Global Anti-Semitism Report

Second, I think some of the comments you referred to really dealt more with issues of, not so much reporting, but creating yet another special office. And there's this constant tension. It's not just in the area of anti-Semitism. We have special people for, you know, disabilities. We have special people for international religious freedom. And in one sense, every time you create one of these offices -- a Holocaust Office which deals with anti-Semitism issues already -- when you create an office, it adds more prominence, perhaps, to the issue, but there's also the risk that you start "stovepiping" your issues too much and you don't get the same kind of effect on other governments.

So, you know, that whole debate was one of absolutely common goals with the Congress. There's no difference between us on the importance of the issue and the threat that anti-Semitism poses in the world or the need to do something about it. The question was: what was the administrative structure that was going to be most effective? A decision has been reached on that now and we're moving forward to implement it.

And on sort of the last part of your question, no, I don't think there was anything affected, the reporting on this. As Ed mentioned, we report on anti-Semitism in the Annual Human Rights Reports and then, because they're staggered on a six-month basis, the International Religious Freedom Reports, and so we've been singling this issue out for attention in any event and it deserves to be. So there's no -- there was no editorial aspect to that.

QUESTION: If it's possible to answer this, two questions. How much weight do you all give to the -- what is euphemistically called "the Arab-Israeli" conflict as a cause of anti-Semitism? The Europeans give a lot of weight to it. And I sense your report is a little -- finds it far more deep-rooted and, frankly, goes back about 3,500 years, before there was an Arab-Israeli conflict.

And the other thing is, you don't touch on the UN, do you? And I wondered if there's any feeling, any findings, any review of the torrent of abuse and condemnation that is put on Israel's back and head by people at the UN all the time, even a UN official saying, I think at least once now, maybe twice, that Israel is the cause of all its problems -- a senior UN official. Is the UN a little bit guilty here of what you're saying a lot of countries are?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Well, let me take a stab and then also have Ed take that.

On the first part of the question of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I think as I tried to indicate in my remarks, and I think is pretty clear in the report, yes, anti-Semites use people's dissatisfaction with Israel's policy and their -- or their own situation, which they may attribute to Israeli policy, as a tool for promoting anti-Semitism. But we make a very clear distinction between criticism of Israeli policy, whether legitimate or illegitimate, that's (inaudible) just as people criticize our policy or some other country's policy, you know, that's one thing. Blaming it on the fact that Israel is tied to, you know, Judaism, both religiously and ethnically, is a completely different -- that's where you get into anti-Semitism, where you're demonizing a group of people because of their religious or ethnic background, not because of what they're doing.

So, yes, these people are trying to blend the two, but it's an older problem and this is a new excuse for the problem, I guess is the way I would put it.

QUESTION: It's a new issue. Well, thank you for that. I'm trying to get at how much of the anti-Semitism that you all see is connected, for honest or dishonest reasons, to that conflict. Europeans, you know, as far as they're concerned, it all began when Israel refused to establish a Palestinian state or something. I don't know.

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: Well, if I could just add, in terms of -- this came up as a process of trying to define anti-Semitism, and in our executive summary we point out that anti-Semitism, as you say, has very traditional deep roots, that's because of Jews' religion and their ethnicity that goes way back.

The more recent form, of course, is linked to what tension in the Middle East and what's happening there. I think that's certainly on the rise. The traditional anti-Semitism is still there and it's manifested by ultranationalist groups in the Eastern Europe or rightist groups. That's still there.

And I think certainly confusion here between Jews who live in Europe and then issues about the Middle East is part of this, and I think that that's important in terms of our definition, like Secretary Powell said, there certainly is room for legitimate criticism of Israel, but it goes beyond the bounds when it becomes -- it demonizes Israel's leaders and things like that.

We've tried to present it in a way to distinguish between those and identify the newer type of anti-Semitism that we see.

QUESTION: And how about the slew of UN resolutions?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Let me take that one. I wanted to mention --

QUESTION: Those are the (inaudible) that nobody notices, but the slew of resolutions condemning -- do you think that's just criticizing Israel's policy, or do you think there's a tinge of anti-Semitism behind that?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: You know, that's looking at what are people's motivations. But I wanted to say something on that because my bureau's got a lot to do with the Annual Commission of Human Rights of the UN in Geneva. And we think it's totally outrageous when you look down the agenda for the UN -- there are these different items that are on the agenda that they take up.

Item nine is the one that's country-specific problems. There, any one country can -- there can only be one resolution against them. But there's a special agenda item, item eight, which is on Israel, and there you can have any number of resolutions under that item, and so every year there's this huge pile-on of resolutions attacking sometimes things that Israel was allegedly doing 20 years ago, but even the people making the allegations don't claim they're continuing to do it, and yet they bring the same resolutions up every year and mechanically vote for them.

So we find that whole practice to be unfair, despicable and degrading to the UN institutions that get abused or misused for that purpose.

Now, whether -- to what extent, that is, you know, the people who are voting for those things or raising those things are motivated by anti-Semitism and to what extent they're motivated by Israeli policy or whether they may be just trying to stick their fingers in our eyes, or whatever their motives may be, I'm probably not the psychiatrist to figure that one out, but whatever is behind it, we don't have any use for it. We think it's wrong and it ought to be ended.

QUESTION: So you wouldn't characterize those UN resolutions as being anti-Semitic resolutions, would you? I have another question. I just want you to clarify that.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: No, I mean, if a resolution says Israel is bad because it has occupation troops or something, you can't say on its face that that's anti-Semitic. You can say it may be anti-Israeli, it may be motivated by anti-Semitism, but that's where it's, as I say, it's -- if it starts talking about Zionism as racism, that's a different case because you're now starting to go beyond a specific Israeli policy and are starting to demonize --

QUESTION: Let me rephrase the question. Yesterday the Palestinian candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, called the Israelis "the Zionist enemy" in response to a shell that killed, you know, eight or nine kids. Now, would that be considered anti-Semitic? Would it be less anti-Semitism if he said the "Israeli enemy," considering that there was a war going on between Palestinians and Israelis? I mean, what is the proper way to address this issue, in your opinion?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Enemy or entity? I didn't get the quote.

QUESTION: "Zionist enemy," he said.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Enemy?

QUESTION: Right, yeah.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah.

QUESTION: So is that anti-Semitic or is that inappropriate -- would it be -- would it have been less, you know, hurtful if he said "the Israeli enemy"?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah, I mean, it would be less able to be interpreted as an anti-Semitic remark. I'm not sure that Israelis would have welcomed it any more.

QUESTION: But then, there is a war going on; in war there is enemies.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Sure.

QUESTION: Obviously, the Palestinians and the Israelis, there is an occupation going on and they are at war. They are enemies. What is the proper way to call them? When do you cross the line into anti-Semitism? How do you define it?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: To me, it's one thing if you say Israel, which with whom we are having this conflict, the state with which we are having a conflict, and we don't like the fact that they're occupying our territory and we're opposed to it, or however they want to phrase it, versus saying the Jews or the Zionists are doing this to us, which starts to attribute the unhappy -- or the behavior you're unhappy with to somebody's ethnic or religious background.

It's the same difference between somebody saying, you know, the terrorists who are attacking -- who attacked New York and the Pentagon or who have attacked our forces in Iraq or something, versus saying the Muslim terrorists or the Islamics who do all of this, because you're starting then to demonize an entire group for the behavior of one part of them.

QUESTION: Not to belabor the issue, but is the term "Zionist" derogatory? I mean, considering that you have a Zionist Organization of America. I mean, there are very proud Zionists in this country. So is that a derogatory term that ought to be equated with anti-Semitism?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Again, you know, it's kind of you know it when you see it. You have to look at what the person saying it has -- what are they trying to convey.

QUESTION: Yeah.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: And, you know, you can see it here in race relations, too. Sometimes one group of people using a term with their colleagues, it's actually a term of endearment; somebody else using it in a different context, it can be a very racist remark.

So I'm not going to try to parse those kind of statements with you, but, you know, and would that it were that we were -- that that was the only problem was trying to get people to use nicer language. It's a much more serious problem.

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: I think, if I just may, where I think we are on firm ground is when Israel is -- the denial of Israel's right to exist, or denial of the Holocaust or a double standard of Israel or demonizing Israel's leaders. These are examples -- demonizing Israel's leaders, for example, with a cartoon, a swastika, and so on -- those are the type of clear examples where I think it's commonly agreed that that becomes anti-Semitic.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Okay. Sir.

QUESTION: Okay, the section of Russian report mentions that three of the four parties come to represent in the Russian parliament have some anti-Semitic element in them. How concerned is the U.S. about it and will there be any comments to the Russian Government on this? And secondly, why is there no specific section on the United States? Does that mean there's no anti-Semitism here?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah, let me -- actually, I think there is a reference indicating that there's anti-Semitism here, but let me hit the last part of your question first, and that is -- and this is something that's based on our standard practice. We don't report on our own human rights record in the annual Human Rights Report. We don't report on our own religious freedom record. And the reason we don't do that is not that we don't have problems; we do have human rights violations in our country; we do have anti-Semitism problems in our country; and we do have religious freedom issues in our country.

But for us to do a report on ourselves just would not be credible. One time they tried it back in the '70s and it was a joke. So we specifically say we aren't going to report on ourselves. Others do report on us, including the OSCE on this issue, or we have to report to them and then it'll get fed back.

QUESTION: Right.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: But that's the reason for it. It's not because we're saying we don't have a problem. We do.

Now on the question of Russia, yes, we are in -- I know from our Office of Religious Freedom and so on, we're in constantly talking to the Russian Government about things like registering, you know, different groups. There, they tended to break it down so some Jewish groups have been able to get registered and others haven't. And, you know, when remarks are made by prominent politicians, we do call it to their attention. And I think as the report reflects, the Russian Government has, you know, taken that to heart in some cases.

As Ed was saying, when you look at this, one of the things that I find interesting in going through it myself is that with all the work that particularly this gentleman is responsible for in the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, whether it's Western Europe or former-Soviet Union states, there is a lot of data. And so you'll have -- there's more data and more incidents that are reported here, but that usually is because those governments and we are paying attention and the incidents get reported and then usually something gets done about them. Now, whether it's adequate or not is another matter, but at least something is happening there.

Some of the other countries, you'll see the report is very, very short and very brief. That doesn't mean they don't have a problem. It could mean that, but it also could mean that they, for example, in the case of Saudi Arabia, have said that anyone who's not a Muslim can't be a citizen. So there are very few Jewish residents in Saudi Arabia; and yet, that country has one of the worst religious freedom records on the planet.

So the fact that not too much is said may either mean that there's just not much of a reporting system unlike what the OSCE has or it may mean that they don't have many incidents because they don't have a Jewish population of any size, which is, I think, the case in much of Africa; or it can mean that they have taken such strong anti-Semitic measures that they don't have a population for very negative reasons and that -- so it's not -- that's why, I think, Ambassador O'Donnell's caution that we not try to compare country to country based on the level of detail and so on in the report is well taken.

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: Back at the end of the room.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah. This young lady, I'll -- you're next.

QUESTION: Thank you. I've been trying so hard.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah. Your colleague back there has been trying just as long as you have, so I'll come to him next.

QUESTION: Okay. Ambassador O'Donnell just said demonizing Israel's leaders is a form of being anti-Semitic. I mean, we watch comedians, U.S. comedians, like, late-night shows, David Letterman, Jay Leno, making fun of the President through cartoons or whatever you want to name it, I mean, and we don't call that anti-Bush or, you know, we don't make a report out of this.

But really, I mean, it's so unclear to me what are the -- what's the mechanism for you to decide what is anti-Semitic? I mean, who is anti-Semitic? What do you call -- which kind of action you call anti-Semitic? And is it safe to say that anti-Semitism is anybody who is anti-Judaism or anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: You want to answer that?

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: Well, I think demonizing means, like the example I gave, where a Nazi swastika, which you can imagine, for Jewish communities in Europe when -- that has a special meaning, and when that's attributed to the leader of Israel or, you know, or someone like that, that's when I think there's a clear, fine point, and that's the perception, certainly of Jews who live in Europe who -- and those are the ones we're talking about -- who feel threatened. And it does -- you can't underestimate, I think, that feeling of insecurity from things that -- like this that appear in the media in caricatures and political cartoons.

Now obviously, there are plenty of political cartoons that do not fall in that category, but there are some that contribute to the feeling of fear and concern for their safety, security, when you couple that with verbal harassment or physical assaults, which is also present in some countries in Europe. And that's why I think that type of anti -- that type of caricature or political cartoon or whatever is also a part of what is seen as anti-Semitism.

QUESTION: And what is, I mean, anti-Judaism or anti-Zionism?

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: Well, I think in our report we tried to clarify that anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish. It's anti-Jewish because of religion or ethnicity or they're different. They look different. They wear -- a young boy who has a kippah or a rabbi, an Orthodox rabbi in the streets of Europe who is assaulted. That's -- and I think that's the way I would answer that one.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah, I mean, I would just follow that because in some of the -- like the OSCE now has special rapporteurs on intolerance, three different types -- anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and then other forms of intolerance. And the UN actually has condemned these things, too.

And I guess the rough analogy I would have, it's the difference between saying, you know, something that went around just promoting hatred of all Muslims because -- maybe because of legitimate grievances against some Muslims, that they, you know, ran an airplane into the Twin Towers. You can say, gee, we really hate what those guys did; but if you translate that into we hate everyone who shares their religion, that becomes Islamophobia.

It's not directed against the actions of or specific actions in a group. It's taking that and broadening it out to say let's hate everybody that shares that religion. And I think that may be the rough analogy here is when -- yeah, it's fine for people to say we don't like Israeli policy on this issue or that. The United States disagrees with Israel on some of its policies. But when you translate that into saying, ergo we should hate all Jews everywhere in the world because the leaders of Israel are Jewish, that's carrying it a bit beyond the --

QUESTION: Can I -- just a quick follow-up?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Let's -- you've had one. If we get a second round, we'll come back to you.

QUESTION: Were you able to make any judgments about the -- to the extent to which anti-Semitic incidents, especially in Western Europe, are becoming less a phenomenon of, you know, skinhead nationalists and more the Muslim immigrant populations? And to what extent is that sort of anti-Semitism being generated by inflammatory rhetoric from Islamic clerics in your --

MR. O'DONNELL: Okay, thank you. I think the traditional anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitism that has been there for some time, is still there, and I think it's difficult to generalize, but I think generally speaking that's still present and you see it with attacks occasionally by skinheads or ultranationalists or right-wing fringe elements. And that's still there. And there's also a traditional anti-Semitism that has been there because the Jews are different, even in the absence of Jews in many parts of Europe and some parts of Eastern Europe where there are very small Jewish communities, beneath the surface you still find the sort of concern about Jews that dates back for centuries.

The increasing type of anti-Semitism is associated with the Muslim minorities, and that has been increasing in the past four years, and that certainly is related to what's happening in the Middle East, tensions in the Middle East. It's fueled to a certain extent by satellite programming, the sort of hate that is represented by things such as the Protocol of Elders of Zion that's coming out of Middle East. This is -- Protocol of Elders of Zion, as you know, is about the Jews controlling the world and dates to the 19th century but it's -- we see it in media in the Middle East and it's being transferred to Muslim populations through satellite to Europe and that does inflame that sentiment so that, unfortunately, those tensions that young Muslims living in Europe feel about what's going on in the Middle East, they take it out on their neighbors because they have a kippah or they're identifiable as Jewish and living in the same communities.

QUESTION: What about the element of this being fomented by clerics from the pulpit? Have you been able to find anything about that?

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: Well, certainly that has an element on Muslim populations and certainly we -- I think there are a lot of efforts, certainly in Europe, I know in France, between the government and the Jewish community and Muslim clerics and leaders to address that so that -- a mutual understanding and dialogue. And that's taking place and obviously more is needed.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: And that is covered in fair detail in the report, sort of country by country. This gentleman has been waiting awhile.

QUESTION: Yes. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on something that you mentioned briefly in the report, and that's the blending of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism in Europe. Have you seen anger over U.S. policy, specifically the war in Iraq, fueling anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic attacks?

(Inaudible.)

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: Well, I think there's several elements to this. There's anti-U.S. feeling, there's anti-globalization, and there's anti-Israel, and there's this traditional feeling that Jews somehow control the world, the sort of Protocol of the Elders of Zion thought. And I think I saw it best represented in a cartoon in a European paper, where there were -- the President -- it showed, supposedly, President Bush in the Oval Office with a map of Iraq and Hassidic Jewish rabbis standing around him, and he's planning it. I mean, that sort of brings it all together in a way. And it's an intellectual sort of a media forum, but it very much is a part of anti-Semitism that I think we're all concerned about, including, I think, European governments who understand that, and we've had dialogue about that as well.

QUESTION: But you don't think anti-globalization is anti-Semitism?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: No, no. But it's -- but what -- I think what we're saying is that some of the anti-globalization sentiment, people who have legitimate or, in their view, legitimate concerns, are entitled to have their views about globalization, have somehow conflated that with this idea that Jews run the world and globalization is the fault of Jews.

And I think one of the disturbing things is that you're starting to see this in some -- you know, it's not just sort of right-wing ultranationalist skinhead types. It's now you're getting some fairly otherwise respectable intellectuals that are left of center who are anti-globalization who are starting to let this stuff creep into their rhetoric.

And that's disturbing because it starts to -- it starts to take what is a legitimate issue for debate, anti-globalization or the war in Iraq or any other issue, and when you start turning that into an excuse for saying therefore we should hate Jews, that's where you cross the line, in my view. It's not that you're not entitled to question all those other issues. Of course, those are fair game. But it's the same as saying, you know, you start hating all Muslims because of some policy you don't like by one Muslim country or something.

One more and then --

QUESTION: Yeah, I just wanted to follow up very quickly because, you know, we're getting into a lot of details. The divestment issue, I mean, there is -- on campuses there are a great deal of effort to divest from Israel because of what is considered to be discriminatory policies against the Palestinians. Recently the Presbyterian Church decided to divest with companies that do business with Israel. Would that be considered anti-Semitic, or did you at all tackle this issue?

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: I think that type of issue needs to be discussed between religious communities. You're speaking of the Presbyterian Church --

QUESTION: Presbyterian Church, yeah.

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: -- and the Jewish community leadership in the United States. And I think that's where that dialogue should take place, between religious communities.

QUESTION: Well, it's a little more than that because what the did, they targeted Caterpillar in particular. They pulled their money out of Caterpillar because it is involved in tearing up, you know, land and olive trees and building the wall. I mean it was sort of issue-specific. That would not be considered anti-Semitic, would it?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: It may be very wrong-headed, but that isn't necessarily anti-Semitic.

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: Would this report have anything, or would have a role in terms of your policies with the countries that you may think that are not doing enough on the anti-Semitic issue?

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Yeah. Do you want to?

AMBASSADOR O'DONNELL: Go ahead.

AMBASSADOR KOZAK: Well, okay. I mean, yes, this report, but I would say, in this respect, it's not something new. That is, I mentioned we, and as Ed mentioned, we have been reporting on anti-Semitism as well as on other human rights violations both in our annual Human Rights Report and in the International Religious Freedom Report.
Congress takes what they see in those reports on this and other issues into account in developing congressional policy towards other countries. The Executive Branch certainly does.