The Republican Jewish Coalition is known in Jewish circles for its annual summit in Las Vegas, which draws headliners and contenders. On Sunday, the RJC held a more intimate gala in the evening after the Israel Day on Fifth parade in Manhattan.
“Tonight is about gratitude. It’s about patriotism, and it is about recognizing the extraordinary people in this room who understand something fundamental about America and the Jewish community,” said Matt Brooks, CEO of the coalition, at the event, which also marked America’s 250th anniversary.
“They understand that freedom is never guaranteed, that leadership matters and that, if you care about the future, you have to show up and fight for it,” Brooks said.
The RJC head revealed that its political action arm spent more than $5 million to defeat Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in his Republican primary, helping to oust the party’s most vocal anti-Israel official.
“Let me say very clearly tonight, ‘That was a fight worth having and a victory worth celebrating,’” Brooks told attendees. “Someone who repeatedly undermines support for Israel, trafficks in isolationism at a moment of global danger and refuses to stand with the Jewish state when it matters most—there has to be consequences.”
“The RJC proves something important,” he added. “Being anti-Israel in today’s Republican Party is not, unlike in the Democratic Party, a path to success.”
Israeli officials told attendees that U.S. President Donald Trump has understood for a long time that Israel’s fight also belongs to the West.
“Together, as partners, we confronted the ayatollah terror regime and proved that free nations still possess the will to fight for freedom,” Amir Ohana, Knesset speaker, told those gathered at Chelsea Pier in Manhattan.
Ohana became the first Knesset speaker to participate in the parade. It was, he said, a direct response to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to boycott the event, a first for a city mayor in 60 years.
“America is a nation whose leadership still lives by the truth its founders knew, that freedom endures by virtue of three simple words: ‘Fight, fight, fight,’” Ohana said, echoing what Trump said after a 2024 assassination attempt.
Ofir Akunis, Israeli consulate general in New York, told the crowd that in Grand Central Station and other locations around the city, international leaders help to “spread blood libels against our people, to use rude words about Israel and about the United States.”
Protesters are “using our democracies to destroy them,” Akunis said.
He applauded the RJC for “making sure that the elected officials in office represent our collective values and that the U.S.-Israel relationship stays at a high priority.”
Multiple speakers decried Mamdani’s boycott of the parade.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who represents the most heavily-populated Jewish congressional district in the county, said that the mayor “should be ashamed of himself for not marching in this parade today and standing up for the people of Israel, and for Jewish Americans right here in New York.”
He called the U.S.-Israel war against Iran “a righteous fight,” urging attendees that “as we celebrate America 250, folks should recognize one thing. It is not just antisemitism. It is not just Jew-hatred. It is not just anti-Zionism, but it is a hatred of America.”
“It is a hatred of Western democracy. It is a hatred of capitalism. It is a hatred of the Judeo-Christian values that are at the core of this nation,” Lawler said. “Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”
Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman, who is running against New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, also spoke at the event, as did Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) and former Auburn University basketball coach Bruce Pearl, one of Israel’s staunchest defenders on social media.
‘Fight and win’
The Jewish Policy Center, a policy think tank affiliated with the RJC, hosted a panel discussion about Jew-hatred to close out the evening. (The center hosted the panel as a nonpartisan body, so that Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, could take part, an informed source told JNS.)
Waltz, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon and Norm Coleman, a former U.S. senator who chairs the RJC, spoke on the panel.
“On America’s 250th birthday, we are the luckiest, most fortunate people in the world to live in the world’s oldest democracy, to be partnered with the Middle East’s only democracy,” Waltz said. It is “something that we can never lose sight of, that we have to fight for.”
Like Danon, Waltz said that he thinks it’s best to remain engaged at the United Nations, despite the swell of Jew-hatred and anti-Israel activity within the global body.
“We need to get in there and fight and win,” Waltz said, noting that Washington forced a large budget cut at the United Nations. “It can be done.”
