Jewish solidarity will be on full display in Milwaukee when the Jewish National Fund-USA annual Breakfast for Israel is held here later this month.
The May 30 breakfast, chaired by local philanthropists Diane and Eric Zall, is a free, annual community event. This year the event will focus on the organization’s Israel Resilience Campaign, intended to shine light on the organization’s on-the-ground efforts to provided support to tens of thousands of displaced Israeli families in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack.
The keynote speaker will be Shahar Azani, a former Israeli diplomat who now advocates for Israel in the international mainstream news and as the senior vice president at Jewish Broadcasting Service.
“I’m very excited about coming to Milwaukee,” Azani said. “There is this great sense of camaraderie after Oct. 7. There is always that feeling that the Jewish community is a big family.”
Azani is the former executive director for the northeast region of StandWithUs, a nonprofit that supports Israel and fights antisemitism through educational programs on college campuses, high schools, and middle schools internationally. . He also has held several diplomatic posts, including Deputy Ambassador in the Embassy of Israel in Nairobi, Kenya. His message for the audience will be solidarity and strength for the American Jewish community and Israelis.
“Wherever we go, we go together. I think if there was one thing that came out of the atrocities is the immense need to understand that we are all in this together,” he said. “The community has grown stronger to empower each and every one of us as individuals. We are so dependent on each other, whether it’s fighting terrorists (or) fighting antisemitism.”
The mission of Jewish National Fund-USA is to help foster a vibrant future for Israel and its people through initiatives and Zionist education. The breakfast will go from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Those wishing to attend can register at https://events.jnf.org/. Registration is required.
“It is more important than ever to stand strong as a community and with Israel,” Diane Zall said in a video message about the event. Azani’s “presentation is guaranteed to be inspirational and will leave us with talking points and principles of engagement empowering us to continue to navigate this world with a strong Jewish identity.”
Conspiracy theories, misinformation and falsehoods on social media and in the press about the attack and Israel’s response have stoked antisemitism in the U.S. and around the globe over the last six months.
Azani said that it is time to push back against the propaganda, and staying silent is no longer an option. That takes a deep understanding of the situation, he said, and a willingness for individuals to disseminate the facts as they know them through social media, personal networks, workplaces and places of worship.
“This is our time to do. No longer do we have the privilege of sitting idly,” he said. “We cannot just keep quiet in the face of propaganda because this is sheer Holocaust denial, and we all know what happens when we allow such hatred, bigotry, and deceitful propaganda to run around.”
In the end, Azani has hope that peace and recovery can come about in Israel.
“To understand Israel is to understand the very essence of optimism and hope and to realize that the impossible is indeed possible,” he said. “I see great hope for the people of Israel to know how to emerge from this terrible atrocity.”
Loading ...