cial media; with the Knesset Diaspora committee chair, MK Avraham Neguise (Likud), in hearings featuring European Members of Parliament; at two conferences of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and in ongoing consultations requested of us by leading anti-Semitism experts, including Dutch Israeli Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld. At the same time, we found ourselves closely following the U.S. hearings on multilateral approaches to European anti-Semitism led by Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), who chairs the Global Human Rights Subcommittee. We decided to prioritize the Netherlands, particularly, after meetings with its sympathetic Jerusalem consulate attaché, who was working in tandem for the since-discredited, anti-Israel NGO, World Vision, and for EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen. Having been solicited as well by a strongly pro-Israel Dutch group looking for guidance in its quest to defend Israel by means of international law, ZOA Israel’s Legal Grounds sent attorney Karen Stahl-Don to their Hague Peace Palace conference in June. Stahl-Don, a former student of ZOA national board member Prof. Malvina Halberstam, presented an outstanding paper on the relevance of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which she also summarized at our Legal Grounds Law Course certificate-award ceremony. 32 Apprised by Dr. Gerstenfeld about the worries of the Dutch Jewish community after an April Rotterdam conference was scheduled by a Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood front group, the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), ZOA Israel sent a letter to Rep. Smith, asking him to reach out to the Dutch authorities. We also met subsequently with Dutch Ambassador to Israel Gilles Beschoor Plug to discuss prevention, at least, of future such hate fests. Ambassador Plug agreed that a tri-continental discourse could be helpful in this regard and assured us that he would bring our proposal to the attention of his government. The PRC conference could not be stopped, but our letter to Rep. Smith may have been responsible for a different step in the right direction. After encouraging him to urge Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to fill the vacant Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism position— ZOA Israel had worked on Jerusalem issues with former officeholder Ira Forman—we saw that Smith had sponsored the H.R. 1191 bill for that purpose days later. As part of our summer Washington rounds, we continued to advocate for 1191 with the additional request that the position be upgraded to the more authoritative one of ambassador-at-large. ISRAEL OFFICE Dutch Ambassador to Israel Plug agreed that a tri- continental discourse could be helpful for preventing future hate fests, and assured us he would bring our proposal to the attention of his government. (L-R) MK Shuli Mualem-Refaeli and Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar push different two-state alternatives at community event Legal Grounds presents paper at Hague conference on advancing Israel’s rights under international law
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