Israeli Envoy to TML: Antisemitism an ‘Ever-Mutating Virus,’ Currently Weaponizing Human Rights
Appointed to her role just weeks before October 7, Israeli Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh has devoted the past year and a half to calling out Jew hatred in all its forms
For nearly a year and a half, Israel has been fighting against seven enemies: Iran, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shiite fighters in Iraq, terrorist groups in Syria, and Palestinian fighters in the West Bank. But according to Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, there’s an eighth, less obvious front: antisemitism around the world. “The State of Israel needs to treat this as an eighth war front, literally a war that is intent on annihilating the State of Israel and murdering Jews around the world,” Cotler-Wunsh, a former Knesset member for the center-left Blue and White party, told The Media Line President Felice Friedson in an interview.
Antisemitism mutates by latching onto the guiding social construct of the time, religion, science, and the secular religion of our times, human rights
Quoting the late Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the UK, Cotler-Wunsh described antisemitism as “an ever-mutating virus.” “Antisemitism mutates by latching onto the guiding social construct of the time, religion, science, and the secular religion of our times, human rights,” she explained.
Antisemitism’s infection of the human rights sphere is a particular focus for Cotler-Wunsh, who has a background as a human rights lawyer. She traced back this strain of antisemitism to 1975, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism.
Patrick Moynihan, the United States ambassador to the UN, understood immediately the danger of that ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution when in a very important speech he gave at the UN, he said that if Zionism is racism and Nazism is racism, then Zionism is Nazism
“Patrick Moynihan, the United States ambassador to the UN, understood immediately the danger of that ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution when in a very important speech he gave at the UN, he said that if Zionism is racism and Nazism is racism, then Zionism is Nazism,” Cotler-Wunsh said. She said the resolution set off an “Orwellian perversion of fact and law.”
That same dynamic of using human rights language toward antisemitic ends was evident at the 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism, where Israel was characterized as an apartheid state, Cotler-Wunsh said. She offered South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of antisemitism as a more recent example.
After a series of conventional wars failed in their openly declared intent to destroy the State of Israel, this unconventional war for public opinion was launched. And it was launched fully, openly admitting that it was going to hijack and weaponize international law and its institutions and the human rights mechanisms.
“After a series of conventional wars failed in their openly declared intent to destroy the State of Israel, this unconventional war for public opinion was launched,” Cotler-Wunsh said. “And it was launched fully, openly admitting that it was going to hijack and weaponize international law and its institutions and the human rights mechanisms.”
In this new stream of antisemitism, Cotler-Wunsh explained, anyone who supports the Jewish state is considered a legitimate target. “We have arrived at this place of the tsunami of antisemitism that manifests on the streets of Amsterdam, Montreal, Washington, Sydney, Melbourne, and around the world,” she said.
Appointed weeks before the October 7 attacks, Cotler-Wunsh is only the second Israeli envoy for combating antisemitism. “I’ve carried on in this position in a voluntary capacity because it is a war, and in that sense, it is the only war that I know how to fight,” she said.
Israel was a little bit late in the game in appointing this role
Around 35 other countries have antisemitism envoys. “Israel was a little bit late in the game in appointing this role,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
It is very critical that we, that the State of Israel, too, identify this as a war, as not just something that we are going to be able to respond to in this whack-a-mole way
She said that Israel has struggled to understand the seriousness of the moment and develop a cohesive strategy on antisemitism. “It is very critical that we, that the State of Israel, too, identify this as a war, as not just something that we are going to be able to respond to in this whack-a-mole way,” she said.
“I think that we are at an intersection where the State of Israel, too, understands clearly but has to take responsibility for what it is that’s happening to the 45% of Jews that are in North America and the 10% in the rest of the world because only 45% of us are here in the nation-state of the Jewish people,” she added.
Asked about the anti-Israel protests on American college campuses, Cotler-Wunsh noted that Qatar has funded anti-Israel initiatives in the US to the tune of billions of dollars. That money has been used to target private companies connected to Israel, individual Jews, and non-Jewish individuals supportive of Israel, she said.
You need not be a Jew. If we look at congressmen like Ritchie Torres, who self-define as Zionist or are identified to be Zionist, they too are the ‘legitimate’ target of this new, mainstream form of an ever-mutating lethal hate.
“You need not be a Jew,” she noted. “If we look at congressmen like Ritchie Torres, who self-define as Zionist or are identified to be Zionist, they too are the ‘legitimate’ target of this new, mainstream form of an ever-mutating lethal hate.”
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She emphasized that combating antisemitism should be a priority for everyone, not just for Jews. “Just as anti-Black racism is not an issue for Blacks alone to combat, just as any other form of hate would not be expected to be fought by the subject of that hate, antisemitism is no different,” she said.
One key project for Cotler-Wunsh is promoting the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. A clear definition of what antisemitism is is required to holistically and proactively address the problem, she explained.
“You cannot combat something without identifying it. And you cannot identify just some strains of an ever-mutating virus,” she said, noting that “inoculation” against Nazi propaganda wouldn’t necessarily provide immunity against anti-Israel double standards.
So far, more than 40 countries and 1,200 entities have adopted the IHRA definition. “Of course, adopting it is not enough. It is a working definition that needs to be utilized,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
She said that justifications for the violence perpetrated on October 7 made the importance of the IHRA definition clear. “Not only did we see and witness on that day the most barbaric atrocities akin to Middle Ages regress, but we saw the inability to unequivocally condemn them in the name of ‘progress.’ That has been the most pernicious manifestation of this tsunami of antisemitism,” she said.
“We face backlash on that IHRA definition precisely because of its accuracy and its ability to identify and combat all strains of this ever-mutating virus,” she noted.
Institutions that have adopted the IHRA definition have been more successful at responding to incidents of antisemitism, she said. In a recent incident, the owner of a Second Cup coffee shop franchise in a Canadian hospital was caught on camera at an anti-Israel protest giving a Nazi salute. “That night, Second Cup issued a very clear statement, unequivocal, because that was a violation of the company’s policies against hate, against intimidation, against harassment. The violation of policies has to be immediately and unequivocally called out and acted upon,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
You have to have a little bit more courage to speak out against it—clarity and courage of leadership, wherever that leadership may be in the media, in the university spaces, in the governmental spaces, in the city spaces, in the corporate spaces, and so on
“You have to have a little bit more courage to speak out against it—clarity and courage of leadership, wherever that leadership may be in the media, in the university spaces, in the governmental spaces, in the city spaces, in the corporate spaces, and so on,” she added.
With many university leaders lacking that courage, Jews and Zionists on college campuses often feel isolated, Cotler-Wunsh said. “Rules that exist in universities are not applied to David, who happens to be a Jew, or Sally, who happens to be a Zionist, or Fred, who just believes Israel has a right to exist, because of the proliferation of this pernicious hate systemically and systematically into the institutions that have failed to apply their own policies,” she said.
The most upsetting example of universities failing to apply their own policies is when they tell Jewish students that they can’t ensure their security, Cotler-Wunsh said.
“Jews are actually told to remove their kippahs or their Magen David or hide their identity because the police—or the campus security or whoever it is that’s mandated to apply policies—not only can’t do it but refuses to try,” she said. “That, for me, is actually a part and parcel of this mainstreaming of antisemitism that endangers those spaces, that actually endangers academic freedom and freedom of speech.”
She said that it’s now seen as legitimate on college campuses to attack or harass people who are Zionists, which has led some Jewish students to reject their own histories and participate in anti-Israel protests.
“Think of that 20-year-old student—Jew or non-Jew, by the way—that is told, if you just shed that Zionist pound of flesh, that for thousands of years your ancestors have prayed and yearned and longed to return to Zion, if you just shed that pound of flesh, that part of your identity, you could be a good person,” she said.
On today’s college campuses, rather than being seen as “prototypical indigenous people,” Jews are seen as “hyper-white,” she added.
The same double standards perpetuated against Jews on college campuses exist on a much larger scale in the UN and other international institutions.
When the UN has around its Human Rights Committee commission table the most egregious violators of human rights, China and Iran, and many of the other most egregious violators of human rights, and in the name of some sort of new principle that’s being invented, only calls out one state actually regularly every single year for more human rights violations than all countries together in the world, then the double standard has collapsed the entire infrastructure
“When the UN has around its Human Rights Committee commission table the most egregious violators of human rights, China and Iran, and many of the other most egregious violators of human rights, and in the name of some sort of new principle that’s being invented, only calls out one state actually regularly every single year for more human rights violations than all countries together in the world, then the double standard has collapsed the entire infrastructure,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
She said that the antisemitism perpetuated by these institutions, particularly the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court, has rendered them useless.
“If they overlook or ignore the very principles they were founded on—justiciability, complementarity, many legal terms that the court completely overlooked when it accused the Israeli prime minister and former defense minister of the most egregious crimes perpetrated by humans to other humans—then those agencies, those mechanisms become completely obsolete as well,” she said.
In other words, the stakes are high for addressing anti-Israel double standards in international institutions. “If those infrastructures fail to protect humanity, then it is an existential moment for all that believe in humanity and freedom and the dignity of difference,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
As another example of double standards in the UN, Cotler-Wunsh pointed to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
“UNRWA is an agency that was created in sin for one single group of refugees, while all of the refugees in the world have another refugee agency. And UNRWA is the single refugee agency that hands down refugee status from generation to generation to generation. We are now on fifth-generation refugees,” she said.
She said that international institutions holding Palestinians to a different standard is misguided. “If we treat the Palestinians differently than all other peoples in the world, we are doing them no favor, and we are actually entrapping them in this lack of ability to take their own future into their hands,” she said.
Cotler-Wunsh is the daughter of Irwin Cotler, a human rights activist and former justice minister of Canada. These days, Cotler lives under 24-hour police protection because of a threat to his life by Iranian agents.
What we have enabled in democracies around the world is the emboldening of not just the proxies of authoritarian, theocratic, murderous regimes, like the Islamic regime in Iran … but actually the regimes themselves. If you enable genocidal terror and you enable the authoritarian undermining of human rights, of that infrastructure, while benefiting from it with sitting around the table at the UN that we just mentioned, with receiving international humanitarian aid, if you enable that, you embolden it everywhere.
“What we have enabled in democracies around the world is the emboldening of not just the proxies of authoritarian, theocratic, murderous regimes, like the Islamic regime in Iran … but actually the regimes themselves. If you enable genocidal terror and you enable the authoritarian undermining of human rights, of that infrastructure, while benefiting from it with sitting around the table at the UN that we just mentioned, with receiving international humanitarian aid, if you enable that, you embolden it everywhere,” Cotler-Wunsh said of her father’s plight. “And Canada, like many of the other democracies, is actually in many ways manifesting that threat of democracies’ strengths being identified as weaknesses by the enemies of democracy and utilizing them to collapse them from within.”
In addition to international institutions and well-meaning democratic states, another enabler of antisemitism is mainstream media, Cotler-Wunsh said. She criticized The New York Times for publishing misinformation about the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion days after the October 7 attack, falsely claiming that an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza had killed 500 Palestinians.
“Imagine if 11 days after 9/11, The New York Times would have posted on its front page evidence given to it by al-Qaida,” she said.
By the time media outlets had corrected the record to note that the explosion was most likely caused by an errant rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it was too late, she added.
The failure of legacy media at this moment, for me, is one of the greatest tragedies of our time, because never in modern history has the importance of legacy media as watchdog of democracy been more pronounced. And never have we seen more failures over and over again across networks.
“The failure of legacy media at this moment, for me, is one of the greatest tragedies of our time, because never in modern history has the importance of legacy media as watchdog of democracy been more pronounced,” Cotler-Wunsh said. “And never have we seen more failures over and over again across networks.”
For all the criticisms of The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets, nothing compares to The Columbia Intifada, a rogue anti-Israel publication handed out at Columbia University earlier this month. Cotler-Wunsh was quick to note that ostensibly pro-Palestinian student groups that perform stunts of this sort don’t actually support the Palestinian cause.
“If they were for Palestinians, they’d be taking to the streets, screaming to free Palestinians from Hamas, and to free the people of Lebanon from Hezbollah, and to free the people of Iran from the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, what they’re protesting for is ‘We are Hamas from the river to the sea,’ echoing the Hamas charter,” she said.
When asked about an incident of hate when two children were shot at a Christian school by a gunman who said he was acting in revenge for the war in Gaza, Cotler-Wunsh lamented the fact that professed supporters of human rights did nothing to protest the act. “If we were fighting for freedom, if we were fighting for human rights, that should have alerted the streets where we have seen demonstrations, just as so many other moments in the last 14 months should have alerted the streets to say, we are in a real existential moment,” she said.
Despite the difficult reality she described, Cotler-Wunsh has hope for a better future and the potential for real dialogue—between warring ideologies as well as warring nations. She pointed to the paradigm shift that took place during the passage of the Abraham Accords, the historic US-brokered agreement normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab nations.
There has to be this hope that the Abraham Accords actually held within it, and that is that we recognize each other’s right to exist as a first step that enables negotiation to our coexistence, paving, ultimately, the path to peace, including with the Palestinians
“There has to be this hope that the Abraham Accords actually held within it, and that is that we recognize each other’s right to exist as a first step that enables negotiation to our coexistence, paving, ultimately, the path to peace, including with the Palestinians,” she said.
