Political Quotes

“I have the honor to chair the U.S. Helsinki Commission, which is well known for its commitment to human rights. It is also our participating arm in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE. Starting when I first joined the Helsinki Commission almost 20 years ago, I worked on the issues of antisemitism and trying to deal with combating antisemitism. This is overt actions against Jews and Jewish institutions, which were on the rise. We tried to do something about it. In the early 2000s, working with Congressman Hoyer and Congressman Hastings and Congressman Smith and others, we made a commitment in the Helsinki Commission to bring up the increasing episodes of antisemitism and what we needed to do about it. We saw increased episodes of violence against Jews and Jewish institutions. We saw that world events were used to try to justify antisemitic activities. As a result of the work of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, the OSCE determined that it was important enough to do a special conference on antisemitism. In 2004, we had the Berlin conference on antisemitism under the leadership of the United States and Germany. I was proud to be a member of the U.S. delegation to the Berlin conference. Good work was done in that conference. We developed best practices, from dealing with Holocaust education, to police training to deal with identifying hate crimes.…”