I attended the American Zionist Movement’s biennial expecting urgency, seriousness, and some acknowledgment that October 7 permanently changed the Jewish world. I anticipated reflection, accountability, and at least a hint of strategic reconsideration. Instead, I entered a room frozen in time, led by people who seemed unaware that the ground beneath them had already collapsed.
Most attendees were well into their sixties and seventies, presiding over a movement they no longer understand and will not live to see renewed or replaced. Out of the entire gathering, perhaps three of us were under forty. Even before the word “future” was spoken, the contradiction was clear. The opening speakers only made it more obvious.
One of the first speakers delivered a talk so hollow and disconnected from reality that people quietly left—not out of disrespect, but boredom. That moment was not accidental. It was telling. It showed what the American Zionist Movement has become: an organization unable to create relevance, urgency, or meaning in the very moment it claims to shape the future.
The conference that couldn’t lead itself
The dysfunction was impossible to ignore. Sessions overlapped, vanished, or shifted without explanation. Communication was inconsistent or nonexistent. As both a sponsor and an invited speaker, I was afforded none of the basic courtesy one would expect at a serious gathering, let alone a national assembly claiming to guide American Zionism. Leadership that cannot manage logistics has no credibility in managing ideology.
Meanwhile, the AZM’s post-conference public relations messaging depicted the event as visionary, unified, and forward-looking. That narrative bore no resemblance to reality. What actually took place was not leadership but theater—a self-affirming ritual designed to reassure donors and insiders that the machinery still works, even as it grinds to a halt. The gap between the PR spin and the lived experience was so wide it bordered on parody.
Nowhere was the failure more revealing than the so-called Young Leadership Panel. On paper, it promised renewal. In practice, it exposed the movement’s decay. Two or three genuinely young participants sat on stage alongside legacy figures who had no structural reason to be there. Their presence was not about mentorship or transition; it was about control. What followed was not a conversation but a justification exercise.
The panel offered no concrete ideas, no pathways into leadership, no requests for engagement, and no challenges to the existing system. Young participants were expected to express gratitude rather than vision, deference rather than disruption. More than one speaker who attended the conference acknowledged afterward that the panel was confusing and misconstructed—that legacy figures did not need to occupy that space, and that even some of them likely knew it.
Instead of asking young people what they needed, the panelists explained why the system already works. Instead of cultivating leaders, they defended structures. This was not an accident. It was the point. I know this dynamic personally.
When I founded The Israel Innovation Fund, at least one individual on that stage dismissed and obstructed my efforts rather than supporting them. I did not build TIIF because the establishment welcomed young leadership; I built it because the doors were closed. Now that those same institutions are losing legitimacy, they have discovered the language of youth engagement—without any intention of relinquishing power.
Why the teens saw through everything
The clearest indictment of the biennial came not from critics, but from the teenagers in attendance. After my session—one of the only moments where young people were treated as participants rather than spectators—I received an email that crystallized everything wrong with the conference. Quoting directly, with all identifying information removed: “You were the only person who actually spoke to us, not at us. I appreciated the opportunity to engage with your ideas. Project Maccabi is a great idea, especially the revitalization of Hebrew. Are there opportunities for teens to get involved?”
That response was not an anomaly. At one point, when I said plainly that the organized Jewish world loves to talk about paving the way for young people and new organizations—but rarely, if ever, actually does—a student immediately responded, “That’s facts.”
The room erupted. One by one, students began voicing the same frustrations. They spoke about being gaslit, silenced, and repeatedly told that the system was thriving and forward-looking, even as their own experiences told them otherwise. They described being fed endless reassurances about success and continuity while being shut out of real leadership, real decision-making, and real responsibility.
What was striking was not anger, but clarity. In the span of a single afternoon, these students had seen through the performance. The greatest failure of the American Zionist Movement was not inefficiency or disorganization—it was the total disillusionment of Jewish youth. And yet, these students were not demoralized—quite the opposite. For the next hour, they displayed a level of passion, engagement, and seriousness that is rarely seen in institutional Jewish spaces. They asked hard questions. They challenged assumptions. They wanted to build something real.
That energy was unmistakable—and it was precisely what the system could not tolerate. The same institutions that claim to exist for the future would rather crush that energy into compliance, flatten it into polite applause, and redirect it toward luncheons, panels, and donor optics rather than Hebrew, identity, and leadership.
What made my session resonate was not personality or performance, but method. I asked them what they needed. I told them they should be seated with leadership, not hidden in the back. I treated them as future leaders rather than props. That simple inversion—power flowing toward youth instead of away from them—was enough to expose the bankruptcy of the rest of the event.
What this failure really represents
The American Zionist Movement’s problem is not merely organizational incompetence. It is an ideological collapse. The AZM is no longer a vehicle for Zionism; it is a museum for its Americanized afterlife. Its leadership—aging, insulated, and structurally protected—is watching an outdated system fail in real time and responding with panels, platitudes, and press releases.
This cannot be reformed. Institutions designed to preserve themselves over outcomes do not adapt; they merely adjust the surface. They speak the language of change while structurally preventing it. The AZM is not an anomaly. It is the clearest expression of a broader failure in American Zionism: a movement that once helped build a state has been reduced to administering a legacy brand.
What the biennial revealed was not just dysfunction but an irreconcilable divide. The Jewish world is entering a civil war of ideas. On one side stand the Hebraists—those who believe Jewish continuity requires Hebrew language, culture, sovereignty, strength, and unapologetic peoplehood. On the other hand, the Liberal Assimilationists—those who universalize Jewish identity into irrelevance, apologize for Jewish power, treat Zionism as a moral abstraction, and attempt to reshape Israel in the image of American progressive politics. These two visions cannot coexist. One produces continuity. The other produces decline. The AZM has chosen its side.
If one wants to understand which ideology the American Zionist Movement now elevates, one needs only look at who it chose to close the conference. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove’s keynote was not an outlier. It was the culmination. Cosgrove’s speech represented the most polished and articulate expression of Liberal Assimilationism. He asked what Zionism means for those who choose not to live in Israel. He emphasized pluralism, moral tension, and Diaspora critique. He framed Zionism as a balancing act between identities, values, and sensitivities. But Zionism is not a balance. It is a decision. It is a doing. It is sovereignty, not sentiment.
More than one participant remarked afterward that the speech did not unify the room but divided it further. That division was not accidental. Liberal leadership, aware that it is losing its grip, is now drawing ideological lines to preserve power. What Cosgrove articulated was not a path forward but a rationale for stasis—a worldview that explains decline while sanctifying it. After October 7, this ideology is not merely inadequate. It is dangerous.
Herzl’s warning, fulfilled
Herzl warned us to beware of men with small aims. He understood that Jewish survival requires discipline, clarity, and seriousness. He arrived at the First Zionist Congress in tails, not out of vanity, but out of responsibility. He built institutions capable of carrying a people toward sovereignty. The AZM, by contrast, cannot carry a schedule. Herzl built a movement. The AZM curates events. Herzl built a nation. The AZM produces talking points. This is not evolution. It is decay.
I no longer believe these institutions can be fixed. They are staffed by people who mistake longevity for legitimacy and procedure for leadership. They congratulate themselves while Jewish teenagers face antisemitism alone. They host panels while the ground beneath them collapses.
In the end, the choice before us is not organizational. It is civilizational. It is not about panels, programs, or platforms. It is about identity. When asked who he was, Jonah did not offer nuance or qualification. He said simply: Ivri anochi—I am a Hebrew.
That is the answer the next generation is searching for, whether the establishment likes it or not. Not apologies. Not endless self-interrogation. Not Diaspora sermonizing. But rootedness. Strength. Clarity. Belonging. The courage to say who we are without footnotes.
If the American Zionist Movement cannot say that—if it cannot build Hebrews rather than manage decline—then it has already written its own obituary. The future will not be inherited by those who convene conferences to explain why they are failing. It will be claimed by those who know who they are.
Ivri anochi… That is where the future begins.
Adam Scott Bellos is the founder and CEO of The Israel Innovation Fund (TIIF) and the creator of Wine on the Vine. He is the author of the forthcoming book Never Again Is Not Enough: The Hebraization Manifesto, a comprehensive blueprint for Jewish revival rooted in Hebrew language, Jewish strength, and Zionist identity. Bellos is a frequent commentator on Jewish affairs, Israeli society, and the cultural and geopolitical challenges facing modern Jewry.