PM’s Diaspora Affairs advisor called Jewish Left a ‘ticking time bomb’
Elgrably-Berzin compares Jews who put universal values first to those who tried to be “good Germans.”
By LAHAV HARKOVUpdated: AUGUST 25, 2020 09:00WITH HIS court case looming on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is launching a last-ditch campaign against the levers of civil society, in particular the judiciary, the police and the role of the free press.(photo credit: TAL SHAHAR/REUTERS)
Gabriella Elgrably-Berzin has been appointed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Diaspora affairs adviser, the Prime Minister’s Office announced. The position had been vacant for more than a year.Elgrably-Berzin has a PhD in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from Harvard and specializes in Arab and Jewish philosophy. She was a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.She does not appear to have any professional experience working with Diaspora Jewry, though the office did not provide her resume when asked. Sources at a number of major Diaspora Jewry organizations said they were not familiar with her but do not expect that to be a problem.Elgrably-Berzin has written opinion articles in Hebrew for various publications, mostly taking the Likud’s stances on political and ideological matters, and writing about the philosophy of Likud ideological forebear Ze’ev Jabotinsky. She has also written about Moroccan Jewry.Several of Elgrably-Berzin’s articles are about Diaspora Jewry, though not ones written in recent years.An Israel Hayom article she wrote in 2015 said Israel was no longer important to many American Jews, and “parts of the Jewish-American Left do not hesitate to cooperate and be funded by anti-Zionists. It’s not an Iranian bomb, but it is a ticking time bomb that hurts Israel, including the Zionist Left.” She called for left-wing Israelis to insist on their Zionism when talking to leftist American Jews.An Israel Hayom article Elgrably-Berzin wrote in 2016 said American Jews who put universal values above “mutual responsibility in the ethnic dimension... sometimes turn their backs on” their Jewish identity, and that their efforts to be ‘good Christians’ or ‘good Germans’ fail when antisemitism rises.”A lack of a connection to Jewish identity or to Israel encourages radical anti-Israel elements, she argued. In that article, she put J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace and BDS in the same category as being “on the axis between extreme Left and anti-Zionist” and “having developed an obsessive empathy for the Palestinian stance and claiming their activities come from a desire to save Israel from itself.”In the past, Netanyahu has said Israel should not put too much effort in preserving the Jewish identity of non-Orthodox Jews because their assimilation is inevitable.In a Makor Rishon article in 2017, Ariel Kahane reported that Netanyahu thinks long-term efforts should be focused on increasing support from Orthodox Jews in the US and that non-Orthodox Jewry there will disappear in another generation or two because they have a low birthrate and most marry non-Jews.
Former ambassador to the UK Mark Regev returned to the Prime Minister’s Office last week, after four years in London, to be a senior adviser to the prime minister for international communications. He is regarded as a levelheaded spokesman for Israel who has made countless appearances on international media outlets.Regev was foreign press adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office from 2007 to 2015 under former prime minister Ehud Olmert as well as Netanyahu.
