Ronald Lauder
Ronald LauderFlash 90

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) Executive Committee is renewing its focus on the anti-Semitic threats confronting the Jewish people and the ever-increasing loss of support for Israel.

Speaking at a WJC Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday, WJC President Ronald S. Lauder focused on those themes, noting that a recent WJC poll found that a substantial percentages of Europeans and Americans do not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

Lauder blamed social media for spreading lies about Hamas that spread: “A lie told often enough – it starts on social media and then goes to different formats and finally comes out the newspapers mainstream newspapers - becomes the truth.”

"We’re tired of being the victim, we’re tired of going to Congress or the British government and saying, ‘Please protect the Jewish people,’” Lauder said. “We’re going to fight. And we’re going to do so in all languages… We have major fight ahead of us, we have to fight, we have to protect Israel at all cost.”

WJC noted that Lauder recently addressed the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, telling the event’s plenary session about the “crisis of resurgent anti-Semitism across the globe, as well as “the new form of anti-Semitism,” that is cloaked in anti-Israel language.

In response, WJC highlighted initiatives to “empower Jewish students to become the future leaders of the Jewish people” were brought up in a discussion led by WJC senior leaders along with Jewish on Campus Co-Founder and CEO Julia Jassey and European Union of Jewish Students Policy Officer Caterina Cognini.

Jewish on Campus, as part of its mandate to combat campus anti-Semitism, published reports outlining anti-Semitic incidents on individual university campuses so that students can use those examples to “show them how it’s a problem” when speaking with administrations, said Jassey.