For four decades, the Wexner Foundation — founded by billionaire philanthropists Leslie and Abigail Wexner — has been singularly devoted to the development of Jewish professional and volunteer leaders in North America and public leaders in Israel.
The foundation’s flagship Wexner Heritage Program works with local communities in North America to identify, recruit, organize and administer two-year cohort programs to educate Jewish communal leaders in the history, thought, traditions and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people. The Wexner Heritage Program is widely respected. And through the influence and work of the thousands of “Wexner graduates,” it has strengthened Jewish life in cities large and small throughout North America.
The Wexner Foundation runs seven leadership programs. Among them is the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program, which was established in 1989 in partnership with Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Each year, the program selects up to 10 Israeli public officials and/or nonprofit leaders to participate in leadership seminars while they pursue a mid-career Master of Public Administration degree at the Kennedy School.
The fellowship program provides Israel’s next generation of leaders advanced training in public management and leadership development and offers participants a unique opportunity to learn, grow and enhance their credentials in a program that is difficult to match.
More than 300 Israeli public officials have participated in the Israel Fellowship, including many who have gone on to become directors general of government ministries, generals and commanders in the military and top advisers to prime ministers. The Wexner Israel Fellowship Program has been very good for Israel.
So, it was both surprising and confusing to learn last week that Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered the Israel Police to terminate all activity with the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program. According to Ben-Gvir — whose order went into immediate effect in a police agency he controls — work with the Wexner Foundation needed to stop because it is an organization that is involved with “obvious left-wing political movements.”
The immediate impact of the Ben-Gvir decree will prevent five Israeli police officers — with the rank of chief superintendent and above — from attending next year’s Harvard program for which they had been selected. The longer-term impact of the decree is unclear.
What is clear, however, is that Ben-Gvir is out of control. He has, once again, gone public and acted reflexively to punish some activity not aligned with his extremist agenda. He does so without regard to the impact his words and actions may have on the ministry and personnel he is supposed to manage or the citizens of the country he is supposed to serve.
We have no idea what Ben-Gvir’s gripe is with Leslie Wexner or the work of his foundation. And we wonder whether Ben-Gvir has any appreciation for how valuable Wexner’s program has been to Israel and his own ministry over the past 34 years.
Either way, as a relative novice to public service and a rookie minister, Ben-Gvir would benefit from training in the Wexner Program. Alas, even were he to be accepted, the program has been placed off-limits by the mercurial Czar of National Security.
The proof for the claims about the Wexner Foundation’s leftist agenda is in the list of some of its more renowned graduates, the vast majority of whom have pushed center-left to extreme-left positions while holding high office in Israel.
The Op-Ed “Ben-Gvir Strikes” in the 9/7/2023 Jewish Exponent was misleading, and therefore failed to provide readers with important context for understanding Israel’s National Security Minister’s termination of Israel’s Police involvement with the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program. While the Wexner Foundation in year’s past may have provided important services to Israel, more recently (i) the Foundation has been criticized for its “radical left political affiliation and cooperation with distinctly left-wing organizations like Breaking the Silence”; (ii) Israel’s attorney general initiated an investigation into the Foundation’s alleged funneling of millions of dollars to then-prime minister Ehud Barak (possibly explaining his sudden resignation, followed by the election of Ariel Sharon); and (iii) convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was a trustee of the Foundation and, according to The New York Times, he held “an unusually strong hold on [Foundation leader] Mr. Wexner”.
As Exponent readers should already know, the IDF is the most moral army in the world. Despite this fact, the anti-Israel group Breaking the Silence regularly and loudly lambastes Israel’s Defense Force and its soldiers with bombastic and unsubstantiated claims of immoral actions against Palestinians, ignoring the IDF’s extraordinary lengths to prevent civilian casualties, even on the Palestinian side.
Supporters of the Jewish State don’t demand agreement from Israel’s opponents. What we do ask is that, at a minimum, debates about and criticism of Israel be based upon a fair and balanced foundation of the facts. The Jewish Exponent should follow this standard in future Op-Eds and articles.