Longtime progressive activist and former congressional candidate Brianna Wu didn’t think that condemning the atrocities committed against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, would come at such a personal cost. Since becoming a vocal advocate for the Jewish state online, she says that she has lost nearly $100,000 in professional contracts.
“It’s like setting a blowtorch to every single relationship in my life,” she told attendees of the American Jewish Committee’s Women’s Leadership Board Luncheon in Manhattan on April 9.
Known for her outspoken advocacy on women’s rights and online harassment, Wu was one of two featured speakers on the hour-long panel, which focused on pro-Israel allyship.
Rawan Osman, a Lebanese-born peace activist, told attendees about her journey to becoming a pro-Israel advocate, which began with a moment of panic in a French grocery store in 2011.
Seeing visibly Jewish men for the first time sent Osman running, she told attendees. But when she returned, the shopkeeper welcomed her—an act of kindness that upended years of anti-Israel indoctrination.
“On that day, that storekeeper, without intending to, converted me from an enemy to an ally by being kind to me,” she said. “He changed the trajectory of my life.”
“That is when I asked myself, ‘Why is the Jew my enemy?’” she said. “I realize that my entire perception of Israel and the Jews was formed and shaped by the one and only secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.”
Wu, who is transgender, credited Jews with helping her survive some of the most difficult chapters in her life.
“I would not be alive today if it were not for the Jews who helped me,” she said.
‘Western values’
Osman told JNS that supporting Israel means defending Western values, especially in the face of the Iranian-led axis with partners in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that seeks to destroy Israel.
“They’ve been working for decades now to destroy Israel’s image, to deliberately delegitimize the country and the Israeli people by echoing propaganda and by translating antisemitic literature that is available in every Arab country—be it Mein Kampf translated to Arabic, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that people believe to be real books,” she said.
“Israel represents Western values in the Middle East, and the camps trying to get rid of Israel had an Islamist agenda,” she said.
Hamas would never have been able to attack Israel on Oct. 7 without the financial support of Iran, according to Osman.
“As soon as the attacks started, groups around the globe were mobilized to express support for the Palestinian cause, while simultaneously bashing the West and calling out its hypocrisy,” she said.
Osman told JNS that a better future is possible for Palestinians if Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are removed.
“They are not fit for government,” she said. “It’s not a politically mature society, and whoever wants the well-being of Gaza has to start by seeing Gazans coming out of Gaza.”
“We despise wars because wars are bad, and it entails collateral damage,” she said. “I do not believe Hamas’s numbers, and that has to be clear, because we do not believe ISIS numbers. However, if one child died in Gaza, that is one too many.”
Wu told JNS that there is a pervasive anti-Israel bias in the Democratic Party.
“I am a Democratic operative and I make my living by helping people win elections,” she said. “I’m trying to raise the alarm, because we have some really bad actors that have infiltrated our party that are anti-West and are teaching people to believe that our own country is the enemy.”
“There is no future for the Democratic party until we reckon with this,” she said. “The Democratic Party is not going to survive if we have elements in it insisting that America is the root of all the problems in the world, and that our Jewish neighbors are the problem.”
Wu told JNS that she will be traveling to Israel to work on a project aimed at engaging the “TikTok generation”—adults under 40, who often lack an understanding of Israel’s history and the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship, she said.
“Jews should not have to beg the rest of America to love you,” she said. “You deserve so much better than that, and I am profoundly embarrassed that the rest of the country can’t see your value.”