Reporters from almost 20 countries convened in Washington this month, in a U.S. State Department Foreign Press Center program, and discussed steps that the government and law enforcement are taking to protect Jewish communities from pervasive antisemitism in the country.
“The United States is aggressively combating antisemitism not only here at home but in every corner of the globe,” Tommy Pigott, spokesman for the State Department, told JNS. “This important program is just one small reflection of how we are working to stop hate in its tracks and to share best practices with other nations confronting this grave threat.”
The journalists came from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, North Macedonia, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The State Department said that it gave priority to countries with higher rates of Jew-hatred. Just four of the countries—Germany, Mexico, Norway and South Africa—were represented by Jewish journalists at the gathering.
“Normally, when you speak about global antisemitism, you find that the majority of authors or writers or columnists are Jews,” Pablo Quiroz Zepeda, a Guadalajara-based journalist and analyst at Diario Judío, Mexico’s main online media outlet for the Jewish community, told JNS.
“Finding that Catholics, Christian Orthodox, atheists or even Hinduists are covering this important topic, I think that we are making a further step in understanding what is the concern about antisemitism,” he said, “and what is the importance of knowing that antisemitism goes sometimes against religious people and sometimes secular people, and also affects many, many generations.”
The tour included stops in Washington and in the Miami area.
Sarah Carey, an Irish Independent columnist, told JNS that attendees had discussions among themselves “both about Israel and antisemitism and about the other issues going on in our own countries,” which were “really enormously rich for all of us.”
The tour presented access to professors and Jewish community representatives, which “we found really enlightening and informative about America, and not just about Judaism but, for instance, policing,” Carey told JNS.
Carey has written about Jew-hatred and the Holocaust and told JNS that “I guess I would be seen in Ireland as somebody who is friendlier to the Jewish community than others.”
The U.S. Embassy in Dublin invited her.
“I will say that Irish people will angrily deny that they’re antisemitic,” Carey told JNS.
JNS and other publications have reported often on antisemitic rhetoric from Irish officials and Jew-hatred in the country, including an Irish hotel canceling reservations for a delegation of Jew-hatred envoys last week.
“They will be absolutely adamant that their only issue is with the government of Israel and the conduct of the war,” Carey said. “We have a tiny Jewish community in Ireland, and many of them would say they’ve had a very happy life here, and whatever antisemitism they have encountered would generally be around kind of the old ignorant remarks about financial conspiracies and that.”
“Most of them would say they’re not directly subject to certainly any kind of violence or graffiti or the kind of things that we heard about in America,” she said. “But mainly they would be asked to account for Israel and the actions of the State of Israel.”
“That’s the pressure that they find themselves under,” she said.
First ‘encounter with real Judaism’
In Washington, the delegation met with Yehuda Kaploun, a rabbi and the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, and with Harmeet Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, and with survivors of Oct. 7.
Rabbi Hyim Shafner, of Kesher Israel, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, spoke to journalists about interfaith dialogue. The delegation also attended an event with Jewish communal security officials.
In Miami, the group met with representatives of the Secure Community Network, the president and security personnel of Florida International University and police from Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County.
It also met with representatives of the Chabad-Lubavitch community, the Hillel at Florida International University and the Jewish Museum of Florida.
“For many of my colleagues, it was the first time to have an encounter with real Judaism, in every aspect, even to have a kosher meal,” Zepeda told JNS. “Also Jewish jokes, even from rabbis. So they found the human contact.”
Carey said that she was particularly struck by the armed presence at Jewish institutions.
“It really made me realize how much under threat Jews are when they’re outward facing and practicing their faith,” she told JNS. “That was very sad.”
She said that it also made her realize the extent to which the Jewish organizations are linked to law enforcement “and the huge community policing effort that takes place.”
“All the police forces were explaining how deep their connections are with the communities, so that when there’s some kind of emergency or a threat, there are very clear lines of contact,” Carey said. “I thought that was very positive, not just for the Jewish community but as a blueprint for policing.”
The journalists also told tour organizers that they would have welcomed a wider range of perspectives on Israel from American Jews.
“We felt the representatives that we met all were on a very similar message about Israel,” Carey told JNS. “Whereas I know from my own personal contact that there are many Jews in America who are horrified at how the government has evolved over the years in Israel, and that it’s just more and more hard to find.”
“We would have liked more of an opportunity to meet with members of the American Jewish community who were more critical,” she said.
The invitation to participate in the tour “surprised” Zepeda.
“Because after 15 years of my work as a journalist on this side, I never expected that antisemitism in Mexico could be something that the U.S. embassy here in Mexico could express an interest in opening for a program in the United States,” he told JNS.
“More importantly, antisemitism years ago wasn’t something really tangible in Mexico, which was really welcoming with the Jewish community,” Zepeda said. “But since 2018, because of the new regime that we have in power, the left-wing party, which is Morena, things have changed so much, and after Oct. 7, even more.”
The program’s final day offered another chance for journalists to discuss antisemitism and Israel, after the announcement that South African jurist Navi Pillay had won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
Pillay’s South African nationality prompted a question for Nicola Miltz, a prominent Jewish journalist from South Africa participating in the tour. Zepeda recalled that someone asked her on the bus if she was happy about the announcement.
“She said, ‘No, I’m not happy at all,’” Zepeda said.
B’nai B’rith International was among the organizations to decry that Nobel Prize selection. It said that it was “appalled and dismayed” that Pillay, who has a “longstanding animus to the Jewish state,” received the award.
Zepeda said that the exchange on the bus opened the door to another discussion among the journalists about the award, Pillay’s record and the differing perspectives represented on the tour.
