“Antisemitism is not the problem of the Jews. It’s the problem of antisemites, and of each of the countries, communities and societies in which it festers,” Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, told JNS last week.
“No form of hate can be fought by the subject of that hate alone,” she added.
JNS met Cotler-Wunsh at the ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute for Antisemitism Studies in Oxford, where she addressed academics from more than 15 countries on the explosion of Jew-hatred that has plagued the world in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
ISGAP’s program, held at St Catherine’s College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, will run through Aug. 9. Faculty members, joining from across the globe, will receive guidance in building antisemitism courses that they will later teach.
“Increasingly, Jews around the world remove Stars of David, mezuzot and every sign of their visible identity. That is a troubling sign for the places in which it’s happening,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
“This strain of ever-mutating antisemitism, though, doesn’t only target Jews. It targets anyone who self-identifies or is identified by others as a Zionist, supporting the right of the State of Israel to exist and supporting the right of the Jews to self-determination,” she continued.
“Hence, it is the role and responsibility of all countries to fight it, and the State of Israel, as the nation of the Jewish people, has a special role in this,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
Cotler-Wunsh is part of a coalition of approximately 30 special envoys for combating antisemitism from around the world that she said represent the shared responsibility of nations worldwide.
To identify and combat this pernicious hate, one must first define it, she said.
“What has been very important for me to talk about in meetings with legislators, university presidents, mayors, law enforcement agencies and others is to talk about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
“Antisemitism has a definition which is the result of a long, democratic process that’s been adopted by more than 40 countries and 1,200 entities and is a critical resource to comprehensively identify what it is that they are facing in the streets,” she continued.
“Strategies for combating antisemitism are not worth the paper they are written on if it is not clearly defined—in all its strains. As such, the IHRA definition is a very important resource and an educational tool for law enforcement,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
From left: ISGAP Managing Director Sima Vaknin-Gil, Executive Director Dr. Charles Asher Small and Chairman Natan Sharansky, and Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh, at Oxford University, July 28, 2024. Credit: ISGAP.
Hate online
Before entering into her role as special envoy, Cotler-Wunsh was a member of Knesset in 2020-2021 who initiated and co-founded the Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism.
“There is an understanding that what happens online doesn’t remain online. This is a global phenomenon and we have to engage with it in the same global way. It doesn’t matter if people consume their social media in Toronto or Paris,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
“Online antisemitism fuels the hatred on the streets and has a real world impact,” she continued.
“We created a work group to engage with social media companies, we held a meeting in the U.S. State Department with my counterpart [U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism] Deborah Lipstadt about the national security threat that online antisemitism presents for the United States,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
Police arrested more than 3,100 protesters during the wave of anti-Israel encampments in the U.S. this spring, but most had the charges against them dropped.
In one instance, prosecutor Delia Garza in Travis County dropped criminal trespassing charges against more than 100 people arrested at the University of Texas at Austin. She said that jurors would have likely decided that students were exercising free-speech rights.
Cotler-Wunsh emphasized the need to create a safe back-to-school strategy for universities and hold them to account.
“The special envoys have a responsibility with regards to their government and legislators. It’s not enough to legislate or make a commitment to combat antisemitism, somebody must follow up,” she said.
“The challenges of these communities mirror themselves, city after city, country after country,” Cotler-Wunsh continued. “They are experiencing similar mutations of this antisemitism that is attacking them and it has a direct impact on their daily lives.”
As Israel’s special envoy, she engaged universities in Israel that had not adopted the IHRA definition.
“We have to recognize that antisemitism is one and the same whether one lives in Israel as a Jew or as a Zionist outside of Israel,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
“Adopting the IHRA definition in academic spaces sends the message that we recognize and reject these forms of bigotry and hatred in academic spaces just as we do all other forms and don’t want it impeding or holding back freedom of speech or academic freedom,” she said.
“Israel is part of a global network of academia and we have to also recognize all forms of hatred; there is no reason to hold Israel to a different standard,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
In the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of some 1,200 people in the northwestern Negev, the connection between Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora was revived and she hopes this bond will continue to grow stronger, she said.
“For thousands of years, we didn’t have a nation-state, a land, a place that could be a refuge if we needed it or if we wanted to opt in,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
“We have a responsibility in this generation to opt in and retrieve our identity as the Jewish people, not because we are threatened by hate or by our enemies that define us from the outside, but because we remember and renew our shared covenant as a people,” she concluded.
Source: JNS