The administration of US President Joe Biden "embraces and champions" the definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a State Department official said Monday.
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The message came from US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Kara McDonald, who was speaking at an OSCE meeting.
"As prior US Administrations of both political stripes have done, the Biden Administration embraces and champions the working definition," she said at the Expert Meeting on Combating anti-Semitism in the OSCE Region.
"We applaud the growing number of countries and international bodies that apply it," she added, urging more nations to embrace the IHRA definition.
"Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews," the IHRA working definition asserts, going on to list a number of possible examples of the phenomenon.
These include Holocaust denialism, "claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor" and criticizing it through the lens of double standards.
The American Jewish Committee welcomed a US State Department official's statement confirming that President Biden "embraces and champions" the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of anti-Semitism.
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AJC CEO David Harris called McDonald's remarks "a solid reaffirmation of American leadership in the global fight against anti-Semitism. The IHRA working definition is the gold standard." AJC, the premier global Jewish advocacy organization, has spearheaded over many years a diplomatic advocacy campaign to encourage all 57 OSCE member states and other countries around the world to adopt and implement the working definition.
Harris saluted McDonald's announcement that she is currently overseeing the work of the State Department Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism as President Biden considers nominating a successor to Elan Carr, who served as envoy in the Trump Administration.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
