Wiesenthal Center Officials Press Undersecretary of State to Appoint New Anti-Semitism Envoy: “Failure to Fill This Position is the Wrong Signal at the Wrong Time”

July 13, 2017

At a meeting at the US Department of State in Washington DC, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Simon Wiesenthal Center Founder and Dean (L), and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Center’s Associate Dean & Global Social Action Agenda Director (R), met with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Thomas A. Shannon (C), where they discussed a broad range of issues including developments in the Gulf region.

A special focus of the meeting was the appointment of a fully funded Special Envoy on Anti-Semitism to fill the vacated State Department post.

“At a time when anti-Semitism is spiking on both sides of the Atlantic, failure to fill this position is the wrong signal at the wrong time,” Rabbis Hier and Cooper told Under Secretary Shannon.

During an earlier meeting with a senior White House official, Rabbis Hier and Cooper also pressed the importance of filling the Special Envoy position in light of anti-Semitic outbreaks around the globe.

Rabbi Hier showed a copy of a letter from the Wiesenthal Center’s archives, written and signed in 1919 by Adolf Hitler, describing his hatred of the Jews and his plans for their annihilation.

The State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism includes the demonization of Israel and the denial of the right of the Jewish State to exist and is almost identical to the one that has been adopted by the European Parliament, many European countries and others in a global effort spearheaded by SWC Government Affairs Director Mark Weitzman.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).