In previous years, MirYam Institute annual benefit briefings have featured speakers who “have been at the heart of policy-making,” including diplomats and elected officials. “This year, in light of the massacre of Oct. 7, we wanted to bring people who have lived, breathed and sacrificed in the course of Israel’s war to defend its borders,” Benjamin Anthony, the cofounder and CEO of the institute, told JNS.
The institute, “a forum for leading Israeli experts of diverse and varied perspectives” with a particular focus on government and campuses, per its website, held the gathering that drew about 300 people at Three Times Square on Wednesday evening in a room adorned with U.S. and Israeli flags.
“The war of Hamas and of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and of jihadist terrorism cannot be accurately understood when viewed through a Western prism,” Anthony told JNS. “It needs to be understood by the people who fought against it, who grew up as part of it, who have sacrificed in the face of it.”
Boris Shtonda, an Israel Defense Forces combat veteran and amputee, was one of the speakers to address the audience on Wednesday. “My friends sacrificed their lives and I am still alive,” he told the crowd, noting that he wears a prosthetic leg. “I am going to do everything I did before the injury and more,” he said.
The Ukrainian native, who told the audience that he was a member of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and protected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Yossi Cohen, the former Mossad director, made aliyah at 12.
Shtonda was in Japan on Oct. 7 and told a friend, right as he learned about the attack, that he was coming back to defend his country. He was injured twice during combat missions in Gaza, during the IDF operation “Swords of Iron.” He was trapped in a building with a Hamas tunnel in the second instance. Four members of his unit were killed instantly, and four, including him, underwent amputations.
“I love this country so much,” he said. “I want to serve this country all my life.”
Bret Stephens, an opinion columnist at the New York Times who has worked for the paper since 2017, also addressed the audience. He told JNS that he has spoken to high-quality, engaged audiences at MirYam events in the past.
“This event proved no different,” he said.
Stephens spoke at the event about his hopes for the incoming Trump administration and the future of foreign policy in the Middle East.
“I think that the president should understand that Israel is helping America wage our fight against a common enemy,” Stephens told JNS. “It is one front in that battle because the common enemy is the axis of repression led by Iran, Russia, China and North Korea and their affiliates around the world.”
The blows that Israel is inflicting on Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, what remains of Syria’s military and Iran “ultimately enhance the security of every American,” he told JNS. “President-elect Trump, I hope, will recognize that fact and give Israel the support it needs.”
Stephans also told the audience that protesters on college campuses have not stood once against actual oppressive regimes but only against the State of Israel. Their protests against the latter have “blossomed” into antisemitism.
“They have an objection to one state, and it just happens to be the Jewish state,” Stephans told the audience.
“I have an opportunity at The New York Times to offer a view and a set of facts which aren’t always familiar to readers but are as important to share as they have ever been,” Stephens told JNS, “and also to perhaps steady the nerves of other readers, who share my views and fear that the world has gone crazy.”
“The media is a plural noun,” he told JNS. “There has been terrific journalism and there has been awful journalism, and without prejudice to any of my colleagues in the media sphere, I try to provide informed and sometimes counter-cultural commentary.”
‘No substitute for seeing it for yourself’
The MirYam Institute partners with U.S. military academies and the U.S. Army to bring current and future American officers to Israel “in the service of American interests and Israeli interests,” Anthony, the institute CEO, told JNS.
JNS spoke with several cadets and veterans at the event, some of whom shared only their first names.
“Given recent events going on in Israel between Hamas and the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah and strikes in Syria, it’s interesting to come here and get the MirYam Institute’s analysis on what’s happening over there,” Donovan Taylor, a student at Norwich University, a military college in Northfield, Vt., told JNS.
Isabella Ross, of North Carolina and also a student at Norwich, told JNS of attending the event that “it’s always nice having that cultural background to understand communities better and what is going on in the world.”
A U.S. combat veteran, who identified only as Dave, told JNS that he served in the Middle East and has worked with the institute for the past four years. The participation of his cadets in Israel strategy and policy international tours that the institute organizes has grown exponentially, he told JNS.
“Our cadets come away with an appreciation of that strategic partnership between the United States and Israel,” he said. “There is no substitute for seeing it for yourself, just exposing the cadets to what happened in Poland with the Holocaust and then 14 days in Israel is powerful.”
“They come back with a whole different worldview,” he added.
Joyce Silver, of New York, also attended the event. She told JNS that she wanted to hear the perspective of the speaker Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father Sheikh Hassan Yousef is a founding Hamas leader.
“I care very deeply and Israel is important to me. I’d like to see the people at peace,” Silver said. “As a Jew, what happens in Israel happens to all Jews in the Diaspora.”
Harold Marcus, a retiree from Pennsylvania who worked at Israel Bonds for four decades, including as executive director of the state region, has hosted Anthony as a speaker and has become close friends with the MirYam CEO.
“No one is going to stand up for us if we don’t stand up for ourselves,” Marcus told JNS. “It’s very important for us to get together in these kinds of forums to show our solidarity.”
Anthony told JNS that Israel must “restore its place as a sure and certain presence among the community of nations.”
“The people of Israel and the State of Israel must become ever more closely bound by their shared and collective future and destiny,” he added.
Yvette Bendahan of New York told JNS that she attended the event hoping to come away hopeful.
“Israel is the most important thing in my life right now,” she said. “When you have family there you are connected, what other reason could one have? You want to wish them well.”