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Human Rights & Public Policy


B’nai B’rith’s International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy held a number of high level leadership delegations throughout 2017.

In May, President Gary P. Saltzman and Executive Vice President and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin led a delegation to Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. The delegation met with President of Argentina Mauricio Macri, Vice President of Uruguay Raul Sendic, Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs Susana Malcorra and other government officials, diplomats and Jewish community leaders. The delegation included B’nai B’rith leaders from each country. There were media interviews and numerous reports in social media, including tweets from Macri´s office. In Uruguay the daily newspapers El Observador and El Pais featured the meetings on page one. There was also an interview for social media in Chile.

In late June/early July, Saltzman and Mariaschin led a delegation to Georgia and Azerbaijan. The group toured Jewish historic and cultural sites and met with Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Artur Rasizade and Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, along with other government representatives, the ranking American and Israeli diplomats in both capitals, representatives of the local Jewish community and religious leaders. Azerbaijan and Georgia are key caucus states with good relations with Israel and historic Jewish communities living within a tolerant society with a notable lack of ingrained anti-Semitism.
B’nai B’rith and The United Nations

Engaging with world leaders is imperative to combating the anti-Israel animus that has become pervasive at the United Nations. B’nai B’rith International, active at the U.N. since the world body was founded, is committed to holding the U.N. accountable to its essential founding values and aspirations. Learn more about our U.N. efforts here with this podcast.

An international delegation of more than 25 B’nai B’rith leaders and supporters participated in the annual B’nai B’rith advocacy delegation, led by Saltzman and Mariaschin, to the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. This year, the delegation met with senior diplomats from some 40 countries, including the United States, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom. During the meetings, delegates discussed the UNHRC’s biased and obsessive focus on Israel — exemplified by the council’s Agenda Item 7, which attacks Israel alone while the human rights records of all other members are discussed under a different agenda item — as well as the countless resolutions and mechanisms aimed at demonizing Israel. B’nai B’rith also hosted a reception at the Palais des Nations, the U.N. Office in Geneva, for diplomats and U.N. officials. More on our efforts at the council can be found here.

Immediately following the visit to Geneva, Saltzman, Mariaschin and some of the Geneva delegates traveled to Paris to continue U.N. advocacy at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In addition to meetings with senior diplomats from some two-dozen countries, including the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Kenya, India and Russia, the delegation also met with then-UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and other senior UNESCO officials. These meetings focused on Palestinian-sponsored resolutions within UNESCO bodies that pervert the mission of the organization by seeking to erase Jewish connections to holy sites in Israel.

Listen to our podcast that recaps the visit here.

We are working relentlessly to ensure UNESCO doesn’t erase Jews’ thousands-of-years connection to Israel. In the Times of Israel, we wrote: “The campaign to not just re-write history, but to eliminate it, has been a priority agenda item for the Palestinians for years.”

We spoke out directly at the Human Rights Council against a council-initiated plan to potentially blacklist companies doing business in Israel: Read more here and watch our statement.

B’nai B’rith organized a meeting for B’nai B’rith leaders and for leaders of other Jewish organizations with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The meeting was held in January, shortly after Guterres assumed office.

B’nai B’rith International also hosted an annual Holocaust commemoration on Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. B’nai B’rith’s Office of U.N. Affairs has a close cooperative relationship with the U.N.’s Holocaust  and the United Nations Outreach Programme, and the event is a complement to the U.N.’s commemoration ceremony in the General Assembly Hall. This year’s commemoration focused on the tremendous efforts of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara to save thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. The program’s featured speaker, Richard Salomon — the son of a survivor whose family was saved by Sugihara — spoke about the need to be an “upstander” in a world rife with hate and conflict. The event was streamed live on Facebook and can be seen in our archives.

In the fall, a B’nai B’rith International delegation, led by Saltzman and Mariaschin, met with dozens of world leaders on the sidelines of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly in New York.

During these meetings, the delegation discussed priority issues including Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist organizations, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, global anti-Semitism and continuing mistreatment of the Jewish state within U.N. bodies. The scheduled meetings included those with King Abdullah II of Jordan, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie, among others.

We view these meetings at the sidelines of the General Assembly as an opportunity to provide a quiet setting to address some of the most pressing issues faced by our community and its friends.

Prior to these meetings, Mariaschin hosted a podcast on what we could expect. Listen in here.

Global Perspective: European Affairs Office, Brussels and Beyond

B’nai B’rith International has a full-time presence in Brussels, the home of the European Union, where we focus on promoting EU-Israel relations and advocate for Jewish issues at European institutions in Brussels. For an overview, listen to our podcast.

In February, B’nai B’rith International co-organized and sponsored the annual EU Activism Seminar together with the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) and KAHAL that brought 20 Jewish students from across Europe and the United States to Brussels for a four-day seminar with meetings and workshops in the European Parliament, Commission and relevant embassies.

B’nai B’rith Canada launched a project to spread the word about the plight of Jewish refugees. In a bid to educate the public about the 850,000 Jewish refugees who were forced to flee their homes from across Arab lands and Iran at the founding of Israel, B’nai B’rith Canada enlisted Canadian human rights activist Judy Feld Carr, who single-handedly helped more than 3,200 Jews escape Syria, to tell her story.

B’nai B’rith hosted the group for its introductory session at our Brussels offices and also organized additional meetings at the U.S. embassy and the European Parliament with several Members of European Parliament as well as a special presentation on B’nai B’rith’s activities at UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in Paris.

B’nai B’rith hosted a steering committee meeting in March at the Brussels office to discuss and finalize the organization of a high-level Holocaust restitution conference in the European Parliament. Participants of the meeting included Israel’s Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues and the Return of Holocaust Era Assets Joel Lion, as well as representatives of the Shoah Legacy Institute ESLI, European Jewish Congress (EJC), the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Israeli Mission to the European Union and the U.S. State Department. The World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) also took part in this meeting.

B’nai B’rith International held high-level meetings in the spring at the European Parliament and Commission to discuss the Middle East peace process, the fight against anti-Semitism and the role of the European Institutions. Meetings were held with several Members of the European Parliament, including Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova, European External Action Service (EEAS) Head of Division for Israel and Palestine Fuentes Milani, coordinator on combating anti-Semitism Katharina von Schnurbein, Deputy Head of Cabinet for European Neighborhood Policy Emma Udwin and Managing Director for Human Rights Lotte Knudsen.
 
B’nai B’rith International, as part of the advisory board to the European Parliament Working Group Against anti-Semitism, co-hosted, together with four cross-party members of Parliament a special screening of “Liga Terezin,” a documentary about a soccer league of Jews in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. The screening inside the European Parliament was followed by a panel discussion with Oded Breda, protagonist of the movie as well as Alon Meyer, MAKKABI Germany president and Roy Rajber, press officer of the German National Football Team, among others to highlight modern day examples of anti-Semitism as well as best practices of how to combat it.
 
Also in the spring, B’nai B’rith International co-organized a conference on Understanding anti-Semitic Hate Crime and Addressing the Security Needs of Jewish Communities. The conference inside the European Parliament included the launch of ODIHR’s (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) new toolkit to combat anti-Semitism as well as interventions by Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s coordinator on combating anti-Semitism, the chairs of the anti-Semitism working group Heinz Becker, Cecilia Wikström and Juan Lopez Aguilar and Chief Commissioner of the Belgian Police Saad Amrani. We were pleased to welcome von Schnurbein to our podcast in August as well.

In June, B’nai B’rith International co-hosted a conference in the European Parliament on Tectonic Shifts in the Middle East: “Trump, Iran and the Sunni-Israeli Rapprochement,” with panelists and keynote speeches by Eliyahu Hazan, director of foreign affairs for the Likud Party; Smadar Perry, senior Middle East editor for Yediot Ahronot; Abdullah Swalha, the founder of the Center for Israel Studies in Amman; and Raul Fuentes-Milani, head of Division Middle East, EEAS. The conference streamed live on the internet.

As part of the European Commission’s High Level Group on Combating Racism, Xenophobia and other forms of Intolerance, hosted by Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova, B’nai B’rith worked together with major internet companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter and leading civil society organizations and member state representatives to exchange views on how to combat online hate speech and discrimination and develop a code of conduct.

We were involved in the drafting and adoption of the code of conduct, which has improved the cooperation of social media companies in tackling anti-Semitism online.
 
B’nai B’rith held a workshop on Jewish pro-Israel advocacy at the annual Limmud Conference in Paris. An introduction into the work of B’nai B’rith International with the EU institutions and NATO was given, focusing on combating anti-Semitism and strengthening EU-Israel relations, as well as the challenges of Jewish communities around Europe.

Why does the world need a common definition of anti-Semitism? Listen to our podcast here.

From B’nai B’rith Australia/New Zealand, the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission also had a great year. The oration featured Ambassador Dennis Ross who attracted more than 900 people to the Melbourne Oration — the event sold out. An additional 600 people attended in Sydney. Ross’ presentation was truly inspirational.

The ADC also got huge press coverage for its persistent fight against anti-Semitism, calling out not only anti-Semitic, but any racist actions against religious or ethnic minorities.

B’nai B’rith Canada launched an advocacy campaign calling for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to remove a textbook falsely accusing Israel of using child soldiers. The book’s publisher, Nelson Education, announced that all copies would be recalled. The TDSB also swiftly followed B’nai B’rith Canada’s suggestion to change an overly broad definition of Islamophobia in an Islamic Heritage Month Resource Guidebook.

Interfaith Leadership

We work with other faith-based organizations to encourage a system of religious tolerance. This includes constant vigilance to ensure Israel is not misrepresented. To that end, we speak out against anti-Israel resolutions that have become more common, at some religious organizations, academic institutions and in the business world. In June, we condemned a one-sided anti-Israel resolution that the United Church of Christ (UCC) passed, which alleged the Jewish state has mistreated Palestinian children residing in Gaza, the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem.

In December, B’nai B’rith International took part in a meeting in Jerusalem marking 40 years of dialogue between Orthodox Christian churches and major Jewish communal organizations. The meeting, which coincided with the long-awaited U.S. announcement recognizing Israel’s capital, focused on the significance of the holy city to both faith traditions and included the participation of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople. Bartholomew, the preeminent leader of Orthodox Christians worldwide, received an honorary doctorate from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was received by the president of Israel.




B’nai B’rith International has advocated for global Jewry and championed the cause of human rights since 1843. B’nai B’rith is recognized as a vital voice in promoting Jewish unity and continuity, a staunch defender of the State of Israel, a tireless advocate on behalf of senior citizens and a leader in disaster relief. With a presence around the world, we are the Global Voice of the Jewish Community.

© 2018 : B’nai B’rith International, 1120 20th St. NW, Suite 300 North, Washington, DC 20036