Speaking from the first CPAC and Tel Aviv Salon's International Conservative Conference in Tel Aviv, produced with Shibolet and Sela Meir publications, MK Atty. Simcha Rothman explains the importance of the Israeli right partnering with American conservatives.

“I think it's not only important, it's a strategic mindset that the Israeli right needs to adopt,” Rothman tells Israel National News. “It's also ongoing all over the world because for many many years the left was global and the right was local and that brought the right to a disadvantage because you have foreign funding in Israel, left-wing organizations are heavily funded by foreign countries, by foreign organizations, and the funding comes from abroad, especially in small countries like Israel and the ideas come from all over. People get their indoctrination around the world and the right was local and did not know how to respond to that.”

He continues: “Once people understood that the conservative movement was trying to preserve the same core values all around the world that [are about] community, family, a free market against the tyranny of the international liberal, so-called progressive front, the cooperation brings out good ideas. One of the outcomes of this is cooperation…The same fight that we are fighting here in Israel against the progressive ideas that try to diminish the nation-state idea – especially the Jewish State idea in our context – the family and and the markets and trying to enforce on us ideas that come from the progressive international front. This helps us better understand the challenges that we're facing and to win.”

The definitions of right and left in Israel and America are not always defined the same way. Rothman agrees but says nonetheless the Israeli right and American conservatives have a lot in common and need to work together.

“It's true because conservatism is all about conserving your core values – and there is a difference – and that's the major switch in our mind that we need to do, because that’s why the right was local all the time. Our heritage as the Jewish homeland is different than that of a European country who conserve different traditions,” he says. “The method to conserve tradition is the same and we know that and the attacks are the same and that's why the special field of conservatism that I deal with mostly – the conservatives in the legal system which says don't let international elites define through academia and through the justice system and the courts and the unelected courts what our core values are but let the people define their core values in their democratic national choice – I think that is the core value that goes all around the world and everyone can share, conservatives in the US, conservatives in Israel.”

He adds: “Where does the power to define our core values come from in the nation? And the rest is different [in each country], free state, free market in Israel means different things in the US. In Israel, we don't know what a real free market means because of our heritage. We need to adjust to it but the idea – defend the people from foreign and international progressive liberal tyranny – that's the same all over the world.”