Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief Dovid Efune.

Contemporary battles to defend Israel in the media are an “extension of the historic Jewish struggle for emancipation,” Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief Dovid Efune declared on Monday at the paper’s annual gala in New York City.

Speaking in front of an audience of over 600 supporters, Efune recalled, “Even the early pioneers knew that the fight for Jewish self-determination would not end with the founding of the Jewish state. Indeed, there is a long and hard road ahead. And the emergence of today’s Information Age has set forth new challenges that have hindered the Jewish campaign to secure our place in the community of nations.”

“In a world where media consumption is at an all-time high, where TV narratives and social media trends command the attention of policymakers, where editors and producers reign supreme, the Jewish people find themselves vulnerable yet again,” he went on to say.

The purpose of The Algemeiner, Efune stated, was to provide a “media home for the Jewish people and everything that the Jewish people stand for — for truth, for justice, for speaking out, for reaching out to those in need,” serving as a “lighthouse newspaper” to “shine a light of truth over the troubled waters of deception and falsehood, and also to highlight the good and the heroic in this world.”

Watch Efune’s remarks in their entirety below: