It has been more than a year since Hannah Rosenthal — who still owns a home in Madison and whose two daughters still live there — was appointed Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C.
As she explained to an audience of about 100 people on Feb. 10 at Chai Point, in her job she has traveled and will be traveling throughout the world to monitor and to combat anti-Semitism.
In that capacity, she said, she has seen several “major trends of increasing anti-Semitism.” They include:
• Traditional forms of anti-Semitism. Rosenthal said such things as scrawling swastikas on Jewish buildings, firebombing synagogues, and desecrating Jewish cemeteries are “happening all over.”
One traditional but still operating anti-Semitic lie is the “blood libel” claim that Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children to make Passover foods. Rosenthal said communities still exist that celebrate the “sainthood” of “non-existent children” supposedly so victimized.
But the blood libel has taken a new form, she said. Anti-Semites now accuse Jews of killing non-Jewish children to steal their organs, supposedly for transplant.
Rosenthal said this accusation is found not only in Israel-hating and Jew-hating Arab countries and organizations, but also in Australia, Sweden, and Ukraine.
In fact, she recounted a confrontation she had with Ukraine’s foreign minister last April in which he said, “We take such accusations very seriously. Jews have done it in the past and we want to make sure they don’t do it again.”
• Holocaust denial. “Supposed historians” and others continue to claim that the German Nazi attempt to murder all Jews never happened, Rosenthal said. She added that she feels a “sense of urgency” about this as it is happening at a time when witnesses to the genocide project — victims, liberators, and others — “are soon not going to be with us.”
• Holocaust revisionism. Rosenthal distinguished this phenomenon from Holocaust denial. People in this group, who often were victims of dictators in Latin America or elsewhere, claim that the genocide of the Jews “has been exaggerated” and that their own suffering was comparable, she said.
Rosenthal said she did not want to deny the suffering inflicted by other dictators, but “it was not the Holocaust” and “we must demand historical accuracy.”
• Holocaust glorification. Rosenthal said this is seen “mainly on television in the Middle East,” but it has “spread all over.”
She said she has a video recording from the Al Jazeera Arab television network of a sermon by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. He praised the Nazi genocide effort and said, “Allah willing, we will be the perpetrators to finish the job.”
• Anti-Israel anti-Semitism. Rosenthal said she spends “about 30 percent of my time” on a different form of anti-Semitism — i.e., “trying to understand when criticism of Israeli policy crosses over into anti-Semitism.”
“It is very hard to draw a good line there,” she said, adding, “If criticism of the state of Israel made you an anti-Semite, half the population of Israel would be anti-Semitic.”
Nevertheless, when, after criticizing an Israeli policy or action, “the conclusion you come to is that Israel shouldn’t exist,” that becomes anti-Semitism, she said.
She pointed out that human rights abuses in numerous other countries — Egypt, China, India, Thailand, Burma, and others — do not lead to calls for those countries to be destroyed. Only with Israel does that happen, she said.
• “Purity” nationalism. “Europe has a very dangerous history with nationalism, which is something we here in the U.S. don’t understand,” said Rosenthal. “We understand patriotism [but] we are not a country that talks about keeping the character and ‘purity’ of our nation ‘clean.’”
That kind of talk has been growing in Europe and is being directed at immigrants, especially those from the Muslim world. So far, this has had little direct effect upon the Jewish community, but “whenever a country hates someone, it is never good for the Jews,” she said.
Rosenthal recounted some highlights of her work to date. But she acknowledged that she has had to learn “the importance of baby steps” in making progress against anti-Semitism.
In a conversation with The Chronicle afterward, Rosenthal said the budget-cutting drive in Washington probably will not include her position. Congress established her job in 2004, and support for it has “always been bipartisan,” she said.
However, the State Department’s overall budget may be cut, which could reduce travel budgets and “may cut into my ability to be as effective,” she said.
Rosenthal said her next project will be to travel with Farah Pandith, the State Department’s Special Representative to Muslim Communities. They will visit countries where Jews and Muslims have coexisted and thrived, like Spain, Turkey, and Azerbaijan.
They will meet there with groups of Jewish and Muslim youth, and urge them to pledge some hours to “walk in each other’s shoes” — for example, by volunteering in the other group’s humanitarian work organizations. The goal of this year-long effort will be to have these young people pledge “2011 Hours Against Hate,” which is the project’s name, Rosenthal said.
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