Hadassah National President meets Israeli President Isaac Herzog at solidarity event

The Jewish world has shown incredible support for Israel at this time, President Isaac Herzog told a Hadassah solidarity delegation on Wednesday.

Led by Carol Ann Schwartz, the newly installed National President of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, who came into office on January 1, the delegation included male and female volunteers from eight countries: the USA, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, and Switzerland.

Schwartz, a member of a four-generation Hadassah family, is the 28th national president of Hadassah and the first to come from Cincinnati. She told The Jerusalem Post, “I’m the first president west of the Hudson.”

One of the first things the delegation did after landing in Israel was to submit a petition to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) demanding that its representatives visit the Israeli captives of Hamas in Gaza.

The petition containing 5,000 signatures was presented by Schwartz, immediate past president Rhoda Smolow, and Suzanne Patt Benvenisti, director of the Hadassah office in Israel. It calls on the ICRC to stop ignoring the hostages still being held in Gaza in inhumane conditions who are suffering physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.

Herzog was interested in hearing from non-Israeli members of the delegation, Jewish and non-Jewish, about the reactions in their respective countries to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the events that have since evolved.

Schwartz told Herzog that everyone in the large delegation was in overdrive.

Latin American representatives

Latin American representatives spoke of the need for greater cohesion and coordination and the challenges posed by countries’ presidents who were inclined to be pro-Palestinian.

Argentina’s recently elected president, Javier Milei, does not share the anti-Israel views of most other Latin American leaders. In conversation with The Jerusalem Post, Olivia Goldschmidt, a member of the delegation who hails from Argentina, said that the previous government had signed agreements with Iran, and now the Jewish community is very pleased to have a president who is so pro-Israel that he got photographed with an Israeli flag. Even so, some members of the Jewish community, remembering the terror attacks on AMIA and the Israel Embassy in the 1990s, which resulted in many deaths and injuries, were fearful of another attack under the administration of a president who is so enthusiastically open about his admiration for Judaism and Israel.

Topics raised in discussion among Herzog, his wife Michal, and members of the delegation included therapies that should be given to women, children, and soldiers; the influence of Muslim-majority countries; gender abuse; the dangers posed by Houthi attacks on ships in the region; appealing to the silent majority; forming a coalition of minorities in Muslim-majority countries; public diplomacy over how Hamas indoctrinates children; and the hearing concerning charges of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

While acknowledging that some governments are not as friendly towards Israel as their predecessors were or as they used to be, Herzog cited US President Joe Biden as a friend. Nonetheless, Israel depends on major Jewish organizations that are powerful and influential, he said.

It is essential that all Jewish organizations reach out and extend their public diplomacy campaigns in their respective countries, he added.

The whole issue related to Gaza is very complicated, he said, describing the summer camps in which children are brainwashed into being jihadists and the discovery of arms and ammunition in schools, hospitals, private homes, and even on the ground.

Neither Hamas nor the Houthis care whom they kill, said Herzog, noting that they have also murdered many Arabs. Regarding the Houthis, he stressed the significance of making it known what effect continued attacks by the Houthis on ships in the region would have on trade and tourism.

MICHAL HERZOG, who has taken the issue of gender abuse under her wing, spoke of double standards. What she does find heartwarming, however, is how much so many people care about Israel and are aiding the war effort.

The prominent role of women in this war has been unique in so many areas, she said. Unfortunately, this is also true concerning gender abuse, of which mostly Israeli women have been the victims during this war, she said. It’s a very complex issue, she explained, because on the one hand, there is no desire to humiliate any woman by making her story public, but on the other hand, these human rights abuses must be exposed.

She suggested that Hadassah organize a major awareness rally in New York designed to embarrass those countries in which women suffer abuse and the perpetrators go unpunished.

From the President’s Residence, the delegation went to Kfar Aza in the South, stopping along the way at Kibbutz Nir Am, which is the home of a Hadassah cardiologist who also happens to be a super sniper and was extremely active on October 7.