MK Ayman Odeh was greeted like a rock star with an enthusiastic standing ovation as he gave a fiery speech as the closing keynote speaker at the HaaretzQ conference in New York City.

The Joint List leaders’ sharp speech, repeatedly punctuated by applause, seemed to supply the two elements that many of the conference’s handwringing conversations concerning the feared death of the two-state solution and growth of regional threats lacked and that the crowd, made up largely of left-wing American Jews, were hungry for.