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Euroasian Jewish News
Best Practices in Combating Anti-Semitism Expert Meeting.
23.11.2006
Berlin, Germany, November 20-21, 2006
 On November 20-21, 2006, Best Practices in Combating Anti-Semitism Expert Meeting took place in Berlin. The meeting was called on the initiative of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The meeting was opened by welcoming speeches of Wolfgang Thierse, Vice-President of the Bundestag, and Chairman of the German Delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and Belgian Sen. Pierre Chevalier, Special Envoy of the OSCE Chairmanship.
Participants of the meeting also heard reports of a number of European officials, including Gert Weisskirchen, MdB, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman on Combating Anti-Semitism, Amb. Jacques Huntzinger, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France, Dennis MacShane, MP of Great Britain, Antonio Arrabal Villalobos, Ministry of Interior of Spain, and Andras Kovacs, Central European University and Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Some distinguished representatives of Jewish organizations and communities also expressed their opinion on situation of combating Anti-Semitism in Europe, namely: David Friedman (Anti-Defamation League), r. Andrew Baker (American Jewish Committee), Mark Weitzman (Simon Wiesenthal Center), Esther Webman (Tel Aviv University) and Shai Franklin (World Jewish Congress).
The CIS and East European Jewry position was presented in the report by Josef Ziessels, the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) General Council and Vaad of Ukraine Chairman, the head of the EAJC international delegation in Berlin. He stressed the regular participation of EAJC representatives in the OSCE forums and thereupon emphasized the necessity of considering opinion of Jewish communities in the former USSR in the development of all-European strategy to combat Anti-Semitism.
"We will never achieve any serious results in combating Anti-Semitism, until governments of all European countries realize necessity to confront so-called New Anti-Semitism that now hides under Anti-Israeli slogans", said Zissels. "East European Jewry had experienced all hypocrisy of Communist propaganda and so-called Internationalism. The ideology, which is used now in the West of Europe to attack the Jewish State and Diaspora, resembles the nightmare from our past so much, that we must speak up about it".
EAJC Public Relations and Media Department
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