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July 5, 2002/Tamuz 25 5762, Vol. 54, No. 42
Combating anti-Semitism
MICHAEL J. JORDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - The new strain of anti-Semitism that has broken out around the world, couching itself in anti-Israel rhetoric, requires a global strategy in response, Jewish and Israeli leaders agree.
Yet six months after the strategy's creation, the most high profile of several different initiatives launched to combat this "new anti-Semitism" is still in the organizing stage.
That raises several questions for those leading the effort to beat back the new anti-Semitism: How will Jewish groups translate their tough talk into action? Will such action be unified and synchronized, or will different groups duplicate efforts? And should Israel direct such efforts, or be just one among several actors?
In January, Israel's deputy foreign minister, Rabbi Michael Melchior, announced the creation of the "International Commission for Combating Anti-Semitism."
It would differ from other Jewish efforts because it would be comprised primarily of prominent non-Jews and would be global in scope, while angling to establish local commissions in as many countries as possible, Melchior said.
Then, the Anti-Defamation League, which for 90 years has dedicated itself to fighting anti-Semitism, announced it would team up with the World Jewish Congress in a new global effort.
Utilizing the WJC's access to nearly every Jewish community in the Diaspora, the groups would create a task force aimed at keeping anti-Semitism "latent, dormant, immoral and unacceptable," Abraham Foxman, ADL's national director, told JTA.
At the same time, the WJC, through its European affiliate, the European Jewish Congress, has established a separate "European Coordination Center" to shape public opinion and lobby European governments and parliaments on issues of anti-Semitism, said Avi Beker, WJC's secretary-general.
"We haven't had a sustained involvement in a manner that would allow this to be established in a quicker manner," said Irwin Cotler, a Canadian lawmaker and human rights expert who co-founded the commission with Melchior and Swedish official Per Ahlmark. He also is a law professor at McGill University in Montreal.
"What we are witnessing today - and which has been developing incrementally, almost imperceptibly, for some 30 years now - is a new, virulent, globalizing and even lethal anti-Jewishness without parallel or precedent since the end of the Second World War," wrote Cotler.
He has proposed 13 indices to identify it from "existential or genocidal anti-Semitism" - that is, public calls for the destruction of Israel or killing of Jews to "Substantive Anti-Jewishness in the International Arena: The Denial to Israel of Equality Before the Law."
These various forms of anti-Semitism now are manifest worldwide, including in some nations with no Jews.
They also permeate the Internet, which means a strategy to combat anti-Semitism country-by-country is insufficient, Jewish leaders say.
"With the globalization of economics has also come the globalization of politics, and we see how the 'Big Lie' can be spread quickly and effectively through new technology," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
"We see that virtually no country is untouched by this new anti-Semitism, so an international approach is certainly warranted for dealing with it," he said.
The key to enlightening what Jewish activists call "decent people of conscience everywhere" to the burgeoning anti-Semitism - and how it fuels violence in the Middle East and against Jewish communities in Western Europe - is to utilize non-Jewish spokespeople, activists say.
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