Einat Wilf

Einat Wilf (11 December, 1970 -) is a former member of Israel's parliament and current Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI). She is active in combating what she has called the "war of ideas" being waged against Israel abroad.

Biographical information

Einat Wilf was born in Jerusalem in what she describes as a "classic Zionist, secular home."

She has a BA in Government and Fine Arts from Harvard University, an MBA from INSEAD in France and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. Outside of formal politics, she was a founding member of Kol Dor and has been active in WePower, an Israeli NGO aiming to increase the number of women elected to public office in Israel. She served for four years as an Intelligence Officer (Lieutenant) in the Israel Defense Forces. She speaks English, French and Hebrew.

After graduating from Harvard, Wilf worked as a strategic consultant for McKinsey & Company. In 1998 she moved to Koor Corporate Venture Capital, where she was General Partner. She wrote a weekly column for the Israel HaYom newspaper; taught social entrepreneurship at Sapir College and was a member of the Israeli Presidential Conference steering committee.

Wilf is married to German journalist Richard Gutjahr. Their first son was born in December 2010.

Her brother, Saar Wilf, is a successful entrepreneur.

Political career

Prior to running for office, Wilf was foreign policy advisor to then-Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. (photo)

Wilf ran for the Labour Party (Israel) in the 2009 elections for Israel's 18th Knesset. Labour won 13 seats, and Wilf came in 14th. However she entered the Knesset on 10 January 2010 as a replacement for Ophir Pines-Paz, who retired. In January 2011 Wilf was one of five Labour MKs to split from the party to form Atzmaut ('Independence') under Ehud Barak. Wilf lost her seat in 2013 when Atzmaut did not contest the election.

"During her four years in the Knesset," The Times of Israel reported, "Wilf remained mostly unknown to the Israeli public." "I'm kind of a well-kept secret," is how Wilf puts it. However she was active within the Knesset:

Committees

• Education, Culture, and Sports Committee (Chair)
• Subcommittee for the Relations of Israel with World Jewish Communities (Chair)
• Finance Committee (Member)
• State Control Committee (Member)
• Science and Technology Committee (Member)
• Education, Culture, and Sports Committee (Member)
• House Committee (Member)
• Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (Member)
• Science and Technology Committee (Member)
• Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs (Member)
• Joint Committee for the Defense Budget (Member)

Knesset Lobbies

• Lobby for the Status of the Teachers in Israel (Chair)
• Lobby on International Relations (Member)
• Lobby for the Promotion of Informal Education and Community Centers (Member)
• Lobby for Promoting the Two-State Solution and Separation Between Israel and the Palestinians (Member)
• Lobby for Strengthening the Jewish People (Member)
• Lobby for Equality and Pluralism (Member)

Other Knesset Roles

• Israel-Netherlands Parliamentary Friendship Group (Chair)

Activities

While in the Knesset, Wilf engaged in debates about defending Israel's image abroad. When the Atzmaut Party decided not to contest the 2013 election, she issued a press release to the effect that, now lacking a position in formal Israeli politics, she would step up her involvement in "representing Israel and Zionism on the international stage." As Ha'aretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer put it,

"Wilf, a media-savvy former Knesset member... eager to be involved in Israeli politics again, has made it her duty in recent months... to be a one-woman hasbara machine."

Wilf cites, as examples of her advocacy work, frequent appearances in international media defending Operation Pillar of Defence and criticising the Palestinian Authority's bid for UN recognition. The "arena" of battle, she explained in 2011, "is no longer the Sinai Desert or international terrorism, but has moved to international forums: courts and the new media." She has proposed creating an "Israeli Intellectual Defense Force" to take the ideological war to Israel's detractors:

"I think that we need to put the same kind of effort and strategic thinking into our intellectual defense as we put into our physical defense... In terms of our physical defense, we always talk about how Israel’s first priority is to move the battle to the enemy’s territory. We have been for too long defensive, and I think we have not gone sufficiently on the offense in terms of [the intellectual] agenda. We always defend... but we don’t come up with our own initiatives."

This comes in the context of a perception on Wilf's part that defending Israel has becoming increasingly anathema to left-wing international opinion:

"As I embarked on my political and foreign policy work about a decade ago I frequently met with my European Socialist colleagues. As a member of the Labor Party they assumed that we were ideological kins. Year by year this kinship was increasingly put in question. The classic Zionist positions I presented had less and less resonance among European Socialists. Any attempt to argue that the Arabs and Palestinians bear responsibility for their fate was flatly rejected... Increasingly to the European left if you are Labor, and so count yourself in the left, you cannot be Zionist and vice versa. The mere insistence on Zionism, on the continued justness of the cause of Jewish self-determination and liberation in the Land of Israel, on the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to sovereignty in at least part of Israel, has been politicized such that it places one strictly on global political right."

Wilf is currently a Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.

In August 2013 she joined NGO Monitor's international advisory board. "NGO Monitor plays a major role," she said, "in revealing the devious motives and the unwitting funding that underpin the war of words, images and ideas that is waged against Israel and Zionism. I am honored to contribute my experience and abilities to shaping the responses needed to face this significant challenge."

She has reportedly written a paper on antisemitism in the European left, which will be published shortly.

UNRWA

In late 2011 Wilf began campaigning against the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). In November 2011 she spearheaded an Israeli effort to have the United Nations close down UNRWA, apparently in retaliation for or to take advantage of the Palestinians' bid for UN recognition. Asked in September 2011 what Israel should be doing about the PA's bid, Wilf advised:

"if the vote goes through, Israel has to use the advantages it has, for example to pursue the question of the so-called refugees. To demand that if the UN says it’s a state and meets all the criteria of a state, then an organization like [the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] needs to be dismantled. … Israel should go for that in a big way, because that is a huge Achilles heel of what the Palestinians are doing and it actually serves the cause of resolving the conflict, by addressing the perpetuation of the refugee problem."

Wilf's efforts, the Israeli press reported, were supported by Israel's Foreign Ministry and resisted by its Defence Ministry. Around the same time, Wilf began working with US Senator Mark Kirk to change US policy towards UNRWA. (On which, more below.)

On 31 January 2012, at the seventh Bar Ilan University Ambassadors Forum, Wilf announced a campaign to restructure UNRWA, whose "inflation" of the number of Palestinian refugees she identified as "a major, if not the greatest, stumbling block" to a two-state settlement (video). Wilf announced the launch of a parliamentary appeal to UNRWA donor states for the restructuring of UNRWA and the removal of "refugee" status from Palestinians born in Gaza and Palestinians living in the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority as "refugees". This would, she said, bring down the total number of people considered Palestinian refugees from approximately five million to around 30,000.

In March 2012 Wilf spoke on the same topic before the Middle East Forum. She also criticised UNRWA alongside Asaf Romirowsky at the 2013 AIPAC Policy Conference.

In September 2013 Wilf published an article in Fathom, the journal of British pro-Israel lobby group BICOM, charging UNRWA with the "perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem" and branding it "one of the greatest obstacles to peace."

The Kirk Amendment

In May 2012 the US Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment requiring the State Department to specify the number of Palestinians receiving aid from UNRWA who were directly displaced from their homes in 1948, as against those who were descendants of 'original' refugees. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), was part of long-running efforts by Israel's supporters in the US to reduce American contributions to UNRWA, and was resisted by the State Department.

Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that the initiative for the Kirk Amendment was provided by Einat Wilf, who "toiled for months" alongside AIPAC lobbyists and Kirk's staff "to promote the change." In September 2011 Wilf met with American pro-Israel lobbyists, and discovered that they were avoiding taking action against UNRWA because "figures in the Israeli government had blocked such moves in the past." Wilf pursued the matter, and indeed encountered opposition from Israel's Defence Ministry, which argued that UNRWA services "align with Israeli interests." But after receiving approval from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Ron Dermer (foreign policy advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), Wilf got to work promoting the initiative with AIPAC officials and Steven J. Rosen, AIPAC's former foreign policy director. In April 2012 she and Rosen met with Kirk's deputy chief of staff, Richard Goldberg.

A preliminary amendment was drafted, which AIPAC then lobbied for. This initial text called on the US to restrict its definition of a "Palestinian refugee" to those who were "personally displaced" in the 1948 or 1967 wars. Opposition from the State Department, however, meant that this demand was dropped from the version passed by the Senate Committee.

Writing about the amendment, journalist Ben-Dror Yemini noted its "sophisticat[ion]":

"[T]here is nothing in it which demands a cut in aid or the changing of criteria. There is only the obligation to report... on the number of original refugees and report on the number of descendants. But information about the amendment makes it clear that in fact this is a first step in the direction of a more basic change. Because following the reports the question will be raised – why should the tax payers have to fund those who are not really refugees?"

Britain and Zionism

<youtube size="medium" align="right" caption=""Britain and Zionism" Knesset hearing - excerpt">pXGP5Ck1Kew</youtube>On 22 May 2012 the Knesset Sub-Committee on Israel and the Jewish people, chaired by Wilf, held a discussion on "Britain and Zionism." The hearing focused on Britain as a "[hub] of anti-Israel activity." The session was initially titled "UK - World Leader in Anti-Israel Rhetoric," but concerns from British attendees prompted Wilf to tone it down.

The Sub-Committee heard from,

• Mick Davis (of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and the Jewish Leadership Council)
• Jeremy Newmark (CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council)
• Doug Krikler (of the UJIA)
• Dermot Kehoe (of BICOM)
• Michael Dickson (of StandWithUs)
• Ehud Rosen and Adam Shai (from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
• Motti Amichai, from the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Northern Europe department
• Matthew Gold, Israel's ambassador to the UK, was due to speak but couldn't make it.

Among the recommendations to come out of the discussion was for the Israeli Prime Minister to appoint a special advisor on the effects of Israeli policies on world Jewry. Following the hearing, Wilf commented,

"We heard some very interesting views. I particularly like the idea that anything we learn about fighting delegitimisation in Britain can be transferred to other hubs of anti-Israel activity. We have to make sure our voice is heard in Britain and elsewhere... Britain is a huge media and political hub and a lot that goes on there later takes place elsewhere. If we do well in Britain, we will do well in other countries, too. My impression is that British Jewry is a vital and dynamic community and that anti-Israel rhetoric is a serious problem. But we don't have to blow it out of proportion."

UK trip (October 2013)

In October 2013 Wilf travelled to the UK. While there she spoke at several events, and accused former British foreign secretary Jack Straw of antisemitism. She returned to Israel on 23 October, carrying with her "a sense of concern regarding people's perception of Israel in the UK." While in the UK she wrote a blog post for the Daily Telegraph, which offered a pessimistic view of the 'Arab Spring.'

Henry Jackson Society

On 21 October Wilf spoke alongside Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini at an event, held in parliament, hosted by the Henry Jackson Society and Louise Ellman MP. There she said:

"The war of ideas, words and images waged against Israel might be using non violent means but this says nothing about the ends. This sinister goal of this war is to create the ideological foundation that would make ridding the world of Israel by whatever means necessary a worthy and even noble goal. Ideas matter and the world's greatest atrocities were preceded by ideas that made the use of violence logical and even desirable."

Writing on Facebook before the event, Wilf described the "war of ideas waged against Israel" as "a real strategic threat," and presented herself as a defender of "Israel's image, especially in the UK, which has been identified as one of the most important arenas in this war."

Jack Straw

On 22 October, Wilf spoke at the Global Diplomatic Forum's 'Diplomacy in the Middle East Round Table', held at the House of Commons. Other speakers included Sky News presenter Andrew Wilson (chair); former British foreign secretary Jack Straw MP; shadow minister for the Middle East and Africa Ian Lucas MP; Palestinian ambassador to the UK Manuel Hassassian; Anas Altikriti; Lord Hylton; Jeffery Donaldson MP; Mike Gapes MP; Russian ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko, Wendy Kristiansen of Le Monde Diplomatique international edition, John Baron MP and Lord Hannay.

The same afternoon, Wilf wrote a status update on her Facebook account expressing shock at Jack Straw's identification, during the Round Table, of American Jewish organisations like AIPAC as a key obstacle to Israel-Palestine peace. She implicitly accused Straw of antisemitism:

"I nearly fell off my rickety British chair today when former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw spoke at the Round Table Global Diplomatic Forum in the British House of Commons. Listing the greatest obstacles to peace, he said 'unlimited' funds available to Jewish organizations and AIPAC in the US are used to control and divert American policy in the region and that Germany's 'obsession' with defending Israel were the problem. I guess he neglected to mention Jewish control of the media...."

Tal Ofer wrote a blog post for The Times of Israel based on Wilf's posting. Straw's comments, Ofer wrote, "are offensive and can be considered as antisemitic." Ofer also posted both his article and Wilf's status update with the Labour Friends of Israel Facebook group, adding: "Did anyone hear about these antisemitic comments by Jack Straw this week? shame [sic] on him." A day later an article in Ynet reported that Straw had made "harsh anti-Semitics [sic] statements." It quoted Wilf again accusing Straw of antisemitism:

"It was appalling to listen to Britain's former foreign secretary... His remarks reflect prejudice of the worst kind."

The pro-settler Israeli news source Arutz 7 also covered the story, as did the Jerusalem Post,, Commentary, and Trending Central and Mondoweiss.

Several of these outlets quoted Straw as referencing "Jewish money;" yet Wilf has (not especially loudly) conceded that he said no such thing.

Responding to the coverage, Straw acknowledged condemning Israeli settlements, discussing Germany's "understandable" reluctance to criticise Israel and pointing out Netanyahu's influence on Republican politics in the US and the "huge sums... spent by AIPAC," but rejected charges of antisemitism:

"None of this is 'anti-Semitic.' There are plenty of people in Israel who take a similar view to me – not least (as I do) because they believe that the current approach of the government of Israel will weaken the position of the state of Israel in the medium and long-term." (full statement)

Noting Straw's reference to Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's 2007 book The Israel Lobby, a Jerusalem Post editorial accused Straw of propagating the "well-known canard" that US Middle East policy is controlled by "a near-omnipotent American Jewish cabal."

Israel's ambassador to the UK Daniel Taub also criticised Straw:

"These comments fall in a very troubling tradition of attributing support for Israel to a sinister exercise of Jewish power."

Responding to Straw's defence, Wilf claimed that he had "substantially toned down" his remarks, but insisted that his original comments exemplified "the traference [sic] of classic antiemetic [sic] attitudes into anti-Israel views":

"Classic medieval and racial anti-Semitism is unacceptable in polite society today. However, the preservation of similar attitudes with respect to Israel seems to be not only legitimate, but even welcome, in polite European society. Anti-Semitism has a long history of mutating according to the times when earlier forms are deemed no longer relevant or acceptable. The mutation of some ancient anti-Semitic prejudices into anti-Israel rhetoric is sadly a mark of our times."

That is, Wilf presented Straw as a paradigmatic example of what has elsewhere been labelled the New Antisemitism: antisemitism manifest in criticism of Israel or Zionism, rather than of Jews per se.

Wilf's attacks on Straw were criticised by Ha'aretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer, who argued that Straw's references to the political influence of American Jewish organisations were no different from "what is regularly said in Israel." In an article for Ha'aretz Pfeffer pressed Wilf on this point, prompting the response:

"That's different... It's like two black men calling each other 'n*gger' which is not right but it's not racism."

In other words, Pfeffer wrote, "according to Wilf, only Jews are allowed to speak of the effect lobbying and political donations have on U.S. policy in the Middle East." In a Facebook post, Wilf dismissed Pfeffer's piece as "a personal attack on me in order to draw attention away from Straw's comments." She accused him of taking her words out of context, but provided no examples.

Conservative Friends of Israel

Also on 22 October, Wilf met in parliament with members of Conservative Friends of Israel and UNRWA head Fillipo Grandi. As related in a post on her Facebook page, she challenged Grandi about the classification of Palestinian refugees.

Views

Einat Wilf's background and politics are secular. When she entered the Knesset in 2010 she reportedly became the only openly "intermarried" (i.e. a Jewish person married to a non-Jew) MK and attracted some criticism from religious figures on these grounds.

Wilf is listed as being involved in the Geneva Initiative, a campaign to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict on terms that are, in the context of Israel's political spectrum, extremely dovish.

However, she describes her political trajectory as tending right:

"I certainly came from your classic Labor Zionist household. I was a huge believer in the Oslo Accords, in peace. I always believed the day the Palestinians get a state in the West Bank and Gaza would be the day we’d have peace... But the last decade, with the failure of Camp David, the intifada, the disengagement, the repeated failures of the Palestinian leadership to take advantage of opportunities to have a state has made me very skeptical... I've become increasingly convinced that the conflict is not about simple territorial claims that can be resolved by finding where exactly the border should go. At the core, the entire Palestinian identity is wrapped in the battle against Zionism."

She characterises her current position as "sceptical left"—which, she notes, "is beginning to look very much like the right." She remains supportive of ending the conflict on the basis of an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory and the establishment of a Palestinian state; what has become more hawkish is her assessment of the obstacles to achieving that, which she now identifies as lying primarily with the Palestinians. She has also become sceptical about the possibility for a two-state settlement:

"I moved in the past decade, from someone who believed that the conflict can be resolved through partition of the land into two states to [sic] two peoples, to someone who has become far more skeptical of that possibility."

She has repeatedly criticised the Israeli Left for "self-flagellation"—i.e. falsely blaming the continuation of the conflict on Israel—and explains her split from the Israeli Labour Party in these terms:

"All of us, partners to the split, have had it with the feature that has taken over large parts of the party and the Israeli left that it was supposed to lead: endless self-flagellation. Whether it was the continued conflict and the absence of peace, or the mere absence of negotiations and the fact that the Palestinians still did not have a state, Israel was singularly responsible. Perhaps inspired by the post-colonial, guilt-ridden global left, in the mind of the new Israeli left, the Palestinians and Arabs were responsible for nothing."

She has, in contrast, praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "careful and prudent conduct in matters of state."

Affiliations

• Jewish People Policy Institute (Senior Fellow)
• Labour Party (Israel) (former MK)
• Atzmaut Party (former MK)
• Kol Dor (founding member)
• NGO Monitor (International Advisory Board member)
• Sapir College (taught social entrepreneurship)
• Koor Corporate Venture Capital (former (General Partner)
• McKinsey & Company (former strategic consultant)
• Israel Defense Forces (former Intelligence Officer)
• WePower
• Conservative Friends of Israel
• Henry Jackson Society

People

• Shimon Peres (former foreign policy advisor)
• Louise Ellman MP
• Ben-Dror Yemini
• Richard Gutjahr (wife)
• Saar Wilf (brother)

Publications, Resources, Contact

Publications

• My Israel, Our Generation (2003)
• Back to Basics: How to Save Israeli Education (at no additional cost) (2008)
• It's NOT the Electoral System, Stupid (2013)

Resources

• Youtube Einat Wilf

Contact

Phone: +972-50-6380127 (Noah Slepkov, media inquiries)

Email: einatw@knesset.gov.il; noah@wilf.org (media inquiries)

Website: wilf.org/English; wilf.org (Hebrew)

Facebook Einat Wilf

Twitter: @EWilf