Palantir CEO Alex Karp called for the Jewish community to step outside its “comfort zone” and look for new strategies to defend itself amid rising antisemitism, during a speech on Tuesday at the American Friends of Chabad (Lubavitch) annual Lamplighter Awards in Washington.

Karp, who was honored at the Chabad gala, also framed the battle against antisemitism as part of a broader fight for Western civilization and societies.

“Lessons that we’ve learned at Palantir … might be valuable for defending the West, in this particular case a particular tribe of people that are equally associated with the West, the Jewish people,” Karp said. “Palantir is a metaphor for working when there’s no playbook, and currently there is no playbook because institutions that have historically effectively defended people who’ve been discriminated against, especially Jewish people, are kind of not working.”

“If we’re going to have a meaningful chance of fighting, everybody’s going to have to leave their comfort zone a couple times a year,” Karp said. “It’s our job and my job to remind people [of] that, especially younger people here.”

He said that he’s “deeply, deeply grateful” for the Chabad award, “but I think we need a world where I don’t win this award, and there’s huge competition for it. … Why are so few people speaking up? There are very, very few people speaking up.”

“I should not be winning this award,” Karp continued. “I’m the least likely person to win this award, and any award in the Jewish community, ever.”

He said that he sees some who oppose the Jewish community as suffering from “Jewish derangement syndrome” and attacking Jews who are “a metaphor for agency and meritocracy” as part of a broader effort at “annihilating our societies.”

“We have to fight for a rule of law, meritocratic, high-agency society, and everybody’s going to have to help out, and that includes people who don’t like to ever speak out — finance, Hollywood, all sorts of other people,” the Palantir CEO continued.

He said that the Jewish community should focus on building alliances with people “who may not  [already like you]” and that building alliances with non-Jews is crucial — ”this is about higher values in our society.”

Karp also suggested that some Jewish nonprofits are failing to work effectively.

“One of the things we have in corporate America, is when institutions fail, they disappear,” Karp said. “We don’t have that in nonprofits. We’ve got to recognize that what’s [happening] now is not working.”

Karp was introduced onstage by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersch Goldberg-Polin, an American citizen taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and killed by the terrorist group in Gaza.

Goldberg-Polin said that she and her husband Jon had connected with Karp during their efforts to free their son, and that he had worked with the couple to strategize on ways to free the hostages. She said Karp and the Palantir team had offered “access, ideas, contacts, advice [and] connections,” as well as their support on a personal level.

“There were concepts that we had not heard anyone else suggest in the previous 95 days,” Goldberg-Polin said, recounting their first meeting. “This was the beginning of my glimpse into the creative, fearless and independent workings of the exquisitely complex mind of Alex Karp.”

Since Oct. 7, she continued, Karp had “showed up for Israel,” and Goldberg-Polin offered her gratitude on behalf of all of the hostage families.

“You spoke and continue to speak an unpopular truth and to chase justice. You are a righteous man. You are not afraid to jump,” she continued. “To all the people in this room with access to our decision-makers, history will remember all of us, and we will all be judged not based on equities, nor interests, nor politics, but on having the courage and integrity to do the right thing. To jump, even when it feels like there is no way forward.”

Karp, who has a doctorate in philosophy, was presented with a menorah and a signed first-edition copy of Man’s Search for Meaning, a book by philosopher Viktor Frankl about his experience in Nazi concentration camps. Frankl inscribed the book to a fellow survivor of Dachau.

One of the freed hostages who was held with Hersch Goldberg-Polin recounted that Goldberg-Polin had quoted Frankl while urging him to keep fighting to stay alive, speakers said.

Karp and other honorees were also honored with letters inscribed in a Torah scroll that the Chabad movement has been writing in significant locations throughout Washington, D.C.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was honored at a pre-ceremony reception, and delivered remarks. White House Jewish liaison Martin Marks delivered a message on behalf of President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.

Attendees from Capitol Hill included Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Michael Bennett (D-CO) and John Cornyn (R-TX) and Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Rob Menendez (D-NJ), Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and Greg Landsman (D-OH).

Antisemitism envoy-designate Yehuda Kaploun, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, undersecretary of state-designate Jacob Helberg, former Sen. Kirsten Sinema (I-AZ), former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and diplomats from close to 20 countries were also in the crowd.

John Fish, the chairman and CEO of Suffolk, served as the event chairman, and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck founder and chairman Norm Brownstein, Real Estate Roundtable president and CEO Jeff DeBoer and Palantir Executive Vice President Josh Harris served as co-chairs.

Rocky Zislin, the president of Chabad at George Washington University, also delivered remarks at the event.