JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

Special Envoy, U.S. State Department
Hannah Rosenthal*
I want to share with you the strong commitment of the Obama administration
to combat hate and promote tolerance in our world. The president
began his administration speaking out against intolerance as a global ill. In
his historic speech in Cairo, he talked about a new beginning and a vision of
a world based on mutual interest and mutual respect, a world that honors
the dignity of all human beings.
We are attempting through diplomacy, public messaging, and on-theground
programs all over the world to confront and combat hatred in all its
ugly forms—whether it is hatred directed against people on account of their
religion, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, differences of political opinion,
or due to their country of origin. Antisemitism is one such form of hatred.
As a child of a Holocaust survivor, antisemitism is something very personal
to me. My father was arrested—on Kristalnacht, the unofficial pogrom that
many think started the Holocaust—and sent with many of his congregants
to prison and then to Buchenwald. He was the lucky one—every other person
in his family perished at Auschwitz. I have dedicated my life to eradicating
antisemitism and intolerance with a sense of urgency and passion
that only my father could give me.
President Obama and Secretary Clinton have honored me with this
appointment and have elevated my office and integrated it into the workings
of all other parts of the State Department. I have been on the job for more
than a year now—and I have seen six significant trends in antisemitism
around the world:
Antisemitism is not history; it is today’s news. I run into people who
think antisemitism ended when Hitler killed himself. More than six decades
after the end of the Second World War, antisemitism is still alive and well,
and evolving into new, contemporary forms of religious hatred, racism, and
political, social, and cultural bigotry.
FORMS OF ANTISEMITISM
Traditional forms of antisemitism persist in societies worldwide,
passed from one generation to the next, and updated to reflect current
events. The first manifestations are the ongoing hostile acts such as the
defacing of property and desecration of cemeteries with antisemitic graffiti.
There are still accusations of blood libel, which are morphing from the centuries-old
Church accusations that Jews killed Christian children to use their
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