WASHINGTON (JTA) — Five major Jewish organizations have teamed up to maintain American support for Israel and fill what they say is a gap in coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
“The 10/7 Project,” named for the day Hamas launched the war with a deadly invasion from the Gaza Strip, has as backers the American Jewish Committee, which initiated the project; the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; the Jewish Federations of North America; the Anti-Defamation League; and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
“The 10/7 Project is designed to promote continued U.S. bipartisan support for Israel by working to ensure more complete and accurate information about the Israel-Hamas war in real time for policymakers and the American public,” the statement released Tuesday said.
The announcement was spurred, organizers said, by the mass turnout last month at a pro-Israel rally in Washington. Pro-Israel groups have been grappling with how to keep the atrocities Hamas terrorists committed on Oct. 7 in the spotlight while media attention turns to the devastation Israeli counterstrikes have since caused in Gaza, and as a growing number of Democrats are calling for a ceasefire.
“Since October 7, there has been a concerted and consistent effort from Israel’s enemies to draw a false and dangerous equivalence between Hamas’ deadly rampage to destroy the Jewish state and Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists,” said Ted Deutch, the American Jewish Committee CEO and former Democratic congressman, in a release.
William Daroff, the Conference of Presidents CEO, said in a text message that it was worth keeping the atrocities front and center in part to confront a crop of people who have denied the magnitude or depravity of the attack.
“We must ensure that America and the entire world are told and retold the stories of the butchery of the October 7 massacre,” he said in a text. “We must discredit and make outcasts of 10/7 deniers, who are Hamas sympathizers seeking to perpetuate false and misleading narratives by minimizing and rationalizing the most deadly day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Daroff, whose group helped organize the mass rally along with JFNA, also said sustaining Jewish solidarity was key. All of the other groups partnering on the 10/7 Project are members of the Conference of Presidents, an umbrella body that supports Israel and advocates for other policies.
“We must work together, as one Jewish community, to successfully communicate to the American people the critical need to stand with Israel, as well as the importance of the US-Israel relationship to America and to Israel,” he said.
