A capacity crowd gathered at the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem on Thursday for the “Celebrate the Faces of Israel” conference, hosted by The Jerusalem Post Group and the Museum of Tolerance. The conference, which celebrated the people who have built and strengthened Israel over the last 75 years, as well as its diversity and tolerance, featured interviews with leading politicians, diplomats, scientists and business leaders. Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief Avi Mayer moderated the conference.
Politicians participating in the conference included President Isaac Herzog; Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman; and Ra’am MK Mansour Abbas.
The conference featured a number of panels on education, hi-tech, cybersecurity, diversity in business, innovation in the periphery and city leadership.
In his introductory remarks, Larry Mizel, co-founder and chair of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, referred to the Museum as a “dream come true,” and likened it to the ancient tent of Abraham, which was open to the four winds, that welcomed all guests, regardless, of race, gender or religion. “The Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem,” said Mizel, “constitutes by its very nature a center in which people will become familiar with the fundamental value of the Jewish people and one that will become a modern Abrahamic tent.”
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and its Museum of Tolerance, recalled the visit of the late King Hussein of Jordan, together with Queen Noor and their children, to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in 1995.
At the time, the king said, “We look forward with confidence when the words ‘Arab-Israeli’ will no longer evoke images of strife and hate but at a time when future generations of Arabs and Jews will enjoy a life of peace where the enemies of yesterday will become the good neighbors of today and tomorrow, when conflict will be replaced by cooperation.”
Hier added that the story of humanity should never be taken from the crematoria, the death camps or the carnage left by terrorist attacks. Rather, he said, “It should be written in the fertile fields that feed the hungry, in the wonders of modern medicine that cure the sick; in the classrooms of our schools and universities that help defeat the plague of ignorance; in synagogues or mosques that nourish the soul and the halls of our legislatures that protect the rights of free men and women.”