Last Thursday, the White House released its much-hyped U.S. National
Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. As our readers are well aware,
combating antisemitism is absolutely central to our efforts. As such, we
feel this issue is important enough that we’re going to deviate from
our traditional multi-topic Update and focus exclusively this week on
the strategy put forth by the Biden administration.

**What is it?**

** **

The Biden administration introduced this strategy as a
“whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approach to
combating antisemitism. While we are grateful for the first White House
report on the rising tide of antisemitism, and it’s call to action
against a clear and present threat against the Jewish people, there are
limitations on what government can do, and challenges in trying to move
private citizens and corporations to address any societal ill. As we see
it, in sum, the document includes some worthwhile executive action
points coupled with numerous “recommendations” which we and many
others will be closely tracking. The strategy is divided into four
pillars:

1.      Raise awareness of antisemitism and its threat to American
democracy,

2.      Protect Jewish communities,

3.      Reverse the normalization of antisemitism,

4.      Build cross-community solidarity.

On its face, one would want to welcome such a national strategy with
great fanfare. But we can’t in good conscience just send out a tweet
patting them on the back – especially after having reviewed the words
on those pages. While the strategy does reference IHRA – albeit in
what we see as an inadequate manner - the Biden administration took a
step back in efforts to combat antisemitism by elevating a definition of
antisemitism which seeks to undermine  the IHRA definition by opening
up further avenues for criticism of Israel, despite the fact that IHRA
has been acknowledged by a majority of U.S. states and dozens of
countries around the world (including the U.S.). With that in mind, we
can move to the next question: will it work?

**Will it Work?**

** **

The answer to this question is that if handled well, some elements of
the strategy will have some impact. For example, there are certain
executive branch actions, such as the establishment of a Holocaust
education research center at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that if
run properly, could be beneficial. Likewise, the emphasis on
incorporating certain best practices into law enforcement efforts to
gather and analyze information on antisemitic incidents and entities as
well as the call to Congress to fully fund the Nonprofit Security Grant
Program (NSGP) could and should make our Jewish neighbors safer if done
properly.

Sadly, however, once we move beyond executive action to the next element
of each pillar, most of the document includes recommendations to
Congress that require a degree of consensus the Biden administration has
failed to achieve on this – or nearly any other – issue.

Moving to the third element of each pillar, we’re not terribly
optimistic that many of the “whole-of-society” recommendations have
much of a chance of coming to fruition. For example, calls to tech
companies to police their platforms for hate-speech are hardly new and
yet this has not happened. Moreover, the administration’s effort to
make tech companies more responsible for what’s on their platforms
would require a key law to change, and, frankly, that has been discussed
in Washington for years, with no impact.

Finally, in another example of what sounds nice but is unlikely to
happen, the administration emphasizes the inclusion of antisemitism
awareness education in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training at
the corporate level, but we expect that will be largely ignored –
especially in light of the fact that a noticeable amount of DEI
activists do not seem to care much about antisemitism (at best). It will
take organizations like CUFI to impact corporate behavior. The
government generally fails in such efforts unless laws are passed (see
our earlier reference to consensus building).

**What’s Next?**

** **

For us, what is next is that we keep doing exactly what we have been
doing because we’ve actually had an impact.

Since we began our Holocaust education enhancement efforts, a number of
states have either legally mandated such or skipped the legislative
process and directly incorporated Holocaust education into their
statewide social studies standards. Likewise, we’ve been there to
support the Jewish community every time they’ve asked for help with
NSGP funding. At the local level, we recently backed the successful
effort to authorize funds for NSGP in Arizona. At the federal level,
we’ve advocated for an increase in those funds, which has taken us
from a $90 million annual appropriation when we embarked on this policy
endeavor to seeing just over $300 million in funds presently
appropriated. 

At the end of the day, we see this strategy as bolstering some of the
important elements of the fight against antisemitism while at the same
time undermining other elements such as the failure to uphold IHRA as
the singular gold standard definition.

Bottom line, even in our modern age, actions still speak louder than
words, and as of now, this memo is heavy on the latter and short on the
former.

Sincerely,

The CUFI Action Fund Team

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