The Sovereignty of Vision: From Herzl to the Frontiers of Alternative Diplomacy

Dear Chaverot and Global Leaders,

Next week, our nation will mark a deeply moving and historic milestone in the Zionist story. On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, an official state ceremony will be held on Mount Herzl for the reinternment of Herzl’s beloved grandparents, Shimon Leib and Rivka Herzl. This historic event takes place 77 years after the remains of Theodor Binyamin Zeev Herzl were brought to Jerusalem, fulfilling his will to reunite the Herzl family in the soil of Israel. The official ceremony will take place in the presence of President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and WZO Chairman Yaakov Hagoel. I want to extend my deepest appreciation to Yaakov Hagoel, whose leadership and dedication made this historic act of national closure possible.

As we prepare to stand on Mount Herzl next week, I find myself reflecting on how the Zionist movement itself was born. Long before there was a state, an army, or a recognized government, Herzl practiced what we recognize today as alternative diplomacy. Armed only with an unshakeable vision, deep moral clarity, and personal relationships cultivated across continents, Herzl walked into the halls of emperors, sultans, and prime ministers. He did not wait for formal permission to advocate for a Jewish home. He forged diplomatic reality through sheer conviction.

Herzl understood a fundamental truth that continues to define World WIZO today: When formal avenues are blocked, visionaries build their own diplomacy.

Tamar Golan and the Myth of Soft Diplomacy

This exact theme was at the beating heart of an extraordinary evening hosted jointly this month by World WIZO and Women Champions for Change at Heseg House. We gathered for the premiere screening of the 2026 Docaviv winning documentary, The Woman in White, directed and produced by Emmanuelle Mayer.

The film tells the captivating, long overlooked story of Dr. Tamar Golan, a journalist, scholar, and diplomat who established secret channels of communication between key political figures across the Middle East and North Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. When official diplomatic ties between Israel and African nations broke down, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin turned to Tamar. Drawing upon years of trust built with President Félix Houphouët Boigny, Tamar quietly brokered a historic secret meeting in Geneva. Where no formal door existed, one woman’s persistence opened a bridge.

People often refer to this kind of leadership as soft diplomacy.

Let me be clear: There is nothing soft about it. It requires an iron will.

It demands formidable intellectual courage, patience, and the moral clarity to act while the rest of the world remains trapped in endless debate. Tamar Golan possessed no official state title, but she understood that true influence is rooted in trust, expertise, and standing. She entered political arenas shaped by men and opened channels that altered history.

Over a Century of WIZO Diplomacy: We Do Not Wait for Tables. We Build Them.

This courage is woven directly into the DNA of our movement. For 106 years, WIZO women have practiced this precise discipline across generations and continents. At times when women were excluded from formal diplomatic positions, our founders did not wait to be given a seat at the table. They created new tables.

Our history contains countless examples of WIZO women carrying out this work:

• In the darkest days of Europe, Gisi Fleischmann built an underground network to save the Jews of Slovakia.
• Rebecca Sieff used her diplomatic weight in London to drive the Kindertransport.
• In 1947, Dr. Vera Weizmann unleashed the full diplomatic pressure of the WIZO international network, forcing the British to release 500 children from the Cyprus detention camps.
• Recognizing WIZO’s mission to restore human dignity, Pablo Picasso personally donated art to our movement to help rebuild a shattered people.
• In 1964, Raya Jaglom pierced the Iron Curtain as the first Zionist delegation leader to enter the Soviet Union, bringing the cry of Soviet Jewry to the global stage.
• Today, leaders like Dr. Chava Bugajer carry that same unyielding clarity into the halls of the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna.

We are not an ornament. We are not just an NGO. We are a global women’s Zionist movement.

Abu Dhabi UN Crime Congress: Fighting for Justice on the World Stage

That legacy of unapologetic advocacy is driving our frontline diplomatic work right now.

From September 26 to 30, 2026, World WIZO will take center stage at the 15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

In partnership with The Dinah Project, Bar Ilan University, the Rackman Center, and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, WIZO is organizing a high level UN event. The event is titled “Responding to Conflict Related Sexual Violence in the Digital Age: Implications of Social Media and Generative AI for Justice and Accountability”.

We are taking the fight for accountability directly to international legal and diplomatic arenas. We will highlight that conflict related sexual violence serves as a means used by organizations to instill terror within targeted communities. We will demand that the international community pursue diplomatic, legal, and policy actions against entities that use conflict related sexual violence, including requesting their addition to the UN Secretary General blacklist and the imposition of sanctions. We do not step back from difficult arenas; we enter them to demand justice and defend our truth.

European Leadership: Dina Baranes and the ECWF Standing Against Silence

Soft diplomacy is equally active across our European federations, where volunteer leaders stand as bulwarks against rising tides of hatred.

I want to pay special tribute to Mag. Blandina Dina Baranes, an inspiring volunteer leader acting in her own right, alongside the leadership of the European Council of WIZO Federations. At the European Women’s Lobby General Assembly in June 2026, the ECWF presented a vital Emergency Motion.

The motion was titled “Feminists Against Antisemitism: a Matter of Safety, Democracy and Peace in Europe”. Faced with the painful silence of many mainstream international women’s organizations, Dina Baranes and the ECWF Steering Committee fought tirelessly to pass this resolution. They forced European feminist institutions to confront the fact that European Jewish women are increasingly targeted through antisemitic hate, including gendered hate and sexualized threats. They stood tall to declare that when targeted hatred infiltrates societies, women and marginalized groups are the first to bear the consequences. This is leadership in action, turning community standing into continental political weight.

Strategic Leadership in South America: WIZO Bolivia’s National Impact

Thousands of miles away, in Latin America, we see another remarkable example of WIZO’s standing.

Our leaders in WIZO Bolivia, Patricia Wiener and Carla Meier, were recently contacted by a government office in charge of working with women deprived of liberty. Recognizing WIZO’s global prestige, the government officially invited WIZO Bolivia to give a presentation explaining the work that WIZO does in Israel regarding shelters for battered women. Their goal is to learn from the WIZO model and potentially adapt it to create a similar framework in Bolivia.

The Bolivian government explicitly asked WIZO Bolivia to guide them on key pillars, including transformational female leadership and women in positions of power. Consider the power of this moment: A national government turning to WIZO leaders to learn how to empower its own citizens. It proves that our authority does not depend on official political office, but on the trust, expertise, and moral standing that WIZO women earn within their host societies.

We Build the World We Need

My dear Chaverot, from Mount Herzl to Abu Dhabi, from Vienna to La Paz, and across all our federations worldwide, the story of WIZO is one unbroken chain of unapologetic leadership.

As I always remind our leaders: Our federations are Zionist outposts.

Your influence in your professions, your civic institutions, and your communities exists because of who you are and the respect you have earned. Do not underestimate the weight of your voice or the impact of your leadership.

My message to all 1700 of our global leaders this month is simple:

Do not underestimate the influence you already hold.

We do not wait for the world to settle.

We build the world we need.

With warmest Zionist greetings and pride,

Anat Vidor
President, World WIZO