Michal Cotler-Wunsh (courtesy)[Missing Credit]
On Thursday, the Trump administration blocked Harvard's ability to enrol international students, citing antisemitism as one of the factors behind the decision to force hundreds of currently enroled students to leave the university.
Cotler-Wunsh declined to take a position on Trump’s policies but was clear: “Applying the law equally and consistently should have nothing to do with Jews.”
It’s a nuanced position – and one, she admits risks getting lost in today’s siloed society.
Born in Israel and raised in Canada, before returning to the Jewish state to study, her PhD research focused on freedom of speech on university campuses.
She is only the second person to take up the voluntary position of special envoy for combatting antisemitism (succeeding Noa Tishby) and is using her academic background to confront the evolving frontlines of Jew-hate.
Her key instrument in identifying antisemitism is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition. Its 11 examples – including holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions and comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis – are, she argues, essential to understanding how antisemitism manifests today.
“It’s my looking glass,” she says. “IHRA doesn’t distinguish between the extreme right, the extreme left or the extreme Islamist; it exposes antisemitism exists across the spectrum, no matter which extremity is peddling it.”
But Cotler-Wunsh is also worried about anti-Zionism – which she dubs “the new strain” of antisemitism – and its use as a “tool in an eighth front of an unconventional war to demonise, delegitimise, and apply double standards to Israel, the proverbial Jew among the nations”.
And yet this “eighth front” is too often ignored within Israel, she claims. “When you’re in survival mode on the other seven war fronts, sound audibly sirens, I am sounding a siren that is inaudible to most.”
Yet antisemitism and anti-Zionism “are critical to be understood by all ministries and decision-makers,” she added, because “they dictate Israel's ability to fight on all other war fronts”. Cotler-Wunsh points to arms embargoes against Israel as an example of this prejudice and of Israel not being treated like any other nation would be during such a war. “I expect Israel to be judged by the same standards as all other countries,” she said.
This belief in consistent principles is evident across her work. “If you allow for the selective application of principle, you render the rule, principle or law irrelevant, and you’ve undermined a shared social covenant”. She sees the marginalisation of Jews in human rights and progressive spaces as part of the same problem.
In her universalist values, Cotler-Wunsh draws inspiration from the late Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks – a family friend and confidante – who championed our shared human experience and responsibility. Cotler-Wunsh is a trustee of the Sacks legacy.
“We have a duty to make accessible the terminology of human rights. We need to make people realise that this is not really about Jews. The Jew may be the first warning sign, the litmus test, the bloody canary in the coal mine, but what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.”
It is a heavy burden, she admits, for Jews on the front line of the fight against antisemitism. She recalls giving a lecture at a New York university years before October 7 and stepping over graffiti reading “Zionists not welcome”.
For some young Jews, the pressure of this kind of anti-Israel activism is too great. “With human rights hijacked and weaponised, the easiest thing for a Gen-Z Jew is to shed their Zionist pound of flesh.” Choosing to step away from the struggle, she adds, is “only human” for some in the community.
But her message is to stand firm and reach out. “We must reclaim intersectionality – transcending and engage across real or perceived divide – especially with those who don’t delegitimise Israel’s very right to exist yet disagree, or who haven’t yet made up their minds.”
“In war, we lose friends, we lose jobs, we lose a lot [but] this is the eighth front of a multi-front war in which global Jewry are the boots on the ground”
And she is encouraging young people to engage with those they might disagree with and explain their experiences of antisemitism.
This doesn’t mean embracing victimhood. “There’s no such thing as a forever victim. Social justice must come with agency, responsibility, and hope. I am naming the hate that targets me… and demanding equal status as an individual, a minority, and a nation state.”
It is a new task for the Jewish people, she argues. The demand to be seen as equal “was not a practised muscle in the collective psychology of our people,” she says.
Cotler-Wunsh during a recent trip to Vienna (courtesy)[Missing Credit]
Historically, Jews built self-reliant communities. “We turned inward to meet our needs. But Israel marks a shift – from building a community to building a society. That is the role and responsibility of our generation in constructing the next tier of the 77-year young miracle.”
Israel, she says, “was supposed to be the solution to antisemitism. The founders of the state didn’t want there to be antisemitism. That was the anomaly of Jewish history.” But she thinks that what Jews face today is the historical norm, “The only difference is that we have a state.”
So what should the relationship between the diaspora and Israel look like — especially at a time of mounting international pressure on Netanyahu’s government? And is it ever acceptable for Jews outside Israel to speak out against the state?
Cotler-Wunsh doesn’t dismiss criticism outright but urges caution. “There is very little ability to understand the nuances of Israeli politics from outside, just as I do not understand the nuances of the politics in the UK.”
That doesn’t mean diaspora Jews should stay silent. On the contrary, she insists, that the relationship must be active and evolving. “Israel has a responsibility to continue to engage global Jewry in continuing to construct our shared project — the State of Israel. Meaning we are not done.”
While Cotler-Wunsh hopes to return to the Knesset, where she served as a centrist from 2020-21, her focus for now is on the unfinished task at hand as special envoy, including the creation of a national strategy for combating antisemitism, “that in Israel’s case as the nation state of the Jewish people must include an international component”.
As she continues to sound the siren on antisemitism in Israel and abroad. The same week she spoke to the JC, London's Israeli embassy was shaken by a foiled terror attack and this week in Washington, two embassy employees were killed at a Jewish event. The urgency of her mission to combat antisemitism and defend Israel’s place on the global stage has surely never felt more stark.
