By: Fern Sidman
The Jewish Voice on Thursday wholeheartedly applauded the House of Representatives for passing the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act. This landmark act will now be sent to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature.
This bill will also elevate the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism to the rank of ambassador. Currently, the position is held by Elan S. Carr. As Special Envoy, Mr. Carr advises the Secretary of State and is responsible for directing U.S. policies and projects aimed at countering anti-Semitism throughout the world.
Prior to his appointment, Special Envoy Carr served as a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County, where he prosecuted violent crimes for more than a decade, including murders, rapes, hate crimes, and crimes involving some of the most notorious criminal street gangs in Southern California.
Special Envoy Carr is an officer in the United States Army Reserve, and he has received multiple awards and commendations for his nearly two decades of military service. In 2003-04, he deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he led an anti-terrorism team in life-saving missions throughout the country and prosecuted terrorists who attacked U.S. troops. He also assisted efforts to establish an independent Iraqi judiciary and trained Iraqi judges and lawyers on constitutional law and criminal defense.
As the son of Iraqi Jewish refugees who fled persecution in Iraq, Special Envoy Carr speaks Hebrew and the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. While in Iraq, he met with remnants of the Jewish community there and led Jewish services in the former presidential palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
Special Envoy Carr was the international president of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, he served on the National Council of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he was a voting member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and he was a board member of Operation Gratitude. In the course of his work in the Jewish community, he has been a recognized leader in the fight against anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses and around the world.
“We offer our praise and appreciation to the members of the House and Senate who understood that the perennial scourge of anti-Semitism still infects all aspects of our society and remains a pernicious problem around the world. The passage of this critical bill, in effect, is a bold message to the world that anti-Semitism in all its insidious forms will be directly confronted and addressed and will never, ever be tolerated. In this divisive time in which we live, hatred is all around us and we must stand united and remain vigilant to stop it from spreading, “ said David Ben Hooren, the publisher of the Jewish Voice.
He added that, “Thanks to elected officials such as New York’s Carolyn Maloney and her contemporaries in the 116th Congress, they took the lead in strengthening the impact of Holocaust education in the US by passing the Never Again Education Act. We know that it was their efforts that lead to the passage of today’s bill and we urge the president to sign it as soon as possible.”
At the time that the Never Again Education Act passed in May of 2020, Rep. Maloney said, “Combatting hate and intolerance must always be a priority and I’m glad that the Senate agrees. Passing this bill by unanimous consent sends a strong message that the Congress is overwhelmingly united in combatting antisemitism and hate through education. Children are not born with hate in their hearts, it is up to us to make sure they never learn it.”
She added that “to do that, we must make sure our educators have the tools they need to teach about the Holocaust, an incredibly difficult subject to teach and for students to understand. I want to thank Senators Rosen, Cramer, Rubio, and Blumenthal for moving this bill so quickly through the Senate and their partnership in this effort.”
