US President Donald Trump has made it clear that “when it comes to Holocaust denial and antisemitism, the same way there is no daylight between the United States and the State of Israel when it comes to military defense and intelligence, there is no daylight between the US and Israel with the words ‘never again,’ said Paul Packer, chairman of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. “The Holocaust will never happen again. We are here to make sure of that.”
Speaking at the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference on Thursday on a panel discussing the rise of antisemitism in the world, Packer said that with “antisemitism popping up everywhere, this commission is busier than we’ve ever been before, especially in the last two years.
Packer made it clear that “there is so much more that unites us than divides us,” adding that his commission has partnered to bring youth to revive synagogues and gravestones in some of the aged Jewish communities.
“There is hope that if we preserve our heritage, there will be a next generation who wants to know about their grandparents and what they did,” he said.
Questions were posed to the panelists about US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are not illegal, and on the recent EU Court of Justice decision that the word “settlement” would have to be included on Israeli goods produced over the Green Line.
German Ambassador to Israel Dr. Susanne Wasum-Rainer said the “declaration of Secretary of State Pompeo does not change international law. The law of belligerent occupation is being guided by many rules of international law, humanitarian law, charter or UN and binding resolutions of the Security Council. Germany and Israel are committed to public international humanitarian law,” and “we will have to discuss in the international community how to deal with this change of interpretation of international law.”
Regarding the EU labeling debacle, Wasum-Rainer said the “EU Court decision to label products from Judea and Samaria is not an antisemitic decision or a decision against Israel. It is a technical decision. It refers to one area because this area was brought to the court – it is in the framework of consumer production.”
Ron Brummer, executive director of operations at the Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry, said that the new wave of antisemitism is stemming from three sources.
“Classic antisemitism is coming from extreme right, Islamist antisemitism... and the third type disguises itself behind the mask of human rights – the illegitimization of the Jewish people from the Left,” he said.
Frederik Rogge, Chargé d’Affaires of the French Embassy in Israel, said that France is working to implement the “fight against antisemitism and hate speech online. We are already on a national level to implement policy on this. One million Euros is going toward the National Memorial of the Holocaust” and France is also training policemen in antisemitism.