Adam Milstein On His Foundation’s Approach To Supporting Israel
And The Jewish People And Combating Antisemitism
Israeli-American real estate investor, philanthropist, and activist Adam Milstein felt compelled to support Israel and fight against antisemitism in 2000, when the second intifada began and the truth was not being reported. “Notwithstanding the terror wave against innocent Israeli citizens, the mainstream media was mostly blaming Israel,” he stated.
That year, Milstein and his wife founded The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to strengthening U.S.-Israel relations, protecting their shared democratic values, and combating antisemitism, hate, and discrimination. Milstein is also co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Israeli-American Council, and he sits on the board of many pro-Israel organizations, including StandWithUs, Hasbara Fellowships, and the Talk Israel Foundation.
Born in Haifa in 1952, Milstein fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and graduated cum laude from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He began his career in real estate when he was in college, while working with his father to expand the family real estate development company. In 1974, he married Gila, a nursing officer who served in the IDF, and they had three daughters. Seven years later, they moved to Los Angeles, where they still reside. After Milstein received his MBA from the University of Southern California in 1983, he started marketing commercial properties as an agent. He is currently a managing partner at Hager Pacific Properties, a private real estate investment company. But he devotes a great deal of his energy and resources toward advocating for Israel and the Jewish people.
On September 10, 2001, Milstein attended a screening of the documentary Jihad in America, which showed radical Islamists chanting “Death to America!” from inside American mosques. “When I woke up the next morning, it was 9/11. The event inspired me to alert the American people and educate them about the clear and present danger from domestic and international hate movements,” Milstein said.
Milstein’s foundation connects and empowers large networks of philanthropic organizations that work together synergistically. A report called “The New Antisemites,” authored by StopAntisemitism.org and the Zachor Legal Institute, became a collaborative campaign when the Milsteins helped reach out to pro-Israel organizations to share the findings, resulting in 64 of them endorsing it. Milstein described how The New Antisemites exposes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as “the new antisemitism of our century… which promotes violence against Jews and uses Nazi language and Nazi tactics.”
He added, “When the report came out in late 2019 and stated that ‘BDS promotes violence against Jews,’ many American Jews said, ‘Well, that’s nonsense. What violence are you speaking about?’ But in 2021 and 2022, thus far, we see more radical Muslims physically attacking Jews in America in the streets of major cities like New York and Los Angeles. So, what the report predicted is now happening in America.”
One of the organizations the Milsteins support conducted extensive research about the origins of BDS, which was incorporated into a 2019 report, “Terrorists in Suits,” published by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy and other think tanks. “The BDS movement was created by the five major Palestinian terrorist organizations in 2001 who decided to start another front to eradicate the State of Israel,” Milstein explained.
He added that the report showed that “many of the leaders of terrorist organizations are now leaders of the BDS movement.”
“Terrorists in Suits” details how the BDS movement was initiated and implemented by the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Islamic Jihad Movement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and other Palestinian NGOs. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) heads the international boycott campaign against Israel. The report states that PACBI compares Israeli policy to that of Nazis and “does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, opposes the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, and works to boycott and isolate Israel.”
The authors used information from “Terrorists in Suits” to alert governments, NGOs, and financial platforms like PayPal to deplatform and stop funding BDS organizations. Milstein explained that this information was also disseminated by legal and advocacy organizations “to counterattack challenges to existing anti-BDS laws by organizations like ACLU and CAIR that have tried to present BDS as a human rights organization.”
Milstein was first introduced to the BDS movement in 2008 at a conference hosted by CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), where the organizers called BDS “a war by other means.” Milstein said BDS is effective at tricking people, including many Jews, into believing it cares about the suffering of the Palestinians because it masquerades as a social justice movement. “They’re using a lot of emotional key words that the far left identify with, including ‘apartheid,’ ‘genocide’ and ‘human rights.’ They try to tie Israel to negative values and show Israel as the bad guy.”
Milstein discussed how anti-Zionist Jews, such as members of Jewish Voice for Peace, who are champions of BDS, are “on a self-destruction voyage,” harming themselves and the entire Jewish community. Referencing the recent Boston Mapping Project, which threateningly revealed locations of local Jewish organizations deemed responsible for “the colonization of Palestine,” Milstein asserted, “They aren’t just mapping organizations that are pro-Israel – they map anything Jewish. They don’t care what type of a Jew you are… Whether you’re a Jew supporting Israel, or you’re a Jew not supporting Israel – a Jew is a Jew, and what this group of American Jews is doing by supporting BDS is fueling antisemitism that at some point will be turned against them.” According to the ADL, the Boston Mapping Project is endorsed by Boston BDS.
The extreme right, the extreme left, and radical Muslims have recently formed a dangerous alliance over their mutual hatred of Jews and Israel. Milstein described how neo-Nazis, BDS, and Louis Farrakhan’s propaganda about Ashkenazi Jews not being “the real Jews,” but descendants of the Southeastern Russian tribe called Khazars, are intertwined in their Jew-hatred. “Basically, they are trying to manufacture an alternative history where European Jews have no connection to the land of Israel, to the Temple Mount, to our history or traditions. All the antisemites have the same talking points.”
Milstein stressed how imperative it is for Jews to have Jewish pride in order to stand up against antisemitism and fight back. “Antisemitism is growing in high schools and colleges, and it’s affecting all of our kids. They are ashamed to be Jews, they’re ashamed to be associated with pro-Israel activity.” To improve Israel’s image in the eyes of the younger generations, Milstein supports the Talk Israel Foundation, a non-profit that will train Israeli and American teens and young adults how to become social media influencers who engage with their peers worldwide about personal and Israel related topics.
As part of a unique approach to fighting antisemitism, Milstein has been joining forces with pro-American philanthropic organizations and think tanks like The Heritage Foundation. Although members of these groups are not predominantly Jewish, “they understand that Jews are just the barometer. Anyone attacking us is sooner or later going to attack Americans,” he stated.
Milstein noted that the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), critical race theory (CRT), and the ethnic studies curricula being taught at U.S. schools are “extremely antisemitic, accusing Jews and the State of Israel of being oppressors” and “seeking to replace and radicalize American values.”
“The sooner we can highlight that they are first and utmost anti-American and not just as anti-Jewish, the better [off] we are,” he said.
For more information you can visit the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation at www.milsteinff.org.
