‘We Are Fighting This Together’: Israel Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Calls on American Public for Support

Like many Israelis, Israel’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh first became aware that a Hamas assault was underway on Oct. 7, when she was awoken by alarm sirens at 6:30 am warning of incoming rocket fire. Those rockets were cover for an invasion of Israel by more than 2,000 armed terrorists intent on slaughtering as many Jews as they could find. 

In an exclusive interview with The Algemeiner on Wednesday, Cotler-Wunsh said that she has now come to the United States to convey the horrors of the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and to let Israel’s supporters in the US know that they also have a role to play in the fight against genocidal terror. Her comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

“I came, first of all, to convey the feeling and to sound the alarm and say that this is not just about Israel, and it is not just about Jews,” she said. “It is not just about this genocidal terrorist attack that brutalized and murdered and raped and burned and bludgeoned and abducted. It’s actually a very important moment in our people’s history and in the world’s history.”

“Much like 9/11 was a moment that nothing would be the same again, Oct. 7 is a moment after which nothing will be the same again,” Cotler-Wunsh continued. “And that requires us to understand what we need to do in order to ensure that the world is prepared to address and to combat what I consider to be a war on our shared humanity and civilization.”

Cotler-Wunsh, who has three children serving in the Israeli army, said that her mission to the United States while Israel is at war and grieving such an enormous loss of life was one of the most difficult moments of her life.

“The reason that I got on the plane — and I admit that it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, to leave when my own three kids are in the army and when we were burying our best friend’s children and our children’s best friends, going from funeral to funeral, from shiva to shiva — is the urgency of acknowledging that each one of us in this war has to do what they know how to do,” she said. “My best friend’s son, Aryeh Ziering, ran to save and to protect and defend our people. And the only way I know how to fight this war, which I believe is not less important, is the war for public opinion and for the understanding of what it is that we’re facing as humanity, as civilization, in this onslaught.”

Ziering, 27, was an Israeli-American and a captain in the Israel Defense Forces who was killed on Oct. 7.

While Hamas’ 1988 charter explicitly calls for war against Jews, rallies in the United States in support of the Palestinian terrorist group’s slaughter are frequently couched as being “pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Zionist.” Cotler-Wunsh said that the two phenomena are linked by their roots in antisemitism.

“Antisemitism not only is the root of the savage attacks of Oct. 7, but it’s also the root of the response to them, including in New York, and in cities around the world, that deny or excuse or justify the savage attacks,” she said. “That is probably the most important thing that I think we need to rally around right now, to understand that it’s very, very clearly antisemitism in its mutation, in its new modern form of anti-Zionism, that does not leave any one of us behind. It’s one and the same hate. And that, at the very least, bands us together in the need to ensure that we defend our people and our nation-state.”

On Tuesday, broad swaths of the international media took at face value a claim by the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza that Israel was responsible for an explosion near a hospital in Gaza that they claimed killed 500 people. Israel, the US, and open-source analysts have since refuted those claims, showing the damage to a parking lot outside the hospital was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket and that the number killed was likely far fewer than the death toll claimed by Hamas. 

Cotler-Wunsh said that the credulity of media organizations in accepting Hamas’ propaganda should be treated as an “Aha moment.”

“Mainstream media, some outlets, chose a side. They chose the side of genocidal terror reports — no questions asked! No facts asked for, no fact checking needed,” she said. “It’s a real moment of reckoning for those outlets and for the consumers of information from those outlets. There has to be an unequivocal condemnation and anybody who cannot unequivocally condemn — and it doesn’t matter if it’s mainstream media, if it’s leadership around the globe, including in the United States, if it’s Palestinian leadership — anybody who cannot unequivocally condemn the crimes against humanity, the war crimes, the atrocities perpetrated on Oct. 7 is on the wrong side of this assault on our shared humanity, is part of the assault on our shared civilization as we know it. The masks are off.”

Despite the bias against Israel in many American and international institutions, Cotler-Wunsh said that Jews in the United States and every American who is concerned with the security of Israel can and should call out antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

“There are multiple ways to be engaged in this war, and every single individual has a role to play in it,” she said. “And especially for the Jews that are here on the ground, the boots on the ground, if you will, in the war for public opinion, it is critical to speak up with courage and to take action in identifying the false moral equivalency, in combating it, because it’s what enables the war on the ground to continue to rage. All who support Israel’s very right to exist have a role to play. It is an opportunity for all who recognize it is an assault on our shared humanity to stand together in defending it. And we have to ensure that we are fighting this together. There is a role for every single person to play.”

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