deploy the resources in the right places. And I know that Israelis are winners. All we have to do is set up the right infrastructure and the right structures and offer the right opportunities to our athletes and we can score on the world stage, and it will accomplish my two goals: to show Israelis in the most positive light on the world stage, which brings us better feeling from the outside; and of course to engender national pride from within Israel and to unify the country."
Q: What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer Israelis, having lived in both continents? Should Israelis be optimistic?
"In fact, I experience this all the time. Israelis, when they hear me talk and say all these wonderful things about Israel, they say, 'Sylvan, I love to be around you, you are so positive.' And here is what I found about Israelis: They don't realize that we have the same problems as any modern prosperous Western nation. We have the same problems of politics, of unaffordable housing, of trying to improve the economy; all of these things happen in every single country. But sometimes, Israelis, they actually believe these problems only exist in Israel, and they are hypercritical of everything. I would say: Step back, look at how far we have come in 71 short years."
Adams took an active role in the Israel Hayom Forum for US-Israel Relations held on June 27, in Jerusalem, along with senior Israeli and American figures, with the keynote speaker being former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. He says the current US administration should be admired for what it has done for the Jewish state.
"President Donald Trump has been a blessing for Israel. He is the only president who has delivered on America's commitments to Israel: moving the embassy and proclaiming Jerusalem as the capital. The US is Israel's most important ally, it's the most important power in the world. It is 25% of the world's economy. It is the world's moral power and policeman which ensures that wrongs and abuses don't take place. As for Nikki Haley, we couldn't have a better spokesperson, I am only sorry that she left her post early but I am sure she will have a long career in politics and we can have no better friend than the US [when it is] led by people like her. I want to thank her for her strong moral support and for using the language of morality, and being faithful to history. We didn't just show up in 1948 and history didn't start in 1967. We have a 3,000-year connection to this land."
Adams also has praise for the Adelson family, which is the primary shareholder of the company that owns Israel Hayom.
"I want to congratulate and commend [Israel Hayom publisher] Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, because they are also doing fantastic work, including setting up the forum and bringing Haley, and course Taglit-Birthright [a program that brings Jewish youth from around the world on 10-day tours of Israel]. The Adelsons support that program so beautifully, I believe they are the largest donors and this does tremendous good work. I really commend the leadership of Miriam and Sheldon Adelson and all of the good work that they are doing."
Q: Pierre Trudeau, the father of the current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was known as a maverick. Do you think his son will show the same bravery by moving the embassy to Jerusalem?
"I am not sure that Trudeau will be brave enough to do it for a very simple reason: demographics. There are more Muslim voters by far in Canada; Canada is a country of immigration, it accepts more immigrants per capita than any country in the world, accepting almost 1% of its population every year, so I believe it is a question of appealing to different constituencies. Trudeau is currently afraid to rock the boat … but I think in the long term all countries will move their embassies and the reality of Israel's capital being in Jerusalem will ultimately prevail."
