Jerusalem News Syndicate’s International Policy Summit will present 12 high-level forums that together amount to a policy blueprint for confronting post–Oct. 7 threats to Israel, the Jewish people and the broader West.
From antisemitism and Palestinian governance to border security, “lawfare” and U.S.-Israel relations, the compendium urges a decisive shift from reactive damage control to coordinated, proactive strategies across security, legal, diplomatic and information arenas.
Senior government officials, diplomats, security experts, lawmakers, jurists, academics, media figures and Israel advocates from across Israel, North America, Europe and beyond are convening at the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem from June 21 to 23 for the second annual JNS event.
Combating antisemitism, anti-Zionism and Holocaust denial
The Combating antisemitism forum argues that Oct. 7, 2023, should have triggered a global “CENTCOM-style” proactive doctrine that treats ideological and legal warfare against Israel and the West as an “eighth front,” not an ancillary concern. It warns that institutions remain “strategically blind” without a unified command structure to counter the weaponization of international law, and information operations that invert victim and perpetrator.
Key proposals include mandatory adoption of the full IHRA working definition of antisemitism, including its Israel-related examples, across government training and police unions, and integrating Zionism into Holocaust and civics education using IMPACT-se standards so Israel is taught as the realization of indigenous Jewish rights. The forum also calls for professionalized police–community partnerships, preemptive monitoring and infiltration of extremist networks and global recognition of May 14 as “Declaration Day” and of Oct. 7 as a day of remembrance, to institutionalize historical truth and counter denial and “genocide inversion.”
Israeli-Palestinian realities
The Israeli-Palestinian forum depicts Palestinian politics as increasingly fragmented and unstable, with Fatah’s apparent municipal gains often manufactured by suppressing opposition and with armed coalitions such as the Jenin Brigade displacing official leadership. It highlights deepening clan rivalries in Hebron, the erosion of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s legitimacy and the persistence of a “struggle narrative” even as Abbas’s era nears its end. The forum calls for international policy to change course by recognizing the Jewish people’s historic connection to the land.
Policy recommendations focus on conditioning any political horizon on narrative and educational reform, strict enforcement and export of the Taylor Force Act model, and closing loopholes that allow “pay-for-slay” stipends to continue under the guise of social welfare payments. The forum urges disarming Hamas and installing a Trump-chaired technocratic board to oversee a deradicalized Gaza, tighter regulation of dual‑use goods and monetary flows, and exploration of a decentralized “Palestinian emirates” approach that works through tribal and clan-based local leadership as an alternative to failed ideological nationalism.
Regional security and border challenges
The Regional security forum says Oct. 7 exposed the failure of containment and purely intelligence-driven models, adding “prevention” as a fifth pillar to Israel’s traditional deterrence–warning–decision–defense doctrine. It argues that Israel must move from reacting to reshaping the battle space through permanent buffer zones, preemptive strikes and a renewed emphasis on the “geographic imperative” of controlling key terrain along the Gaza, Lebanon and Syrian borders.
Recommendations include formalizing permanent buffer and demilitarized zones, institutionalizing community first-responder units integrated into the Israel Defense Forces (“Tel Hai model”) and reducing IDF reservist burdens by treating border communities as standing security assets. The forum also calls for prioritizing economic and political pressure aimed at Iranian regime change over limited nuclear deals, expanding Israel’s Red Sea footprint via its recognition of Somaliland, and elevating “cognitive warfare” and alliances with minorities such as Maronites and Druze into core elements of national security to fracture hostile regional axes.
International legal issues: UN, ICC, ICJ
The International Legal forum advocates moving from a defensive, largely symbolic posture at the United Nations and international courts to aggressive, coordinated engagement to reshape legal baselines. It centers on contesting International Criminal Court jurisdiction over “Palestine” by arguing, based on Security Council–endorsed Trump-era plans, that Palestinian statehood has not been achieved and that the P.A. lacks competence to accede to the Rome Statute.
The forum proposes building NGO–state coalitions to file powerful joint amici briefs, with Germany identified as a plausible lead state in jurisdiction challenges, and offering behind‑the‑scenes drafting assistance to sympathetic governments to strengthen their submissions. It further presses to treat the Gaza disarmament and demilitarization elements of the Trump Plan for Gaza as binding Security Council mandates, framing continued Israeli operations against Hamas as enforcement of existing U.N. requirements rather than unilateral policy.
Justice, accountability and the courts
The Justice and Accountability forum seeks to knit together litigation, legislation and public advocacy to impose real costs on antisemitism and terror, arguing that current legal regimes often protect stolen art better than Holocaust survivors and terror victims. It laments restrictive U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Anti-Terrorism Act that have narrowed victims’ ability to sue state sponsors and limited expropriation remedies mostly to high-value artworks.
Proposals include legislative reform of the ATA and FSIA to lower knowledge thresholds, fix jurisdictional hurdles and restore access to U.S. courts for American victims of terror and Holocaust-era asset theft. The forum calls for a unified convening authority to coordinate evidence-sharing and strategy among law firms and NGOs, clearer recognition of Jews as an ethnic and national group for hate-crime and civil-rights purposes, and sustained pressure on allies such as Jordan to extradite wanted terrorists such as Ahlam Tamimi rather than sheltering them as celebrities.
All of those legal tools, the forum says, must be matched by a clear, unified communications strategy that explains to the public what antisemitism, anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism are, and why anti-Zionism is simply another form of antisemitism. It also calls for directly confronting campus and community claims that paint Israel as an apartheid, racist state and even a serial perpetrator of sexual assault, urging new strategies to reach younger generations who are turning against Israel, Jews and Zionists at levels not seen since the Holocaust.
Narrative warfare
The Narrative Warfare forum defines the information space as a full-fledged theater of war, arguing that narrative and kinetic campaigns have merged and that information operations now function as the “unavoidable precursor” to physical assault. It insists that Israel and its allies must abandon fragmented, ad hoc public relations in favor of a centralized, professional command structure.
At the heart of its recommendations is a “narrative nerve center,” a depoliticized, government-funded hub modeled on Israel’s Innovation Authority that would synchronize messaging hubs in Jerusalem, Washington and London and operate like a joint chiefs of staff for information operations. The forum urges identity “inoculation” to build confident Zionist identity among youth, exposure of jihadist atrocities, legal and financial targeting of terror‑linked NGOs and what it calls “weaponized comedy,” using professional-grade satire and advertising to render enemy movements ridiculous and thereby permanently erode their cultural power.
U.S.-Israel affairs
The U.S.-Israel Affairs forum portrays the alliance as having matured into a peer-to-peer partnership, citing high-intensity operations such as “Epic Fury” and “Midnight Hammer” as proof of unprecedented tactical and intelligence interoperability. It notes growing interest from Indo-Pacific partners, particularly Japan, in adopting a “Israel of the Pacific” model based on U.S.-Israel style cooperation.
The forum’s centerpiece is a shift from “aid to trade”: phasing out the annual $3.8 billion in Foreign Military Sales credits, which it says distort Israel’s economy and encourage brain drain, and replacing them with an investment and co‑production model supported by eased export controls and a “Five Eyes–style” defense procurement network. It also emphasizes joint AI and tech initiatives, tax reforms to facilitate bilateral R&D, vigilance against Iranian and Chinese penetration of tech supply chains, and domestic measures such as the Mamdani Act to keep foreign religious legal systems subordinate to U.S. constitutional norms, amid concerns that rising antisemitism and foreign-funded cognitive warfare could politicize support for Israel in Washington.
Judea and Samaria: Historical Rights vs. Current Challenges
The Judea and Samaria: Historical Rights vs. Current Challenges forum argues that, after more than three decades of systemic Palestinian Authority violations and terror, Israel should formally declare the Oslo framework over. It warns that the P.A.’s expanded, heavily armed security forces now pose a direct threat to Israeli communities, and says that the movement to build communities in Judea and Samaria has matured from a grassroots cause into a state-level policy project that requires a single, coherent sovereign strategy.
Participants back a de jure end to Oslo, the formal application of Israeli sovereignty, and full normalization measures such as opening and completing the land registry, investing in infrastructure and using initiatives such as the “Biblical Highway” name for Route 60 to cement Jewish historical claims on the ground. They also call for an independent, sanctions‑proof regional banking system and “environmental sovereignty” tools such as aquifer protection, saying Israel must prioritize domestic rule of law and irreversible facts on the ground over deference to failed international diplomatic models.
Israel’s Vibrant Democracy Forum
The Israel’s Vibrant Democracy Forum warns of a widening gap between Israel’s formal democratic structures and how accountable they are in practice, pointing to an empowered “deep state” and expanding judicial reach. It argues that court interventions in national-security matters, controversial rulings and the growing influence of unelected legal elites have fueled alienation among segments of the public who feel their views are blocked outside the ballot box, even as unresolved questions over Haredi integration and women’s representation expose deeper cultural and educational weaknesses in the system.
Still, participants say Israel’s democracy remains fundamentally resilient, so long as the state strengthens both its institutional checks and its Jewish and Zionist civic identity. They urge the Knesset to tighten standing and “reasonableness” standards for judicial review; clarify that government legal advisers advise rather than veto; require publicly funded parties to include women on their Knesset candidates lists; introduce robust civic education in the Haredi sector; create independent oversight for investigative spyware; shield core security decisions from judicial micromanagement; and restore Jewish and Zionist content in schools, drawing on early Zionist models of elected self‑governance to show that democracy is indigenous to Jewish national life, not a foreign import.
Challenges in the International Arena
The Challenges in the International Arena forum says Israel is moving from reactive crisis management to a proactive “Pax Israeliana” doctrine that treats Israeli military superiority as the anchor of postwar regional order. It argues that the Iran war, the collapse of the old peace-process paradigm and the erosion of faith in international institutions have created a new reality in which hard power and deterrence, rather than U.N. resolutions, are the real currency of diplomacy—and in which fighting antisemitism and standing with Israel are increasingly the same strategic project.
Participants lay out a five‑pillar “victory doctrine” that turns battlefield gains into lasting leverage: a deterrence‑first security posture; offensive lawfare against Iranian and Hezbollah commanders and biased tribunals; a Middle East “defense shield” that draws Sunni states into Israel-led missile defense; a strategic communications command that bypasses legacy media and makes clear that Israel is defending the West; and U.S. state‑level legislative models to combat antisemitism and delegitimization. They also call for a mutual‑defense‑style partnership with Washington, aggressive exposure of Qatari‑funded influence networks and discrimination in global finance, and rapid build‑out of the IMEC trade and defense corridor to lock regional economies into long‑term dependence on Israeli stability.
Christian-Israel Alliance
The Christian-Israel Alliance forum presents the partnership between Christians and Israel as essential for both communities’ survival and moral clarity in an increasingly unstable world. It points to a shift from “replacement theology” to covenant-based theology that affirms the Jewish people as the indigenous nation in their land, urges the use of “Judea and Samaria” rather than “West Bank,” and contrasts persecution of Christians across the Middle East with Israel’s record as the only state in the region that protects and sustains Christian communities.
Participants argue that rising anti-Zionism is a modern form of antisemitism, fueled in part by Qatari-funded influence in Western academia and by media voices that turn parts of the Christian base against Israel. They call for defining anti-Zionism as antisemitism in law and policy, mandating transparency for foreign funding in universities, and using examples such as the sharp decline of Bethlehem’s Christian population to highlight regional repression while positioning Israel as a guardian of religious freedom.
To reach Gen Z, they recommend pairing biblical messages with a focus on Israel’s humanitarian and technological contributions—such as water innovation and medical advances—as a universal, values-driven case for a strong Christian-Israel alliance.
The Reservists
The Reservists Forum says Israel’s citizen-soldier model has been pushed to its limits since Oct. 7, as reserve duty has turned into an open‑ended national mission rather than short emergency call‑ups. It argues that the reserves must now be treated as a top national priority, with financial stability for individual reservists seen as essential to maintaining readiness and social resilience.
Participants call for replacing narrow voucher schemes with flexible, tiered pay that reflects 20‑hour combat days and prolonged absences from work, alongside preferences for reservist‑owned small businesses in government procurement so service does not mean financial ruin. They also urge tax and regulatory relief for volunteer groups supplying critical gear, stronger benefits in housing, education and childcare for reservist families, and legal and operational reforms that remove “over‑legalization” of combat and restore a victory‑oriented doctrine built on clear, decisive military outcomes rather than recurring cycles of limited operations.
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