US Jewish academic and Holocaust expert Deborah Lipstadt addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Photo: Reuters/Sipa USA/Rod Lamkey

The US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, told lawmakers and human rights experts assembled in Washington on Tuesday that antisemitism is like a virus in testimony on rising antisemitism in the United States and abroad.

“I think of antisemitism as a virus, a virus almost like a herpes virus,” she said. Someone who was unlucky enough to get that virus, it’s very difficult to get rid of it,” Lipstadt told the Helsinki Commission, an independent US government commission compromising 18 members of Congress and and three currently-vacant executive branch appointees.

Formally known as the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Helsinki Commission holds annual hearings on antisemitism in recognition of Europe’s unique history of antisemitism, including the Holocaust, according to its website.

Lipstadt said for societies undergoing stress, that outbreak is often to resort to blaming Jews. “Because if they were to blame bicycle riders, people would say, ‘you’re nuts,'” Lipstadt added. “Now, there’s some medication that may get rid of it. But for many people who have it, a moment of stress, a job interview, their wedding, something happens and they wake up that morning and they’ve got an outbreak, they’ve got a sore.”

In opening remarks to the commission, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) noted that 2021 saw the highest number of antisemitic attacks ever recorded and that 2022 appears to be on “the same trajectory.” Cardin also thanked Republican members of Congress who spoke out against Former President Trump’s dinner with antisemitic rapper Kanye West and Holocaust-denying alt-right figure Nick Fuentes.

The hearing follows the announcement by the Biden administration Tuesday of the creation of an inter-agency group to combat antisemitism.

Several commission members noted that the FBI’s hate crimes report for 2021, which was released Monday, is marred by failures in data collection and reporting. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized the 22% decline in the number of local police agencies reporting their hate crime data to the FBI, including large cities like New York and Los Angeles. Despite the smaller sample size of reporting agencies, anti-Jewish hate crimes still comprised the largest percentage of religion-based hate crimes in 2021.

Rabbi Andrew Baker, the American Jewish Committee’s Director of International Jewish Affairs, testified to the commission that in Europe anti-Kosher-slaughter and anti-circumcision movements are a rising threat to European Jews.

“Proponents may say they are acting in the name of animal welfare or children’s rights,” Baker said. “But they welcome support from anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and antisemitic parties. And their success threatens the very future of Jewish life in Europe.”