For Immediate Release May 10, 2008
Contact: Micah Naftalin (202) 237-8262 x101

On behalf of UCSJ's board, thousands of members, and its principal "action" councils in Chicago and Boston, we wish to join in congratulating Israel on its 60th anniversary. We also congratulate President Peres' conference, Facing Tomorrow, that addresses the future of Jews, Israel and the world. We urge that its panels address a vital foreign policy issue that seems likely to fall between the cracks: the importance of mobilizing public opinion to support courageous and embattled human rights and religious freedom NGOs that monitor and combat the principal indices of corrupt and dysfunctional systems for rule of law. These are violent antisemitic and xenophobic hate crimes, the perpetrators that incite them, and the wholesale discrimination of religious and ethnic minorities.

President Peres has been quoted to the effect that antisemitism is not a Jewish problem and needs to be confronted by others. He's only half right: others must address it, but it is a truly major international problem affecting Jews and Israel. It is of great concern to us that one of the best kept human rights and foreign policy secrets is the unprecedented achievement of UCSJ and the Moscow Helsinki Group in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in establishing a coalition of 30 human rights and religious freedom NGOs in these three countries called the "Coalition Against Hate" - all but one not Jewish -- and a bi-lingual Blog of the same name. In Russia, for instance, the absence of rule of law defeats accountability and empowers the Kremlin to intimidate its neighbors and conspire with Israel's greatest enemies. Diplomacy alone, however, lacks sufficient leverage to promote reform in totalitarian regimes. As we learned in the remarkably successful era of the Soviet Jewry campaign, mobilized public opinion is an effective strategic complement to diplomacy.

So now, we are moving to create a prestigious Leadership Committee to support the Coalition Against Hate that will become the central address for focusing the mobilization of public opinion and protest. Elie Wiesel has graciously agreed to be its honorary chairman. The committee will comprise religious freedom leaders among Jewish, Roman Catholic, Evangelical Christian and Muslim communities, alumni of the diplomatic corps, members of congress and parliaments, and human rights, academic and media individuals known for their principled stands against the corrosive effects of antisemitic and xenophobic hate.

As we say to those invited to join the Leadership Committee, and to "Facing Tomorrow" conferees: "It is beyond question that mobilized public opinion spotlights, and thus protects, the victims of hate crimes and their champions, compensates for the limitations of diplomacy, strengthens the positive resolve of democratic governments and international bodies, and undermines the confidence of repressive regimes." What we are accomplishing is an opportunity to convert human rights monitoring and advocacy from being merely a politically correct "feel good" enterprise into an effective negotiating tool of foreign policy strategy and statecraft.

Our initiative is taking place in the former Soviet Union. (Notably, thanks to UCSJ's influence, Russian human rights NGOs were among the very few to support Israel against the execrable antisemitic NGO campaign that characterized Israel as a Nazi country at the U.N. Racism conference days before 9/11/01 in Durban.). But, it can and should be an exemplar for diplomacy in the Middle East as well. We hope the panels of the Jerusalem conference will address this foreign policy initiative in designing its "blueprint for the future."

Micah H. Naftalin, National Director

Larry Lerner, President
UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union
Washington, D.C.

Ludmilla Alexeeva, President
Moscow Helsinki Group
Moscow, Russian Federation

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