GENEVA - The World Jewish Congress’ Jewish Diplomatic Corps (JDCorps) will co-host a panel discussion as a side event to the 35th session of the United Nations Human Right Council in Geneva on Wednesday, on the challenges of combatting the new frontiers of anti-Semitism. The discussion will take place at 4 PM at the Palais de Nation, and is being organized in conjunction with the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations in Geneva and the European Union of Jewish Students.
The side event is part of the WJC’s advocacy efforts in Geneva, aimed at bringing the issue of anti-Semitism back into the global human rights agenda, and will focus on best practices in preventing and combating anti-Semitism, featuring renowned experts in the field.
Jewish communities in Europe and around the world today are facing increasing levels of anti-Semitism. Some European communities are finding themselves targets of violence, hate speech is increasing online, right wing populism has become ever present, and efforts to delegitimize and boycott the State of Israel are growing. Each of these issues has a detrimental effect on the everyday lives of European Jews, and the challenges they are facing must be brought back to the forefront of the international agenda. 
Speakers at Wednesday’s event include European Union Coordinator on Combating Anti-Semitism, Katharina von Schnurbein; Ambassador Dr Felix Klein, the Federal Foreign Office’s Special Representative for Relations with Jewish Organizations; Yohan Benizri, WJC Vice-President and Member of the WJC JD Corps; Benny Fischer, President of the European Union of Jewish Students; and Jacob Turner Steering Committee Member of the WJC JDCorps.
The WJC JDCorps, is a worldwide network of outstanding young Jewish professionals who voluntarily engage in diplomacy and public policy. It comprises a cadre of some 200 professionals aged 27 to 45, from more than 40 countries. Members, known as Jewish Diplomats (JDs), come from a wide variety of backgrounds and include attorneys, Jewish community lay and professional leaders, venture capitalists, international financial advisers, university professors, social activists, parliamentarians, and entrepreneurs.
Earlier this week JD Jacob Turner delivered 3 statements on behalf of the WJC to the human rights body as it met in Geneva. In his statements under Item 9, he spoke about the need to effectively combat anti-Semitism wherever it manifests itself. The recent WJC report on online hate, which found among statistics that an anti-Semitic post is uploaded to social media every 83 seconds, also highlighted a very worrying trend. Turner spoke on the necessity to address this growing threat online and the need for the implementation of a universal definition of anti-Semitism as a crucial step in this battle.
