A conference on Monday organized by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Reut Group and The Israeli Institute for Economic Planning featured prominent speakers with wide-ranging experience, including former high-ranking officials from Israel's national security establishment and strategic ministries. The conference's title was: "Israel-US Relations: Trends and Looking Ahead".
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President Isaac Herzog, who delivered the keynote address at the opening plenary, hailed the strong bond between the two countries and recalled his recent visit to the White House, "at the invitation of my friend Joe Biden." Herzog, who delivered his speech via video message due to last-minute political developments in Israel, said that "it is no secret that the future of the relationship is increasingly dependent on the next generations, and it is where we have an immense challenge. He cited recent trends showing eroding pro-Israel tendencies among younger demographics in the US, and said that sometimes this can be attributable to a lack of understanding regarding the Jewish state. He took aim at a piece by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who warned that the results of the Israeli election mean that "The Israel we knew is gone". Herzog said "such columns do great injustice to Israel."
Renowned pro-Israel legal scholar, Professor Alan Dershowitz, echoed Herzog and said that while right-wing extremists in the US should be countered by law enforcement when they act with violence, Israeli efforts should focus on left-wing extremists because they pose a real danger to US-Israel relations.
"The bad news is that the future Israel-American relationship is in grave danger," Dershowitz said. "Not for today, not necessary for tomorrow but for the day after tomorrow. For our children's and our grandchildren's generations; if nothing is done to change the current trend the relationship will suffer; Israel must prepare to go to it alone without the support of the US, and it must adopt a doomsday strategy in relation to US-Israeli relation; it can and it will because Israel has the will to survive and it will survive." He added that "the primary goal of the anti-Israel movement is very strong, it is to sever the relationship between US and Israel. It starts with Students for Justice for Palestine, which is not so much a pro-Palestine situation as it is an anti-Israel and deep down anti-Jewish," Dershowitz added.
Speakers in the panels included former chief of IDF Military Intelligence Directorate Tamir Hayman and former Consul-General in New York Dani Dayan.
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