A bill to create a State Department office to monitor international anti-Semitism passed the U.S. Congress yesterday despite opposition from the State Department itself.
The Global Anti-Semitism Awareness/Review Act, a response to the recent surge in anti-Semitism worldwide, particularly in Europe, passed the House of Representatives five months after the bill was cleared by the Senate.
The Act mandates the creation of a new office at the State Department dedicated solely to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, and for that office to file a report on anti-Semitic incidents around the world. The U.S. government also would be required to include information about anti-Semitic acts in its annual reports on human rights practices and international religious freedom.
The legislation resulted from initiatives by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., who worked with Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., to integrate key provisions of his own bill dealing with anti-Semitism with another bill that had emerged from the Senate and was sponsored by Sen. George Voinovich.
The Act received a substantial boost last month when a bipartisan group of more than 100 prominent American political, religious, academic and cultural leaders sent a supporting letter arranged by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
The letter was signed by a broad cross-section of individuals, including leaders of the Yale Divinity School and other Christian theological seminaries, former Secretary of Housing and vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, former Clinton Administration National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, former Reagan Administration Ambassador to the U.N. Jeane Kirkpatrick, and singer Janis Ian.
But the State Department opposed the legislation, suggesting it would show favoritism toward the Jewish community in human rights reporting. In an unsigned memo sent to Lantos in July, the Department claimed that creating an office to monitor and fight anti-Semitism would “diminish credibility,” and show “favoritism” and “imbalance” in U.S. human rights policy – overlooking the existing offices at the State Department dedicated to promoting religious freedom, and women’s and Tibetan rights.
“Passing a robust measure to reverse the growth of global anti-Semitism has been an uphill battle this year in Congress,” said Lantos.
Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff praised Lantos for “standing up to the State Department, just as a few brave Congressmen stood up to the State Department in 1943 and forced President Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board, which helped rescue some 200,000 Jews from the Nazis.”
Among other things, the Board sponsored the rescue work of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who sheltered Jews in German-occupied Budapest – including 16 year-old Tom Lantos.
The Wyman Institute’s associate director, Benyamin Korn, told WorldNetDaily, “It was particularly galling for the State Department to have used the Orwellian excuse that the legislation would single out the Jews for special consideration. Obviously, it is the anti-Semites who are singling out the Jews, not the other way around.”
Many Jewish and Christian leaders are expressing concern over what they say is a rising tide of worldwide anti-Semitism, particularly, in Europe. There has been a sharp increase in anti-Jewish attacks, and vandalism against synagogues, mainly but not only in France. Criticism of the Israeli government, expressed across Europe’s political spectrum, has become so widespread and often so fierce that some Jews in Europe say they feel it is spilling over into hostility to them as people.
