Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) and Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt during the event at Queensborough Community College’s Kupferberg Holocaust Center, 24 July, 2023. (Photo: Office of Rep. Meng)

The US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt on Monday met with leaders of the Queens Jewish community at Queensborough Community College’s Kupferberg Holocaust Center where she highlighted the Biden administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism both in the US and across the globe.

Lipstadt described the administration’s National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism that was released in May as well as the national and global rise in antisemitism alongside Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY), who represents Queens and is a co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism.

“It was very clear to the White House…that they see antisemitism as a threat to national security,” Lipstadt said of the impetus for the strategy. “So the White House took this very, very seriously. Now we have had presidents from both sides of the aisle, from all different political persuasions, who have spoken out quite passionately and meaningfully when there have been antisemitic incidents – too many in past years. But never before has an administration said, ‘What can we do about it?’ And they marshaled two dozen federal agencies to look at their programs and say, ‘What can you do to address antisemitism?’”

Meng in her introduction cited the statistical rise in domestic incidents of antisemitism, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recording a 36% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2022 over the previous year – the highest total number of such incidents since the ADL began tracking them in 1979.

“And globally, the picture is not much better,” Meng said. “Earlier this year, a survey measuring antisemitic attitudes across Europe found that some of the most hateful beliefs about Jews, that they control the government or are inherently greedy, remain deeply entrenched.”

Lipstadt said that despite these negative global trends, significant progress has been made to combat antisemitism in the Arab world, particularly in the wake of the Abraham Accords that established normal relations between Israel and several Arab countries for the first time.

“The references [in Saudi Arabian school textbooks] in which it was common that Jews were referred to as monkeys and dogs and [other] horrible ways – it’s all gone,” she said. “I know that based on work done by our embassy in Riyadh, that the antisemitic content of the Friday Sermons is way down. And I was just in the UAE and the Abrahamic House, which is a church, mosque and synagogue together….You ever thought I’d be visiting a…synagogue in the United Arab Emirates? Five years ago, they’d have said, you’re nuts.”