‘This is the first time ever there is an international framework for how to respond to antisemitism,” explained Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, who was appointed by US President Joe Biden and confirmed by the US Senate in March 2022 as the US special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, leading efforts to advance US foreign policy to counter antisemitism throughout the world.
She spoke to The Jerusalem Post, two months after issuing the landmark “Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism” in Buenos Aires.
As of September 2024, 42 countries have signed the guidelines, a deceptively simple document, containing just a dozen directives – fewer than 700 words: Speak out against antisemitism, avoid politicization of antisemitism, adopt and implement strategies and action plans, appoint and empower leadership designated to combat antisemitism, understand and define antisemitism, protect Jewish communities, collect data documenting incidents of antisemitism, enforce anti-hate crime and anti-discrimination laws, educate, cultivate a whole-of-society commitment, engage social media, and strengthen international collaboration.
On a daily basis, Lipstadt meets with Jewish stakeholders, Jewish organizations, US Senate members, prioritizes issues with her staff, and meets with senior members of the State Department to discuss how to encourage more countries and institutions to sign the guidelines.
“Many of the countries who are signatories, including my own, have national strategies, but that’s each in a silo,” Lipstadt explained to the Post.
As of September 2024, 42 countries have signed the guidelines, and Lipstadt’s office continuously works to get more signatories, a complex process that requires individual negotiations and meetings. Since April, she’s traveled to 12 countries, and in each country she discussed the guidelines.
“There is a concept of walking the precincts. Before elections, the head of the committees of the parties would walk the precincts so people would get out and vote. We walked the precincts,” she told the Post.
Lipstadt also revealed that the State Department chose to issue the guidelines in Buenos Aires to emphasize that the guidelines are multilateral – not solely a US government document – and to highlight the anniversary of the July 1994 bombing near the Argentinian Israelite Mutual Association Jewish Community Center. Until October 7, Lipstadt said, “this terror attack was the greatest historical assault on the Jewish community since the Holocaust.”
Lipstadt said the process of issuing the guidelines required many strategic decisions. For example, a few days before leaving for Argentina, a senior member of the State Department looked at her list of signatories.
Noting that Ukraine was missing from the list, the department official argued it deserved to be part of the first group of signatories for symbolic reasons. “It’s fighting for its survival, [and] it’s being bombarded with antisemitism,” she explained.
Lipstadt told the Post that she first went to Israel to get its signature, then they went to European Union countries, and then to Organization of American States countries, choosing the order based on the United States’ strongest allies. Since Ukraine was not part of either of those groups of countries, it was not a country that was prioritized.
Following her conversation with the State Department official, she wrote to Ukraine’s ambassador to the US. “I didn’t expect anything,” Lipstadt stated. “The guidelines must go through the foreign ministry, a cumbersome process in any country.”
However, at a dinner in the Buenos Aires home of the US ambassador, she received a call from the Ukrainian ambassador to Argentina, who told her he had received a directive from his foreign ministry to “embrace the guidelines. ‘We want to be in the first group to embrace them, and we will be at the Argentinian ministry of foreign affairs tomorrow to do so,’” Lipstadt quoted the ambassador as saying.
According to Lipstadt there were several countries eager to sign the guidelines in order to combat antisemitism in their own countries.
“There was a feeling this is a serious problem and... here is something that can be done,” Lipstadt said, adding that many signatories urged their neighbors to also sign as well.
She recalled, “We were now hearing from countries: This is now a problem we recognize. What can we do about it? Before that, sometimes we had to convince many countries that it [antisemitism] was a problem.
Since October 7, many countries have now recognized that it’s a problem. What are the best practices? Other countries, allies of the US, and countries that are not our strongest allies, would say to us – we agree with you; you don’t have to convince us that this is an issue – but what do we do?”
One of the concerns the antisemitism envoy cited was politicization. “If you only see antisemitism on the opposite side of the spectrum, you have to ask, are you really fighting antisemitism, or are you really just fighting your political enemies? Wherever it comes from, be against it.”
Regarding the potential effect of the guidelines on Jewish communities around the world, she said, “If you live in a country which has adopted and embraced this, if your country engages in or doesn’t speak out against antisemitism, you can ask, ‘If you adopted, embraced, and endorsed this, how come you are being silent and not addressing this? How come you’re not offering protection? How come you are not enforcing laws?’
“It’s a tool that is now out there,” Lipstadt explained. However, “We are not the global guidelines police.
“We are now meeting with our counterparts about implementation, what can be done, and collection of data. We’ve got to know what we’re fighting, how bad the problem is, and how significant it is. This is just a baby that was born a month ago,” Lipstadt said.
Pointing to the next stages for the guidelines, she said the next challenge is bringing the document to life. “Everyone who has been involved in this multilateral document is now beginning to look at it and say, how do we make this a tool in the fight against antisemitism?”
NOW, UNIVERSITIES are saying that they could use these guidelines for implementation at their institutions. Universities in America are where Lipstadt, as well as the entire State Department, has seen “outbursts of antisemitism in a way we never would have predicted or imagined.”
She told the Post that while Iran is amplifying the protests, there is a great deal of lack of education and awareness.
The Post pressed that these students are already at the top institutions in the world, and should already be receiving a high-quality education.
“They go to our finest institutions, but some of them have no sense of what’s really going on. Some of them, even though our country has declared Hamas to be a terrorist organization, they treat it like it’s some benign NGO. You can go to a fine institution and know little about reality in this area, or other areas,” Lipstadt responded.
She added that many of the university students engaging in antisemitism are failing to see two sides of the conflict – while they see the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, they fail to view Hamas as a terrorist organization.
WHEN ASKED what she believes is the most important thing for people to know to combat antisemitism, she stated:
“It is one of the oldest hatreds, one of the most consistent hatreds in the world. It’s like a virus. It adapts. There is no other prejudice that can be found on the Right and on the Left; that can be found amongst Christians, Muslims, atheists, Jews; and between socialists, communists, and the most conservative right-wing nationalists. There is no other prejudice that has proven adaptable to so many entities. And it morphs – it has morphed over centuries, and over millennia. That should leave our minds boggled, but we know it’s a reality.”
Lipstadt believes the best way for individuals to combat antisemitism is to speak out and educate.
“We can’t afford to be silent,” she told the Post. “You may not change the mind of the burning antisemite, but for the people who just fall into the trap of thinking that it’s true, you’ve got to educate them.”
When asked by the Post what inspires her to combat antisemitism on a daily basis, Lipstadt first explained how “lucky” she is to have “something concrete to do.” She also feels that she’s representing the best of America.
“Addressing concerns about antisemitism, George Washington told the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, his country will give ‘to bigotry no sanction.’ This represents the best of American ideals, what we’re doing. Not because it’s [the] protection of Jews – that alone would make it worth doing – but because it represents what America stands for,” she explained.
From her perspective as a historian, Lipstadt finds that the continued existence of Jews defies logic. “I’m not just talking about the Shoah, when one in every three Jews in the world was killed. But go back to first-century Europe, or go back to Rome, or even further to the Middle East. Whether it was under Christianity, Islam, Protestantism, or Catholicism, Jews shouldn’t be here. If you were someone living in that time, and someone said, ‘convert or be persecuted,’ many people thought, I hate doing it, but I’m going to convert, or I’m going to leave. It’s easier to be something else. And yet, we’re still here.
“Not only are we still here – it’s a difficult time – but we’re here and, on some level, we still thrive. There’s a Jewish state. There’s an ambassador at the State Department, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, with a portfolio to address antisemitism. That’s unbelievable.”
She concluded by telling the Post, “I have a good Jewish education. I’m well versed.... Its my job to learn, to study. I know what Jewish tradition [is], I know the wealth of Jewish tradition, and when I say that, I mean religiously, culturally, diplomatically, politically, nationally.... I know what we’re all about, and I know we’re worth preserving.”