Preaching tolerance abroad while hatred grows at home
A year ago, Deborah Lipstadt, recently confirmed as the US special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, attended a White House reception and reintroduced herself to President Biden when he stopped by.
“I know who you are,” Dr. Lipstadt remembered that the president had told her. “And you have a great job.”
Mr. Biden was right, but for reasons neither of them could have fully imagined.
Dr. Lipstadt, whose role at the State Department carries the rank of ambassador for the first time, “leads efforts to advance U.S. foreign policy to counter anti-Semitism around the world,” according to her job description. But as she spreads a message of tolerance in Europe and the Middle East, an alarming increase in anti-Semitic attacks and rhetoric at home in the United States has changed her approach to work.
“My predecessors could go to countries and say, ‘You have a problem, and we’re taking this seriously, and you have to take it seriously.’ I can’t. I have to go and say, ‘We have a problem.'”
Dr. Lipstadt, 76, has spent her career studying anti-Semitism. To take on the position of envoy, she retired from teaching at Emory University, where she is the founder and director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies.
“Antisemitism is not a niche issue,” she said in an interview. “It’s an existential threat to democracy.”
The role of the special envoy was created two decades ago, but Dr. Lipstadt, the preeminent scientist to hold the position, serves a president who is doing something new: seeking Europe’s help in the battle against a 2,000-year-old prejudice that is rearing its ugly head in America.
In February, Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, received European special envoys at the White House to advise the United States on a national strategy to combat anti-Semitism. The move surprised some envoys more accustomed to the United States’ lectures on the subject.
“This was an acknowledgment that anti-Semitism is also a serious problem in the US and that an action plan should be developed to address it more strategically, not just in response to anti-Semitic incidents,” said Felix Klein, a German government official. Commissioner for Jewish Life and Combating Anti-Semitism, who attended the conference. “It’s a much more cooperative approach.”
Last year there were 3,697 reported incidents of anti-Semitic assault, harassment and vandalism in the United States, according to an annual audit by the Anti-Defamation League. The figure, up 36 percent from 2021, is the largest number of incidents against Jews in the United States since the organization began its assessments in 1979.
Diplomacy is new to Dr. Lipstadt, a resident of Queens, NY, who was once a fast voice on Twitter. Her Senate confirmation was delayed eight months, in part because a far-right senator, Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson, objected to denounce her tweet his comments on the attack on the Capitol on January 6 “white supremacy/nationalism.”
Now her staff checks her tweets.
Dr. Lipstadt’s office is relatively small, with a budget of $1.5 million and a number of staff, supplemented by contractors and diplomats on temporary assignment. Led by presidential appointees, the agency changes leadership with each new administration and is subject to shifting priorities; President Trump took two years to appoint her predecessor.
Although dr. Lipstadt acknowledges domestic anti-Semitism at meetings abroad, the problems at home are not in her job description. And she should be careful in the countries she visits, leaving broader foreign policy issues to her State Department colleagues.
Its narrow focus is conspicuous in places like Poland, where its right-wing populist government is a front-line ally in the West’s efforts to counter Russia, and in Israel, whose far-right government has led to deep tensions with the U.S. Jewish community.
She has also been forced to engage in an often contentious debate over the definition of anti-Semitism, which some fear could be used to shield Israel from legitimate criticism.
US policy follows the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism, which was widely adopted by Western governments after lobbying by Jewish groups, EU leaders and the alliance itself.
But that definition has come under fire by dozens of Israeli and Jewish scholars and human rights organizationswho say it falsely portrays criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.
The Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism has examples related to criticisms of Israel, including using double standards by requiring it to behave in ways not expected of other democratic countries, or denying Jews the right to self-determination by claiming that Israel’s existence is a racist enterprise.
Doctor Lipstadt got into the controversy during her confirmation hearing.
“I don’t think any rational thinking person would think criticism of Israeli policies is anti-Semitic,” she said, adding that some criticism of Israel “crosses the line” into anti-Semitism.
The person who created the working definition of anti-Semitism nearly two decades ago, Kenneth S. Stern, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College in New York, is now one of its most well-known critics. He said the definition is “weaponized” to quell criticism of Israel and its behavior towards Palestinians. He is particularly concerned about the definition’s impact on the college campus debate.
“This is trying to say what can and can’t be learned,” said Mr. Stern in an interview. “To fight anti-Semitism, you have to preserve democratic institutions. You cannot use the state to put a finger on the scales.”
Dr. Lipstadt began her tenure as special envoy with visits to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The choice to visit Saudi Arabia was criticized by some who cited the record of human rights violations in the kingdom.
“I really think there is room to make progress with certain Muslim-majority countries,” said Dr. Lipstadt. “I want to show that the territorial crisis in the Middle East, which is now at a very sensitive point, is something separate and separate from prejudice and hatred.”
During the Saudi trip, she said, “I happened to be sitting with an imam who said to me, ‘If Israel solved the Palestinian issue, there would be no anti-Semitism.'”
The professor in her wanted to trace the history of anti-Semitism back to the 12th century.
Instead, she recalled the battle in New York City over a proposed Muslim community center, open to the public, several blocks from the former World Trade Center site. Tensions that persisted for years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks contributed to Islamophobia and an upheaval that ultimately scuttled plans for what its detractors called “the ground zero mosque.”
The Imam was with Dr. Lipstadt agreed that the community center’s opposition was an example of broader prejudice. Likewise, she said, Israel’s territorial dispute should not be grounds for prejudice against Jews in the rest of the world.
“Not to diminish the importance of the territorial conflict, but anti-Semitism is something that exists apart from that,” she said. “As I recently said to an ambassador from a Muslim-majority country, now more than ever is the time to redouble the fight against prejudice.”
Last year, she met with executives from German airline Lufthansa after the airline banned dozens of passengers wearing the signature clothing of ultra-Orthodox Jews from a connecting flight from Germany to Hungary after some passengers refused to wear medical masks. During the meeting, Dr. Lipstadt reiterates the link between anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry. “This was unconscious bias at best,” she said. “Imagine four black kids misbehaving and you take every black person off the plane.”
Lufthansa issued a public apology and said it would review employee training with the help of experts from the American Jewish Committee. The airline agreed to a $2.7 million settlement with the passengers excluded from the flight.
She was in Israel in July when a group of ultra-Orthodox teenagers and young men disrupted bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies at the The egalitarian square of the Western Wall. The extremists tore up prayer books, blew whistles and shouted “Nazis” and “animals” at the worshipers.
“Deeply troubled by the disturbing actions of a group of extremists at the Kotel last week,” Dr. Lipstadt on Twitter, referring to the Western Wall. “Let us not be mistaken, if such a hateful incident – such an incitement – had taken place in any other country, there would be little hesitation in labeling it anti-Semitism.”