World Jewish Congress

Prior to the United Nations Assembly of world leaders, the WJC American Section convened the Jewish community’s only high-level public forum on United Nations reform, “Reclaiming the UN Charter.”WJC President Edgar M. Bronfman highlighted the historic Jewish role in shaping the UN: “The UN never could have credibility as an institution or a moral voice without accepting that its founding and its role in the world were indelibly shaped by the depravities that targeted every single Jew. Without acknowledging the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the responsibility to confront anti-Semitism, any universal lessons will fall flat.”

Mr. Bronfman called for the General Assembly “to pick up where it left off 45 years ago, by adopting the condemnation of anti-Semitism courageously endorsed by the full Human Rights Commission in 1960. In a diplomatic culture so reliant on precedent, it is indefensible that the one UN precedent for fighting anti-Semitism is ignored.”

At the event, in the keynote address to the audience of 150 diplomats, community leaders, policymakers and journalists, former United States House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has also served as co-chair of the U.S. Task Force on the United Nations, outlined a substantive agenda for UN reform, including management, advancing democracy and human rights, humanitarian intervention, fighting terrorism, and opening up to Israel and the Jewish people.

Other speakers included Mark Malloch Brown, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s head of cabinet (and recently appointed Deputy Secretary-General), and U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.

To advance the WJC’s mission, the American Section brings Jewish leaders from outside the United States into contact with Americans and American Jewry.

The American Section brought EJC President Pierre Besnainou and the new Tunisian Foreign Minister, Abdelwahab Abdallah, together with American Section Chair Evelyn Sommer and WJC Policy Council Chairman Israel Singer, for an Islamic-Jewish event on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition by Tunisian-Jewish artist Lisa Seroor to promote unity against extremism.

Executive Director Shai Franklin visited Paris and Marseille in the fall as a guest of the French Foreign Ministry, and met with Jewish, Muslim and government leaders on the subject of Jewish-Muslim relations. The American Section returned the favor by hosting the CRIF leadership in New York and co-sponsoring a dinner with leadership of the UJA Federation of New York.

At the January 2006 conference of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, held in Jerusalem, the WJC American Section brought five prominent members of Congress and three state legislators to attend. U.S. Congressman Gary Ackerman was elected as ICJP President. The 2007 session will take place in Washington, D.C., and the American Section is already working with Congressman Ackerman and others around the world on next year’s session, which looks to engage Capitol Hill, the U.S. Government, embassies, the Organization of American States, and the World Bank.

Ten members of the WJC Young Professional Diplomatic Corps, drawn from communities around the world, attended the historic 29th International Conference of the Red Cross in Geneva. Organized by YPDC Director Adam Koffler, Future Generations Director Peleg Reshef and International Organizations Director Shai Franklin, the YPDC participants played an instrumental role in outreach to government delegations and national societies at the Red Cross meeting. The WJC YPDC delegation helped achieve the long-sought admission of Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) into the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The WJC and its YPDC worked in close consultation with MDA leaders Uri Geller and Dr. Noam Yifrach, and the American Red Cross, as well as with Israeli and US diplomats on the scene. The American Section has worked closely with Congress and with the American Red Cross to maximize U.S. leadership in support of the historic international Diplomatic Conference in Geneva last December, which adopted a neutral emblem that allows Israel’s Magen David Adom to qualify for membership in the International Federation of the Red Cross.

With assistance from the World Jewish Congress American Section, Aliza Olmert, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, visited a Head Start early childhood intervention program in New York City. Mrs. Olmert spent two hours at the Bloomingdale Family Program, meeting with staff and seeing classrooms to gain insight for new initiatives in Israel. The WJC American Section arranged this opportunity with the office of New York Governor George E. Pataki.

The Mexican Jewish community, acting through the Comité Central and the Tribuna Israelita, continues to play a serious role in Mexican society and in Israel-Diaspora relations. At a working lunch with President Vicente Fox, an annual Jewish community event since Fox became President in 2000, Mexican Jewish leaders gave voice to the community’s concerns ahead of July’s presidential elections. Comité President Benjamin Speckman was unambiguous in his message to President Fox, saying that pluralism and democratic values are paramount, along with the fight against all discrimination and anti-Semitism.

President Fox underscored the government’s close relationship to the Jewish community, and in his speech highlighted the January 27 Holocaust commemoration and the importance of the new observance in the United Nations.

On the international scene, the Comité has been very active in inter-religious outreach and in expressing the community’s solidarity with the State of Israel. The Comité initiated a Catholic bishops’ trip to Poland and Israel. Together with three American bishops and Mexican Jewish leaders, the group visited Auschwitz, Belzec, Majdanek and Warsaw, and then met with political and rabbinic leaders in Israel.

Among its activities of the past year, the Jewish community inaugurated the Ben Gurion Park in Pachuca City, together with Silvan Shalom, at the time Israel’s Foreign Minister, and Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, and the governor of the state. At the ceremony, Minister Derbez said that “discrimination has no place in the world of the 21st Century,” and that “anti-Semitism, as a form of discrimination, must be condemned at every international forum.”