On January 22, the UN General Assembly held a special meeting to discuss anti-Semitism. With the exception of speeches by the Israeli and American ambassadors, and by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévi, the session amounted to a gathering of foxes discussing how best to guard the hen house. Ben Cohen suggests a better approach:
While it would be churlish to demean the efforts of Jewish advocacy organizations and the Israeli UN delegation in helping to pull off the meeting, it’s important to recognize that our side of the debate doesn’t have full control of the proceedings, and never will. As long as we fail to control the substance of the debate, and as long as we are powerless to weed out anti-Semites . . . from these deliberations, we will never properly explain to the world what anti-Semitism involves.
Ultimately, it’s not about trading in discredited stereotypes or being nasty to individual Jews. . . . In the era of the Jewish state, anti-Semitism . . . seeks the restoration of the status quo that prevailed before World War II, when there was no Jewish state, and when Jews were by definition a minority at the mercy of others.
That is what we have to oppose. And so, if there is a future meeting about anti-Semitism at the UN, or at a national parliament, or any similar body, let’s state at the beginning that the movement to destroy Israel—which spans Middle Eastern governments, Middle Eastern terrorist groups, and assorted Western activists brandishing signs in favor of anti-Israel boycotts—is the greatest concern and the greatest threat. If we can’t say any of those things, then it’s probably not worth holding the meeting to begin with.
Read more on Algemeiner: http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/02/02/getting-anti-semitism-wrong-at-the-united-nations/