Global business leader Hilary Fordwich, who won the praise of President Donald Trump for defending his foreign policy agenda, lambasted the growing anti-Semitic hatred against Israel being fomented by the world media.
Fordwich, who was one of the delegates on the Newsmax Mission to Israel trip attended by MRC staff in August, sat down for an interview with MRC Business during the 2025 Jbiz Expo event organized by the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
MRC addressed Fordwich’s stern rebuke of the student-led Oxford Union during an interview with Sky News Australia for having the audacity to declare Israel as being a greater threat to regional stability than the terrorist state of Iran (yes, really). As Fordwich told MRC, this case was emblematic of a “disturbing trend” that is being driven in large part by “jealously” of the success of the Jewish people over the course of history, despite many hostile nations’s attempts to destroy them.
Fordwich pointed the “politically incorrect” factoid out that “Ashkenazi Jewish people are amongst the most intelligent in the world. So I think Jewish intelligence, Jewish drive — basically doing the right thing by business — has been so successful; I think there’s a lot of jealousy in the world.”
This is not just conjecture. A research paper published by the University of Utah’s Department of Anthropology found that “Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group, combined with an unusual cognitive profile.” Fordwich went deeper, arguing that religious hatred is also a fundamental factor in why the Jewish people are targeted so much today, such as what is furthered by radical Islam and revisionist interpretations of Christian theology by the anti-Semitic Groyper movement on social media:
I also see the root and evil of a lot of religions. There’s a lot of religions that have wanted the death of other religions. And I think it’s fine to have your own personal beliefs, but I think it’s very wicked.
As Fordwich concluded, “I think historically, you’ve seen so many religions be evil. No. Have your beliefs. Believe in your god and don’t kill other people.” Fordwich then turned her sights on the leftist reporters and anchors that have done nothing but regurgitate Hamas propaganda to continuously smear the state of Israel following the horrific genocide perpetrated by the terrorist group on October 7, 2023: “I want to ask every one of those anchors, are they either an idiot or have they just gotten amnesia?” She continued her excoriation of the media:
Do they not know what happened on October 7? So maybe they should learn about not only October 7 but about Hamas. Not only was it the militants that went in and massacred innocent people and committed atrocities. But when I was in Israel, we actually saw that Hamas instructions that were to burn and that were to rape. And I don’t remember military history where you actually see those kinds of military instructions. That’s number one. Number two: What we also learned was a truth — was that after the wave of militants there was a wave of [Gaza] civilians that went in for fun to rape, and to burn, and to kill and murder.
Do you think the media care about any of this? Not likely. Fordwich argued that this is all a result of “media amnesia” and “media selective reporting that they’ve just chosen to ignore facts. They’ve chosen to ignore what is now recent history?” And “Why,” asked Fordwich rhetorically. “It’s anti-Semitic and I think it’s very sad. There is no other reason other than that people have poor judgment. They have warped values and their particular religion may have taught them that they should be saying this and doing this.”
Fordwich also reasoned that the vast hatred against the Israeli state is also being stirred by generational brain rot, particularly amongst Palestininian children. “I feel actually sorry for little Palestinian children,” Fordwich lamented. “When they grow up — everyone that they love and everyone that they trust has been telling them to do and telling them that they can become a martyr for committing such atrocities. So you almost can’t blame people that are being brainwashed since birth.”
But it’s not just Palestinian children that are being brainwashed. It’s the next generation in developed countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. as well. Fordwich’s rebuke of Oxford Union is a case-in-point.
When asked what strategies could be implemented to reverse the growing resentment against the Jewish people and Israel amongst young people, Fordwich reasoned that leaders and educators should meet them where they’re at on “social media” and capitalize on the “effectiveness of soundbites.” “When you hear people chanting, ‘From the river to the sea,’ I don’t believe they know which river, which sea and I don’t think they know their history,” Fordwich argued. “But it’s easy to remember and it’s easy to chant. What is Israel chanting right now? I don’t know their chant and I know my history.”
Fordwich pointed MRC Business back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917. “You can actually see that this is not a recent phenomenon. This was many, many years ago where there needed to be land carved out for Jewish people. Anti-Semitism has been pervasive for many centuries — for longer than that, even.” Her advice for Israel and the Jewish people was that they “need to have effective soundbites and more effective social media. And with the brilliance and the brains in Israel, that’s something that I think that the Jewish population and the Israeli leadership should focus on.”
Fordwich likened this strategy to the marketing campaign that drove American voters to elect President Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Trump in 2016. “Always remember that President Eisenhower was elected simply because Americans wore a button that said, ‘I Like Ike.’ President Trump was elected because he said, ‘Make America Great Again,’ and Bill Clinton was elected because he said, ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ We can remember those, why — because they were soundbites.”
Israel, as Fordwich concluded, “needs to think ‘I Like Ike,’ and think, ‘What is our soundbite comparable to refute, ‘From the river to the sea,’ and that is meaningful, is historically accurate and that would help Israel.”
