By Dmitriy Shapiro
(JANUARY 28, 2022 / JNS) Jewish leaders at a virtual panel hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, held on Wednesday to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday, were told by experts that the community should unite and go on offense against antisemites across the political spectrum.
The hour-long event was moderated by Conference chair Dianne Lob, who discussed antisemitism with former Obama administration Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ira Forman, his Trump administration counterpart Elan Carr, and Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC).
All three agreed that in the past decade, antisemitism has been growing, as indicated by data from the Anti-Defamation League, the FBI, and other organizations.
“One of the things I think we’ve all seen since 2017 is the end of certain taboos about saying things about Jews, as well as others, that four or five, six years ago people would have thought twice about saying this,” said Forman, pointing to the conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds and the coronavirus pandemic on the political Right and Left.
“If we only criticize antisemitism from our political opponents and not people in our own party, our own ideology, we really aren’t caring about antisemitism. We’re really not battling antisemitism. We’re just using the platform of antisemitism to wage war against our political opponents,” said Forman. “And those are those of us on the Left, like myself, those on the Right, have done too much of this and we have to end it.”
Carr followed Forman, saying that the fact that antisemitism is rising just eight decades after 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust speaks to the insatiable hatred and bloodlust for the Jewish people. Post-Shoah, he said, it was taboo to be a Jew-hater, compared to the uptick in antisemitism seen in the past 10 to 15 years.
Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, asked if Jew-haters should be ostracized, then why haven’t Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) been called out by the Democratic leadership, taken off committees, and publicly condemned by name?
“That would go a long way to show that Congress will not tolerate in a serious way, antisemitism,” he said. “Why do you think that hasn’t been done?”