AJC Impact 2020 Year-in-Review

History was made in 2020 when Israel established diplomatic relations with four Arab nations—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. These agreements fulfill a vision that AJC has vigilantly pursued for more than a quarter-century. Since our first consultations in 1994, AJC has made frequent visits to the Arabian Gulf and North Africa. We met quietly with Emirati, Bahraini, and Moroccan leaders, as well as senior officials from other countries in the region, and we cultivated ties between Israel and the Arab world. This is an example of how AJC’s effective diplomacy can help forge new paths toward peace. To build on this work, in 2021, AJC opened its first office in an Arab nation, AJC Abu Dhabi: The Sidney Lerner Center for Arab-Jewish Understanding.

AJC played a key role in convincing Facebook to ban content that denies or distorts the Holocaust from its platform of two billion users. This was a dramatic shift in policy and a victory in the fight against antisemitism. In announcing its decision in October 2020, Facebook noted AJC’s role in bringing it about. For several years, AJC has engaged directly with Facebook, advocating for a tougher stance against antisemitism. Following Facebook’s decision, Twitter imposed a similar ban on Holocaust denial and YouTube cracked down on the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory.

In January 2020, AJC and the Mecca-based Muslim World League led a historic joint visit of Muslim and Jewish leaders to Auschwitz 75 years after its liberation. Sixty-two Muslim representatives from 28 countries participated, including 25 prominent religious leaders. The mission represented the most senior Islamic leadership delegation to ever visit a Nazi death camp. While knowledge of the Holocaust is deeply deficient throughout the Arab world, AJC is educating influential leaders—an essential step in ensuring that such horrors never happen again.

On January 5, 2020, following a surge in antisemitic attacks in the New York area, AJC co-organized the 25,000-person “No Hate. No Fear.” march in protest of rising hatred against Jews. AJC designated the following day, January 6, as #JewishandProud Day—a day to celebrate Jewish identity openly in a show of solidarity. AJC’s initiative reached over 200 million people on social media. Jews and non-Jews—including members of Congress, world leaders, and celebrities—participated. This profound public display demonstrated that the Jewish people stand united in the face of antisemitism and that countless allies stand alongside us.

In 2020, AJC continued to urge governments to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. AJC played a critical role in the original drafting of the definition, which was later adopted by the IHRA. It provides a universal standard for what constitutes antisemitism, making it easier to track and prosecute antisemitic crimes. With AJC’s help, a growing list of countries have adopted the definition, including eight in 2020 alone. And we successfully advocated for local and state bodies in America to take this step as well.

During 2020, AJC made major progress in our effort to weaken Hezbollah, the antisemitic and anti-Israel Iranian terror proxy. For two decades, AJC has urged the international community, through public and private advocacy, to designate all of Hezbollah a terror organization. Many countries grant it partial legitimacy by recognizing only its “military wing” as a terrorist entity. But in 2020, ten new nations, including Germany—the most powerful EU member state—joined the list of countries that have banned the terror group in its entirety. Following Germany’s decision, the AJC Transatlantic Institute in Brussels united lawmakers from both sides of the Atlantic in a declaration urging the EU to ban Hezbollah in its entirety.

For more than a century, AJC has been engaged in the unfinished civil rights struggle for full and equal opportunity and protection under the law. That work continued in 2020. AJC opened two new domestic offices in Louisville and Minneapolis-St. Paul in memory of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. We built closer ties with the Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus, first launched at AJC Global Forum 2019, and held a weeklong Black-Jewish Unity initiative with the National Urban League to bolster understanding and joint advocacy. The campaign, which addressed rising racism and antisemitism, quickly became a widespread statement of partnership and strength.

Jews represent less than 2% of the American population, yet they are the victims of more than 60% of religious-based hate crimes. And this grossly underestimates the real number, since it’s based on voluntary data from local law enforcement agencies. Our leaders cannot combat hate crimes if they don’t understand the scope of the problem. That’s why, in 2020, AJC continued to lead the charge—in partnership with our interfaith and interethnic allies—to convince Congress to pass the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act, which would improve hate crimes reporting. AJC was instrumental in building bipartisan congressional backing for this urgent bill, which was signed into law in May 2021.