Roll came out publicly after meeting Skaat 11 years ago. At the time, Roll was working as a model and a cable TV host, and they formed a celebrity power couple. But they quickly settled into a quiet life in a residential neighborhood of Tel Aviv, and Roll left modeling to study law and work as an attorney in Israel’s tech sector.
It was his and Skaat’s decision to start a family that pushed Roll into politics. Surprised to find that it was illegal in Israel for gay men to adopt or have a child via surrogate, Roll founded an organization called Pride Front to encourage more LGBTQ Israelis to get involved in the country’s political process. In 2018, the group brought more than 80,000 people into the streets to protest the adoption and surrogacy law. Last July, after years of lobbying by the group, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples can legally have a child via surrogate. (Same-sex marriage is still not legal in Israel, but since 2006 the country has recognized same-sex marriages performed abroad.)
The protests drew the attention of Lapid, the head of the Yesh Atid party. He called Roll into his office and told him his activism was impressive, but that getting into politics would enable him to make real change, Roll recalls. Then he asked, “Are you ready for the next step?”
“It struck me that I had to practice what I preach,” Roll said of his decision to enter politics. “I had to not only just encourage others to take political action and move forward, but I had to take the lead.”
I was privileged to meet members of the @LGBTEqCaucus to discuss how we can promote #LGBTQ rights & how much we have in common in the pursuit of #Equality. I met a group of friends who care deeply about 🇮🇱🇺🇸 relations & I look forward to working w/ them to strengthen our alliance pic.twitter.com/9ZTJAAT65G— Idan Roll – עידן רול (@idanroll) November 17, 2021
Roll joined Yesh Atid and was elected into the Knesset in 2019, focusing on LGBTQ issues at first before venturing into tech and other policy areas. During the pandemic, he pushed for funding to help small businesses reopen. But he also drew public criticism — first, for challenging the Netanyahu government’s authority to impose a lockdown and, more recently, for being photographed unmasked at a New Year’s Eve party, after which Roll and his husband tested positive for the virus. (Roll said all attendees had been tested before the event.)
Still, colleagues call Roll a rising star who embodies his party’s DNA: moderate, inclusive and forward-looking. Some Israelis compare him to a modern-day Srulik, the iconic, mid-century Israeli cartoon of an aspirational, strong Israeli man. “He knows about the troubles of small business and those fighting for equal rights,” said Israel’s energy minister, Karine Elharrar, another member of Yesh Atid. “He hasn’t forgotten the challenges he faced or what rocketed him into politics.”
The new Israeli government has made shoring up relations with America a top priority. Lapid, the foreign minister, tapped Roll to be his deputy to reach out to younger American leaders and address what Lapid sees as a global delegitimization campaign against Israel playing out on social media and college campuses.
“There are many misconceptions about Israel,” Lapid said in an interview. “Some people do not accept us and are attempting to delegitimize our existence. Idan’s out-of-the-box and forward-thinking approach to challenges make him the perfect figure to tell Israel’s story to the world.”
As part of Israel’s recent push to reset relations with the United States, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Roll’s boss, met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (top) and Vice President Kamala Harris (bottom) in Washington last fall.
|
Andrew Harnik/AP Photo; Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
In addition to his visit to Washington, Roll has been speaking regularly with young lawmakers on Capitol Hill and with Jewish leaders on an almost daily basis, making his case to the American left; he has done similar outreach in other countries as well. But when it comes to the conflict with the Palestinians, his word can only go so far. While Yesh Atid opposes any division of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians envision as their future capital, the party’s support for a two-state solution stands in contrast with the position of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. A protégé of Netanyahu’s who campaigned as his right-wing alternative, Bennett has publicly stated his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state.
At the same time, Bennett has committed to what he calls “shrinking” the longstanding conflict by helping to improve living conditions for Palestinians. Since taking office, the Israeli government has increased the number of work permits for Palestinians inside Israel, allowed the construction of thousands of Palestinian homes in West Bank areas under Israeli control and granted legal status to thousands of Palestinians.
“It is not the level that we would like, but for the first time in many years there is significant progress on a range of issues — from water to work permits — and we are seeing some improvements in the quality of life for Palestinians,” a senior State Department official told TheTeCHyWorLD.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (right) has said he wants to “shrink” the Israel-Palestine conflict, which has now lasted for decades.
|
Top: AP Photos; Bottom: Fatima Shbair/Getty Images
While Democrats have long supported a two-state solution, the Biden administration, in a way, has pursued its own “shrinking” of the conflict. With President Joe Biden stating his desire for America to focus less on the Middle East and more on China, the two-state solution has been reduced to a talking point. Instead, U.S. officials now call for policies to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis experience “equal measures of freedom, security, opportunity and dignity,” as Blinken has put it.
This presents an opening for Roll. Yet progressive Democrats have become increasingly critical of Israel, and to many on the left, Roll’s diplomacy, while an improvement over the Netanyahu years, ultimately is only cosmetic. (This pushback is not just an American phenomenon: On a visit to Belgium on the way back from the United States, Roll canceled some meetings with Belgian officials after the left-leaning government passed a law requiring goods made in Israeli settlements to be labeled that way.)
“The question is: Toward what end?” asks Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. “If we’re just trying to upgrade to a Premium Economy version of the occupation, that’s not going to work. We should try to improve Palestinian lives and defend their rights on a real and declared trajectory toward ending the occupation and replacing it with political equality.”
Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian author and scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, points to a cultural and generational shift in which younger grassroot activists who are important to the Democratic Party are demanding policy with principle — for domestic as well as foreign policy. “Their formative experience when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship is fundamentally different from the generation that is going to shape the leadership of the party going forward,” Munayyer says of Democrats’ older generation.
“It’s hard for a Democrat to be supporting voting rights at home but overlook the fact that Palestinians under Israeli occupation have no right to vote for the government ruling over there. Those things just can’t fly anymore,” agreed one congressional staffer who traveled to Israel and the West Bank in November with a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who led the delegation, told TheTeCHyWorLD in a statement that bipartisan support for Israel in Congress remains strong, but that he is “concerned about how the bipartisan consensus [in the United States] and support across the Israeli political spectrum for the two-state solution has eroded.”
Progressive Democrats have become increasingly vocal against Israel, with Reps. Ilhan Omar (left) and Rashida Tlaib (right) pushing to upend the party’s support for the country.
|
J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Even as Tlaib and Omar have called for a halt to American military aid to Israel, other progressives take more nuanced positions. Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) support providing security assistance to Israel, including $1 billion in new U.S. funding for the Iron Dome missile defense system, while still being far more critical of Israel than Biden or Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Levin, the Michigan congressman, is trying to move his colleagues to what he calls a “new center of gravity” that both reaffirms the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security and seeks to end the occupation of the West Bank. He has authored legislation that would restrict how Israel spends U.S. military aid, so it won’t be used to uphold the occupation.
“The world is changing. Congress is changing. And I am determined and happy to occupy this very uncomfortable position,” said Levin, whose father and uncle, Sander Levin and Carl Levin, served for decades in Congress and were both staunch supporters of Israel. “Maybe the proudest part of my family’s Jewish tradition is that we stand up for what we think is right. It’s more important than any political career.”
Roll says he isn’t running from tough conversations with lawmakers like Levin, who told me he found Roll “impressive” in their meeting. “It’s not about coming here to win an argument. It’s about creating a dialogue,” Roll says.
For him, emphasizing Israel’s social advances doesn’t negate the fact that the current government needs to address the conflict with the Palestinians. But if Americans better understood the complex mosaic of Israeli society, he says, perhaps they could help encourage the Israeli government to keep making changes.
“What I’m at times troubled by is the fact that everything has become so binary. And I think that binary concepts are not good concepts in politics, or in life,” he says. “We live in gray areas. Our lives as individuals and societies are complex.”
To that end, Roll is working with Lapid on getting additional countries to sign on to the Abraham Accords — a set of peace agreements between Israel and several Arab states signed during the Trump years — and is promoting Israel’s tech sector with a global program that trains citizens across the world for high-tech careers. Roll believes efforts like these will earn Israel more good will than any political message. He also is expecting to return to the United States this spring to visit not just Washington but New York and the West Coast, where he hopes to connect with progressive communities. In the future, he wants to travel to cities like Chicago, and Austin, Texas, which top Israeli officials have not visited in years.