City Walk Earns Reputation as Jeddah Season’s Best Entertainment Zone

RIYADH: Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, said in an interview with Arab News that openness and honesty in addressing important issues such as antisemitism or hatred of Muslims is the way in which change can be achieved.

Repeatedly confronted with real-world anti-Semitism, she is perhaps best known for the libel suit brought against her, in the UK, by Holocaust denier David Irving. Lipstadt won the case in 2000, with the judge describing Irving as a “neo-Nazi debater” who engaged in “racist and anti-Semitic” speech.

Lipstadt’s visit comes ahead of US President Joe Biden’s trip to the Kingdom next month and at a time when US-Saudi relations have been at “one of the lows”, as Prince Turki Al-Saudi put it. Faisal in a previous interview in Arab News. Frankly speaking” when describing the fluctuating but strategic relationship.

On May 24, Vice President Kamala Harris swore in the Emory University professor and historian as a special envoy. Just a month later, she made her first international trip to the Kingdom, telling the media that “Saudi Arabia is a very important country in the Gulf and has shown willingness and openness to receive me.”

On the sidelines of a panel discussion held at the Arab News headquarters in Riyadh, he noted how “the representation of the Jew, which in years past, often decades, the Jew was demonized. The Jew was spoken of in very derogatory language and that had its impact outside the Kingdom on the rest of the Muslim world.” She added that she has observed the change in perception and that she was “exceptionally encouraged” to meet people who recognize the need for change.

“That’s the first step: recognize your own shortcomings, whether you’re an individual, a community, a family or a nation, and say ‘we want to change.’ Only an honest person can do that. And I’ve seen some of that here (in Saudi Arabia) and I find it very encouraging,” Lipstadt said.

For years, interfaith dialogue has been fostered with various religious groups, academics, and leaders alike. Open dialogue is a means of acknowledging and getting to the root cause, as Lipstadt said at the roundtable, and understanding how “prejudice operates, the way Jew-hatred or anti-Semitism operates. And more importantly, the way in which one group’s hatred morphs into another group’s hatred, that the same principles operate in all prejudice, whether it’s racism, anti-Semitism, hatred of Muslims, whatever it is, That operates. in the same way.”

She added: “You can’t take what I call a silo approach: I fight one, but not the other. You have to fight on all fronts, but you also have to take them seriously. And too often there has been a failure to take anti-Semitism seriously in many countries. And what I found so interesting and encouraging here in Saudi Arabia is the way things are changing.”

Religious and interreligious scholars believe that such intercultural debates and dialogues build bridges, promote peace, and are a means of ending old animosities.

In 2016, the American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America announced a seemingly unlikely alliance of 31 members that included Imam Mohammed Magid and Lipstadt. The announcement came amid growing xenophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States and across Europe.

Europe and the US have taken different approaches in the postwar era to hate speech and anti-Semitism, with some European countries outlawing Holocaust denial.

“My country is not perfect. And my president, the secretary of state to whom I report, and other leaders acknowledge our shortcomings. And we don’t go out preaching to the world ‘we are perfect and must change’. But what we’re saying is these are issues that we care about within the US borders and we care about outside the US borders,” Lipstadt said.

“We do not come to preach. We come to talk and to teach, and to explore together how things can be improved”.

One of Lipstadt’s main fields of expertise is service to the cause of the Holocaust. For decades and multiple administrations, she was a historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama offered him presidential appointments to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and President George W. Bush asked him to represent the White House on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

“As a great believer in interreligious dialogue and cooperation in interreligious work, it cannot just be dialogue; if it’s dialogue, it’s just words,” he said.

She noted how shocking and exciting the visit of the Secretary General of the Muslim World League, Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, to the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz was for her. Al-Issa joined a group from the American Jewish Committee and prominent Muslim religious leaders in 2020 in what was called an “unprecedented visit.”

“As a scholar of the Holocaust and as someone who has visited many times, and as a scholar of anti-Semitism and my knowledge of the change in attitude and the change in this country and the representation of the Jew… I was tremendously moved.” she said.

The dialogue around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, for some time now, driven a wedge between religions, with growing sentiment against all parties involved. Lipstadt believes that people have confused issues, political issues in particular, something that, according to her, “my country takes very seriously.”

“Anti-Semitism transcends the political question, the question of Israelis and Palestinians. Not to say it’s not serious, of course it is serious, but we can’t wait to address anti-Semitism until it is resolved. Both need to be addressed together,” Lipstadt said.

Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the US, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud, recently met with Lipstadt and shared with her Saudi Arabia’s significant progress in promoting peace, tolerance and interreligious dialogue.

Lipstadt described the conversation as “wonderful.”