Michal Cotler-Wunsh: "Israel is not a result of the Holocaust" | WATCH

Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, has challenged narratives that misrepresent Israel’s origins in a recent Instagram post.

She said, “Anyone teaching that Israel is a 76-year-old European colonialist project that was meant to repair the atrocities of the Holocaust is fueling modern-day antisemitism. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, a prototypical indigenous people. That word has meaning, indigeneity. Israel is a people that speaks the same language, Hebrew, that practices the same rituals, that traverses the same land, that worships the same G-d, that reads the same book, the Bible. We have to reclaim that too. It is the nation-state of an indigenous people, returned after thousands of years of exile and persecution. That is how we move forward.”

Born in Jerusalem in 1970, Cotler-Wunsh is a human rights lawyer with an LL.B. from Hebrew University and an LL.M. from McGill University. Raised partly in Canada after her mother married human rights advocate Irwin Cotler, she served in the IDF, training recruits, and is a PhD candidate studying freedom of speech.

A former Knesset member (2020–2021) with the Blue and White alliance, she chaired committees on drug use and Israel-Diaspora relations, co-founded the Inter-parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism, and served as the Knesset’s liaison to the International Criminal Court.

Since her 2023 appointment as Special Envoy, she has advocated for the IHRA definition of antisemitism, linking anti-Zionism to anti-Jewish hatred, especially after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. A Ra’anana resident with four children, three serving in the IDF, she advised the Goldin family on repatriating Israeli soldiers’ remains held by Hamas.

Her work has been featured in JNS, Newsweek, and The Jerusalem Post.