Thank you so much for joining me. The u. S. Government main point person for fighting antisemitism abroad and vulnerable jewish communities around the world. Please welcome to the stage, the special envoy for batting antisemitism, elan carr. Thank you so much. What an amazing room. I am so pleased and so honored to be with you today. Really, my most Important Message to you is a thank you. I owe you a debt of gratitude personally and the United States government owes you a debt of gratitude. In my work monitoring and fight this ancient relentless sickness that is antisemitism i have no more important address than the adl. There are many fine jewish organizations out there. But there is one organization synonymous with the fight against antisemitism and with the fight against ethnic and religious hatred and intolerance. Thats adl. This to epstein and jonathan greenblatt. What amazing leaders you have. Tim jacobson with the adl forever and got and award last night. Youre amazing. Were see grateful to you. Special shoutout to your National Leadership team. When i tell you adl is a goto address, thats not just a line. I want to give you an example, a very recent example. I just got back from eastern and central europe. My first trip that involved bilateral meetings with foreign governments was a trip to eastern and central europe. For every country i visited, i relied heavily on adls work product. In fact, the briefings i received from adl were a key part of my preparation, in addition to all of our government resources, a key part of my preparation going to those countries and having specific strategies and specific asks for ways we can improve upon the situation in those countries. And so i cannot thank you enough. Your work product and your impact was felt literally in the last few weeks. Before those visits to those countries in central and Eastern Europe, i want to tell you what else i did. Four weeks ago, 4 1 2 weeks ago, i had the great privilege to participate in the first ever official United States government delegation to march of the living. 6 [ applause ] thats right. 6 United States ambassadors. Our ambassadors to poland, israel, germany, the vatican, switzerland, spain, and i, marched arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder. On that terrible walk from auschnitz, we did that with thousands and leaders who came to be a witness and came to be accounted for and came to say, never again. Then, hours later we boarded a plain and flew to israel. The very next day, after being in that abyss of death, next to the gas chambers and the crem ma toria, we again were arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder. But this time dancing and celebrating shebat. It was friday night and dancing and celebrating it with ibs shoulders and dancers and visitors, revving in a celebration of life. In that moment the message was driven home in celebrating the state of israel were celebrating a country and birth of a founding, humanitys greatest response to historys greatest evil. The building out of the ash of 6 million, a country that is decent and just and democratic and free and a beacon of innovation for the world, truly, thats what the state of israel represents. You know what else is a great human answer to injustice . The adl, in 1913, as antisemitism was rising in europe, after the conviction of leo frank, this organization answered in terrifying prussian, that trend by building an organization not only to fighting antisemitism, how wonderful it is the organization was dedicated to fighting intolerance and injustice and hatred of all kinds and all stripes. That brings me to today. In central and Eastern Europe i confronted the antisemitism threat of those far right ethnic supremists movements on the rise in parts of europe. We confronted it. We had specific requests of those governments and im happy to report our interlo surks uitors are making specific requests i put forward. What i want to put forth today is the Fastest Growing kind of antisemitism. That is the antisemitism that clothes itself in the language of ante zionism and israel hatred. This is the intellectual circles and u. S. College campuses. It is no less dangerous than the other flavors and forms of antisemitism. In my line of work, yjew hatred is jew hatred. Whether from one side or the other, we will confront it. [ applause ] this kind of antisemitism is often called the new antisemitism. Im here to tell you, there is nothing new about it because everything it does and every manifestation that comes out of it is the same old antisemitism from years past, rebranded andr andr andree repackaged. How about the blade libels . Its no different. The blood libels are against the jewish state accusing them of prepr preposterous crimes. How about what weve seen over so many decades and so many centuries . Same old thing. The state of israel delegitimize, the same serious question its right to exist undermined. How about terminology . The same old terminology. A European Jewish leader was recently called a dirty zionist as though the substitution of a term might confuse us as to what it really meant. How about the obsessive pathological hatred we again have seen in the traditional antisemitism over so many ages, it is the same. A kid at a Prestigious University in the United States gave me a math answer sheet, thats right, a math answer sheet. I have it in my possession j says the integral of soandso of suchandsuch and derivative of suchandsuch is soandso. Then, it say, another day in the occupied palestinian territories occupation zionists killing children. Then it goes back to math. The kid who gave me this. You know what he told me . He said to me, with a voice of exhaustion, in math class, i cant get away from this stuff, in math class . The same obsessive hatred. How about justification . Antisemitism over the centuries, over the millennium always found justification, things we supposedly did and things we supposedly are doing, even justified by the german assassination of a diplomat by a you. Not made up, true. We know it wasnt the response to to one thing one jew did. It came out of it. Certainly this new antisemitism is always premised upon and grasps antisemitism one thing it is said to have done. We all know its not really about israeli policy, it is the same old hatred, obsessive hatred that is seeking justification in israeli policy. Finally, economic isolation. The yuden boycott, those nazi brown shirts holding signs. The german budistad just voted the divestment levels against the state of sirles is antisemitism plain and simple. Thats right. Thank you, germany. [ applause ] they also said they also said in this legislation, and they ought to know the bdf movement reminds everybody of the uden boycott of the 1930s. So thats what this socalled new antisemitism is. Why is it so important we unite to fight it with every bit of vigor and every bit of dedication we need to exhibit in our fight against the other kinds of antisemitism, because, my friends, this kind of antisemitism is working. It is working. A recent poll done of American Jewish College Students shows that jewish students on College Campuses today are less supportive of israel than ever, nor nor more inclined to blame israel than ever before, because of the climate on College Campuses. I recently spoke at a los angeles festival, after i spoem, an evangelical kid, a whole group of christian evangelicals there as volunteers. He came up to me and said, i love israel. I asked, matthew, let me ask you a question, is it true young evangelicals are less supportive of israel than ever before . He said, absolutely, thats true. He said, because we also go to college. We also hear whats being said. We also in that same context, the same indoctrination. This is, my friends, a moment of decision for us. What we see in europe and what we see here in the United States is a combustible caldreth of antisemitism from the ethnic supremacist right, the vicious antizionist left and radical islam. They operate together, they borrow each others language and they paint each others symbols on jewish institutions. We have to decide that today, today there is no room for disunity in the jewish world. The times are too urgent, the crisis too great. If we are serious about fighting all antisemitism, now is the time for us to come together, one voice. We are in the final weeks, the final week of the counting of the omar. What is it about . The process of transition from the slaves physically out of egypt to the emotional liberation of the jewish people at mount sinai, 49 days. We count those days to mark increasing levels of spiritual elevation. What is the message . To what end do the jewish people progress in the 49 days until they got to mount sinai . That tells us that it was a journey of unity, and that the prerequisite for the jewish people receiving the tohla at mount sinai was jewish People United more than ever before. That the jewish people stood at mount sinai, one body with one heart, one beating heart. Thats what it took. No less than that is what it took. And today, as we mark 75 years, only 75 years, since the cre crematori stopped operating, they have barely cooled, and we see our survival threatened again, in europe of all places and latin america and the middle east and now in the United States. So today i ask of the jewish world and especially you the organization, that defines this fight, that we stand together and that we dont weaponize antisemitism, that we dont politicize antisemitism, and that we decide jew hatred is jew hatred and we will fight it everywhere and anywhere it rears its ugly head. If we decide that, my friend, if we decide that, and if we act that way, we will truly build [speaking nonenglish] and we will build that Better Future that our children and our grandchildren so richly deserve. Thank you so much. God bless you. Thank you for everything you do. [ applause ]
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