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ILTV hosted philanthropist and newly appointed president of the World Jewish Congress in Israel, Sylvan Adams, in the studio on Sunday to discuss the ongoing war, the Iranian threat, the rise of global antisemitism, and much more.
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
(ILTV)
The following are excerpts from that interview:
ILTV: You’re stepping into this position at an especially challenging time—just months after the October 7 attacks. In this new capacity, what are some of the key issues you hope to address as president of the World Jewish Congress in Israel?
Adams: The fact is, October 7th revealed—didn’t create, but revealed—a latent antisemitism that we honestly, myself included, had thought had largely disappeared. We knew that there were radical Islamists who were hostile forces in a variety of countries, especially in Europe, and also in my native Canada. We knew that they were there, but they have now been joined by their ideological captives, radical leftists, who have joined forces with them and revealed an antisemitism which I, as the son of two Holocaust-surviving parents, would have never imagined.
I could never have imagined these things could be openly spoken and, shockingly, not criticized—and, you know, defended under the auspices of free speech. Now, this isn’t free speech, because this is hate speech, which would not have been tolerated against any other minority. Can you imagine visible minorities or the LGBTQ community being subjected to hideous, blasphemous, insulting commentary, and somebody defending their rights of free speech? No—these things would have been shut down in five minutes. So we’re dealing with a new reality—as I said, revealed, not created by October the seventh, but revealed.
ILTV: We're seeing this age-old phenomenon, as you mentioned, take on new life. Is enough being done to combat it—particularly from within the Jewish community? And what more can or should be done to confront this rising antisemitism?
Adams: So one of the things that's happened are these demonstrations, these protests, these tent camps that we've seen—these are not spontaneous events. In fact, these are organized. There are paid operatives who organize them, who run them, who finance them, and they are paid operatives from Qatar, Iran, and, more recently, China, and they've been at it for over 20 years. There are trillions of dollars behind this campaign, and so we need to wake up. This is a wake-up call for us. It's, you know, we can win the physical wars on the battlefield. But to win, we need to win it also in the war in the world of public opinion, and we are losing that war against a very capable, determined propaganda machine—a well-financed propaganda machine. And this is a wake-up call. So we need—it's all hands on deck. We need to unite the Jewish world with our brain power. How are we going to catch up against, as I said, trillions of dollars? We're 20 years behind. Oh, there's a new—there's a new development, a technological development that is a game changer for us, and it's called AI. And we will be able to—we will be able to combat them.
One of the things that these operatives do is… they use these bots, and they are able to propagate their message on social media, which is largely where young people get their information today, and multiply it to, literally, to tens and tens of millions of people. So we need to use our own.
But this is a war. This is a war. We can't afford to lose the information war any more than we can afford to lose a physical war. Our standing in the world is being challenged. Our Prime Minister and former defense minister were indicted by international institutions that feed into this anti-Israel—which is really an antisemitic—campaign. They are out to get us.
ILTV: We've focused heavily on the negative and the rise in antisemitism—but looking ahead, are you optimistic about the future of the State of Israel and the Jewish people?
Adams: I'm always optimistic. And you know, I moved to Israel a number of years ago. And I like to say that I moved from Canada—I wouldn't have moved to a country that is less open, tolerant, pluralistic, and, of course, fiercely democratic than my native Canada. Why would I?
So, I am very optimistic for the future. In fact, the tragic events of October 7 ended up with the ring of fire around us and our strategic comeback—starting in Gaza, but then in Lebanon, the fall of Assad, our humiliation of Iran by taking out so many of its military assets, and our demonstration that deterrence is back, and our demonstration of our military prowess. So, we've reversed the equation in the Middle East.
We were a punching bag. We took rocket fire for years since Hamas took over in 2015… and we've reversed it. I'm hopeful, with the support of the United States and the Trump administration, that we're on the verge of creating conditions for many more countries to enter into peace agreements with us—including perhaps Syria, maybe Lebanon. If the regime in Iran can be pressured to fall, why not Iran?
And if all of that happens, I can see this being an era of 100 years of peace. Absolutely.