“The ultimate goal of Zionism,” says Anat Vidor, “is to ensure the Jewish people can live out loud and entirely uncompromised.” In Vidor’s telling, the sentence is not a slogan but a working principle, one that runs through her family history, her career, and the institution she now leads: World WIZO.
Vidor’s biography reads like a compressed version of the Zionist story. Her great-grandfather, Dr. Menachem Stein, was a Bilu pioneer and one of the founders of Tel Aviv’s Neveh Tzedek neighborhood. Her great-grandfather’s uncle, Dr. Aharon Mazia, hosted Albert Einstein in his Jerusalem home, served as president of the Hebrew Language Committee, and compiled the first Hebrew medical lexicon. Another great-grandfather, Yosef Shechter, was one of Petah Tikva’s early residents from 1906, helped pioneer citrus orchards, co-founded the Shoneh Halachot synagogue, and established an ice factory and cold storage for citrus fruit.
Today, Vidor’s story remains tied to Neveh Tzedek, close to the streets and institutions associated with her ancestors. Her own trajectory follows the same builder’s instinct: after serving in the IDF’s Ammunition Corps, she represented the Jewish Agency and the Betar and Maccabi movements in Australia, earned a Master’s degree in Communication from Bond University, became president of WIZO Sydney (NSW), and returned to Israel in 2018. The thread connecting these generations is the often invisible work of building systems that allow a society to function.
“I’m not calling it the importance of liberal democracy,” she says. “I think it’s why civil society is the one that will dictate the future of democracy in Israel.” Democracy, she argues, is “the dictatorship of those who did not vote” – the best system available, but one that must be protected by institutions strong and independent enough to influence it. WIZO, with its century-long history and vast operational reach, is one such institution.
Founded in 1920 in England by figures such as Rebecca Sieff and Vera Weizmann, WIZO entered the Zionist Congress as the first women’s movement in the famed institution. It was conceived as part of the machinery of state-building: training women in agriculture, establishing early childhood systems, and taking responsibility for entire sectors of social life.
“Ben-Gurion is not a feminist,” Vidor says, “but he needed those women.” That need translated into influence. Rachel Kagan, a WIZO representative, was among the few women involved in founding the state and one of the women who signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence. By the 1950s, Israel had relatively high female representation in political life. “We were above everyone else,” Vidor notes. “In the U.S. Congress, it was 2 percent.” Over time, that presence receded.
Today, she sees the absence of women from decision-making spaces as a structural issue. “There are no women,” she says. “There is no one to do the work in the middle.” Her argument is functional rather than moral. “Women are not better or worse than men. We are just different. It takes using two different lobes to make a decision.” Without that duality, she suggests, politics becomes reactive, ego-driven, and polarized.
Israeli society itself, she argues, has become more centrist, while political discourse is increasingly driven by identity, personality, and power. Into this landscape steps WIZO, not as an ideological actor, but as an operational one. “It’s the largest NGO in Israel,” Vidor says. “Twice the size of the second largest. Our annual budget is approximately 840 million shekels, and we employ about six thousand people.”
The numbers only begin to capture the organization’s reach. WIZO operates kindergartens, shelters, youth villages, and community programs across Israel, providing an average of 250,000 meals per day. In crisis, its scale becomes even clearer. “When they ask what WIZO has been doing since the war, I laugh,” Vidor says. “Because we were never closed. We never stopped working, and that is one of our greatest achievements.”
Two days after October 7, WIZO had opened kindergartens inside hospitals so medical staff could continue working. Vidor describes this capability as “capacity”: manpower, experience, and institutional memory that allow rapid, large-scale action – “like a civilian army.” But if WIZO’s operational power is clear, its structure is complex.
The organization remains genuinely global, with federations retaining formal authority over budgets and governance. Women from 38 federations around the world vote on annual plans, approve budgets, and appoint leadership. “Someone from Australia will decide on the work plan here,” Vidor jokes, but she does not see that as a flaw. “This is one of the only things where a business of this size is still in the hands of Jewish women of the world.”
Where real strength lies
For Vidor, WIZO’s significance lies in its ability to influence policy. “When people say, ‘We give to Israel because the government has no money’ – no. That’s not the story.” The point is not to replace the state but to shape it. Civil society, she argues, must have enough power to act as both partner and counterweight. “If civil society doesn’t have a share, it won’t be able to influence the government.”
During the current war, when proposed furlough policies threatened to devastate the caregiving workforce, WIZO intervened. “If you do this, we told them, we will lose caregivers. Twenty thousand children will be left without care, and they understand what that means for the economy.” The government adjusted its policy, she says, “because we have power. Not goodwill, real power and influence.”
The same logic guides WIZO’s work on domestic violence. “A shelter is the most expensive thing for the state,” Vidor says, and statistics show that many women return to abusive partners. WIZO created community-based support systems to accompany women after leaving shelters and provide ongoing assistance. “We achieved no less than ninety-five percent success,” she says. “Now we show the government: this is more practical for you.” Diaspora funding often allows WIZO to test such models, prove results, and then push the state to adopt and scale them.
Internationally, WIZO has held consultative status with the UN since 1959, operating more as a practitioner than an advocacy group. “They will always let WIZO speak because we have receipts.” Rather than framing issues only in national terms, the organization builds coalitions around shared concerns, including wartime sexual violence. “You don’t just show up and shout,” she says. “You approach people and present them with a common cause.”
This soft power rests on credibility, and it connects to Vidor’s broader concern about democratic fragility. “Democracy can destroy itself,” she says. “You need citizens with power, not just voters.” She argues for power distributed across institutions, sectors, and genders. Her solution is not a separate women’s politics, but integration at the highest levels of decision-making. “You need to build capacity. Economic power, operational power. Only then can you start to change legislation.”
In the end, Vidor offers less a call to action than a shift in mindset. “Give power to civil society,” she says. “Not because the government has no money, but because otherwise we will teeter on the edge of totalitarianism.” Then comes the qualification: “Not instead of the government. Alongside it.” In Neveh Tzedek, close to where her ancestors helped lay the foundations of a city, Vidor is still engaged in that essential task: building the infrastructure that allows a society to endure and govern itself more wisely.
Written in collaboration with WIZO