By: Joseph Schneider

Edited By: Eric Omorogieva

Note: The author interned at EMET during the summer of 2024; all opinions in this article are his own. So are his in-text pictures.

For the second time after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Endowment for Middle East Truth—commonly known as EMET, the Hebrew word for truth—hosted its annual Rays of Light in the Darkness Dinner to fundraise and grant awards to those who had shown unmovable support for Israel during the previous years. The dinner’s name is very telling. Officially nonpartisan, EMET is a small nonprofit organization that exclusively and unapologetically takes Israel’s side in the international conflicts in which the Jewish state is involved. Therefore, it is clear that EMET perceives supporting Israel as the only moral choice. EMET has also made forays into fighting antisemitism. For instance, it claims credit for introducing the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 to members of Congress. The bill, which originated in the House and awaits passage through the Senate, seeks to require that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The SAIS Observer was among the few media organizations that covered the event.

Despite EMET’s small size, the awardees were at least renowned within the pro-Israel community; many of them were famous outside of it. The event format was that each recipient spoke as attendants enjoyed their three-course supper. New York Republican Congresswoman and the Trump administration’s nominee for the Ambassadorship of the United States to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, was the first awardee to speak. In December 2023, Stefanik became famous for her aggressive questioning of the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT during a congressional hearing, which sparked the resignation of the first two soon after. In her address, Stefanik declaimed her love of Israel as a child whose all-girls school faced a synagogue, as a fellow for The Foundation of Defense of Democracies, or at a speech she gave in the Knesset after October 7. She also stated her opposition to the International Criminal Court, her support for Iron Dome, and her opposition to the “terrorist” college protestors who, in her view, did not reflect the overall mood in the United States.

Stefanik’s speech then turned to explaining and celebrating her hallmark questioning of university presidents the previous year. She stated that she could only ask the three university presidents whether the phrase “from the river to the sea”—which many interpret as a chant for anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing—violated each university’s code of conduct because the most junior member of the House Committee on Education yielded her three minutes to her. After stating that it did not “depend on the context,” as those university presidents answered, Stefanik congratulated herself for having the most viral hearing in the history of the United States Congress and for unveiling a culture of “moral decay, intellectual laziness, and groupthink (…) at so-called elite institutions.” She also promised to continue this kind of work in the United Nations, bringing moral clarity and the hostages in Gaza back. During these moments, the crowd broke into rapturous applause. When the speech ended, EMET president Sarah Stern handed Stefanik her award.

Then, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Mike Herzog, and his wife, Shirin, spoke for a few minutes before they received their award and, despite their acknowledgment of the trauma of October 7, mostly kept to official Israeli talking points and to comment about the end of their tenure on January 20. The next awardee was Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz. In his speech, Moskowitz, introduced as a “wonderful liberal Democrat,” spoke about bipartisanship and denounced how “[American Jews] didn’t come together after Israel’s 9/11 moment” and how many Jews who had supported the struggles of minorities ended up feeling abandoned after not receiving the response they expected in return. During his speech, Moskowitz expressed admiration for Senator Joe Lieberman, Congressman Ted Deutch, and Congressman Ritchie Torres and cited how he went to support Jewish students during the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University. Moskowitz also said that being anti-Zionist did not mean being anti-Semitic, but said that a high number of anti-Zionist people were. He also dispelled genocide accusations against Israel. A noteworthy moment in his speech was when he said that calling out antisemitism was “much harder” when it was “within your own tent” and called Republicans to disavow Tucker Carlson, but tempered it down by hinting that more Democrats were promoting antisemitism and treating Jews like “second-and third-class citizens.”

Next was Mosab Hassan Youssef, son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Youssef, who gave an interview in the only switch in the dinner format. Youssef congratulated EMET president Stern for keeping him in her home to save him from deportation. Apparently, because of his family history, United States authorities associated Youssef with Hamas until Stern clarified how he had renounced the ideology of Hamas. Therefore, he urged attendants to “put down your forks” and “show respect” whenever Stern spoke. In a particularly aggressive intervention, Youssef accused Hamas supporters of performing “child sacrifice,” seeking a genocide but then complaining about one, being “Nazis,” supporting a Palestinian “colonial entity,” and merely seeing Israel as a stepping stone for control of the wider Muslim world. Youssef also rejected the Palestinian Arab claim of a collective identity. He urged resisting any Trump-sponsored ceasefire and that he could only talk about peace “after I crash their [Hamas’] skulls.”

The final speaker was Shabbos Kestenbaum, a former Harvard Divinity School student suing the university for religious discrimination. Kestenbaum feted Stefanik and said her giving him her phone number was an act of “leadership.” He mentioned that former roommates did not want to speak to him anymore and recalled his class-action lawsuit at Harvard and other class-action lawsuits from Columbia and NYU students. Kestenbaum recounted his appearance at the Republican National Convention and said he wished he had attended the Democratic National Convention. He also asked the camera to focus on his yarmulke because he stated that many Jewish students had taken them off. In the end, Kestenbaum concluded in tears when he narrated how a 15-year-old girl handed him a 100-dollar bill to give to “the next person in Israel.” He then concluded with appeals for bipartisanship and Western civilization.

The EMET Rays of Light in the Darkness Dinner is an excellent showcase of the optimism, anger, sadness, frustration, and preparedness that many sectors of the American pro-Israel community feel. For the attendants, Israel goes all the way.