Ilan Goldenberg: An Outstanding Choice for Jewish Outreach Director and Policy Advisor
By Israel “Izzy” Klein
Vice President Kamala Harris recently chose Ilan Goldenberg to be her Jewish Outreach Director and Policy Advisor. Her choice is notable for two reasons: Goldenberg brings unprecedented qualifications to the role, and Goldenberg has been subjected to an unprecedented smear campaign by Republicans eager to cast aspersions on anything and everything related to the Harris-Walz campaign.
Ilan is someone I’ve known for more than 30 years personally and professionally. We are products of northern New Jersey schools and attended Central Hebrew High School, run by Rabbi Stu Warner, for decades. Goldenberg’s parents are Americans who met at Tel Yehuda, a Jewish overnight camp, immigrated to Israel, and then returned to New Jersey, where Goldenberg was raised.
Before assuming his current position, Goldenberg served in the Office of the Vice President of the United States as Special Adviser, Middle East, Defense and Technology. He served as a Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (“CNAS”). He is a foreign policy and defense expert with extensive government experience covering Iran’s nuclear program, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the broader challenges facing the Middle East.
He has researched and written extensively on how to manage the risks and safeguard Israel’s security under a two-state solution–which is an existential necessity for Israel–and he has worked on steps the U.S. could take to make the Iran Deal better and more effective, work that came to naught after Trump withdrew from the deal while Iran was in compliance, more than a year from nuclear breakout (when Trump left office, Iran was only weeks, if that, from nuclear breakout thanks to Trump’s poor planning).
Prior to CNAS, Goldenberg served as the Chief of Staff to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations at the U.S. Department of State. Before that, he served as a Senior Professional Staff Member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee covering Middle East issues for the Democratic Chairmen. You can read more about him here, and if you do, you’ll see that by appointing someone with Goldenberg’s qualifications, Harris is signaling how seriously she takes the Jewish community and its concerns.
Goldenberg believes in diplomacy as a tool — so does Vice President Harris and the vast Democratic Party and foreign policy establishment. We saw from Trump’s failures and Biden’s successes that diplomacy, intelligently exercised, can work. Most notably, the Biden-Harris administration’s speedy organizing of the coalition of allies that is defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion and the coalition that the administration put together to successfully defend Israel from Iran’s unprecedented missile attack on April 13.
On Iran specifically, reasonable minds differed at the time about the merits of the deal with Iran in 2015, but Jewish members of Congress supported the Iran deal by more than a 2–1 margin, as did many members of Israel’s security establishment (sans Prime Minister Netanyahu). Iran complied with the deal until Trump unilaterally withdrew. Only then did Iran move from over a year from nuclear breakout to only months away. The JCPOA prevented Iran from funding more terror, contrary to unsubstantiated claims that are repeated over and over. Polling from August 2022 showed that Americans are more likely to support members of Congress who prioritize diplomacy. Jewish voters support reentering the JCPOA 68% to 32%.
What matters in this election are the serious policy and political differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on issues of concern to the Jewish community and their respective records. What does NOT matter in this election are manufactured concerns around dedicated staffers like Ilan Goldenberg or others. As one of my former bosses used to say, you could fill an aquarium with Republican red herrings on this subject.
These are the facts that our Republican friends would prefer we not talk about: Harris has a great record on Israel and antisemitism. Trump has a long history of antisemitism and is utterly unqualified to be president.
But don’t take just my word on Ilan Goldenberg. Read this thread from Michael Koplow, the Chief Policy Officer of Israel Policy Forum. Read this from Nadav Eyal. Read this from one of Israel’s most noted journalists, Barak Ravid. Read this from David Makovsky. Read this from Nimrod Novik, a retired Israeli security expert. Read this from Halie Soifer.
Given Goldenberg’s actual record, given Harris and Trump’s actual record, ask yourself whether you should believe misinformation about Goldenberg or if it is more likely that this is just another Republican smear campaign.
Israel “Izzy” Klein is a founding Board Member of the Jewish Democratic Council of America and a co-founder and principal at Klein/Johnson Group. He is from West Orange, NJ, and currently resides in Chevy Chase, MD.
