Additionally, he has identified building relationships between Israel and the students, faculty, and administrators at American universities as a priority. Talking about a recent event at UC Irvine, Consul General Grundwerg said, “I was at UC Irvine last month, when the president of Tel Aviv University and the Chancellor of UC Irvine signed an agreement of cooperation, and it was one of several examples of cooperation and partnership between different departments within the institutions. The more that we have that type of cooperation, the more it builds bridges and we have the exact opposite of what the actors behind the boycott (BDS) effort would like to see done.”
Consul General Grundwerg is also focused on continuing to strengthen the relationship between Israel and the Jewish community here in the United States, explaining, “My area covers Southern California and six other states. And besides having a large Jewish population, this area has the largest concentration of Israelis outside of Israel. So we want to grow and deepen our relationships here.”
Some might say that managing the relationship between Israel and Jews in the United States is, in itself, a full-time job. And that job is made all the more challenging when opinions in the American Jewish community tend to be split on some of the most important issues facing Israel today. Perhaps falling back upon his diplomatic skills, Consul General Grundwerg points out, “(We can) try to focus on the things that we share, and not necessarily focus on the things that divide us. There are important issues that need to be dealt with, but there are more than enough issues that we share. I've been talking a lot about the concept of unity, but not not necessarily uniformity. We can still disagree about things and have different approaches, but there's enough that unites us.”
Certainly one of the most critical issues facing Israel is its ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. And, like so many other issues, the American Jewish community is split on whether or not this conflict can be resolved through an establishment of an independent Palestinian state (known as the “two-state solution”). Consul General