Fighting antisemitism, bolstering identity: Elan Carr on IAC's post-Oct 7 future - exclusive

Elan Carr had only been the CEO of the Israeli-American Council for five days when Hamas launched its October 7 pogrom in the South, he recalled in an exclusive Jerusalem Post interview last week.

Through the shock and horror the IAC CEO felt in the face of a “catastrophic explosion in Jewish history,” Carr revisited a thought that he held as a US Army reserve officer after the September 11 terrorist attacks: “Thank God, I’m here where I am.”

Carr had been thankful to have been in the military so that he could be part of the American people’s response to the 9/11 attacks, eventually leading an anti-terrorism unit in Iraq, prosecuting terrorists, and even lighting candles in Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace. As the new CEO of the IAC, an organization tasked with representing Israeli Americans and strengthening the bonds between American Jews and Israelis, he once again felt he was in the right position to meaningfully answer a call to arms.

“Thank God, I have this job,” Carr recalled thinking on October 7. “Thank God, I’m leading an organization that will absolutely, I know, be a critical part of the response to this.”

Almost six months later, Carr’s sentiment has grown stronger as he has grown into the position.

“Having led the organization and seeing what we’re doing, what we’re doing for the identity of our kids, what we’re doing to fight antisemitism, in schools, on campuses, in our streets, what we’re doing for the State of Israel, to stand up and support the State of Israel, to make sure every single American is viscerally aware of the horror that all of us have suffered, all of us now as Jews... I couldn’t be prouder,” said Carr. “And I couldn’t be more grateful to be able to make that kind of impact and to fight for the future of Israeli Americans, but more broadly, to fight for the future of our people since October  7.”

Since that day, Carr said the IAC has organized numerous events across the US gathering hundreds and in some cases, thousands of Israeli Americans, American Jews, and people of all creeds to come together “to support Israel, to pray for the release of our hostages, to demand that the United States stand with Israel unequivocally until we have a decisive victory over the enemies of civilization.”

The IAC held a rally in Times Square on October 21 in which leaders from the Republican and Democrat parties joined thousands of citizens around billboards projecting the faces of hostages. Carr said a Knesset member present broke down crying.

“We’ve done events all across the country that changed people’s lives,” said Carr. “Because when people come together and demand justice... it changes them. Not only is it effective in the influence it makes on America and on our society, it also changes them, it makes them activists.”

Organizing strategist of the IAC

The IAC maintains an activist base of over 10,000 people who receive calls to action from the organization, said Carr, explaining what they need to know about the war in Gaza to be able to advocate on behalf of Israel and what actions they can take to make a difference.

Pro-Israel activism is far from the IAC’s only response to October 7. Carr had come into the position with the broad strategic vision of seeking to combat antisemitism, instill a shared Jewish-Israeli identity and heritage, and help foster community cohesion for Israel-Americans, but until October 6 he thought he had more time to meet as many of the 120 permanent employees and 100 seasonal staff members, visit all 20 IAC regional chapters, and experience all of the programs before implementing any plans. He had just visited one of the regions on the week of the attack. The implementation of Carr’s vision didn’t change on October 7 but he said it was accelerated to a “wartime tempo.”

“The mission is as relevant today as it was on October 6, and, in fact, I would say it’s more relevant today,” said Carr. “The mission is to create a strong and unifying Israeli-American community to achieve specific purposes.”

Strengthening Jewish and Israeli-American identities and the confluence between the two is so vital in the wake of October 7 to Carr because “how can you possibly fight the enemies on the outside if we don’t know who we are on the inside?”

“Of course, identity isn’t only a matter of fighting enemies on the outside, it’s an end in itself,” said Carr. ‘It’s the Jewish future. You’ve got the Jewish future and ensuring the Jewish – and also in our case Israeli – identity of the next generation, but that is also the chief weapon against fighting antisemitism on the outside.”

The identity of future generations of Israeli and Jewish Americans was in mind when the IAC chose Carr to lead them on this mission.

Carr, while a long-time American-Jewish leader as the ex-special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, former international president of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, and a voting member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was not a first-generation Israeli American.

The New York-born Carr had been familiar with the IAC since it was founded as a small organization in Los Angeles, according to him at the suggestion of then-LA consul general Ehud Danoch. Carr’s mother and stepfather were among the founders of the IAC and watched it grow from a small group to expand out from Los Angeles across communities in the United States and become a Jewish mainstay in just under two decades.

Part of the reason Carr was chosen by the IAC board over Israeli candidates was that he was a second-generation Israeli, whom they believed to be the future. Israeli board members had children who were born in the United States, and they wanted to ensure that the organization would “speak to them.”

The IAC faced the problem of assimilation rates for Israeli Americans that far exceeded those of secular American Jews, said Carr.

“Part of the problem is that Israelis, especially those who were recent immigrants to the United States, I don’t think really connected or saw a role for themselves in the Jewish-American organizational world,” said Carr. “One of the key central end states that the IAC seeks to achieve is the Israeli-American community integrated into the Jewish-American community.”

The answer is not just about seeing more of the over 700,000 Israeli Americans in American-Jewish institutions, said Carr, though they have worked to foster involvement. He said Israeli Americans were presidents of Jewish day schools and federation board members across the country.

The IAC itself had integrated into the network of American-Jewish institutions, with the CEO participating in a “J7” meeting of the largest global Jewish communities and attending Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations meetings. Carr didn’t rule out the IAC applying to the Conference for membership but said that had to be discussed internally and decided also by the board.

While many Israelis were integrated into the organized Diaspora, “We don’t just want integration, we want a joint identity,” said Carr. “We want every Israeli American to understand, learn, and live how to be a Diaspora Jew.

“By the same token, we want every American Jew to understand viscerally what it is to have that magic of the Jewish homeland under Jewish sovereignty, and to absorb and embrace that Israeli identity, which belongs to every Jew,” Carr expanded. “That’s the heritage of every Jew, to appreciate, to understand, to imbibe the magic of Jewish sovereignty and the Jewish homeland and to revel in the culture created in that magic. And the language itself is a miracle. The rejuvenation of our ancient language that’s today spoken by many Jews around the world. Well, that’s not only for Israelis – Israelis don’t own Hebrew, the Jewish people own Hebrew.”

The IAC sought to create “this kind of stronger, better, deeper Jewish identity that includes the Israeli identity,” said Carr.

American Jewry connection to Israel

POST-OCTOBER 7, American Jews have never felt more connected to Israel, nor have hungered for more of a connection. There are many American-Jewish children in IAC programs because their parents understand the need for a deeper sense of identity. They were present in the Eitanim teenagers program as well as the Gvanim leadership program. Carr attended a New York forum for alumni of the leadership program on Wednesday.

Second-generation Israelis grew up with a deeper understanding of this “magic,” hearing and often speaking Hebrew in their households, but were wrong about thinking that Jewish identity could be absorbed in the air like in Israel –  “lo and behold, one day their kids don’t know who they are,” said Carr.

“We have an entire department that teaches Israeli Americans how to civically engage and exert the influence that is the right of every American citizen to exert on the body politic,” said Carr. “We do that every day. We have courses that teach this... teaching Israelis how to be Diaspora Jews, teaching Diaspora Jews how to be Israeli.”

Yet both Jewish Americans and Israeli Americans are under attack with the wave of antisemitism that has hit the US following October 7. Carr doesn’t see discrimination against Israelis for their national origin as being separate from the problem of antisemitism, but a different angle to the same problem of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

“That angle is often denied by those who are not sympathetic to the Jewish concern and not sympathetic to Israel, that when a Jewish student complains, very often they hear sometimes from the very systems created to help minorities deal with discrimination, they hear, ‘ah, you you’re part of the privileged, you know, you’re part of the problem. You don’t talk to us about the need for our help.’”

As an organization that represents immigrant communities, the IAC makes the case that people are discriminating against immigrants because they understand that argument, said Carr, but just because that phrasing works, national origin discrimination against Jews is indeed antisemitism.

The vast majority of the antisemitic incidents the IAC was seeing were anti-Zionist.

“One would have thought that the medieval savagery visited on the Jewish people on October 7, it might have, you know, at least for a short period of time, embarrassed the antisemites of the world and driven them underground, even for a short period of time,” said Carr, noting the incidents began immediately after the pogrom. “Nope, the opposite happened. This triggered an orgy of Jewish hatred displayed publicly and openly without embarrassment around the world, in our communities, on our streets, in our schools, on our campuses.”

The IAC has trained over a thousand teachers to understand antisemitism, anti-Zionism, discrimination against Israelis, and the Holocaust.

“Zionism isn’t something peculiar to Israeli-American Zionism, it is part of Jewish identity,” said Carr. “It’s part of what it means to be a Jew. And we make that very clear in our training, that that is part of what it means to be a Jew.”

The IAC has also directly handled 600 individual cases of antisemitism, 300 of them in schools. Carr said they don’t just make statements and condemnations but hold meetings with parents and teachers, and act as caseworkers for students on campus.

Carr said the Biden administration’s strategy on antisemitism wasn’t perfect, but it was commendable. He gave input in the development process but would have liked to have seen more campuses addressing anti-Zionism.

As a former special envoy on antisemitism, Carr sees a lot of measures against Jew-hatred as being defensive. He prefers to go on the offensive by pushing a pro-Jewish narrative.

“The very fabric of Western civilization, and certainly of the United States, has been wrapped around Jewish values and the Jewish story from the moment of our founding and the founding fathers, all the way through our greatest moments, including the civil rights movement. That needs to be taught... not only to Jewish kids, who should be very proud of that, that should be taught to every American kid,” said Carr. “One of the priorities I had is taking advantage of Jewish American Heritage Month – during which little happens – I pushed that as special envoy. I’ve been working on that since right now. The IAC is part of the Jewish American Heritage Month Task Force.”

For their work in promoting Jewish identity and fighting back against antisemitism, Carr calls on Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans to engage with the IAC.

“Not for our sake,” said Carr. “Engaging with IAC produces kids who are proud, care about who they are, committed to staying what they are, produces a strong, empowered, unified community that takes care of each other, as well as fights our enemies on the outside and then produces influence for our united Jewish and Israeli community.”