Press Releases and Statements

Leaders of the JCRC of Greater Washington, the ADL Washington, D.C., and American Jewish Committee (AJC) met Monday evening with Dr. Lewis Ferebee, Chancellor of the DC Public Schools, and Rev. Thomas Bowen, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Religious Affairs, to discuss the horrific incident at Watkins Elementary School involving a school librarian who allegedly instructed third grade students to reenact the elements of the Holocaust.

“This groundbreaking legislation is a welcome next step to further enhance U.S. engagement in the strategically important Eastern Mediterranean,” said AJC CEO David Harris, who has been a leader in advancing U.S., Cyprus, Greece, and Israel ties for nearly four decades. “It is immensely heartening to witness Congress come together in a bipartisan fashion to strengthen our democratic partners and regional stability in a part of the world critical to American interests.”

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today expressed deep concern about the efforts of some political factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina to remove the country’s legal ban on denial of the Holocaust and other genocides.

A new initiative sponsored by American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Mimouna Association is bringing together for the first time a group of young Americans, Israelis, and Moroccans to deepen understanding and build cooperative relationships. The AJC -Mimouna Michael Sachs Emerging Leaders Fellowship follows on the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that ACCESS, AJC’s young professionals network, and the Mimouna Association, an organization of young Moroccan Muslim leaders, signed in January.

An American Jewish Committee (AJC) leadership delegation concluded a week of consultations and institutional events in three Arab Gulf capitals, continuing AJC’s 25-year-plus engagement with regional governments and building on the breakthrough 2020 Abraham Accords normalization agreements between Israel and two Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

After the launch of the Transatlantic Friends of Israel (TFI) inter-parliamentary group in the EU Parliament in July 2019, the first national chapter opened on October 13 in the Austrian parliament, under the leadership of Chair MP Martin Engelberg and the support of lawmakers from the Greens, the Social-Democrats and NEOS, the liberal party.

Hillel International and American Jewish Committee (AJC), in collaboration with the American Council on Education (ACE), will bring together college and university leaders from across the United States for a two-day summit on the unprecedented increase in antisemitic activity and the marginalization of Jewish students on campus. The February summit will be hosted by New York University.

A satirical news show and an interfaith coalition of high school students dedicated to fighting hate are among the winning projects from the groundbreaking American Jewish Committee (AJC) Disrupt Antisemitism initiative, the first incubator to fund innovative ideas by young American Jews to combat antisemitism. “Bold new ideas are critical to combat the growing threats to Jews in the U.S.,” said Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman, Director of AJC’s Alexander Young Leadership Department. “The creative thinking of Jewish innovators will help the rising generation of American Jews lead us in fighting hate.”

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today honored the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, with the organization’s Human Dignity Award. The AJC honor recognizes Bartholomew’s singular care for humanity and the environment, exceptional commitment to interreligious coexistence, and indispensable advancement of Orthodox-Jewish relations.

An American Jewish Committee leadership delegation concluded a week of consultations with senior Moroccan officials, civil society organizations, U.S. and Israeli diplomats, and Jewish community partners – the latest round of talks on issues of mutual concern in more than 30 years of high-level contact between AJC and the Kingdom of Morocco. The delegation, led by AJC President Harriet Schleifer and Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer Jason Isaacson, praised His Majesty King Mohammed VI for his historic December 2020 decision to re-establish and expand formal relations with the State of Israel, which had been frozen since October 2000, and reiterated AJC’s support for the territorial integrity of Morocco, a U.S. strategic partner.

American Jewish Committee praised New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s decision to pull pension fund investments out of Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s. The ice cream maker announced in July that it would cease selling its products in the West Bank. “Comptroller DiNapoli has demonstrated that boycotting Israel has consequences,” said Marc Stern, AJC Chief Legal Officer. “Unilever’s failure to undo Ben & Jerry’s misguided decision to stop selling its ice cream in the West Bank contravenes state government laws across the United States.”

American Jewish Committee (AJC) today released its 2021 State of Antisemitism in America report based on new national polling of the U.S. Jewish and general adult populations. The surveys, the largest and most comprehensive of their kind ever conducted, confirm that hatred of Jews remains a severe problem in the United States, requiring urgent attention—and that American Jews and the U.S. general public view the problem very differently.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) President Harriet Schleifer today addressed the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism. Schleifer stressed that “any genuine effort to remember the Holocaust and its victims must be coupled with the present-day fight against antisemitism.”

American Jewish Committee (AJC) welcomed a Texas court’s decision to recommend a new trial for Randy Halprin, a Jewish prisoner on death row who has long claimed that the judge presiding over his trial was inherently biased against Jews and other minorities. “The court reached the only possible result, that the original judge’s long uncontested and undisguised bigotry made it essential that Randy Halprin be granted a new trial,” said AJC Chief Legal Officer Marc Stern. “The district court’s recommendation that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals order a new trial is a vindication of core American principles of impartiality in American jurisprudence.”

“The EU should be applauded for taking this significant step toward combatting antisemitism in Europe and abroad amid the dramatic surge of Jew hatred within living memory of the Holocaust,” said Daniel Schwammenthal, Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute, the EU office of AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization. “It is reassuring to see that the strategy aims at tackling antisemitism whether it originates from the far-right, the far-left, Islamists or mainstream society and clearly identifies “Israel-related antisemitism” as a major problem. As the Commission notes, it is in fact ‘the most common form of antisemitism encountered online by Jews in Europe today.’”

American Jewish Committee (AJC), the leading global Jewish advocacy organization, congratulates Fernando Lottenberg on his appointment as the first Organization of American States (OAS) Commissioner for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. Creation of the position was initially announced by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro at the AJC 2021 Global Forum in June.

A Spanish language edition of Translate Hate, American Jewish Committee’s widely-used glossary of common antisemitic terms and tropes, is now available at Traduciendo el Odio. “Better informing Spanish speakers across the United States and around the world about hateful rhetoric and images targeting Jews is vitally important to the global fight against antisemitism,” said Dina Siegel Vann, Director of AJC’s Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) welcomes the introduction today of a resolution in the U.S. Senate urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terror organization. The bipartisan resolution was introduced by Senators Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).

Lithuania honored American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO David Harris today with The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania, one of the Baltic nation’s highest awards. Lithuania President Gitanas Nausėda bestowed on Harris during a ceremony at the Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in New York.

honored American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO David Harris today with one of the country’s most prestigious awards, the Grand Commander of the Order of Makarios III. Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades presented the medal to Harris during a ceremony at the residence of the Cypriot Ambassador to the United Nations in New York.