[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COMBATING ANTI-SEMITISM:
PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND OVERSIGHT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 14, 2010
__________
Serial No. 111-87
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
______
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York RON PAUL, Texas
DIANE E. WATSON, California JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MIKE PENCE, Indiana
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOE WILSON, South Carolina
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee CONNIE MACK, Florida
GENE GREEN, Texas JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
LYNN WOOLSEY, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TED POE, Texas
BARBARA LEE, California BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
VACANTUntil 5/5/10 deg.
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on International Organizations,
Human Rights and Oversight
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri, Chairman
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts DANA ROHRABACHER, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota RON PAUL, Texas
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey TED POE, Texas
Jerry Haldeman, Subcommittee Staff Director
Paul Berkowitz, Republican Professional Staff Member
Mariana Maguire, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Ms. Hannah Rosenthal, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-
Semitism, U.S. Department of State............................. 8
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center.... 23
Mr. Kenneth Jacobson, Deputy National Director, Anti-Defamation
League......................................................... 28
Rabbi Andrew Baker, Director of International Jewish Affairs,
American Jewish Committee...................................... 60
Ms. Elisa Massimino, President and Chief Executive Officer, Human
Rights First................................................... 69
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Russ Carnahan, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Missouri, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight:
Prepared statement............................................. 3
Ms. Hannah Rosenthal: Prepared statement......................... 11
Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Prepared statement......................... 26
Mr. Kenneth Jacobson: Prepared statement......................... 30
Rabbi Andrew Baker: Prepared statement........................... 63
Ms. Elisa Massimino: Prepared statement.......................... 71
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 100
Hearing minutes.................................................. 101
COMBATING ANTI-SEMITISM: PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2010
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on International Organizations,
Human Rights and Oversight,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:14 p.m. in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Russ
Carnahan, (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Carnahan. I want to call to order this Subcommittee on
International Organizations, Human Rights, deg. and
Oversight, and the hearing today on combating anti-Semitism and
protecting human rights, and we will start with some opening
statements from the members, and we will get onto our two
panels.
But we do have some special guests with us today. I want to
recognize Brian Grim from the Pew Research for being here and
thank you, and also we have some special students with us. We
have, my understanding, 34 fifth graders, they are here from
the Jewish Primary Day School of our nation's capitol, and why
don't you all stand for us. Welcome, and I understand you are
studying government and also this week studying the Holocaust.
So welcome, and we are happy to have you here. Let us give them
a hand.
[Applause.]
This past Sunday, April 11, nearly 1,000 St. Louisans, my
home city, attended the Shalom Kneseth Israel Synagogue to
commensurate Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust for Memories Day. The
event was hosted by the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning
Center.
After World War II, about 300 Holocaust survivors came to
St. Louis. Today fewer than 150 survivors remain. Each year
this commemoration takes on more urgency as fewer survivors are
able to recount the terrible tragedies that they witnessed.
While Holocaust survivors are still among us, we must
strengthen efforts to speak out and combat Holocaust denial.
Today, we have with us Ms. Hannah Rosenthal, special envoy
to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. I understand that her
father is also a Holocaust survivor. We are honored to have her
here today to talk about the Obama administration's efforts to
combat Holocaust denial and other forms of hateful, derogatory
anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is not just rhetoric. It is a violation of
human rights. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, signed in 1948 under the Harry Truman administration,
says,
``Everyone has a right to freedom of thought, conscious
and religion, and this right includes freedom to change
his religion or belief and free him, either alone or in
community with others, and in public or private to
manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice,
worship, and observance.''
The incidents of anti-Semitism are on the rise. According
to Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation
League, 2009 was, ``. . .probably the worst year of global
anti-Semitism since the Second World War.'' There has been no
country, no city, no continent that has not witnessed anti-
Semitism, and we do not talk even about thousands and thousands
of Web sites, millions upon millions of hits to reinforce anti-
Semitism.
According to the Roth Institute for the Study of
Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University,
violent acts against Jews worldwide more than doubled last
year. In 2009, there were 1,129 anti-Semitic incidents. This
figure is up from 559 incidents the previous year. It is the
highest since the study began more than 20 years ago.
I would like to submit for the record a new report on
rising anti-Semitism just released for the hearing today from
the Pew Forum on Religion and Politics. Author Brian Grim, who
I mentioned in the beginning, notes that although the global
Jewish population takes up approximately .2 percent of the
world's population, governmental or societal harassment of Jews
was reported in 55 countries, 28 percent during the 2-year
period under examination.
Today, we will hear about efforts to combat anti-Semitism.
I am interested in learning about the Obama administration's
effort to reduce anti-Semitism and the stigma and
misconceptions about other faith through their interfaith
dialogue. I would like to know how other measures our panelists
are going to recommend to be more effective to enforce measures
that combat anti-Semitism.
I would also like to hear more about the enforcement of
laws to address Holocaust area restitution issues. For example,
the Government of Spain has refused to return a painting
expropriated by the Nazis to the owners, heirs, even though
Spain is a signatory to the Terezin Declaration affirming its
commitment to return looted art. Likewise, Lithuania has yet to
enact a law to return communal property while Poland has yet to
enact a law returning private property to Jewish owners.
We are also interested to hearing about efforts through
international organizations to combat anti-Semitism and what
can be done through the U.N., the Organization for Cooperation
and Security in Europe and other international organizations.
Last May, the United States decided to join the U.N. Human
Rights Council, reform it from within and use its voice and
vote to focus attention on the worst abusers of human rights
and away from an excessive focus on Israel. I am also
particularly interested to learn about the status of anti-
Semitism on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These media can be
tools for liberation and freedom of expression, as we have seen
in Iran and Venezuela, but they can also be used as tools to
spread hateful and inciteful speech and dangerous ideas.
I want to now introduce our first witness. Well, actually I
am not going to do that right now. I am going to turn to our
ranking member, Mr. Rohrabacher, recognize him for 5 minutes
for his opening remarks as well.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carnahan
follows:]Carnahan statement
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You will get it
down right. He is our new chairman. And Mr. Chairman, let me
congratulate you as a new chairman on deciding that this would
be one of the first hearings that you would call for an
organize. This is a vitally important issue for us, not only to
understand where anti-Semitism stands in the world today, but
to get to understand some of the root causes for anti-Semitism
which has plagued this planet for thousands of years.
I am also very grateful to Mr. Chris Smith, who is to my
left, and let me just note that he has been a champion on this
issue and a role model for myself in terms of compassion and
responsibility on these kind of issues, and I appreciate your
leadership too, Mr. Smith.
Let us take a note about anti-Semitism, and just start this
off by suggesting that I do not believe that the root cause for
the expansion of anti-Semitism is the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict. This notion is something that I think provides too
many people an easy out in terms of understanding what anti-
Semitism is all about, and it is not because the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict that you have such anti-Western attitudes
among some, if not many, Muslims. The fact is that there has
been an anti-Western element to the Islamic societies over the
centuries, and we have seen this, and there have been people,
and today manifests itself quite often in the form of anti-
Semitism, but it goes much deeper than just a hatred of the
Jews.
Let us note that we have a situation here in the United
States where we have anti-semites who now have sort of again
focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a means to
promote their anti-Semitism, yet anti-Semitism existed among
certain elements in the United States long before there was
ever an effort by people to have a rebuilding of the nation of
Israel.
So we need to understand some of these fundamentals if we
are going to get at it. Remember we had an anti-Semitic
terrorist movement in the United States that was very strong
for about 100 years, if not 150 years, but about 100 years. It
was called the Ku Klux Klan, and they marched around and with
their crosses and talked about Christianity, and yes, not just
repressing black people, but also anti-Semitism was a major
part of their ideology.
So, today as we look at this issue, and I am looking
forward to hearing the testimony, let us note some of the root
causes for anti-Semitism and try to go beyond simply blaming
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but we do know that with that
in mind there is an unholy alliance today among anti-semites
throughout the world and Muslim extremists who they themselves
hate, not just Jews, but hate the Western way of civilization,
that this unholy alliance threatens bloodshed and threatens
violence not just aimed at Jews but aimed at all Western
Civilization and all those who would uphold those standards of
human rights that we hold dear.
So, Mr. Chairman, today it behooves us to get a better
understanding of this issue and make sure that the American
people have a deeper appreciation of the depth of the challenge
that we face in trying to guard against this evil force in the
world. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher, and for your
leadership on this committee. The issues that you have
championed, and this is a good example of one that has brought
bipartisan support, and I am also especially pleased, as you
mentioned, to be joined by our colleague on the full committee
Chris Smith of New Jersey who is one of the great champions of
human rights in this Congress and I want to recognize him for 5
minutes as well.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for extending
the courtesy to join you on the committee. Thank you for
convening this. It is one of the first hearing and it shows
your priority, which is an extremely important one, combating
anti-Semitism, and I thank you for that, and I want to thank
Mr. Rohrabacher, the ranking member, for his kind remarks but
also for his years, decades of championing human rights all
over the world, including those rights against Jews all over
the world. I want to thank him for that.
Let me just say you made a very good point in your opening
about the idea of differences of opinion with the Palestinians.
Natan Sharansky has over and over again pointed out that
disagreeing with policies that may be promulgated or pushed by
the Knesset or by whoever the existing prime minister might be
is just the latest cover on the part of anti-semites to attack,
to demonize, to de-legitimize Israel, and especially Jews, it
comes from the far right, it comes from the far left, it comes
from the skinheads. There is a large collection, regrettably,
of bigots who hate Jews simply because they are Jews, and now
they use the pretext of disagreeing with the Israeli state as a
means of promoting their hatred.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century more than
any other time since the dark days of World War II Jewish
communities worldwide have faced violent attacks against
synagogues, Jewish cultural sites, cemeteries and individuals.
It is an ugly reality that we know from experience it won't go
away by ignoring it, a sobering reminder that our societies are
filled with a collection of bigots who hate Jews. These bigots
must be fought and they must be defeated.
I look out at the audience and I see Mark Levin, who when
he was in his early career working with the NCSJ, now executive
director, I had given a speech, Mr. Chairman, on the floor, the
Hamilton Fish had called us together for a special order in
1981, and Mark was sitting in the gallery, and after I finished
the very unremarkable speech came down and said you ought to go
to Moscow, Leningrad with the NCSJ, which I did in January
1982, and certainly that was my true eye opener about what
state-sponsored anti-Semitism hate looks like, and that, of
course, was the Soviet style.
Unfortunately, we have seen over the years that it has
gotten privatized in some cases. I chaired a hearing back in
1985, it was the first hearing ever as far as we know on this
rising tide of anti-Semitism, and I remember several of our
witnesses, some of whom are testifying today--just shows they
are long stayers in this battle--talked about the privatizing
of it, where the countries in question look to stance while
those who harbor these ill thoughts and this pernicious form of
hate would be somewhat have a free hand to do whatever they
wanted against Jews, and that certainly is a serious problem
although we see many states do, like Iran, practice this in a
very systematic way.
You know, I believe one of the most important things we can
do in fighting anti-Semitism is to keep reliable records on
anti-Semitic hate crimes. Surely a surgeon can't remove a
cancer or prescribe a course of treatment without documenting
the nature, scope, and extent of the disease, and anti-Semitism
is a vicious disease.
This is why in 2004, Mr. Chairman, as prime House sponsor
of the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, I offered an amendment
to the already passed Senate bill which just called for a 1-
year look at anti-Semitic hate, and that amendment created the
State Department office to monitor and combat anti-Semitism,
and the position of special envoy for monitoring and combating
anti-Semitism, the position occupied by our distinguished
witness who we will present in just a moment.
It is also why since 2002 I and other members of the
Helsinki Commission have taken the lead within the
Parliamentary Assembly for the OSCE, and then with the OSCE
itself in trying to get the 56 participating states to focus, I
know some who are here, Andy Baker, who is now our special
representative in the OSCE, fighting to try to make other
countries, and our own, aware of what our obligations are as
governments to fight this. We worked within the OSCPA and of
course the OSCE to make that all happen.
I also believe that another key to combating anti-Semitism
is attention to policing and prosecution issues. Police and
prosecutors must be trained on how to recognize and respond to
anti-Semitic hate crimes. That is why within the
Interparliamentary Coalition Combating Anti-Semitism, which I
serve in the steering committee, I continue, along with the
other members of that committee, to push for policing issues.
If you get the police right, and when something occurs in any
of our countries, it even happened in my own state, Mr.
Chairman, where in one of our municipalities swastikas were
painted on gravestones and they just chalked it off as just,
you know, this some hooliganism.
So when we take on the French and say you have got to
realize that that is a sign of hate, it also is equally hateful
when it happens within our own borders.
We must, and I will conclude on this and would ask that my
full statement be made part of the record, must never give into
fatigue or indifference. You know, we cannot get compassion and
fatigue. We cannot say we have been there, we have done that,
why don't other people get it. Anti-Semitism remains what it
has always been--a unique evil, a distinct form of intolerance,
the oldest form of religious bigotry and a malignant disease of
the heart that has often led to murder. It continues to
threaten our Jewish brothers and sisters throughout the world,
so we must redouble our efforts in the fight against this
scourge of anti-Semitism.
Thanks again, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Mr. Carnahan. I want to thank the gentleman from New
Jersey, and without objection his full statement will be placed
in the record.
I just got a text. We think we may have votes in 20 minutes
to half an hour so we are hoping we can get through our first
panel, and do votes, and then return for our second panel.
I want to introduce the administration's witness for today,
Ms. Hannah Rosenthal. She is the special envoy to monitor and
combat anti--Semitism for the Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights, and Labor of the State Department. Her father was a
rabbi and Holocaust survivor. She has also studied to become a
rabbi.
From 2005 to 2008, Ms. Rosenthal was executive director of
the Chicago Foundation for Women, and prior to that she was
executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs for
5 years. Ms. Rosenthal served as midwest regional director for
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the
Clinton administration, and has helped lead the Wisconsin
Clinton-Gore Campaign in 1992 and 1996.
Ms. Rosenthal attended graduate school for rabbinical
studies at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem and L.A. and holds
a bachelor's degree in religion from the University of
Wisconsin.
Ms. Rosenthal, welcome. I understand this is your first
appearance before a committee since your new position, so
especially we want to welcome you today. Please proceed and we
want to recognize you for 5 minutes, and then we will get to
questions.
STATEMENT OF MS. HANNAH ROSENTHAL, SPECIAL ENVOY TO MONITOR AND
COMBAT ANTI-SEMITISM, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ms. Rosenthal. Thank you so much. Chairman Carnahan,
Ranking Member Rohrabacher, and members of the subcommittee,
again this is my first appearance before you and I thank you
for the invitation to testify, and I would ask that my full
written statement be submitted for the record.
Mr. Carnahan. Without objection.
Ms. Rosenthal. The role of the special envoy and my office
was created by the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004 and
came out of this committee with your leadership, Congressman
Smith. I recognize the great leadership role this committee has
played and that your attention is key to this important human
rights issue. Regrettably, the need for that attention has not
diminished.
I am pleased to be here today also with Kenny Jacobson of
the Anti-Defamation League, Rabbi Andy Baker of the American
Jewish Committee, Elisa Massimino of the Human Rights First,
and Rabbi Abe Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Their
work is absolutely critical, and I thank them for their
contributions, and I look forward to working with them even
more closely as we move forward.
Last Sunday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day
where millions across the world honored the memories of the
victims of the largest genocide in history. As mentioned, I am
the child of a Holocaust survivor, the only survivor of his
family. I have no grandparents, I have no aunts and uncles, no
cousins. So fighting anti-Semitism is something very personal
to me.
When I was old enough to somewhat understand what my father
endured as the only member of this family to survive, I asked
him how could he go on during the Holocaust, and he responded,
``I survived to have you, Hannah,'' and those words he took the
mantle off his shoulders and put it squarely on mine, and I
have dedicated my life to eradicating anti-Semitism and
intolerance with a sense of urgency and passion that only my
father could give me.
On January 27th, I walked, voluntarily, through the gates
of Auschwitz under the infamous ``Arbeit Macht Frei'' sign as a
member of the official U.S. delegation to mark the sixty-fifth
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In his remarks,
President Obama eloquently reminded us that we are here as
survivors not only to bear witness but to bear a burden.
Anti-Semitism occurs on every continent. This year the
Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report
and Country Reports on Human Rights Practices revealed an
increasing trend in incidents of anti-Semitism cited in 74
countries, and the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Project Survey
showed very high levels of unfavorable views of Jews and
Muslims globally. All of this together is a very troubling
trend.
The outrageous statements by Iranian President Ahmadinejad
that the Holocaust never occurred and that Israel and all Jews
should be wiped off the world map are more than anti-Israel
rhetoric. It is not land that would be drive into the sea, but
Jewish people. The United States strongly calls for this
destruction of Israel, and finds reprehensible this explicit
incitement to commit the most extreme violence.
In recent months, Europe has also seen some disturbing acts
of anti-Semitism. In Poland, thieves stole the ``Arbeit Macht
Frei'' sign at the entrance to Auschwitz. The sign was found a
few days later cut into three pieces. The alleged ring leader,
a Swedish neo-Nazi, was extradited to Poland a few days ago to
stand trial. In Greece, two arson attacks damaged the historic
Etz-Hayyim Synagogue, the last Jewish monument on Crete. Greek
officials condemned the attacks with unprecedented open letter
to the people of Greece.
Anti-Israel statements are increasingly the vehicle for
anti-Semitism, often couched in demonstrations, cartoons and
speech against the State of Israel. The legitimate role of
public expression criticizing government policy can quickly
cross over into hateful racial slurs and denunciations of the
Jewish people themselves. This is unacceptable. We believe
criticism of Israel crosses the line into anti-Semitism when,
for example, it applies a double standard or compares the
policy of Israel to that of the Nazis, or holds all Jews
responsible collectively for actions of the State of Israel, or
denies that Israel has a right to exist.
Natan Sharansky identified the three Ds that cross the
line. It is anti-Semitic when Israel is demonized, held to a
different standard or delegitimized.
Now let me describe briefly how my office and the Obama
administration are fighting anti-Semitism. As my title
indicates, we vigilantly monitor anti-Semitic acts and
discourse. At the State Department, I work with all regional
bureaus, the bureau multilateral efforts, as well as our
diplomatic missions abroad. I am forging partnerships with key
offices across the U.S. Government, including the National
Security Council. I am also building on partnerships we have
with scholars and nongovernmental organizations who help us
document abuses and provide insights and ideas.
But combating anti-Semitism calls for more than monitoring.
Bilaterally we encourage government to confront anti-Semitism
within their own societies and reach out to their own Jewish
communities. We also encourage partnership in international
institutions. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe has been a global pioneer in this regard and we play a
leading role in their efforts against anti-Semitism. We
strongly support the work of Rabbi Andrew Baker, the OSCE
special representative on combating anti-Semitism.
This year Kazakhstan as OSCE chair will host a conference
on tolerance and nondiscrimination at the end of June which I
will attend.
At the United Nations anti-Semitism and anti-Israel
sentiment often overlap. United Nations' bodies have long shown
a bias toward condemning Israel at a rate much higher than any
other country. We continue to press for Israel to be treated
fairly at the United Nations and other international
organizations. We are pressing the U.N. Human Rights Council to
live up to its mandate which encompasses treating Israel by the
same standards applied to other countries and combating anti-
Semitism.
In addition to diplomacy, we advance civil discourse. We
promote public discussion on new forms of anti-Semitism, how to
recognize it, how to combat it. We don't just confront
intolerance, we are actively promoting tolerance. We are
educating opinion leaders and policymakers how increasing
levels of anti-Semitism are insidiously entering mainstream
media and public settings.
Interfaith engagement reenforces religious tolerance. It is
easy to criticize and even demonize people you have never met.
Building relationships among different ethnic and religious
communities are central to tearing down walls of hostility. We
are actively engaging faith leaders to reenforce the importance
of pluralism and protection of all religious minorities. Next
week I will travel to Lithuania, Ukraine and Tunisia to advance
these efforts.
This administration, the Department of State, and my office
will continue to employ the full range of tools to fight anti-
Semitism from reporting to international diplomacy, from
training law enforcement to education, from multicultural
relationship to public engagement. In so doing we must work
hard to promote three things: Acceptance, respect and
tolerance.
The Jewish story is a unique one and anti-Semitism has
unique aspects, especially as we observe these days of
Holocaust remembrance, but hate is hate, and intolerance is
intolerance. Jews cannot eradicate anti-Semitism alone. We
condemn intolerance against any and all religious or ethnic
groups, and strive to eradicate it. Together we must combat
anti-Semitism and promote tolerance so that in the twenty-first
century this age-old scourge finally will be relegated to the
past.
I look forward to working with you all, and Mr. Chairman, I
am happy to answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Rosenthal
follows:]Hannah Rosenthal
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you again for your great overview and
presentation here to the committee. I want to start, I guess,
with questions about this past Sunday and Holocaust Remembrance
Day, and as we see the democratic trends of Holocaust survivors
passing away and fewer and fewer of them around to tell of
their experience. I guess can you talk about the status of
Holocaust denial laws in the world, and how they are addressing
this issue, and any countries in particular that you think
serve as models for best practices in terms of how to address
that?
Ms. Rosenthal. There are several good stories I can tell
you. Before I walked through the gate to Auschwitz we met with
29 ministers of education from around the world, and the focus
of that meeting was the status of their Holocaust education,
and while uneven, all 29 states spoke about the importance of
their education and how they are addressing it in their
countries, and I considered that very good news.
Mr. Carnahan. Can you cite any other best practices of
countries that have taken positive action to combat anti-
Semitism and have any of those steps that you think could be
replicated to other countries as a model?
Ms. Rosenthal. I have a few examples for you. The incidents
of anti-Semitism in the U.K. has gone up hugely and it is a
cause of great concern, and two members of Parliament decided
that this was to be a national priority there, and they did an
investigation, which resulted in the creation of a body called
the Interparliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism, and
they are working with parliamentarians throughout the country
to not only address but to strategize how do we eliminate anti-
Semitism with our youth, with our older people and with
everyone in between. They are kind of taking the show on the
road and they are using that as a model in training many
European countries on how to put together that kind of
investigation and how to create an interparliamentary coalition
as a result. They, by the way, will be having a meeting in
November in Canada, which I am hoping you all will attend.
France saw a tripling of incidents in 2009, and their
response was to do what you all did, and that was to create a
special envoy position, and that special envoy did come to meet
with me to see how I plan to address the issue and mobilize
agencies within the government and outside of government in a
coordinated manner employ diplomacy, civil discourse,
education, interfaith and intergroup relationship building.
Mr. Carnahan. And on that I guess just to follow up on that
topic, during the President's speech in Cairo in June 2009, he
emphasized the importance of interfaith dialogue and interfaith
actions. To what extent do you think that these kind of
projects can help reduce the stigma and stereotypes around
Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and to what extent do you believe
they can be a useful tool, and I guess could you elaborate more
on how the administration is using that?
Ms. Rosenthal. Well, I agree that it is a very, very
important tool. It is a critical tool. Everywhere I go, whether
it is in a community in this country or abroad, I, of course,
meet with government officials and I meet with the Jewish
community to find out what their concerns are and how they are
weathering the reports that we hear, but I make a point of also
meeting with organizations that are working interfaith and
interethnic advocacy.
Jews cannot fight anti-Semitism alone. Muslims cannot fight
hatred against Muslims alone, and it goes on for all vulnerable
populations, and we have to recognize the common threads of
hatred and how we have to work together to fight it.
Mr. Carnahan. One more question, then I am going to yield
to our ranking member, but I mentioned technology in my opening
remarks, and the new technologies, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
in terms of getting information out. It has been such a
positive tool on the one hand, but the implications of the
negative use of those technologies as well, if you could
comment on really how you see this technology being used, how
we can use it in a positive way, and is your office involved in
that new media?
Ms. Rosenthal. Well, I will tell you that just a few days
ago they put me on Facebook, but I will tell you I have no idea
how to use it yet. The department is using Facebook, Twitter,
and Web sites that are constantly being added information and
trying to figure out ways to be more user friendly.
There is no question that the new technology and new
communication tools represent both opportunities and huge
challenges. We in this country treasure our First Amendment.
However, when there is hate speech online and there is hate
speech in the public discourse, it is not good enough just to
protect freedom of expression. We have to call it out, and that
is what we are focusing on: How do we use these new
technologies to make sure accurate information is being put
forth, and in addition we are calling out the bad speech, and
condemning it strongly.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. I want to yield now to the ranking
member, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would
like to ask our witness, do you think our President has been
forceful enough in calling out this hate speech and anti-
Semitism?
Ms. Rosenthal. I absolutely do. I find his words very
inspirational.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Can you give me quotes that he has said
about when he was apologizing to the Mullahs in Iran about how
the United States have had a bad--have done bad things to Iran
that might have caused ill will, do you have something that he
also added in condemning their anti-Semitism of the current
Iranian mullah regime?
Ms. Rosenthal. In our bilateral relationships and our
multilateral relationships, this is a high priority. We
consider Holocaust denial, Holocaust glorification, which
unfortunately is out there, absolutely unacceptable, and the
administration is deeply committed to doing so. I have----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am just going to have to tell you, and I
again I am trying not to be partisan here, but obviously I am a
Republican and I am a little sensitive when a President of the
United States begins in an apologetic tone to a regime like the
mullah regime in Iran.
You are saying that you are confident that he has offset
that with other public statements that condemned anti-Semitism
in Iran?
Ms. Rosenthal. I think the President has been very firm, as
has the Secretary of State in--by the way, in my position,
which has been elevated and integrated into the workings of the
entire State Department, in elevating my visibility and my
access to all parts of the department is an indication of an
increased commitment and a strong support.
The President speaks so inspirationally, and when he
condemns hatred against one group, it is condemning hatred
against all groups, and he has been very strong in his support
of the Jewish community and in calling out anti-Semitism.
In his comments on Holocaust remembrance and when we were
in Auschwitz in January, I only quoted a little bit of what he
said when I quoted him here, but very movingly he talked about
our responsibility to recognize what happened is unique to
Jews, and how we take those lessons and translate them into a
better world where hatred against anyone is eradicated.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I am sorry I am not being too more
general here because, frankly, broad statements with flowery
words do not move me. What moves me is specific statements,
when you say ``calling out'' you are not talking about making a
general statement against anti-Semitism or condemning the
Holocaust, we are talking about specific statements toward a
regime that is a monstrous regime that we should have helped
their people overthrow their own government a long time ago,
and the mullahs--and what we have is a President going over
there and apologizing for what we have done in the past. I
would hope that that did not give people the impression that
United States--people of the United States in some way are
ignoring the anti-Semitism elements as well as the anti-Western
elements that are going on in Iran today.
The Islamic culture is expanding into Europe and there are
repercussions of this, and we see the moves by the banning of
head scarves and minarets and things like that that have been
popping up in various countries, Switzerland, et cetera.
Now does this type of let us say response to the expansion
of the Islamic culture, is that leading to anti-Semitism in
these countries?
Ms. Rosenthal. There is never an excuse, I don't care what
it is, for anti-Semitism.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Of course.
Ms. Rosenthal. And anybody who uses some kind of excuse,
whether political, religious or whatnot, is to be condemned.
When I used the word ``call out'' before, that is what I meant,
strongly condemned.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So they can actually ban the head scarves
and do these things without having to worry that this is going
to have an anti-Semitism response?
Ms. Rosenthal. Well, we believe strongly in this country of
the freedom of expression, the freedom of religion, people
should be able to practice their religion, including wearing
head scares or caput for Jews, and we totally oppose laws that
would make that criminalized. Freedom of expression, people
should be able to freely represent themselves, whether it is
their religion, and the list goes on.
So, no, and we speak out against that when France proposed
that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, as you can tell I am a little bit
concerned about what I considered to be lack of a tough
position with what is obviously an overtly anti-Semitism regime
in Iran, the President, I don't believe, has been tough enough,
but let us go on.
He has been pretty tough on Israel on the other hand. I
mean, Israelis refurbished some apartment buildings, and all of
a sudden they have become the enemies of peace, and do you
think that the President's tough stand on that has helped
alleviate or contributed to the anti-Semitism in the Middle
East?
Ms. Rosenthal. The anti-Semitism in the Middle East is
there for any different root causes and----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Sure.
Ms. Rosenthal [continuing]. One of them isn't what the
President says.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay, so the President of the United
States' tough rhetoric with Israel but not so tough rhetoric
with the Iranian mullahs doesn't send a message?
Ms. Rosenthal. I obviously see it very differently,
Congressman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. I see that my time is up and
let me just thank the witness for putting up with my very
pointed questions.
Ms. Rosenthal. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. I want to thank the gentleman, and now
recognize our colleague from the committee, Mr. Ellison, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Ellison. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
witness. Welcome to this committee.
Ms. Rosenthal. Thank you.
Mr. Ellison. I would just like to read a quick statement if
I may.
Chairman Carnahan, thank you for holding this important
hearing today on combating anti-Semitism. This past Sunday we
observed Yom Ha'atzmaut in which we remember all those who died
and suffered because of the Holocaust. We also mourn our
collective failure to prevent such a horrific tragedy. It is a
painful lesson of dangers of inaction, and we remind ourselves
that we must never be complacent in the face of genocide,
xenophobia, intolerance and hatred.
As we remember those who were killed in the Holocaust, we
must also commit ourselves to combat the same discrimination
that continues today. Incidents of anti-Semitism dramatically
increased in 2009, and I am committed to speaking out against
all acts of anti-Semitism regardless of where they originate.
This is why it is also important that we are holding this
important hearing today.
I just want to note that in 1983, when I was 19 years old,
I went to Poland as a student exchange participant, and we went
to Auschwitz, they call it ``Oswiecim,'' and you know, I just
think that is something that every person of any age could do
because it does dramatically demonstrate what depths humanity
can sink to, and it just reminds me that we all have to be
vigilant.
I have also been to Yad Vasshem. I have also been to the
Holocaust Museum even in Amsterdam and Norway, and I can tell
you that every time I go to a place like that it renews my
commitment to try to speak up when people are threatened based
on who they are, what they believe, what they look like, and
even what their gender is. You know, sadly there are occasions
in the world we live in right now where people because of their
gender are being persecuted, abused, raped, but whether it is
religious persecution as in the Holocaust or whether it is
ethnic cleansing persecution or whether it is other types of
abuse, it is something that I hope this Congress always stands
against.
So I yield--well, I don't really have any questions. I had
the privilege of meeting with the special envoy and she
answered all my questions, but I just want to let you know how
proud I am of the work you do.
Ms. Rosenthal. Thank you.
Mr. Ellison. And I encourage you to just keep it up. Please
call on us.
Ms. Rosenthal. Thank you very much, Congressman.
Mr. Carnahan. I want to thank the gentleman. I now
recognize our colleague, Mr. Smith, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Rosenthal, thank you for your testimony.
Ms. Rosenthal. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. And for the information you have provided. Let
me just ask a couple of questions.
First, on two previous occasions I actually had Natan
Sharansky testify at hearings on anti-Semitism. One of those
hearings he brought with him a number of clips from Arab
television that included a soap opera where blood libel was
treated as if it were a reality rather than a horrific lie, and
also some news clips, and made the point that many people in
the Middle East and many people who are part of diaspora who
live in Europe, France and elsewhere feed on that kind of anti-
Semitic hate in all aspects of their life. They watch it on
television, they see it in their news programming, and when you
are young and impressionable especially that will lead you to
think, oh, it must be true.
Rabbi Baker in his testimony points out that in an example
in Sweden of a newspaper called ``Aftonbladet''--I may be
mispronouncing it--published a report from Gaza claiming that
Israeli soldiers were harvesting organs from Palestinians that
they had killed. This updated version of the medieval blood
libel charge was openly denounced by political leaders in the
United States and in some European capitals. However the
Swedish foreign ministry maintained in that in its press
freedom laws do not permit its own public officials to
criticize the article, and they even reprimanded their own
ambassador who made some comments contrary to it.
You know, these are some of the problems obviously face,
and Andy Baker faces it as he travels throughout Europe. I
wonder if you could tell us what your plans are in terms of
active monitoring.
When Sharansky presented his testimony everyone if us,
Democrat and Republican alike, sat there, our mouths
practically dropped, and we said, we never knew. You know, none
of us have ever seen that before. And I am wondering if you
have other than the data calls that go out to our embassies for
information, if you have any plans to look at print, especially
the broadcast media, especially the entertainment media,
because, again, this influence that this has is pernicious. If
I could, active aggressive monitoring would be the point there,
particularly of the broadcast.
Secondly, on staffing, I remember when John Shaddock sat
right where you sit and I chaired the Human Rights Committee,
and Frank Wolk had a bill called the International Religious
Freedom Act. The administration, the Clinton administration was
completely against it, completely. The bill died a death of
1,000 deaths as it made its way through the House and the
Senate. I held all the hearings on it. And when it was finally
passed, obviously it took awhile for it to get up and running,
but John Shaddock sat there and said it would set up a
hierarchy of human rights when it came to religious freedom,
all of it was unfortunate. Thankfully not a true response, and
then the administration became advocates for it.
When the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act came up, Colin
Powell, Secretary of State, wrote a several page letter saying
it was unneeded, we already had that covered by IRFA, and again
we ran into one of those things where don't worry about it, we
have got it covered.
We responded very aggressively, passed the bill. It was a
Senate bill, but as I said at the beginning it was going to be
a 1-year review. I offered the amendment to say I am going and
you in an office is in charge of it. I am very concerned about
the trend of--again of maybe double hatting, maybe not your
position, but the staff. And if you could speak to--we need, I
believe, dedicated staff that is integrated and working with
IRFA and other State Department personnel who are talented and
have part of their portfolio, or all of their portfolio working
these issues, but I would hate to see the specialness of your
office diluted, and that is what I would believe it to be if
you didn't have dedicated staff, so if you could speak briefly
to the staffing issue.
And finally, before my time runs out, I have a lot of other
questions, but the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating
Antisemitism, I think everybody in that front row was there and
spoke at it, I spoke at it in London. Jonathan Mann, a member
of the Parliament, had done an outstanding job. I am one of the
founding members, and I hope all of us go on November 7th to
the 9th to Canada to be a part of it.
But let me ask one final question on the Internet. We hear
among our OSCE friends over and over again that the free
speech, and I am a passionate defender of First Amendment free
speech, but when it comes to hate speech and incitement, we
know obscenity is not protected speech, I am a sponsor of the
Global Online Freedom Act which protects nonviolent political
speech, nonviolent religious speech. I want nothing to do--that
is not free speech in my opinion, especially when it inures so
horrifically against Jews because it just does terrible things.
I mean, I have seen some of it at the side issues at the
parliamentary assembly meetings, and you can't watch that
without saying, how can that be protected speech. So the
internet, if you could speak to that as well.
Ms. Rosenthal. Well, your first question kind of links to
the third question, and that is, how aggressively and actively
am I monitoring the messages and the media, and it is bone-
chilling. I do have much more recent clips, which I would be
happy to share with you if you really want to have a bad
afternoon. Tapes of people looking at the camera, and this is
on Al-Jazeera, so it is watched by millions of people, where
clerics are calling for a new Holocaust, where they show actual
footage of the Holocaust and say, isn't this wonderful what
humiliation we are watching, next time we hope we can be part
of it. I mean bone-chilling. There aren't words strong enough
to condemn that, but representing free speech and not calling
that what it is--hateful, disgusting and using every diplomatic
tool we have to condemn it--would be the wrong thing and we are
using all the tools.
The Internet, then you know because John Mann, who is the
member of Parliament in U.K., really believes that bad Web
sites need to be shut down, and he and I have a good little
tussle when we are talking because I say, the answer to bad or
hateful speech is more good speech, and that we need to respond
to it, not try to shut it down because it cannot be shut down.
They would just come over here, open up a Web site, and do
their technology, which I don't understand.
It is very serious. It can be used to incite to violence
which is absolutely the only exception we in the United States
Government use. First Amendment rights and freedom of
expression is paramount except when it comes to incitement to
violence, and there are examples where there is incitement to
violence and we raise it with the television stations and we
raise it with the ambassadors, and with the NGOs on the ground
that are trying to deal with it.
Mr. Smith. The staffing?
Ms. Rosenthal. The staffing. Nothing I have needed has not
been responded to. I work with a great team at the Department
of State. I mentioned that I have been brought into the
building up on the 7th floor. I have a front office of the
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. I work directly
with Assistant Secretary Mike Posner, and very closely with the
International Religious Freedom staff. I can't begin to tell
you how helpful it is.
It is not being diluted. It is being elevated, and I am
integrated into every directors' meeting, every senior staff
meeting, I am there asking the questions that need to be asked,
and I think you would be proud of how well the department is
supporting me and how much access and help I get.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Just 2 seconds?
Mr. Carnahan. Without objection I yield.
Mr. Smith. I appreciate your yielding.
And ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, will that
person be named soon?
Ms. Rosenthal. There has been a person identified and the
person is being vetted currently.
Mr. Smith. Okay.
Mr. Carnahan. That is good news.
Ms. Rosenthal. I am glad you asked.
Mr. Carnahan. I want to thank you for being here.
Congratulate you on your new position, for the work that you
do. We look forward to working with you on many of these
challenges, especially the time spent today. Thank you.
Ms. Rosenthal. Thank you so much.
Mr. Carnahan. I think what we will do with votes being
called, we have four votes, and I think what I would like to do
just to pick up some time is have the second panel come up. We
will do a quick introduction of the four on the panel, and then
we will break, do our votes, and come back, and we can jump
right into questions.
Welcome to all of you for being here. Thank you for being a
part of this hearing. I want to start with Mr. Kenneth
Jacobson. He will be our first witness for this panel. He is
the deputy national director for the Anti-Defamation League. He
is also the former director of the International Affairs at
ADL.
Mr. Jacobson holds a master's degree in American history
from Columbia University, earned his bachelor's degree in
history, and Hebrew literature at the Yeshiva University.
Welcome.
Next, Rabbi Andrew Baker. He is the director of
International Jewish Affairs for the American Jewish Committee.
In January 2009, he was appointed the personal representative
of the OSCE chair in office on combating anti-Semitism, and was
reappointed in 2010. Rabbi Baker served as AJC's director for
European Affairs from 1992 to 2000, and as Washington area
director from 1980 to 1992. He is the past president of the
Interfaith Conference of Washington and a former commissioner
on the District of Columbia Human Rights Commission.
Rabbi Baker received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a
master's degree in rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union
College, Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City.
Next, Ms. Elisa Massimino, did I get that correct? Sorry
about butchering your name. She will be our third witness
today. She is CEO and executive director of Human Rights First.
She is the former director of the organization's Washington
Office. She serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown
University Law Center where she teaches human rights advocacy
and has taught international human rights law at the University
of Virginia and refugee law at George Washington School of Law.
She is also a member of the bar of the United States Supreme
Court.
She holds a law degree from the University of Michigan, a
master of arts in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University.
Last but not least, Rabbi Abraham Cooper. He is the
associate dean of Simon Wiesenthal Center. For three decades,
Rabbi Cooper has overseen the Wiesenthal Center's international
social action agenda ranging from worldwide anti-Semitism and
extremist groups, Nazi crimes, to interfaith relations, and the
struggle to thwart the anti-Israel divestment campaign, to
worldwide promotion of tolerance and education. He is
recognized as an authority on issues related to digital hate
and the Internet.
Rabbi Cooper has his B.A. and M.S. from Yeshiva University
and a Ph.D. from the Jewish University of America.
Officially welcome all of you. We look forward to hearing
your testimony, and we will have some questions when we return
from these set of votes. Thanks very much. We will be in
recess. Assume this will take about a half an hour to 45
minutes.
[Recess.]
Mr. Carnahan. I want to reconvene the subcommittee. I
appreciate your patience, and we will jump right back into
this. We have also been joined by our colleague Ron Klein from
the full committee. I want to welcome him, and also I
understand Rabbi Cooper has a time issue, and if it is all
right with everybody else we are going to ask him to go first.
Also, just by the nature of time, we had allotted 5 minutes
originally. If you could do it a little shorter, keep it short
and crisp, we can get right to questions.
So Rabbi Cooper.
STATEMENT OF RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER, ASSOCIATE DEAN, SIMON
WIESENTHAL CENTER
Rabbi Cooper. Since you already have my comments, I will
try to cut to the chase, and I will take toward the end of my
remarks a few minutes to show you some of the Web sites that
you had referred to in your opening remarks, and hopefully we
will still be around to have a bigger dialogue on the issue of
what to do with the Internet companies, et cetera.
As the chairman and others have pointed out, share this
afternoon the shocking statistics of 100 percent rise in
violent acts against Jews the world over, and I will not repeat
here the horrifying statistics brought down from the Roth
Institute's report, but much more than synagogue, schools and
cemeteries are under attack. Memory and the very legitimacy of
Jewish identity are also under assault.
A French Holocaust survivor, Jewels Isaac, labeled the
century's long Christian theological anti-Semitism ``the
teachings of contempt'' which created an environment that
helped make the Shoah possible. Thankfully in 2010, the
Catholic Church is an ally, not an enemy in the struggle
against history's oldest hatred, but a generation after
Auschwitz the teachings of contempt are alive and well.
Using statecraft, the Internet, academic freedom, age-old
canards have been powerfully repackaged to disrespect our dead,
demonize the living, and de-legitimize the Jewish peoples'
narratives. Why not desecrate a synagogue in Caracas or hurtle
rocks at a Passover Seder at a Rabbi's home in Budapest, attack
Jews on the streets of Berlin on a Sabbath morning if you are
taught and believe that the Protocols of Zion is a legitimate
book about Jews and Judaism and that synagogues are actually
the epicenter for Jewish conspiracies to control the world?
What if, as the U.N. Human Rights Council's Web page posts,
there really is a plot of the Israeli military to harvest
organs of Palestinians, Ukrainians and even Haitians? After
all, as has been stated before here, the Government of Sweden
in the name of defending freedom refused to condemn a
mainstream article headlining such canards.
If Jews lie about a 3,500-year-old relationship with the
Holy Land, if Solomon's Temple was never built in Jerusalem as
senior Palestinians insist today, if, as a recent article in
Kuwait's Al-Tard insists, Adolph Eichmann, the chief organizer
of the Holocaust, was actually a friend of the Jews whose
``kindness'' was repaid by kidnapping and executing him, if
there was no Final Solution, as the genocide threatening
Ahmadinejad insists, and that the real Nazis are the people of
Israel, as too many diplomats, Imam's Ministers, professors and
campus activists chant in unison, or what if, as some leaders
in the Baltics say, there is nothing unique about the Nazi
Holocaust, that it should be remembered simultaneously with
victims of communism, why then in democratic Lithuania why not
prosecute former Jewish partisans while refusing to try a
single Nazi collaborator?
These trends are now just a few short years ago were
marginal rantings are not a permanent feature of the subculture
of hate on the Internet. The Internet incubates the big lie
conspiracies, repackages the oldest hate, and promotes center
stage the denial of the Shoah.
Let me just take a few seconds to show you a few of the
visuals from our annual report just released with the help of
your colleague, Congresswoman Maloney, a few weeks ago. Our
latest report accounts for about 11,500 problematic Web sites,
social networking, blogs, et cetera, on the day of the Oklahoma
City bombing 15 years ago there was exactly one hate Web site
on the Internet, and I have just for the purposes of this
meeting pulled only a few of the hundreds of postings.
This one from Russia, this one from the Palestine
Information Center, this says, ``Enough, exterminate the
rats.'' If you look up at the screens, you can follow it. Here
you have what looks like an online version of the New York
Times or the Washington Post, and said it is called ``Filthy
Jewish terrorists'' and if you look carefully at the headlines
actually in the lower right-hand corner there is a signature
picture of the Oberai Hotel in Mumbai ablazed last year which,
of course, was attacked by Islamist terrorists from Pakistan,
and all of the ills of the world, and all of the breaking news
is simply repackaged to reflect it being done by Jews.
David Duke, this is a Facebook page called ``Zionist
Terminator'' that has some 2,400 fans. A few blocks from here
last year you had James Von Brunn, an 89-year-old racist come
shooting into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Now
this is a man who was a bigot a long time before the Internet
came along, but he kept his hatred alive and it was validated
and promoted because he continued to be active on the Internet,
and other racists who survive him continue to hold this up as a
great example. And even when someone, in the case of the
shooter at the Pentagon, who had no known connection to the
hatred of Jews or White Supremacy, immediately after his
attack, that act was then cut and pasted by the extremists
online to make it appear as if he in fact was an anti-semite or
was motivated by the hatred of minorities.
These are now various Web sites around the world that mock
or deny the Shoah. This is a Facebook page called ``Six Million
for the Truth about the Holocaust.''
For the record, Simon Wiesenthal Center has a very good
working relationship with Facebook, especially in the area of
interdicting terrorist, pro-terrorist sites, but as we see
there are when we come to issues involving denial of the
Holocaust and demonization of all religions, we think that they
come down, if you will, too hard on the side of freedom of
expression and not enough on the side of community standards.
What I am going through right now without stopping is just
to give you some of the examples of Holocaust denial. The book
called ``The War for Genocide: The Protocols of Zion,'' all
over the Internet. Here you have it in Egypt.
YouTube, as a social networking site, being promoted. This
is a Nazi game which I won't bore you with the horrible details
but basically to win the game you shoot down mocked Jews who
are en route to the gas chambers. But on the Internet today you
also have hate games of bombing the survivors of the Haitian
earthquake. You have a suicide bomber game where you win if you
collect the body parts. This too is all part of the Internet.
Here you have the conspiracy mindset of Plan Andinia of
Chile and Argentina saying of an alleged plot for Israel to
take over that part of the world, and this is the updated
version, of course, of the blood libel, the harvesting of
organs, all over the world with a big boost not only for the
Government of Sweden, but especially, of course, the Iranians,
and the recent elections in Hungary which gave the extremists
party, an anti-Semitism party close to 17 percent, now the
third largest party in the country, and here you have the
validation of murdering Israeli civilians by prominent Imam.
And I will just close here with--I won't repeat what it
says at the top, but these are sites that are currently up and
running on Facebook. If you look, the first one is an attack on
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism. So for all of
the important statements that were made before that we are here
first and foremost to talk about anti-Semitism and also
connecting anti-Semitism to the world view of those who support
terrorism, that is all reflect in the reality on the Internet
today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Rabbi Cooper
follows:]Abraham Cooper
Mr. Carnahan. Rabbi, thank you for that really graphic and
broad overview of some of the things that are out there.
Next I want to go to Mr. Jacobson.
STATEMENT OF MR. KENNETH JACOBSON, DEPUTY NATIONAL DIRECTOR,
ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE
Mr. Jacobson. Thank you for holding this hearing. I think
it is very important that you are doing so. We have already
submitted a lengthy document for your reading. I was going to
make some extended remarks but because of time I think I will
just limit myself to a few comments.
Let me first say that people ask us at the ADL, is it
happening all over again? We get that basic question, and our
answer is no. Let us understand what the Holocaust was, a
unique situation. But having said that I think what most
disturbs us is the peeling away step by step of all the
constraints against anti-Semitism that grew out of Auschwitz.
In other words, when the world saw Auschwitz they didn't
suddenly not become anti-Semitic, but they became embarrassed,
ashamed about manifesting anti-Semitism, and while that is not
everything that we want, we surely want peoples' attitudes to
change, that had a tremendous impact for decades, limiting the
manifestations of anti-Semitism.
And I would say today because of a combination of factors--
time passing, witnesses dying away, and the fact of this
constant barrage against the State of Israel has opened up a
legitimization of anti-Semitism, and a peeling away of those
constraints that allowed us to live in a world where for 50
years or so anti-Semitism existed, but it existed in certain
limited fashion which now I think are being peeled away, and
that is what keeps me up at night, which is the idea as we move
along if we continue to allow these constraints to be removed
we may see a much more explosive period of anti-Semitism in the
future.
Secondly, there are two ironic and depressing
manifestations of hatred toward Jews which have reemerged which
we have to deal with. One is the great irony, this is the Human
Rights Committee, is that a lot of human rights law came out of
the terrible experience of the Holocaust: Universal Declaration
of Human Rights of the U.N., the Nurenberg laws were
manifestations of the world waking up to what happened at
Auschwitz. We have the situation today, particularly at the
Geneva Human Rights Council, but in other ways, where human
rights laws are now being turned against the Jewish people
through the State of Israel, and it is something that we should
be outraged about, and we should call attention to, and make it
clear that it is the Jewish people who not only suffered the
greatest degradation of human rights, but that indeed so many
Jews and Jewish organizations as represented here have been in
the forefront fighting for human rights around the world, and
this degradation of this principle is one that is not only
dangerous to the Jewish people but dangerous to the world at
large.
And connected to that is the ironic and very depressing
element of how the Holocaust itself is being turned against the
Jewish people. The great tragedy of the Jewish people is now
being used in so many instances against Jews. During the war in
Gaza so many of the protestors against Israel and against Jews
had signs accusing Israel and the Jewish people of being the
Nazis of today.
Whatever your views are of Israeli policy, the notion of
comparing Israel today to what happened to the Jewish people 65
years ago is outrageous and really is important to counter and
to make clear what all this is about, and these are things that
we have to see.
Now, people ask us very often what is the difference with
all these problems, the Ahmadinejad problem, the nuclear issue,
the global anti-Semitism, what is different today? And I think
what is really truly has been different in so many ways in
terms of the Jewish condition has been our great country.
If we remember in the 1930s America, when Woodrow Wilson
went to Paris after World War I and came up with the concept of
the League of Nations, and came back and the U.S. Senate
rejected American participation, we retreated into
isolationism, what turned out to be a disastrous development
for the world at large and for the Jewish people.
The United States, thank God, entered World War II soon
enough to save the world from Hitler. We did not enter the war
soon enough, for a whole variety of reasons to save the Jewish
people, and we know about that, and so much of what we have
done and what our own Government and people have done over the
years is to say ``never again'' and to use the leadership of
the United States to ensure it. And I think that continues to
be the message. The work that we did with the OSCE, all these
committee hearings, the legislation, all the public statements
over the years, the work with Soviet Jewry, and Ethiopian
Jewry, and all of these issues were because of the tremendous
leadership of the United States of America.
And so you are holding this hearing today, in my view, as
part of that historical process and the most I think we can say
is we need to encourage to move it forward in a very, very
positive direction. That means in terms of bilateral relations
with every country this must be a priority. That means in terms
of enforcing legislation and building up Special Envoy Hannah
Rosenthal's work and the work that we do, all of that is
terribly important.
My basic message is that the problems are becoming more
severe, and the role that all of us play in the months and
years ahead will become even more important. Thank you very
much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Jacobson
follows:]Kenneth Jacobson
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. Appreciate your
being here and your remarks.
Next I want to go to Rabbi Andrew Baker. We will recognize
you for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF RABBI ANDREW BAKER, DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL
JEWISH AFFAIRS, AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
Rabbi Baker. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again you
have my full testimony for the record, and I am going to try to
summarize what I had prepared in an abbreviated form.
I think for all of us if we look back on this decade it is
evident that we were overly optimistic in thinking so many
issues, domestic and international, would be resolved, so
perhaps we, while can be troubled, should not be surprised that
anti-Semitism is one of those issues.
We can recall the U.N. Conference in Durban in 2001, which
was really intended to fight racism but became a venue for a
new anti-Semitism, an attack on Jewish targets. The breakdown
of the Middle East peace process shortly thereafter triggered
unprecedented attacks on Jewish targets in much of Western
Europe. Many Eastern European countries eager to gain
membership in NATO were focused for a time on addressing
unfinished issues related to the Holocaust, Holocaust history,
dealing with anti-Semitism, property restitution. But most of
those efforts were incomplete and still remain with some
distance to go.
We have seen the persistence of ultra nationalist parties
in Europe, the old ones in France and Austria, for example, and
new ones which have been formed in Bulgaria, only last week in
the elections in Hungary. Many of these parties have a more
broad anti-Roma xenophobic agenda, but they all link together
with anti-Semitism as a theme running as well.
We know of this, it has already been addressed by several
speakers that anti-Israel animus that really has become a new
form of anti-Semitism when it crosses over literally to the
kind of eliminationist talk of Israel, holding it up to
standards no other country is expected, et cetera.
What I wanted to do here was to reflect at least in some
areas based on my work at AJC, but also as the personal
representative of the OSCE chair. I would say to begin with
that the essential element of the problem in many countries is
the increasingly normative presence of anti-Semitism in public
discourse, in press, media, on the Internet, and at public
gatherings. It is pernicious in its own right, but it also
represents or can represent serious security questions for Jews
and Jewish institutions.
Many European countries have various laws that restrict
hate speech. Usually the difficulty is not necessarily in the
legislation itself, but it is in the difficulty of actually
enforcing and operating with these laws. I have enumerated in
my written testimony specific examples, but in many cases what
you have are laws that are only infrequently enforced. You
often have months, even years passing, before a charge that has
been brought reaches some conclusion.
In countries such as our own which have very absolute free
speech protections, we have devised other ways to confront this
hate speech. We are accustomed to seeing political figures,
civic leaders speaking out quickly and forcefully. That, in any
case, is what we would ask. But in many of these countries we
will find political leaders saying, ``It is in the hands of the
prosecutor, we can't speak.'' In some case it is really a way
to let them off the hook, and they are looking for a way to be
let off the hook. In other cases you will find, I think, in
different countries political leaders calculating that being
too strongly opposed to anti-Semitism may even cost them votes,
so leaving that somewhat ambiguous literally plays to their
political motives.
One of the concerns that has been identified by ODIHR in
its most recent hate crime report is the need for monitoring,
for recognizing these events when they take place. Governments
have been urged to do it. Many are lax or incomplete in their
collecting data or in collecting data that is sufficiently
detailed to identify perpetrators and victims. As I mentioned,
since much of anti-Semitism comes in the form of public
discourse, sometimes that is the first area that is really not
very well monitored and recorded.
Governments have made certain commitments within the OSCE
process. They are not all living up to it. We need to push them
to do it. We can also encourage and support Jewish communities
in collecting their own information in a standardized way that
can then become again a vehicle for reporting. What has
happened too frequently is that events are not reported. If
they are not reported, political leaders say we don't have a
problem. We know differently.
Finally, in a general overview, the importance of defining
anti-Semitism cannot be underestimated. The European Monitoring
Center, which is an EU agency, 6 years ago conducted its first
survey, its first analysis of anti-Semitism in the EU then of
17 countries. Over half the monitors of those countries had no
definition at all. Of those that did no two were the same, and
as a result pushing them and working with them they developed a
``working definition'' of anti-Semitism. It is an official
definition now of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency.
The full definition is appended to my report, but it is
important to note that it gives a clear overview of what anti-
Semitism is and it has a very specific area focusing on where
that anti-Israel animus itself becomes a form of anti-Semitism.
There are other definitions that may be similar but I think it
is very important for us to focus here because essentially
here, at least now for 27 countries in the EU this is their
definition, and I think we want them to live up to it. It has
been undertaken for use by ODIHR and its police training, so
here we have it being disseminated to 56 countries.
In conclusion, I can recall, and I know that Congressman
Smith was with us in Berlin at the time of the OSCE conference
in 2004, and in the issuing of the Berlin Declaration that at
the time 55 countries ascribed to. Among that declaration's
statements, I want to point out that these countries said, and
I quote, ``International developments or political issues,
including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East,
never justify anti-Semitism.'' A terrific declaration.
Sadly, I think we see it is still the problem, not
necessarily that it justifies it in the eyes of political
leaders, but it often triggers it, and it is often used as an
excuse for it. So here I think we need to keep our focus and
focus on those governments to live up to the declaration that
they ascribed to 6 years ago.
The OSCE does remain an important international venue to
get at this issue when you think and put it in contrast to what
happened in Durban at that U.N. conference. We have had very
serious discussions within the OSCE, and in commitments that
governments have made. It only has happened because here in
Congress there has been the impetus, pushing at times an
administration that may be reluctant because of that OSCE
consensus-based decisionmaking process, but it has succeeded.
The current chair-in-office, Kazakhstan, has indicated it
will hold a high-level conference at the end of June. I think
it is very important that the U.S. is represented at a high
level. All of us at the table here are trying to encourage the
administration to do so. We hope you can play an equally strong
role in pushing for this.
I would add one other element within the OSCE. Every year
there is a Mediterranean seminar linking those six
Mediterranean partners with the OSCE, and I believe it is an
opportunity with enough time given to it and with energizing
our own representation in Vienna that at that gathering it
should be possible to address these issues, the issue of anti-
Semitism and other tolerance-related issues with those
partners. As we know, as we have seen, some of those partner
countries--Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria--have become a source of
anti-Semitism exported to immigrant communities in Europe
proper. So with effective planning I think we can make that an
important venue as well.
In closing, I think one always has to say, and I thank the
members here, that your ability to raise this issue when you
receive leaders of foreign governments who come to Washington
or when you travel abroad is perhaps the most significant
effort that the U.S. Government plays. As long as political
leaders in these countries know that here on Capitol Hill, that
here in Washington this issue matters, then it gets their
attention and they will at least begin to address it. I think
without this help we truly would be lost.
So again let me thank you. We at AJC, whatever efforts and
resources we have at OSCE in my role are ready to assist you or
offer any information or material that would be helpful. Thank
you, Mr. Chair.
[The prepared statement of Rabbi Baker
follows:]Andrew Baker
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Rabbi Baker, and last we want to
turn to Ms. Massimino.
STATEMENT OF MS. ELISA MASSIMINO, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST
Ms. Massimino. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all
for your leadership and attention to these issues. I want to
say a special thank you to Congressman Smith with whom we have
worked so closely on this issue and many other human rights
issues over many years.
Combating anti-Semitism has been a priority for Human
Rights First for a long time. In 2002, we started monitoring
the rise in violent acts motivated by anti-Semitism and to
press for stronger government action to combat them, and since
that time we have issued a number of reports on the subject,
which I have with me and can share with you.
Our focus and the focus of my statement and our testimony
has been on anti-Semitic hate crime in Europe and North
America, specifically on the 56 countries of the OSCE. We have
long maintained that anti-Semitic violence, along with other
hate crime, must be viewed and responded to as a serious
violation of human rights. Likewise, we believe it is important
that these violations be challenged, not just by victims groups
or those who represent communities of targeted individuals, but
by all who seek to advance universal rights and freedoms.
I would like to make three quick points today, and ask that
the rest of my written testimony be included in the record.
First, anti-Semitism is a unique and potent form of racism
and religious intolerance, and the extent of violence motivated
by anti-Jewish animus throughout much of the OSCE region
remains alarming. Second, with few exceptions, government
responses to this rising tide of violence has been woefully
inadequate; and finally, other forms of violent hate crime
motivated by race, religion, national origin, sexual
orientation, and other similar factors have also been on the
rise in many countries, and governments and nongovernmental
actors should be developing comprehensive strategies to combat
it.
In Europe and North America, anti-Semitism violence remains
at high levels following a significant increase beginning in
the year 2000. Indeed, violence in some countries is several
times higher than it was at the end of the 1990s. Anti-
Semitism, like other forms of racism, is an obstacle to
participation in public life fully and free of fear. Violent
incidents have involved individuals who are identified as
Jewish by their religious dress or appearance when traveling on
public transport or walking in the street, and in many
instances Jews have been targeted while going to and from their
places of worship or schools.
The translation of sentiment against Israel or the policies
of its government into anti-Jewish antipathy has since 2000
generated new patterns of anti-Semitism violence that has
fluctuated in relation to events in the Middle East. This new
anti-Semitism combines the ancient route in forms of anti-
Semitism with new political elements, and appear to be related
to periodic surges in the tax.
But the Middle East is only a part of today's anti-
Semitism. Contemporary anti-Semitism is multifaceted and deeply
rooted. It cannot be viewed solely as a transitory side effect
of the conflict in the Middle East. Anti-Semitic incitement and
violence predate the Middle East conflict and continue to be
based in large part on century's old hatred and prejudice.
The branding of Jews as scapegoats for both ancient and
modern ills remains a powerful underlying factor in the anti-
Semitism hatred and violence that continues to manifest itself
today. Less than a year ago we received a grim reminder of the
potency of this hatred just blocks from where we now sit when a
self-avowed white supremist and anti-semite gunned down a
security guard at the entrance to our Holocaust Museum.
Human Rights First advocated a comprehensive program of
action, our 10-point plan which is included at the end of my
written testimony for governments to combat anti-Semitism and
other hate crimes. We have seen some limited progress over the
last several years. For example, in public recognition of the
problem, in monitoring and reporting, in enactment of hate
crime laws, and in law enforcement. But high levels of anti-
Semitism violence persist and the political will to address
them is still lacking in many countries.
In our first report on this problem in 2002, we identified
a serious data deficit on anti-Semitism offenses with most
governments failing even to monitor and report on, let alone
prosecute these crimes. Almost 10 years later most European
governments still fall short of their commitments to monitor
anti-Semitism offenses, which we think is an essential building
block for a comprehensive response to the problem.
While the threats facing the Jewish community today are
deeply rooted and uniquely potent, they are also part of a
rising tide of hate-motivated violence across Europe. We have
reported an increase since 2005 in hate-motivated violence in
many parts of Europe and North America perpetrated against
members of a range of communities because of their ethnicity,
religion, sexual orientation, immigrant status or other similar
factors. The shared nature of the problem of hate-motivated
violence underscores for us the need for governments to adopt
comprehensive approaches to the full range of this violence.
Likewise, in the nongovernmental sphere the shared nature of
the problem calls for a coordinated response.
The promise of work toward a shared solutions is perhaps
best illustrated by the cross community cooperation that has
emerged in recent years among civil society groups here in the
United States and abroad. Here at home the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights, of which Human Rights
First is a member, is a good example of this unified effort.
Working together with other leadership conference members,
including the Anti-Defamation League, has enormously
strengthened our capacity to raise awareness in the U.S. and
internationally of the threat posed by anti-Semitic and other
hate crimes, and to work with governments and regional and
multilateral institutions for change. But, unfortunately, this
type of cooperation is rare in the communities that are often
working in isolation from each other.
I have a number of recommendations in my written statement
that are addressed at the United States Government, the
Congress, the Executive Branch, multilateral institutions, and
I would echo the recommendations of my colleagues on this panel
with respect to the need for leadership by the United States in
pressing the state of the OSCE, in particular, but all nations
to live up to the commitments that they have already made to
work against anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic hate violence and
all forms of hate crimes.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Massimino
follows:]Elisa Massimino
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, and we will want to jump right
into some questions here, and I think I again want to start
with Rabbi Cooper because I know you are close on time. Do you
have a few minutes to take some questions before you leave?
Rabbi Cooper. Yes, please.
Mr. Carnahan. Looking back at the issue of the thousands of
hate sites on the Internet, to what extent can the U.S.
Government or other governments combat these kind of sites
while balancing the freedom of speech issues? What are some of
the strategies that you think can be effective in addressing
the issue?
Rabbi Cooper. Well, I think we have a few things we can all
agree upon. We don't want to assign on to rules or protocols
written at the U.N. that would make Beijing or Havana happy. We
want to make sure we protect our liberties, and also just from
a practical technological point of view it is impossible to
keep any idea off of the Internet. Just like we can't legislate
hatred out of the real world, we won't be able to write
protocols to remove it.
Having said that, the notion that the answer to ``hate
speech on line is more speech'' doesn't wash. It is a different
kind of technology. We can spend millions of dollars and some
of us have here on brilliant Web sites but you have to bring
the people to look at it, and those who are both the targets of
attacks and the young people who are targeted to believe the
hatred are not necessarily going to come to your site.
So on a practical basis how do we approach this? With
democracies, we play it very simple. Whatever their rules of
engagement are about where to limit speech, hate speech, we
will cooperate with them, but that usually drives many of those
Web sites to U.S. servers. That is really the bottom line, it
has pretty much shredded in some ways the German anti-hate laws
that they have had because you just go ahead and go offshore,
if you will, to the United States.
Our approach here, first and foremost, is to urge the
Internet providers to live up to their own rules. You know, Mr.
Chairman, each of us pushes that little gray button when we get
a new software that says, ``I agree,'' I don't know if you have
ever read what you agree with. I haven't either, but we have
really researchers who have. We sign a contract when we push
that button, and what we are saying, if the Internet is now a
giant virtual mall, we want to make sure that the companies who
provide that access don't give frontage property to the bigots
and racists, and if they cross the line they should be thrown
out.
Facebook has been brought up a lot here. They are in a
unique position. They are now at 400 million separate users and
climbing worldwide. They have, I think, the right business plan
and the rules in place, and kind of overwhelmed simply by
just--it is hard to even wrap your mind around the kind of
stuff that is being presented.
I think that this committee does have a role. I believe if
Congress will call in and convene another hearing, bring in the
Internet community, bring back some of the--have a focus on the
issue of human rights and the Internet, I believe, knowing
quite a few of the players up in Silicon Valley, if they are
given the opportunity to apply some of their collective genius
to this problem and a little bit of a bully pulpit from this
august body, we will get a lot further than by waiting for some
magical answer to come down from a U.N. agency in Geneva.
So, I think there is a lot to be done, and I think that
having a constructive consortium of government, private
industry, Internet users, and human rights NGOs could bring us
to a better place.
Mr. Carnahan. Rabbi, it is a great idea, great food for
thought, and I am going to yield to the ranking member who has
got limited time as well.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, and because we have
been through this today when the Egyptian Ambassador arrives in
my office in 10 minutes I will make sure I bring it up. All
right.
A couple of idea and suggestions. First of all, in terms of
the Internet of which we are talking about here, I think we do
have to be very careful not to permit totalitarian governments
to take advantage of systematic that we have set up in order to
prevent this type of hatred from being used to suppress
democratic movements, et cetera, and to cover their own
misdeeds.
Perhaps there could be a labeling that would be agreed upon
by all of the Internet providers that would be passed on by and
judged by certain people to say that this--the following has
been judged to be untruthful and based on hatred or something
like that, some kind of big thumbs down, and then that might be
an official approval or stamp of disapproval that might have an
impact. That is number one, and it would be a way to counter
them saying, well, that, of course, was discounted by blah-
blah, you know, by whatever commission on truth and against
hatred or whatever you want to call it. That is one idea.
And to counter--look, what we are talking about here is an
increase in anti-Semitism throughout the world, and there are
ways to counter it by doing what I just suggested, or there are
ways to be proactive in basically undermining basic concepts of
anti-Semitism. One of the things that I have worked on and
spent a lot of time working in my office with Representative
Paul Brown who has a bill, H.R. 1175, in which I am basically
the co-author of it, although I am the co-sponsor I am actually
the co-author of it, I worked with Congressman Brown on this.
And what it is is a resolution that suggests that the Ten
Commandments should be recognized as a unifying force for
Western Civilization, and if we have a positive approach toward
making sure that we emphasize that--when you talk to the Judeo-
Christian heritage of our country, and of Western Civilization,
that it really is the Judeo-Christian heritage and point that
out, and this resolution, for example, I think would be very
proactive in promoting the idea that--I think what it does is
declare the first weekend of May to be a Ten Commandments
weekend, that we all recognize this, and it might even be a way
to reach all Muslims who I believe believe in the Ten
Commandments as well. So that would be the type of positive
approach where you are building up a recognition of something
positive rather than just pointing out the negative. And anyone
that can help promote that bill, for example, that would be a
very positive thing to do, and it should be a bipartisan effort
because there is only one Democrat on the bill right now but it
should be a bipartisan effort. So I would hope that you might
lobby some people in Congress and that would be a positive
thing as well.
So, Mr. Chairman, those are my responses to this today, and
again what we have seen here and was verified by the last
witness is that we have had this increase in Holocaust as we
know, and we need to recognize that, and we need to counter it
both in a positive way, but also in a way that we can actually
condemn it, officially condemn it without actually restricting
freedom of speech, and that the moral condemnation means a lot,
and that is what this committee hearing is all about today, So
I will when I got to the--yes, sir?
Rabbi Baker. I didn't mean to interrupt you, Congressman,
but since you said you were going to see the Egyptian
Ambassador----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Rabbi Baker [continuing]. I wonder if I could share a
thought.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Please do and I will share that with him.
Rabbi Baker. I was in Cairo a month ago. This was part of
efforts going back, oh, 5 years, to press the Egyptian
Government on the preservation of Jewish heritage in Egypt. For
example, there are a dozen synagogues in Cairo, but probably
only a few dozen Jews are left. To their credit, the Egyptians
ultimately follow through. A month ago we had a re-dedication,
the Egyptians have essentially restored, reconstructed the
original yeshiva of Moses Maimonides, the most famous Jewish
scholar who lived in Cairo in the Twelfth Century, and the
adjacent synagogue which was built in the Nineteenth Century, a
beautiful restoration.
The fact is, however, no Egyptian official participated in
the re-dedication event. In fact, press was physically turned
away from the event. What is the reason? There is such a
conflation between Jews and Israel that doing anything
positive, even as political leaders saw there was value in
maintaining or restoring this heritage, doing anything positive
in this area of its Jewish history so unnerved them in terms of
incurring criticism from their own population, or the political
elites in their population, they did not want anybody to know.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I will make sure that I, number one,
praise them for allowing this to happen, but number two,
mention that they really missed an opportunity to show--to
reach out and show some leadership.
One last note here and then I really do have to go, and I
am sorry, I think it is really important for us to understand
one point, and to make it clear to the people who are listening
today that we are not saying that Israel is above criticism,
and far too often what has happened is people are suggesting
that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism and it is not.
Israel, just like the United States, it is not anti-Americanism
to criticize and to point out our failings, and America has
failings too.
So, we should make sure that we also discipline ourselves
so that we know that some criticism, there are mistakes that
have been made and people didn't live up to certain standards
both in our country and every country, and that that type of
criticism we should not--those people who are labeling that
anti-Semitism are doing a disservice to those of us who are
trying to get at some of the hard core stuff that Rabbi Cooper
was showing us.
Rabbi Cooper. May I make just one quick----
Mr. Carnahan. Mr. Jacobson.
Mr. Jacobson. I think your point is so vital. When we meet
leaders, as others here today, they always raise the question,
``Are you saying any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitis?'' I
am always happy when they ask it because I know they are saying
to themselves, ``The Jews are trying to stifle the legitimate
criticism of Israel by claiming anti-Semitism.'' We make it
clear, and I think that point that you made is terribly
important for the credibility of all that we do. Of course not.
Israel is a country like other countries. It has good
policies and bad. We may disagree with the criticisms, but that
doesn't make it anti-Semitism. What it really is when it is
egregious or sometimes even less obvious or certain campaigns
such as boycott campaigns, divestment campaigns which are only
done against democratic Israel, this leads to legitimate
questions as to the motivation behind it.
But I couldn't agree with you more that we have to make
clear that we are not talking about normal criticism whether
one agrees with that or not.
Rabbi Cooper. Mr. Chairman, if you would just give me----
Mr. Carnahan. Yes, Rabbi Cooper.
Rabbi Cooper. The good news is I actually do have to leave,
so it will just be 30 seconds.
There is one other part to the equation of anti-Semitism
which technically could be brought up under OSCE because the
U.S. is a member, but we shouldn't be under any
misunderstanding that the issues are not just in Cairo or in
Budapest. I have received letters from our fellow California
constituents at UC Berkeley in the last 2 days who are facing
physical intimidation for standing up for their rights to be
heard on campus.
Mr. Rohrabacher. UCI as well.
Rabbi Cooper. UC Irvine, the UC system, so they are all
saying that charity begins at home, it will be for another day
and another time but we have an overflow of these problems
created elsewhere that are playing out to the detriment of our
kids, and of our educational systems right here in the U.S.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. Rabbi, again thank you, and safe
travels.
I want to get one quick question in and then go to Mr.
Smith, and I want to direct this to Rabbi Baker. As I mentioned
in my earlier remarks many countries have made commitments at
international conferences over the last decade, most recently
last summer in Prague to resolve claims of families whose art
was looted during the Holocaust. What steps can we take to
countries who are in possession of such works that repudiate
these commitments such as Spain as they have done with the
claim by Claude Cassirer?
Rabbi Baker. Yes. You know, I know Claude Cassirer very
well. I have been taking up his issue whenever I have had the
opportunity with Spanish officials. It is a terrible and very
cynical example of the problem we face. Here you have a
situation where there was no dispute this was a painting that
hung in his grandmother's living room in Berlin, it was part of
looted Nazi art. He was raised by his grandmother. He remembers
that painting. When it ultimately was discovered to exist, it
was, as it is now, a part of the Thyssen Museum in Madrid.
When pressed, the Spanish Government, as you said, they
were part of the signatories to the Terezin Declaration, they
were also here in Washington in 1998 when there was a set of
principles that were adopted on looted art. At first they said,
well, this is a private museum; therefore the government
doesn't have a role to play.
When the Cassirer family finding no alternative to trying
to reach some negotiation tried to go to court in this country
suddenly this was no longer a private museum, it was a
government museum and they were appealing to the foreign
sovereignty law to prevent this suit from going forward.
Now the Spanish Government or the cultural ministry is
saying, well, Claude Cassirer's grandmother was paid
compensation by Germany. In fact, Germany did make payments,
indemnification payments for losses under the Nazis. Usually
they were a small percentage of what was the real value, but
even Germany today would say if the painting is there and can
be returned, which a German institution would do, then whatever
payment was made in the past would simply be repaid, but the
actual object that was looted would be returned.
So, it is a very cynical argument that has come from Spain.
I last addressed it to the Foreign Minister in June last year,
and also to the deputy minister of culture, but I have to say I
am pleased you have raised it because I think only will there,
I think, be a positive resolution--again it will continue
through the U.S. courts, it is still a possibility that it will
be allowed. The lower court said they should be allowed to
bring suit. A panel in the Appeals Court upheld that. Now the
full Appeals Court is hearing it. But I think Spanish officials
need to hear that it is outrageous and to hear that from you
and other Members of Congress.
I do believe there are elements in the Spanish Government,
it is not monolithic, that would like to see this resolved, but
I think the word needs to get beyond the foreign ministry into
the cultural ministry and elsewhere, but I am pleased you
raised this issue because it is a terrible and sad case. Mr.
Cassirer is, I believe, 89 years old now, and one really just
fears that he is not going to see this resolved in his
lifetime.
Mr. Carnahan. I appreciate your work on that, and I think
it is an important issue that needs to continue to be raised.
I now want to recognize Mr. Smith for 5 minutes.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, thank you again. Thank you for
convening this very important hearing, and, frankly, this panel
is made up of extraordinary men and women who are not just
experts but highly effective activists who have made the
difference in mitigating anti-Semitism. It would be much worse
than it is today had it not been for your work over these many
years and even decades.
I also want to thank you for your clarity, your wisdom,
your passion, your leadership, another wake up call to Congress
that we need to redouble our efforts, and today your patience.
Special Envoy Rosenthal earlier spoke of how her work is
being integrated into the State Department work, and while
mainstreaming I think can be a good thing, there is a flip-side
to that coin, and we have seen it at the OSCE, Rabbi Baker,
perhaps you more than anyone else, where it gets subsumed into
everything else and loses that--or becomes blunt and loses that
sharp edge that it must have.
I am wondering if you could speak to the issue of the
office not having dedicated staff. Do you think we should push
to try to reverse that? Frankly, I think we should. Rather than
having other people within the Department of State as, you
know, people that are go-to, but the special envoy can only do
so much as one person. I do think she needs other people
working for her and with her.
I would ask you if you could touch on how well the office
is monitoring broadcasts I mentioned earlier, even Rabbi Baker
and Mr. Jacobson and others. When we were in London there were
some broadcasts that some watched on satellite television that
were filled with anti-Semitism hate. It is routine, but are we
capturing it at the office or do we just wait occasionally for
someone to bring it forward? I think that is important, and do
we have the capability at the office? Maybe there needs to be
additional appropriation to make sure that they can capture
that data so we know what we are really dealing with.
Let me ask you also to speak, if you would, on south of the
border anti-Semitism. Several years ago I met with Edwardo
Elstain, and Argentine Jew who lost--he was kidnapped, he was
tortured, and lost his business. He has been trying for 38
years to reclaim it. I have raised the issue again and again
with our own Government. I have raised it with the Argentine
Government. Still he has not been able to receive his
confiscated property.
But last August I, along with Jonathan Mann, and we have
spoken about him today, with our interparliamentary group, put
together a trip to go to Venezuela to meet with the Jewish
community there and then hopefully to meet with Chavez's
people, maybe Chavez himself, to raise the issue of anti-
Semitism and especially in light of Ahmadinejad's ever-
closening ties there. I would say for the record that I was
profoundly disappointed when our own committee would not
authorize my travel even though I had asked several members on
the Democrat side to travel with me. We were declined. Jonathan
Mann ended up not going, and I wanted to go on my own dime,
frankly, but I knew I couldn't get State Department buy-in to
get me the meetings that both he and I and our small delegation
of staff wanted to have with the Chavez government. So that was
an opportunity lost, but hopefully we can put together a trip
in the future.
I asked Congressman Klein and Engel, they could not make
it. You might recall Chairman Engel had a back problem so he
really could not make it for reasons of heat. But it was a
missed opportunity because that problem there is festering and
we all know Chavez is spreading his ill will all over Central
and South America, and with it comes anti-Semitism. So I am
wondering if you might speak to that concern that you might
have with regards to countries south of the border.
Finally, two last things very briefly on the Internet. I
don't believe that our First Amendment rights are in any way
put in jeopardy and First Amendment free speech rights are
injured in any way, shape or form when efforts are taken to
take down these anti-Semitism Web sites that are reaching young
and impressionable minds, and those of the neo-Nazi genre and
others who then take Holocaust denial as if it were a fact when
it is an absolute like. And I am wondering your thoughts on
that.
I know Rabbi Cooper's. He and I have had that conversation,
but again I don't think the First Amendment is in any way
violated when we move, and even as a government not to mention
what could be done by Facebook and others unilaterally by
themselves.
And on the academics issue, Kirk Weisgetten at one of our
meetings who held the position that Rabbi Baker now holds,
brought together a group of academics from Germany and it was
very insightful, Mr. Chairman, to hear how the
institutionalization of anti-semiticade is alive and well and
thriving in many of our universities and colleges throughout
Germany, United States, and the world.
I don't think we have spent enough time on that issue; that
somehow it passes for academic freedom to hold views regarding
Jews that are antithetical to anything that we hold dear, and
that is tolerance and respect, and it seems to pass it that
somehow it is okay. And those academics form Germany brought
that out, and I thought in a very profound way at one of our
meetings, so the academic situation, if you could touch on
that. Thank you.
Rabbi Baker. Can I respond first? I will try to be quick
and touch on a couple of those things.
By the way, with regard to the special envoy, I do not
think that this office needs to be in a position to play a
first-hand role in collecting and monitoring data and
information. Many of our organizations have been doing that.
Our information is available. There are others in Europe, in
Israel that can as well. I think the real question is what kind
of political force can this envoy, can this office make. I
think that Hannah Rosenthal is new to this position, but she
brings a lot of--clearly--commitment and enthusiasm and
personal dedication. I hope that she will find a State
Department that is open.
To me the danger is for this to be--pardon the term--
``ghettoized.'' We have an office over here that deals with
this issue bit it is left separately. Will this be taken up at
a high level at bilateral meetings by the Secretary or her
deputies? I think that is the question, and the degree to which
the special envoy can push inside for that will be a measure of
her success.
I think if we recall that the bill that created that office
also called for this first report, an international report on
anti-Semitism. There was something very powerful in a U.S.
Government report that indicated country by country the status
of the situation, and I am sure Ken Jacobson recalls or had the
experience, I know I did, of being in different countries. This
report was read very carefully, at least that section in that
country. Usually the U.S. Ambassador was called in. They were
concerned about it.
We have not done that. I don't know whether this office
will think about doing it, and maybe that would require more
staff, but I think it is something to be considered rather than
having it within a larger, as you say as we saw in the OSCE,
subsumed in a human rights report or international religious
freedom report, something that holds it out specifically.
My only other comment will be on Latin America, on
Venezuela. I think we all know Venezuela is a very, very
serious problem. At our annual meeting here in Washington in 2
weeks we will have 25 Jewish leaders from Latin America, and we
will have Jewish community leaders from Venezuela. Their
stories are wrenching. I mean, because here you have--it is not
simply a question of popular attitudes, but you have a
political leader that is essentially making anti-Semitism a
piece of his agenda and he is a very aggressive figure.
The degree to which you directly or with your colleagues in
other countries can try and put some pressure, the United
States may not have much leverage on Venezuela, but at least to
address this would surely be welcomed. Thank you.
Mr. Carnahan. Mr. Jacobson?
Mr. Jacobson. I was going to make a similar comment about
the envoy's office. It seems to me that the single biggest step
taken was exactly this kind of coverage in the State
Department's human rights report on the subject of anti-
Semitism. I think both symbolically and very practically that
appearance at that initial stage was remarkable, and to me that
would be the major step forward, and that again as Andy
suggested could involve staff. I don't know exactly. It clearly
takes a lot of hands-on work, but it can be done and I think
knowing that that can be done has already an impact on anti-
Semitism around the world, so I would echo Andy's comments
about that.
You raised a lot of subjects--let me just take a second
about the academic world. There is no doubt that the fear that
some of us have that American universities will go the way of
Europe. I remember we had a meeting with the Israeli Ambassador
to Great Britain a few months back and he said it is an ironic
situation that Israel's situation is a situation of Jews
operating very well in West European countries at the top
level. In other words, if you look at Gordon Brown, you look at
Sarkozy, you look at Angela Merkel, you look at Berlusconi, you
look at all of them are not only friends of Israel but people
have spoken out on the subject of anti-Semitism.
When you go below that to the bureaucracies, to the
intellectuals, to the nongovernmental organizations, to the
universities, you find not only is Israel's image presented in
a very negative way, but this has a real impact on attitudes
toward Jews on the street as well.
So this is a great thing we have to worry about. I don't
think America is anywhere close to that even though we have
examples of that. But I agree with you, we need to start
addressing that problem in a more serious way before it ever
gets to the point, and I think it is the job of Congress, I
think it is the job of the administration, I think it is a job
of nongovernmental institutions, so I couldn't agree with you
more.
Venezuela Andy spoke to. We also have issued a number of
reports. The key for our working with Jewish communities,
whether it is in Venezuela or Iran or Argentina or whatever,
historically has always been to be in consultation with those
communities because, as much as we care deeply, they have to
live with the consequences of what we do here. We want to make
sure we are on the same wavelength. Sometimes the communities
feel so endangered that they can't really express their true
feelings, and we have to take that into consideration. That has
happened in the Soviet Union as we remember all those years, so
we have to weigh and balance that. But I agree with you, that
is one of the great concerns.
The last point on the Internet; we take very seriously
First Amendment issues, so I want to just state that for the
record for us at ADL. We are the American representative of an
international group called INACH, the International Network
Against Cyber Hate, and most of the coordinating groups are
European and they say to us, you Americans are crazy. You know,
you have this First Amendment, and we kick them off our sites
by our hate speech lawyers, and then the go to American sites.
What are we going to do about you?
We say, well, we value the First Amendment, but we also
agree, and I also agreed with Hannah Rosenthal's comment that
you fight bad speech with good speech. That is a basic ADL
concept for the world at large. For the Internet, it is a very
different proposition, so we know you have to do more.
We have been working with Google, with Microsoft, with many
of them to, first of all, get their attention to ensure this is
a serious issue for them, and you cannot simply avoid it by
talking about the First Amendment, which we all support. You
have to work out serious programs, whether it is labeling,
whether it is rules of the road, enforcing rules of the road,
and I think we have gotten their attention. We have had meeting
with them in the west coast, and at least they know that it is
an issue for them.
So I don't have simple answers because the First Amendment
issues are profound issues for us. We tried a hate filter out
once for parents, at least to protect the Web they have for
pornography. It did not take off the first time, but that may
be another way to go, which is in the First Amendment,
protecting children who are the main ones exposed to this hate.
So I appreciate you raising all these comments, and I think
for many of us these are priorities as well.
Ms. Massimino. I just had one quick thought on the capacity
question that you raised, Congressman Smith----
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Ms. Massimino [continuing]. Because I do think it is an
important one. There is no question in my mind that Hannah
Rosenthal brings enormous energy to this position, and that she
has the competence of senior leaders of the State Department,
which is a good thing.
We are going to be watching very closely her capacity to
effectively deliver some concrete results and I think we should
judge the need for greater capacity on whether or not she is
able to achieve that through her work.
You have heard, I think, several people mention this high-
level review conference in Kazakhstan in June. If there is
high-level participation by the United States in that
conference, that will be a good sign.
I also think that we should look to sort of the whole of
government approach on anti-Semitism. It is not just the State
Department. I think there is a lot that the FBI, the Department
of Justice can do in terms of technical assistance, and they
are doing some of that now, but I think there is a lot more
they can do to help investigation and prosecution of hate
crime.
Then, as I mentioned in my testimony, the importance of,
you know, the degree to which monitoring really, and
information comes from people who are close to the ground, but
greater funding for civil society groups who are both doing the
monitoring and working together across community to advance
solutions here I think is something else that we should be
pushing. Thanks.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. I wanted to, I guess, ask a
broader question for the panel. We heard several references
today to 2009 being one of the worst years in terms of anti-
Semitic activity. I guess my question is, do digging into the
reasons that you believe account for that, is this more of a
spike in this activity or do we see this more as a trend? So
part of my question is direction, and I guess part of it is
what do you see behind it, and we will start from----
Mr. Jacobson. I will go first.
Mr. Carnahan. Mr. Jacobson.
Mr. Jacobson. I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that it is
both a spike and a trend. The spike factor, I think, in 2009
particularly related to the war in Gaza. In the U.K. during the
3 weeks of the war in Gaza, there were 220 anti-Semitic
incidents, many of a violent kind many of them. In France
during that period of time there were 113 incidents, and I
would make clear that, in my view, it is not the cause of the
incidents but the occasion for such anti-Semitic expressions.
So I think there is an element of a spike, but going back
to my comments and my earlier remarks I think that each time we
have a spike and a spasm, and an occasion, whether it is the
war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza, Intifada, the financial crisis
in the world, which is another example, each time we have one
more spike we allow that unpeeling that I referred to, the
sense that, well, anti-Semitism is not beyond the pale, whether
it is because a lot of time has passed, whether it is because
all the attacks on Israel have made people more comfortable
with it, whether it is the comparing of Jews or Israel to Nazis
today, all of which create the spike turned into a trend I
guess is the way I would put it, and in effect, I think we do
have a trend.
It is a very, very disturbing one, and as I said earlier my
great concern is that those inhibitions, which have manifested
themselves for 50-60 years around anti-Semitism, are
disappearing. But to inhibit the expressions of anti-Semitism I
feel they have been eviscerated to a large extent, and
therefore my concern is that we will be heading into a period
where this trend will increase rather than decrease. I think
the leadership of the United States in this matter has been
profound, and therefore I think all of us who have worked so
closely with you understand that it is only the work that we do
together that can really begin to inhibit such kind of a trend.
Mr. Carnahan. Rabbi Baker.
Rabbi Baker. Look, I think we know, at least if you are
looking at reports on incidents, that the reason the numbers
were so high in 2009 was the fact that the Gaza war triggered
this, but I don't think that is particularly a reason to be
sanguine even though the war is over and those numbers
diminished during the latter part of 2009.
If you keep in mind, in 2002, 2003, 2004, when we really
saw a dramatic increase in France and in some other Western
European countries, and governments at the time really wanted
to deny this was anti-Semitism, and label it as somehow
generated politically because of Middle East events. It took
awhile before those forces would come together and at least
acknowledge that whatever the politics were or whatever the
events were in the Middle East they did not justify attacks on
a school bus of Jewish kids in a Paris suburb, for example.
So when you keep in mind that much work was done, I made
reference to the Berlin declaration of the OSCE conference as
one example of it, governments becoming mindful of this
problem. What was depressing was when we had these issues
triggering a new round of attacks in 2009, where were the
people, where were the lessons that were supposedly learned 5
years ago? I mean, where was the strong political voice
speaking out and efforts to tamp these incidents down?
I don't want to say there were no voices, but for the most
part it did not emerge in the way we had hoped. So in that
sense it was, I don't want to say trend or spike, but it was a
recognition that we still had much more to do. And then when I
look in the OSCE area, I think Eastern Europe is a different
situation. I don't think events in the Middle East really have
that much impact or in some cases even any impact on anti-
Semitism in these countries, but in many cases they didn't
really deal with the Holocaust era past. They still have the
old anti-Semitism in many cases unreconstructed, and these
democracies are still rather fragile.
So again if one looks at Hungary and the recent election,
here we have a Jobbik Party, the party that emerged from
nowhere 1.5 years ago, first in the European Parliament, and
now in the Hungarian Parliament, an unembarrassed anti-Roma and
anti-Semitic platform, essentially a party that grew out of a
fascist-like Hungarian guard, a group of people dressing in the
uniforms modeled after the fascist Arrow Cross, parading by
torch light primarily in towns with a high Roma population. I
mean, it is a terrible picture. So I think we see we have a lot
of work to do in these areas as well.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. Ms. Massimino.
Ms. Massimino. Yes. I think we view this as a longer term
upward trend in violence with some periodic spikes like the one
we saw in 2009. But it is part of a larger trend of rising
violence across the board, hate crime, and I think what that
underscores for me is the need to invest in long-term
solutions, really getting at, you know, going to communities
and education, building the legal framework to go after
perpetrators, building the structures like we have begun to do
in the OSCE and in other government entities to create
obligations to monitor and report so that we can better answer
the question of whether this is a trend or a spike.
I think the lesson that we take from this is that we really
need to invest in longer term solutions across the board to
deal with hate violence.
Mr. Carnahan. Which is a great segue to my last question,
and that is, you know, we mentioned the provisions in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, also certainly there are
provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights. I guess we have several of these international
covenants, agreements, principles that are out there, but to
what extent are these incidents that we have talked about today
have anti-Semitism being treated like international human
rights violations in terms of the broader context?
Ms. Massimino. Well, I think that that is part of what Ken
was talking about, is that as much as the whole framework of
international human rights standards and protections grew out
of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, in
particular, there has been an erosion in thinking about hate
violence across the board but anti-Semitism hate violence in
particular as a human rights violation. I think we have to
reclaim that in order to kind of reinstitute, as Ken talked
about, the shame of participating or condoning or remaining
silent in the face of these violations. That is part of why we
as a human rights organization that works on many different
issues thought it was important to make this a priority in our
work, to underscore the fact that this is not just disparate
victims groups, the Roma work on--the violations against the
Roma, the Muslims work on anti-Muslim violence, but to join
together and identify this trend as a comprehensive one that
needs comprehensive solutions, and one that really involves
violations of very fundamental human rights. Governments needs
to see it that way, and the U.S. has an opportunity to lead the
way in that.
Mr. Jacobson. Yes, I must say that we at ADL and others, I
believe, really expressed appreciation to Human Rights First
for doing those reports because it was unique in the human
rights community, or at least in my understanding, in the sense
of making anti-Semitism a priority as a human rights issue. It
should be a priority for the human rights community, and it has
not been, and I think part of the importance of this hearing is
to make that very point; that not only is anti-Semitism a
threat to Jews, it is threat to human rights of the world, and
anyone who is serious about human rights and doesn't take up
the issue of global anti-Semitism today, particularly because
of the origins of the human rights international body of law,
is not really contributing to human rights around the world.
Rabbi Baker. I would only add that I think the very way in
and reason we are able to get this issue addressed at the OSCE
and see the evolution in the attention it has received is
precisely the recognition that this is a human rights issue. So
I think it is a reminder of how when we bring that forward it
can have very pragmatic, tangible, and even positive results.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. I want to recognize----
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan [continuing]. My colleague, Mr. Smith, for
some final questions.
Mr. Smith. Just one really. And if I could you have
mentioned the importance like at the OSCE, Rabbi Baker, of
anti-Semitism finally being treated like a human rights issue.
How would each of you rate the work of the Human Rights
Council, especially now that we have a seat at the council, I
have met personally with a lot of the ambassadors from both the
Latin countries and from the African countries specifically on
this obsession of the Human Rights Council to focus on Israel,
Israel, Israel. It is not unlike, as we all know, the Human
Rights Commission that this was supposed to be the reform and
the replacement reform, it certainly has not panned out that
way. How would you rate that, and what would be your
recommendations to us and the Executive Branch on the Human
Rights Council?
Mr. Jacobson. Well, I would rate a bad ``F'' of the Human
Rights Council, but that is not coming to a definite conclusion
about the policy of this administration concerning
participation. I would say that they need to take into
consideration that their first experience with the Human Rights
Council and American participation has been a very bad one, in
my view, and it has been a failure, but I am not coming to the
conclusion that it automatically has to remain that way.
I think there needs to be a reassessment of the kind of
role that America plays and eventually you may have to question
the role at all, but I think at least the experience of this
last year, year and a half or however long we have now been
participating, should say, you know, it has not really worked
the way we have done it so far. We ought to take a look at
other ways because the truth is some people would argue that
the Human Rights Council has even been worse than the Human
Rights Commission.
We could have a discussion about that, but it surely has
not been an improvement. So I would say a rating for the Human
Rights Council a sure ``F.'' The question of the American role,
I am not dismissing. There is a good argument to say that we
should be there and have an impact, and I think you could make
that argument, but the question is how are we going to go about
doing it in a way that has been different over this first year,
and I think that would be an important role for this committee
to raise with members of the administration, not just to say
you made a mistake by doing it, but saying what can we do so in
a way it will have a real impact.
Rabbi Baker. In a sense I am only echoing what Ken has
said. I think we are all enormously disappointed with the Human
Rights Council. It is perhaps no better than the commission,
and its approach certainly vis-a-vis Israel is outrageous.
What usefulness, effectiveness we have now that the U.S is
engaged I think is still an open question. Engagement by itself
in many areas doesn't automatically mean a change in policy on
the other side. I don't think we would take issue with the
principle that to be engaged could result in certain positive
things, but I think everyone would say the best right now one
can see is damage control, and there is a lot of damage to be
controlled.
Ms. Massimino. Well, we have a lot of problems with the
Human Rights Council and one of them is its obsession with
Israel, but there are many other problems too. Some states
actively trying to underline the independence of the U.N.
experts, the inability of the council to respond in real time
to serious violations. There are a lot of problem with the
council.
That said we have been very supportive of the
administration's attempts to reengage and to join the council.
We don't think it can be improved from the outside, that is for
sure. The question I think is still open whether it can be
improved at all to the degree that will justify engagement. But
now is a very important movement for the United States to be in
there. There is going to be 5-year reviews, and a lot of the
spoilers on the Human Rights Council are allies of the U.S.
Government. So if we can have an impact, you know, now is the
time to do that.
I think that it is clear to us that better, stronger human
rights machinery at the U.N. is strongly in the United States'
interest, and in the world's interest. The world needs that. I
think we are all looking, searching for some evidence of
concrete improvement as a result of the engagement. I think it
is going to be a very slow road toward that.
But, you know, when I talk to my colleague human rights
organizations around the world they largely welcome U.S.
engagement there as a voice to push back on these governments
that many of my friends are trying to operate in. So I think
for that reason alone it is useful, but I hope that when we are
looking at this 2-3 years down the road we have some more
actual victories to celebrate.
Mr. Carnahan. I think that hopeful attitude is a good one,
and I, too, am a strong proponent of engagement. We have not
seen all the results we would like yet but we are hopeful and
determined that we can figure out ways where we can.
I just want to genuinely thank all of you for your time,
for your expertise, and especially in this long afternoon for
your patience. We really appreciate it. And I think some of the
comments here today are going to be very useful to us in going
forward with generating some additional ideas. I think the talk
about the lost inhibitions that are out there I think also have
some interesting coincidence with kind of lost inhibitions with
people and what they do on the Internet generally, I think
certainly we need to look at strategies there.
In terms of the broader approach to looking at human
rights, and all minority groups, I think there is a certain
power in that collective sense of looking out for those that
are being really discriminated again.
So, again, really appreciate what you all have done here
today, your time. We definitely look forward to working with
you in the future. Take care. We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 6:09 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing RecordNotice deg.