Reut Group

Reut's charter defines its mission as sustaining "significant and substantive impact on the future of the State of Israel and the Jewish people" and leaving an Israeli and Jewish imprint on the future of the world.[2] The organization describes its vision as a twenty-first-century Zionism combining Jewish self-determination in a secure, prosperous, democratic Israel with the continued meaningful existence of the Jewish people.[1]

Reut lists national security, Israeli-Jewish relations, and socioeconomic development as its three primary work areas.[1] Its activities combine research and strategic analysis with consulting, leadership development, and initiatives intended to test or scale proposed solutions.[1]

The Reut Institute was established in January 2004 as an Israeli nonprofit operating under Israel's nonprofit law, with Gidi Grinstein as founder and president and Noa Eliasaf-Shoham as co-founder.[2] The organization is governed by a board of directors and a president.[2] Its staff page identifies Grinstein as founder and Eran Shayshon as CEO, noting that Shayshon joined in 2004. It lists Abed Assli as vice president for strategic and business development and Naama Klar as director of the Reut Institute.[6] The board includes Dan Atzmon, Dalia Levy-Rashal, Erez Meltzer, Eliyahu Novershtern, Gal Inbar, Gidi Grinstein, and Shmuel Rabina.[6]

Grinstein served as secretary of the Israeli negotiating team with the Palestinians from 1999 to 2001, including at the July 2000 Camp David summit with Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat.[7][8] He holds a BA in law and economics from Tel Aviv University and earned an MA in Public Policy from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government as a Wexner Israel Fellow in 2002.[7] While at Harvard, he studied how to implement the ISRAEL 15 Vision; after returning to Israel, he established the Reut Institute, where the vision became central to its socioeconomic work.[4]

The ISRAEL 15 idea originated in a Friedrich Ebert Foundation project held from 1997 to 1999, in which participants considered scenarios for Israel in 2020. Raya Strauss Ben-Dror, David Brodet, and Grinstein developed the scenario they called the ISRAEL 15 Vision—placing Israel among the world's 15 leading countries in quality of life within 15 years.[4] A 2008 profile reported that the institute made its resources available to the Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet.[9] A Congressional Research Service report separately described its services to the Israeli government as pro bono.[10]

Reut says its methodology draws on the reframing methods, tools, and services of Praxis Institute founder Dr. Zvi Lanir.[1] Its process involves identifying strategic gaps or "blind spots" between leaders' perceptions and changing realities, formulating a desired vision, developing strategies, and piloting models with individuals and organizations central to the issue.[1] A 2012 account described Reut as a policy organization that had worked closely with successive Israeli governments and produced studies and position papers on security, consumer prices, and the Diaspora's role in modern Jewish life.[11]

The organization also offers research and strategic consulting to organizations and executives. It says it has developed strategies for clients including Hillel, the Israel Innovation Authority, and Tel Aviv Municipality, and seeks to train and empower young leaders for public service in Israel and the Jewish world.[1]

The ISRAEL 15 Vision—placing Israel among the 15 leading countries in quality of life within 15 years—has served as the organizing framework of Reut's socioeconomic work.[4] Reut argues that achieving the vision requires a socioeconomic "leapfrog" to close Israel's quality-of-life gap with leading developed countries. Its definition of quality of life includes personal, physical, and social well-being as well as income.[4] The organization estimates that the vision would require per capita growth of at least 4 percent for a period that could last up to 20 years, together with improvements in non-material measures of well-being.[4]

Grinstein presented the vision to economist Ricardo Hausmann in 2006. Hausmann subsequently became involved with the institute and visited Israel as its guest to meet and lecture senior government officials.[9] At Reut's 10th-anniversary conference in 2014, the Israel 15 approach was described as promoting inclusive growth across Israeli society, including the development of growth engines based on local assets.[12] A 2012 account said Reut's programs sought to enable women, Arabs, and people it called "the disenfranchised" to share in Israeli society and treated innovation as a means of improving quality of life broadly.[11]

The Leapfrog Center, established after 13 years of Reut research and fieldwork, applies this approach through consulting, training, and implementation support for regional and urban development.[5] It has worked with national and regional government, local authorities, communal institutions, and third-sector organizations on socioeconomic development, vision-building, social entrepreneurship, community development, and plans tailored to individual communities.[5]

Reut's focus on civilian resilience followed its assessment after the Second Lebanon War that Israel's home front represented a weakness in national security.[2] Beginning in March 2008, the institute assigned a team led by Dana Preisler-Swery to the issue. A version of its proposal was submitted to a government committee preparing for national emergencies and, according to the institute's documentation, was adopted by that committee in November 2008. A more developed framework produced with the Israel Trauma Coalition was published in August 2009.[2]

The resulting Civil Resilience Network framework proposed a national network involving individuals, households, public institutions, businesses, nonprofits, philanthropists, and Jewish communities overseas.[2] It defined resilience as the ability to pass through a crisis while adapting, minimizing casualties, maintaining a basic quality of life, and preserving core values and identity. It also recommended preparedness standards, local and national partnerships, and a resilience fund for preparation and crisis response.[2]

An INSS analysis described Reut's initiative as an "innovative experiment" to construct a conceptual framework for a statewide civil-resilience network.[13] The surrounding discussion emphasized local leadership, public-private cooperation, information sharing, preparedness, and attention to schools, social welfare, and public health.[13]

INSS identified Reut as among the first Israeli policy organizations to focus on what it called the delegitimization phenomenon.[3] Reut's London case study said the institute had focused on the issue since the summer of 2008 and had presented an initial conceptual framework at the Herzliya Conference in January 2010.[14] On the eve of that conference, Reut published "Building a Political Firewall against Israel's Delegitimization." As reported by INSS, it argued that increasingly harsh international criticism was eroding Israel's image and exacting a strategic price.[15] The report attributed this trend to what it termed a "delegitimization network" that "tarnishes Israel's reputation, constrains its military capabilities, and advances the One-State Solution."[15]

Reut characterized the challenge as requiring a shift from local or situational responses to a proactive, global, systemic approach.[14] Its London report said the team had met more than 100 people during the preceding year and presented London as a major hub in what it called the delegitimization network, citing the city's concentration of media, academic, diplomatic, legal, and nongovernmental institutions.[14] The report recommended a networked response and limited its definition of fundamental delegitimization to negating Israel's right to exist or the Jewish people's right to self-determination, distinguishing that position from criticism of particular Israeli policies.[14]

The Jewish Virtual Library reported Reut's 2010 argument that public relations, while important, "cannot and will not neutralize" campaigns to delegitimize Israel, which Reut described as operating from the bottom up through grassroots movements, academia, and social networks.[16] Reut's national-security page lists the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, regional security, home-front and civilian resilience, and delegitimization challenges outside Israel as its principal research areas.[17]

A 2008 Congressional Research Service report cited Reut's paper "Fundamental Early Warning: The Final Act of the Two State Solution?," which warned that Palestinians could abandon the two-state solution as soon as the end of 2008.[10] A 2009 CRS report described Reut position papers as advocating the "upgrading" of the Palestinian Authority through de facto statehood and expanded autonomy and sovereignty-related capacities, rather than through a unilateral declaration of statehood.[18] Examples included Palestinian currency, a tax authority, foreign embassies, and membership in international organizations. CRS noted that Reut had discussed upgrading the Authority since shortly after Mahmoud Abbas's election as Palestinian Authority president in 2005.[18]

In November 2022, Reut co-organized a conference titled "Israel-US Relations: Trends and Looking Ahead" with INSS and the Israeli Institute for Economic Planning. President Isaac Herzog delivered the opening keynote by video after last-minute political developments prevented him from appearing in person.[19]

Strengthening relations between Israel and world Jewry has been a consistent focus of Reut's work, and an American Jewish Committee publication identified the organization as a leader in that field.[20] Reut's Jewish Peoplehood program lists four areas of work: developing a new covenant between Israel and world Jewry; explaining the strategic importance of world Jewry's support; using tikkun olam as a bridge between Israel and the Diaspora; and framing Israel within Israeli society as the nation-state of the Jewish people.[21]

A March 2012 conceptual framework described a shift from a relationship centered on Israel and aliyah toward one emphasizing partnership, mutuality, strong Jewish communities in Israel and abroad, and movement between them.[22] Reut reported meeting more than 80 communal professionals, lay leaders, academics, government representatives, media figures, and nonprofit participants for the project.[22] It proposed a two-stage approach—"One Hub at a Time," followed by "Platform to Platform"—and named work with the JCC Association, Hillel, Birthright, and the Jewish Agency's Partnership2Gether program.[22] Six proposed pillars included resilient Jewish communities, tikkun olam, Hebrew, a secure and democratic Israel, Jewish culture and tradition, and opposition to antisemitism and what the report called the fundamental delegitimization of Israel.[22]

In an AJC essay, Grinstein and Ari Afilalo argued that Israel and world Jewry should be treated as an integrated society of communities with equal standing. They proposed improving Israeli schoolbooks' treatment of world Jewry and familiarizing Israeli civil servants with Jewish communities abroad.[20]

Reut also partnered with the World Jewish Congress and the Reut-powered Jewish Peoplehood Coalition on the Leadership Bridge for the Future. The three-day Jerusalem and Tel Aviv program brought together more than 120 Jewish leaders from 50 countries and more than 100 young Israelis for dialogue and joint action concerning Jewish unity and Israel-Diaspora relations.[23]

In 2017, Reut warned of a potential "perfect storm" in Israel's relationship with world Jewry, primarily American Jewry, and argued that Israel had a "blind spot" regarding the Diaspora.[24] The reported analysis linked possible deterioration to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, political polarization, religious pluralism, and the Orthodox rabbinate.[24] At a 2022 Washington summit, CEO Eran Shayshon described Reut as an action-oriented think tank combining analysis with grassroots work and argued that the Abraham Accords could create opportunities for cooperation between centrist Muslims and Jews.[25]

Tikkun Olam Makers (TOM) is an international assistive-technology nonprofit venture founded in Israel in 2014 by the Reut Group.[26] Reut traced the venture's origin to community work showing that many people with disabilities had needs that commercial markets did not serve because the affected groups were too small to justify costly and complex product development.[27] TOM brought engineers, designers, and technology experts together in open "makeathons" to develop solutions without intellectual-property restrictions, allowing others to use and reproduce the results.[27]

A 2019 account described TOM as a worldwide network connecting people with disabilities with engineers, designers, and programmers to develop affordable solutions for unmet needs.[28] Participants with unmet needs were called "need-knowers" and joined the design process, while TOM communities used local materials and made assembly instructions available for download.[28] A 2026 report stated that TOM had more than 1,200 open-source solutions in development at various stages and had operated in the United States, Israel, and more than 30 other countries.[26]

A precursor to TOM's maker-network model appeared in 2012, when Reut established what was described as Israel's first open-source 3D-printer lab in a central Tel Aviv basement.[11] High-school students used computer-design tools and PLA, a plastic-like material made from corn starch, to make products. Lab manager Matan Harel said building a new printer from online instructions took about a week and cost $600 to $700.[11] Reut envisioned the 3D XLN Cross-Labs Network as dozens or possibly hundreds of open-source spaces where people could make objects and learn skills, with customized prosthetics and medical aids among the anticipated benefits.[11]

Following the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and the ensuing war, TOM used its resources to assist vulnerable displaced populations in Israel, including families of people with disabilities.[8] Reut states that its aspiration through TOM is for Israel and the Jewish people to make a distinct contribution to the lives of a quarter of a billion people through innovation and tikkun olam.[5]

Reut has developed what it calls a "broad tent and red lines" approach to advocacy and discourse about Israel.[29] The framework characterizes the BDS movement and certain other actors as participating in an assault on Israel's legitimacy, while recommending broad, cross-political partnerships against what Reut describes as delegitimization.[29]

Reut defines "red lines" as voluntary boundaries for constructive discourse about Israel. At the same time, it cautions that classifying harsh critics of Israeli policy as delegitimizers can alienate people engaged in legitimate criticism and push them toward organizations that reject Israel's right to exist.[29] These classifications and prescriptions represent Reut's own political analysis.[29]

Reut's significance has rested on its combination of published strategic analysis and attempts to turn that analysis into operational models. INSS listed the institute among Israeli organizations contributing to foreign-policy and security decision-making and described it as among the first to focus on the delegitimization phenomenon.[3] Congressional Research Service reports cited Reut papers on two-state-solution prospects and Palestinian Authority capacity-building as inputs to broader policy analysis.[10][18]

The Center for Israel Education has listed Reut publications including Daphna Kaufman's 2021 article "Framing the Jewish and Israeli Establishment in Progressive Discourse" and Ezra Kopelowitz and Shlomi Ravid's October 2021 report "Jewish Peoplehood: Mapping the Field in Israel."[30][31] Reut has also published frameworks on civil resilience, Israel-Diaspora relations, and socioeconomic development.[2][4]

At a 2014 Reut event, Grinstein described his book Flexigidity as an exploration of adaptability as a source of Jewish survival, security, prosperity, and leadership.[32] In 2017, the organization marked its move to a WeWork building in Tel Aviv with a gathering titled "The Change in the Pace of Change," attended by figures including Erez Meltzer, Benji Singer, Shai Agassi, and Raya Strauss Ben-Dror.[33]

Reut's characterization of anti-Israel activism as a coordinated "delegitimization network" is politically contested. The descriptions of that network, its participants, and its effects represent the institute's analysis rather than independently established findings.[15][14] Approved sources also refer to related 2010 work under differing titles, and the available documentation does not establish whether all of those titles represent alternate versions or separate publications.[14][34]

Reut's recommendations regarding the Palestinian Authority—including expanding autonomy-related capacities involving currency, taxation, foreign embassies, and membership in international organizations—were policy proposals described by CRS, not settled outcomes.[18]

A credit dispute arose over the IKEA ThisAbles accessibility campaign. Reut alleged that its collaboration with advertising agency McCann and IKEA contributed the campaign's central concept and solutions and that they were later used without attribution.[27] McCann denied the allegation, saying the collaboration had not succeeded, the project continued with other suppliers, and Reut's contribution occurred at an early stage. The attribution remains disputed.[27]

A 2019 Globes article challenged a Reut document's description of the emerging gap between Israel and US Jewry as a "Yom Kippur War" type surprise capable of causing economic disaster. The commentary argued that the economic data indicated a different problem and characterized some of Reut's language as apocalyptic.[35] Reut's use of the term "Jewish erasure" for narratives framing Jews as white and Israel as a white colonialist state likewise represents the organization's political analysis rather than a neutral classification.[25]