Commissioner Felice Gaer to Testify Before Helsinki Commission on Global Efforts to Combat Anti-Semitism

WASHINGTON-Commissioner Felice D. Gaer will testify at a hearing of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission) at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 7, on global efforts to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. Commissioner Gaer will focus on U.S. policies to fight anti-Semitism within the context of the 56-state Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as the OSCE's own initiatives and performance.

Ms. Gaer is Director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights of the American Jewish Committee. Ms. Gaer, who was first appointed to the Commission in 2001, has served twice as Chair of the Commission, as well as Vice Chair. She has taken part in numerous meetings of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on behalf of the Commission, including the first-ever special meeting on anti-Semitism in 2003 and the 2004 Conference on Tolerance and the Fight Against Racism, Xenophobia, and Discrimination. Encyclopedia Judaica describes Ms. Gaer as having "played the key role in assuring passage by consensus of the UN General Assembly's first-ever condemnation of anti-Semitism" in 1998.

The other witnesses at the hearing include Dr. Gregg Rickman, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, U.S. Department of State; Rabbi Andrew Baker, Director of International Jewish Affairs, American Jewish Committee; Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder, Simon Wiesenthal Center; Mark Levin, Executive Director, National Conference on Soviet Jewry; and Ms. Stacy Burdett, Associate Director, Government and National Affairs, Anti-Defamation League.