Good Thursday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a new proposal for increased federal funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. Also in this newsletter: Alfred Moses, Elizabeth Cullen and President Joe Biden. We’ll start with a letter about antisemitism that top American and global Jewish leaders sent to the United Nations.
A coalition of major American and global Jewish organizations wrote to United Nations leaders on Wednesday urging them to include an endorsement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in the U.N.’s forthcoming action plan monitoring and responding to antisemitism. The letter was exclusively obtained by Marc Rod from eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
The letter, signed by 176 global Jewish groups and 120 academics from the U.S. and elsewhere, was organized by the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, European Jewish Congress, Jewish Federations of North America and World Jewish Congress.
“Any UN Action Plan must acknowledge the importance of the IHRA Working Definition to the vast majority of Jewish individuals, organizations, and communities who are the primary targets of antisemitic hatred, discrimination, and violence; are the Action Plan’s primary intended beneficiaries; and are best placed to identify manifestations of hatred and bias directed against us,” the letter reads.
The letter acknowledges that the IHRA definition’s examples, particularly those related to criticism of Israel, have prompted concerns from “some civil society organizations,” but argue that the inclusion of such examples “is precisely what makes this tool uniquely valuable for understanding and monitoring modern day antisemitism.” They also note that the IHRA definition “explicitly affirms that criticism of Israel per se is not antisemitic” and that governments that use it “have found it entirely possible to sharply criticize Israeli policies and practices.”
The letter’s arguments in favor of IHRA and against other definitions of antisemitism come amid similar wrangling within the U.S. over whether to include or endorse the IHRA definition in the Biden administration’s antisemitism plan. Several of the organizers and signatories to the U.N. letter have provided input to the White House on its antisemitism strategy.
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