Leadership Talk by the AJC Director of International Jewish Affairs; Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism

Abstract

Fifteen years have passed since the OSCE held its first conference on antisemitism in June 2003, here in Vienna. It addressed specific matters relevant to antisemitism, including the importance of understanding and defining it, the need for education about Judaism and the Jewish community, and the value of promoting Holocaust education and remembrance. But the conference also spoke in general and comprehensive ways by offering recommendations. It underscored the obligation for governments to identify and monitor hate crimes, the need to train police and prosecutors, and the need to teach students about religion and religious communities generally. In that pre-social media era, the conference flagged concerns about the spread of hate on the internet and the responsibility of traditional media to avoid promoting intolerance.1 It offered the OSCE as a place for governments to share best practices and to prod its participating States to do more. Before the conference had come to an end, the German delegation stood up to propose that it host a follow-up conference in Berlin the following year. That conference and the Berlin Declaration that resulted from it were a milestone in efforts by the OSCE to tackle the problem of antisemitism. In carefully worded language, the conference began a process of defining antisemitism as it relates to Israel. The declaration spoke of antisemitism taking on “new forms and expressions,”2 and it made clear that incidents in Israel and the Middle East could never justify antisemitic attacks. It spelled out commitments for participating States and for the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), including identifying