ADL Hosts Special Envoy Deborah Lipstadt and Discusses “Fighting Hate from Home”

By Stephen E. Lipken

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt and Deborah Leipzig, ADL Vice President of Leadership hosted U.S. Department of State Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt in a webinar, “Fighting Hate from Home” on Wednesday, July 27, 2022.  

Lipstadt recently traveled to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) and participated in the Presidential Delegation to Israel. 

“Antisemitism is on the rise, here at home and around the world,” Greenblatt began. 

“We are bearing witness to the proliferation of antisemitic acts in public places and have seen a normalization of antisemitism, the shift of movement of fringe ideas from margins into the mainstream, including manifestations in Europe against circumcision and Kosher slaughter.

“ADL has been tracking antisemitic incidents for over forty years, longer than the FBI.  In 2021, ADL tracked 2,717 anti-Jewish incidents across the U.S., the highest number we have ever seen. We launched a COMBAT Plan last year, a one-of-a-kind comprehensive framework for policymakers and elected officials to fight antisemitism.”

Greenblatt asked Lipstadt what her specific goals were. “The way I see this job is like a pitchfork with two prongs; “one, is to put out fires to make sure the embers do not explode into a conflagration.  Given the Abraham Accords which have been fully embraced by this Administration, there is a chance to do something positive, to work in countries where there were purveyors of hatred,” Lipstadt replied.

Expressing deep alarm about the rise of White Nationalism with linkages between Europe, America, Christchurch, New Zealand, Norway and Democratic Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum’s association with left-wing Dream Defenders, tied to Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, Greenblatt asked Lipstadt, “How does that factor in terms of your priorities?  How do you reconcile this White Nationalism with the work you are doing?”

“There is the impossibility in this day and age to make a strict separation between foreign and domestic,” Lipstadt, author of Antisemitism: Here and Now answered.