The Confused Special Envoy on Anti-Semitism

Gregg Rickman
The Cutting Edge
05 July '10

Cutting Edge human rights analyst Gregg J. Rickman served as the first U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism from 2006–2009.

Last December, the Obama Administration's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal attacked Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren for not toeing the J-Street line regarding his own country thereby taking J-Street's soft approach to terrorism against Israel. In March, in London at the Community Security Trust Dinner, while ostensibly discussing her work on anti-Semitism, she called for more effort in the fight against Islamaphobia. And most recently, in Kazakhstan at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), she again called for increased work to fight the problem. I am confused. Is she the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism or Islamaphobia?

In Kazakhstan for the OSCE's Conference on Intolerance, our envoy Hannah Rosenthal said the following, according to JTA, “In the OSCE region, for example, the free practice of Islam is severely constrained in different ways—from overt prejudices to non-support for structures that allow religious observance. In some participating States, Muslim communities have great difficulty operating mosques not controlled or sanctioned by the state, sometimes resulting in problematic penalties for this activity. In some states, in fact, one can't even build a mosque. In some states, registration systems often disproportionately burden small Muslim religious communities, and some countries' legal systems ban personal religious expression—restrictions which inevitably limit freedoms we all hold dear.”

In a compliment to Rosenthal's speech, Farah Pandith, the State Deparment's talented emissary to Muslim communities delivered the speech Rosenthal should have. Again according to JTA, Pandith said, “In addition to an increased number of violent attacks against Jews and synagogues in Europe and elsewhere, 2009 saw growing incidents of harassment of Jewish children in their schools; desecration of Jewish institutions; and increasingly violent and virulent rhetoric in graffiti, as well as in various media. In recent weeks, we have seen legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies cross the line into anti-Semitism. Natan Sharansky teaches us that anti-Israel sentiment crosses the line into anti-Semitism if Israel is demonized, delegitimized or held to a different standard than any other country.”

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