And i know that for bigots, especially those who style themselves as antizionists, israels Independence Day is a day to redouble their efforts to make sure it is israels last Independence Day. So let me be 100 clear as i start this speech and as we open this summit today there are challenges in israel and there will be challenges and Difficult Conversations to come. But the adl will never waver in its support of a democratic jewish state. [applause] is really is nothing short of a miracle, and i will never apologize for being a lifelong crowd zionists. Crowd zionists. I cannot help but think about that first Independence Day, when it was proclaimed that there was the first jewish nation into millennia. Many of us heard that scratchy recording and many of us have traveled to that little building in tel aviv to see where it happened. Over the past two months, we have heard a lot about israels declaration of independence as israelis have passionately argued about the future of their own democracy. What is little appreciated is what wit into getting to that final draft. Watch went into getting into that final draft. Should god be mentioned or intentionally left out . Shouldnt reference the United Nations, the showa should it reference the United Nations or the holocaust . What does the document say about the borders of this new state or nonjews who would live there . Apparently there were four drafts written by four different people and it was the Prime Minister himself who had to take hours out from planning a new government and fighting an imminent war literally the day before Independence Day, he was there editing and finessing and finalizing a draft that all of the parties could sign. That a group of jews got together to argue about that may be the most jewish thing in the world. For the people of the book, words clearly metal. Yet, as important as these words are, and they are, what made the state of israel was not the words in that document or the florio graffiti of the ceremony. It was the hard for a graffiti of the ceremony. It was the hard work that came after. The work to defeat invading armies and let you build a mighty military. The work to welcome at shelter hundreds of thousands of indigents, impoverished, exhausted juice desperate to escape the camps of europe. Or those driven out of arab lands they had called home for centuries. The work of making the desert bloom. And then building a veritable silicon valley. Theodore heard so, hertzel, the father of zionism said it was no dream. It was that said that if you will it it is no dream. It was that will to seize the hard work that gave us this occasion. And this is really an important reminder for all of us today. It is a model and it is why, frankly, you are here. Because when it comes to yielding our own future, it means that we cannot just talk about antisemitism and we cannot just it were tweet about it more tweet about it. We have to fight hit antisemitism and do the hard work of battling it everywhere across the political spectrum and around the world. And that is what the adl is doing every single day. Here at home, and around the world. The hard work that you all do in your communities, with us and for us all. And the challenge we face is bigger and it is growing. The landmark poll of American Attitudes towards jews found that one in five americans, 20 , believe in six or more antisemitic tropes about jews. People who have extensive Antisemitic Attitudes. 20 of the population, 60 million people. It is the highest level we have seen in more than 30 years. That is were some. Worrisome. 3 of americans believed all 11 tropes that were presented to them. 3 . That number might sound small, 3 . But that is 8 million people. Who believe every vicious, vile think that they hear about jews. 8 million people, let me put that in some perspective for you. That is more than the number of jews in this country. But that settling for a minute. Let that settle in for a minute. It should come as no surprise that hateful beliefs feel hateful actions. As i think many of you know, you can track Antisemitic Attitudes in america, and we have been doing it longer than anyone else. In 2022, we tracked 3697 antijewish acts. Not just the highest number that we have ever seen in more than four decades of doing this work, it was 36 more than 2020, which, itself, was a historic high. It is the third time in five years we have reached a new high watermark. It is more than 500 greater than the total you go. The alarm bells should be going off. Breaking down these numbers really exposes how dramatically this threat has metastasized. Antisemitic vandalism increased envelope a whopping 51 . The south 26 . More than half of those assaults targeted visibly orthodox jews. Now we find that the dramatic increase in touch jewish incidents is not due to any single ideology or any one group become more accepting of antisemitism or another, is because every ideology is becoming more comfortable with antijewish hate. And i think that too often we see these elements targeting our most sacred and vulnerable spaces. Antisemitic incidents in k12 schools were up 49 . On college canvases, 41 . Campuses, 1 . The alarm bells should be going off. The hostage situation in colleyville last year was perhaps the most hairy harrowing example of the threat. It was only through the courage of the rabbi who utilize training he got from the adl and other groups that keep and the other congregants were able to escape unharmed. And i am so proud that rabbi charlie is not a special advisor to the adl and you will hear more from him later today here at the National Leadership summit. [applause] but it is more than an isolated incident at a synagogue in suburban dallas. Everywhere we look, we see some of our biggest stars in music and sports from the halls of limiter schools to the halls of congress across all of our social media platforms and all of these gaming environments, antisemitism has been mainstreamed like never before. And so i am here to tell you today that we are pushing back. We are doing the work. At the adl, we go with the antisemitism is and we confronted without apology. In 2022, Brooklyn New York was the epicenter of antisemitic assaults with 52 distinct attacks, and antijewish assault every week. In brooklyn. Brooklyn. What you might consider the capital of judaism in america, placed that birth so much of you dish culture birth so much of yiddish culture. And the brazen attacks on the committee committees are despicable. Our orthodox brothers and sisters are under threat concert. They deserve support from everyone. To see this community singled out by institutions like the New York Times, arguing the most important paper in the world, one that i read every day, to see the paper consistently depicts the Orthodox Community as clannish or you seek their power to manipulate events and so on is the kind of antisemitism that we know all too well and that we should not become so complacent as to accept. Let me be clear. This is not a question for me about the quality of their education, or what their curriculum is. There are real questions to be asked and answered to make sure that the students get the education they need to be successful in the Global Economy in which we live. But when the paper of record frames these people and suggesting that this group is different, it is ok to be afraid of them, not ok. We have implored the New York Times behindthescenes, we have spoken out publicly. This framing encourages more antisemitism. And we have been building our relationships with the community. In fact, just last week, i will ship one of my proudest moments as the ceo of adu when we opened an office in borough park in the heart of brooklyn. [applause] why did we do that . Because we go where the antisemitism is. We do the work. And in the middle east, we worked in the United Arab Emirates for years to review and recommend and root out and i jewish bias from school textbooks, improving the discourse and working to prevent a new generation from being exposed to h old antijewish tropes in their education. Now, as you heard yesterday, from dr. Allie, we are working to cure people to people activities thats for understanding not just on the Arabian Peninsula but across the middle east, north africa, Southeast Asia to europe and beyond. I was in abu dhabi earlier this year to announce the opening of the Menorah Center for regional coexistence, chair by a friend of ours. It is an ngo that will build a relationship and create programming with universities to promote understanding and encourage peace. I hear that some might not like the fact that we are working with the United Arab Emirates. Their democracy, if you are, the government seems very different than ours. And it is. Some might push back. But the idea that we are not going to progress until, again, we are going to where the problem is. We will work with the uae and others because we do the work. And going to antisemitism is means going not just to the middle east, to where the antisemitism is means not just going to the middle east but to College Campuses here. On college cap on College Campuses, jewish students are besieged by antizionism that is vile, confrontational antijewish hate. To underscore what i set last year at this congress, conference, antizionism is antisemitism. And when many people were applying to colleges of my generation, the thought never crossed our mind to ask is this a place where i can be saved as a jewish student, and i could tell you it is now at the top of every jewish students mind. And every parents mind. I see this as a jewish parent. With a child who applied to college this year. This was literally consideration, right here, in america. It is at the top of the adls mind and the top of our agenda. In addition to putting pressure on University Officials who, way too often, give these activists a free pass, i am proud that we are partnering with an organization that will give jewish students the resources they need to feel safe, including two working to make sure that de i training in colleges teaches campus leaders and administrators and the students themselves about antisemitism, just as they teach about other prejudices affecting other marginalized communities. [applause] and we are doing this work because we go with the antisemitism is. Again, we do the work. And that is also why the adl is increasingly focused on corporate america. For years, the adl has been at the forefront of pushing big tech to stop eating antisemites and extremists of all types, which these companies do either by not policing their platforms adequately, or by writing algorithms that actively push the most incendiary views. Sometimes they do both. And as advances in Artificial Intelligence like chat gpt are being rolled out and embedded in the source code of so many applications in our digital society, we are redoubling our efforts to make sure that this is an innovation that does not benefit extremists. But it is not just a product and a platform that companies are launching that gets our attention. It is the policies and processes they are adopting and how they run their businesses. And it is something that is happening across all sectors of the economy. Indeed, over the last few years, the bds movement has jumped like a flu or a virus from the College Campuses into Corporate Board rooms. Like when ben and jerrys announced that they would not sell ice cream to the west bank, essentially exiting israel. Or when agencies like morningstar adopted policies that would make doing business with the jewish state a black mark on the cubbies profile. How do these things happen . Because a set of activists are trying to exploit the esg movement as a trojan horse for an antizionist agenda. We can have an argument over whether esg investment principles are important for corporate governance. I believe they are. But what is indisputable and inarguable is that no one should be using esg to push antisemitism. That is why the adl joined forces with another organization last year, the leading Jewish Valuesbased Investment Firm in the world. The group doing the work to make sure that jewish communities at the table and that antisemites dont hijack it and subvert Shareholder Activism for their own purposes. They have a strong track record in promoting socially responsible investing with Jewish Values and since joining the adl, their team has continued to work hard behindthescenes to get ahead of the movement. And as part of our efforts, oncampus and in corporate america, we are also taking a hard look at the diversity, equity and inclusion for di programs, and at all of these institutions. We deeply believe in the merits and value of diversity, equity [no audio] with organizations that represent every marginalized group from morgans mormons to muslims. Api, lgbtq and anyone who is targeted or victimized for that their identity. Look at our Jewish Security alliance operating in new york and new jersey, its incredibly important as a new configuration, which formalizes existing relationships, streamlines information sharing, and bolsters the safety of the entire community by bringing adl, you ja, local federations, the Community Security service, all of us working together to protect our institutions and individuals. [applause] you we will also look at our new embed program. Which places staff from other ngos like vlad and the Asian AmericanFoundation Within adl centers on extremism to share our strategies and train them in our tactics, so that together we can monitor the threat that affects us all, and make all committees safer as a result. We go where the need is. We do the work. And frankly, so do you. It is why you are here today. It is why you chose to come to this summit, to spend several days in washington dc. To talk to the people who make decisions when it comes to funding our priorities. And we know, i deeply appreciate the fact that your voices matter. In large part it is really because of what you do that congress has stepped up in recent years to steadily fund nonprofit security grants. Dollars from dhs which allow nonprofit institutions, houses of worship, faithbased centers. Building defenses to keep themselves safe. The latest round of funding was 305 million and we will need your help to make sure this funding remains robust for years to come. Before i close, and you get onto the incredibly Exciting Program that lies ahead, i would like to go back to where i started. Israels fifth Independence Day. Last week was a moment of celebration and complexity. All of us have watched the protests play out night after night, week after week on the streets of tel aviv, haifa and jerusalem, all over the jewish state. I would like to pause and say that it is Something Special that we dont appreciate, hundreds of thousands of israelis marching every week in a nonviolent manner not burning but raising israeli flags. Celebrating their country, even as they protested. To put that in some perspective, when you look at these numbers, literally night after night they had total representation that exceeded 10 of the non the Jewish Population of the country. More than 10 . Almost 40 million americans marching every week, in equivalency, and joyful patriotic displays. Of love for america. Can you imagine that for a moment . This could only happen in a democracy where people can march without worry of being arrested as we see in turkey or fear of being murdered by the authorities as we saw in iran. Sickly part, these protests do not represent the failure of zionism. This is not the crisis of zionism. This is nothing less than the triumph of zionism. The triumph of a modern Jewish Democratic state. [applause] while i take tremendous joy in seeing that play out, the issues they are protesting about are deeply deeply serious. In recent months, the adl has taken a strong public position about the need for compromise. Were calling for compromise because there are real and legitimate concerns, needs at hand to strengthened israeli democracy. For example, the country would benefit from a more prone pluralistic Supreme Court where all ethnicities are represented. [applause] a more equitable Public Service where all of the nominations of jews served on the front line or on the homefront, Everyone Needs to serve to support the jewish state. [applause] a more open society where choose are accepted and embraced irrespective of how or whether they worshiped or the countries from which their ancestors fled. [applause] and a Civil Society where nonjews enjoy the same rights and fulfill the same responsibilities as their jewish neighbors. [applause] if we learned anything, by watching israel in this first 75 years, its that democracy is not a spectator sport. We learned that lesson here as well. Nor is it a foregone conclusion. We cannot take it for granted. You must do the work. I come back to that. Doing the work to preserve the privileges that you enjoy. That goes for israel and it goes for right here in the United States. Again, it is why you are here, to learn about