Between October 6-8, 2026, the National Conservatism Conference (NATCON) will take place at Binyenei Ha’uma in Jerusalem—an international gathering bringing together key figures from the conservative movement worldwide. The organizers aim to present an ideological alternative to liberalism and strengthen ties between nationalist camps across Western nations.
The National Conservatism Conference is landing in Israel for the first time and will host hundreds of participants from around the world. Ofir Haivry, one of the organization’s founders, explained the ideological background of the event in an interview with Yaakov Bardugo: “So let’s start with the term and then we’ll talk about the conference. National conservatism is a term for something that developed, let’s say, in the last 30 years. Back during the Cold War there was an alliance against communism. When the Cold War ended, the struggle between conservatism and liberalism began to rise. Conservatives are people who don’t accept the ways of liberalism—and in Israel there are more of them than in the West.”
1+According to Haivry, the gap between the worldviews runs deep: “The question is what is liberalism. What’s accepted as liberalism is a view that says ‘the individual person is the beginning and end of everything.’ The conservative view says there are rules that are more important than the individual—not under all conditions and not everywhere, but they exist—they’re not fantasy. Liberalism as an ideology sees only the individual.”
He emphasized that Israel is particularly fertile ground for this approach: “Israeli society is a very national society. The ability to volunteer for things and so on—it’s very exceptional compared to Europe and America. So we, a group of Israelis, together with people from Europe and America, started a movement called national conservatism, ‘National Conservative.’ Until now we’ve held a series of major conferences around the world, and this year will be the first time the conference comes to Israel.”
1+Regarding the composition of participants, Haivry noted: “The conference is mostly non-Israelis. That is, 90% of those coming, or 85%, are not Israelis. My partner Yoram Hazony and I established an organization called the Edmund Burke Foundation, together with people in Europe and America who agree. Among the people who came to our conferences was, for example, a beginning writer named J.D. Vance—today Vice President of the United States.”
When asked about Vance’s relationship with Israel, Haivry clarified that there’s been a shift in approach among American conservatives: “Vance, like very many Americans today, looks at the world and at Israel much more in terms of interests. He’s not against Israel, let’s say fundamentally—broadly speaking he says Israel is from the field of the good guys, but I’m for American interests.”
National conservatism emphasizes the importance of nation-states, culture, and tradition. In contrast to global liberalism, national conservatives argue that the nation is the foundation for social cohesion and that every country has the right to define its future without external dictates. The Jerusalem conference seeks to position the Israeli model—as a society that has clung to its nationalism despite challenges—as a model to emulate for other Western nations.