Since the brutal October 7th, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas, groups outside of Israel that support not only Jews abroad but also the State of Israel are needed more than ever. One such group leading the charge is the nonprofit organization is the Israeli American Council (IAC), which has focused on building bridges between Americans of Israeli descent and the diverse Jewish communities here in the U.S. Its stated mission is to “build an engaged and united Israeli-American community that strengthens the Israeli and Jewish identity of our next generation, the American Jewish community, and the bond between the peoples of the United States and the State of Israel.”
Since October 7th, the IAC has been hard at work living up to this mission in communities across the U.S. while drawing more American Jews to its events. It has organized or hosted rallies and exhibitions in places as diverse as Austin, Texas and Bellevue, Washington, and on campuses like MIT and UCLA, advocating for Israel’s right to defend itself and fighting against antisemitism. It has also made a push to address antisemitism in public schools. It boasts 21 regional offices and 104 communities across the country, and more than 83,000 individuals actively participated in IAC-led community events and programming.
Adam Milstein, a Los Angeles-based philanthropist and American of Israeli descent, is one of the group’s original founders. He has been a member of its national board from its inception in 2006 until today and the board chairman from 2015 to 2019. By the time the IAC was formed in 2006, Milstein had already made a name for himself in the philanthropy world, having established the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation with Gila his wife in 2000. Its mission is a perfect complement to the IAC – to strengthen American values, combat hatred and bigotry in all forms and support the U.S.-Israel alliance, and it’s still going strong today.
At its founding, the IAC was called the Israeli Leadership Council (ILC), when, Milstein says, it was more of a “local club in Los Angeles.” But Milstein helped transform it into a community spanning across the U.S., the “fastest growing Jewish-American organization in the nation.” Its original mission was and still is to “reach Israelis living in America wherever they were, bolster their new identity [as] Americans of Israeli descent, empower them with a defined sense of purpose, and unite them into a coast-to-coast Israeli-American community that preserves and strengthens the Israeli and Jewish identity of our next generation.”
Since then, it has expanded its programing to encompass programs that engage Jews of all ages on subjects that range from Hebrew learning and community building to technology and innovation. “Any time our members came up with a community need, the IAC was there to expand its programming and make it happen.”
Milstein says a central tenet of the IAC has always been to provide “unwavering support to the State of Israel.” So when major Jewish organizations started to distance themselves from Israel, no longer seeing the Jewish state as central to Jewish-American identity, “more and more Jewish Americans and even some non-Jews joined the activities of the IAC nationwide.” That’s why the IAC has been a vital pillar of support in Jewish and pro-Israel communities since October 7th, especially as antisemitism and anti-Zionism have been on the rise.
Milstein has ideas for how to make the IAC even more impactful. His personal vision, though he doesn’t speak on behalf of the IAC, is to take it global. By expanding it into the “Global Community for Israel” outside of Israel (or ‘GC4I’), the organization would encompass the “pro-Israel community in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Britain, France, Australia, and everywhere else outside of Israel,” including non-Jews. Milstein uses Chabad, the Jewish outreach movement of the Lubavitch Hasidism, as an example to aspire to, because Chabad is “the most successful Jewish business model in the world.” Indeed, Chabad exists in countries all over the world, supporting Jewish communities no matter how small.
In order to execute this global vision, Milstein says the IAC needs to rally donations from philanthropists and foundations who believe in its mission. A decade ago, Sheldon Adelson and his wife Dr. Miriam Adelson invested heavily in the IAC, helping it expand from a local organization in Los Angeles to a national community with dozens of regional offices across the country. He’s confident that “the IAC’s current donors – as well as a new generation of patrons – will see the benefit of expanding the Global Community for Israel vision and investing in this far-reaching and ambitious worldwide model.” That’s why it’s vital that organizations like the IAC continue to engage the next generation of Jewish leaders to instill in them a strong sense of Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish state.
The IAC’s new CEO Elan Carr, former U.S. Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, assumed his role on October 1st, 2023, just days before the October 7th attack. His leadership has been key during the months since then as antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment has skyrocketed. At a Jerusalem Post panel in early June 2024, Carr said the American Jewish community could use some Israeli optimism and pride. “[F]or the American Jewish community to be successful, we all have to absorb some sense of Israeliness, that sense of forward-leading, of being proactive, of being unvarnished in our pride, in our heritage.”
By instilling an Israeli ethos into the global Jewish community, Milstein believes the Jewish people will have a brighter future. This, combined with his grand vision of a global, interconnected IAC, will help ensure that Jews and Israelis all over the world have the support they need and that future generations will be prepared to lead the charge in the years to come.