“NO FEAR: A Rally in Solidarity with the Jewish People” is billed to feature “victims of antisemitism and elected officials across the denominational and political spectrum.”
Former president Donald Trump signed a bill into law in January to elevate the status of the special envoy on antisemitism, and attorney Elan Carr was appointed to the position by then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo in February 2019.
We urge President Joe Biden to designate someone now under The Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act (SEAS), which upgrades the status of the important position at the State Department to the level of ambassador, thereby requiring Senate confirmation.
Biden spoke out at the end of May against a rise in attacks targeting Jews, after 132 members of Congress issued a bipartisan plea for him to appoint a new special antisemitism envoy.
“I will not allow our fellow Americans to be intimidated or attacked because of who they are or the faith they practice,” Biden said. “We have seen a brick thrown through the window of a Jewish-owned business in Manhattan, a swastika carved into the door of a synagogue in Salt Lake City, families threatened outside a restaurant in Los Angeles, and museums in Florida and Alaska dedicated to celebrating Jewish life and culture and remembering the Holocaust vandalized with anti-Jewish messages.”
Now is the time for the president to act. The person chosen should be of the caliber of Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian justice minister who was named by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as his nation’s first special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism in November 2020.
“At a time of escalating antisemitism both globally and domestically, the appointment of special envoys are as timely as they are necessary,” Cotler told The Jerusalem Post. “These envoys will provide important leadership on the initiation and implementation of US and global action plans for being a singular and indispensable focal point for combating this pandemic of antisemitism.”
Antisemitism certainly has no place in the US, where according to the American Jewish Population Project, there are more than 7.6 million Jews. Antisemitism has escalated in the US in recent years. In the worst antisemitic attack in American history, a gunman murdered 11 Jewish worshipers in an attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh during Shabbat services on October 27, 2018.
Six months later, on the last day of Passover, April 27, 2019, a gunman killed a woman and wounded three others inside the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California, and on December 10 two assailants killed four people at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City.
The 11-day war in May between Israel and Hamas triggered a rise in antisemitic incidents in the US, including a spate of physical assaults on Jews, according to the ADL.
The Biden administration has condemned antisemitic attacks as “despicable” but has yet to nominate a new special envoy. As Eric Goldstein, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division, wrote, “Filling that post would provide a focal point for calling out and combating antisemitism in the US and worldwide.”
In the attack on July 1, Rabbi Noginski, the Israeli father of 12 sent to Boston as a Chabad emissary two years ago, was stabbed eight times outside the Shaloh House synagogue and school in Brighton. Police arrested Khaled Awad, 24, and charged him with assault and battery.
Noginski told his 12 children after the attack that they should continue wearing signs of Judaism. “We should be very proud that we are Jewish and not be scared,” he said.
“The best way to push darkness is not by fighting the darkness. It’s not going to help,” he told reporters, adding that the way to do it is to bring a “small candle, and the small candle will push a lot of darkness.” That small candle could very well be a new antisemitism envoy.