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Lipstadt hopes next Jew-hatred monitor is ‘barn builder, not barn burner’

“There are officials inside the U.N. who have engaged in overt antisemitism, but I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” the outgoing U.S. envoy told reporters.

U.S. President Joe Biden, pictured with Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, held a High Holidays call from the White House on Oct. 9, 2024. Credit: White House.
U.S. President Joe Biden, pictured with Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, held a High Holidays call from the White House on Oct. 9, 2024. Credit: White House.

Curbing Jew-hatred became an official national U.S. strategy in May 2023, and after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attacks later that year, local, state and federal bodies focused increasingly on surging antisemitism. Along the way, Deborah Lipstadt’s portfolio and office as special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the U.S. State Department has expanded, the outgoing envoy told reporters on Tuesday.

“I think that we have raised the profile,” the noted Holocaust historian, who taught at Emory University before her role in Foggy Bottom, said in her farewell briefing. 

The office has gone from being “simply about one particular group and the animus they faced” to “a larger issue of foreign policy, national security, national stability and societal cohesion,” she said.   

Instead of “only screaming and yelling and condemning what was going on,” Lipstadt told reporters that she sought “ to somehow get governments to take it seriously, to address it as a foreign policy concern that this has direct implications on your foreign policy, irrespective of whether you have a large Jewish community or not.”

In July 2024, Lipstadt and her office were a part of the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism, a non-binding framework onto which Washington and dozens of countries and global bodies signed.

The guidelines carry the full weight of U.S. foreign policy and enshrine combatting Jew-hatred with other human rights priorities, according to Lipstadt and Aaron Keyak, her deputy special envoy who is also in the final days of his State Department term.

“These will automatically be part of human-rights offices throughout the world, and every embassy knows that this is a foreign-policy priority of the United States,” Keyak told reporters at the briefing. “We have a policy of protecting vulnerable populations or promoting democracy. This is now just one of those pillars.”

The guidelines also signal to other countries that their actions when it comes to Jew-hatred domestically—like in other areas, including religious freedom and women’s rights—will impact their relationships with Washington, according to Lipstadt.

The envoy also told reporters that her office received invitations to global meetings, such as the Munich Security Conference, Manama Dialog and Paris Peace Forum, where meeting people on the sidelines of the events is very important.

“Your presence showing up is a big deal because you’re signaling, ‘We take this seriously, and we see this as part of international dialogue,’” she said.

Herzog Lipstadt
Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, meets with Deborah Lipstadt, special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, in Israel, Jan. 8, 2025. Credit: U.S. embassy Jerusalem.

No reinventing the wheel

Lipstadt told reporters she is proud that when she and Keyak, who are both political appointees, depart on Monday, the rest of the roughly 20 staffers—a mix of civil servants, foreign service staffers and contractors—will remain. That office structure will ensure continuity that the government previously lacked, she said.

One place that does need more change is the United Nations, according to Lipstadt.

“There are officials inside the U.N. who have engaged in overt antisemitism, but I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” she said. “If we can start to get it to take this issue seriously, then that would be worthwhile. Its record has not been great.”

She told reporters that a long-stalled plan to fight Jew-hatred at the United Nations, which the global body worked on with Jewish groups, remains “in the works.”

“Is it serious? A plan could be serious, but it’s only a plan,” she said. “It’s what’s done to implement it.”

Lipstadt told reporters about a previously unreported exchange that she had with António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, at a Munich synagogue.

After thanking Guterres for meeting often with the families of hostages being held in Gaza, Lipstadt mentioned the frequent antisemitic remarks of Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, who has drawn criticism from the U.S., German and French governments. Critics have said often that Guterres and the United Nations haven’t sufficiently denounced Albanese, who is considered an adviser to the global body and not an employee.

Lipstadt told reporters that Guterres said, within earshot of the press gaggle at the synagogue, of Albanese that “she’s a horrible person.” (JNS sought comment from Guterres.)

Fritz Berggren, a U.S. foreign service officer revealed to be the creator of a white nationalist website, is no longer a State Department employee, Lipstadt told reporters. More than 70 department employees had written to Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, in August 2021 calling for Berggren’s removal, but employment policies and laws appeared to protect Berggren.

“The legal details are not fully open, but it was an ending,” Lipstadt said. She didn’t specify if Berggren opted to leave or was fired.

Lipstadt and Keyak told reporters the person who carved a swastika into a State Department elevator in July 2021 has yet to be identified. The department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom is closely guarded by officers, but there was no camera in the area of the elevator, they said.

The envoy was asked if Jew-hatred is more prevalent at the State Department after Oct. 7. Lipstadt said that mid-level staffers, who came out publicly against the department’s positions and policies on the Israel-Hamas war, shouldn’t be seen as antisemitic.

Her office faced “some internal resistance” from “some misinformed people,” who thought that it was essentially running cover for Israel, she added. She told reporters that no one ever approached her with such concerns.

She wouldn’t comment on or endorse a successor, but said only that she hopes the next envoy “will be a barn builder, not a barn burner.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Blinken at the helm of the State Department, takes Jew-hatred seriously, according to Lipstadt. “That gives me hope on this issue,” she said.

“Some of the things I’ve done have been done quietly. Sometimes, they’ve succeeded. Sometimes, they haven’t. Speeches that were given, lines that were delivered, weren’t delivered,” Lipstadt told reporters. “I don’t want to speak out too much on everything. At some point, you’ll be dismissed as a partisan hack.”

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