Sharon Pardo

October 7, 2023, was the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. The war in Gaza and operations in Lebanon and Iran have reshaped Israel’s security environment while fundamentally transforming the reality of Jewish communities worldwide. Across key countries, discourse about Israel and the Jewish people has become increasingly associated with war, occupation, conflict, and hatred, as violent antisemitism has reached levels unseen since World War II.
Military power is essential for protecting lives, deterring enemies, and ensuring security. Yet it cannot alone establish legitimacy, inspire trust, or foster partnerships. These depend on soft power: influence exercised through culture, values, education, science, innovation, institutions, creativity, and human networks.
This vision paper argues that the Jewish people possess one of the world’s richest reservoirs of soft power, but that it remains strategically uncoordinated and underused. It introduces the “Jewish Soft Power Matrix,” adapting Joseph Nye’s concept to the Jewish people as both a global civilization and a people with a sovereign state and diaspora. The matrix comprises four forms of capital: civilizational, knowledge and innovation, social, and creative.
The paper also presents an operational agenda, including a Global Council for Jewish Soft Power, a Jewish Soft Power Index, stronger international engagement, expanded scientific and cultural cooperation, regional strategies, and investment in education and digital, sports, cultural, and science diplomacy. Soft power, it argues, must become a central pillar of Jewish and Israeli security. Military power ensures survival; soft power shapes the legitimacy, partnerships, and influence within which the Jewish future will be determined.