Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-4th), a leading human rights legislator in the United States, is in the United Kingdom for an international conference designed to counter global anti-Semitism.

On Sunday, Smith arrived for the three-day event called “The London Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism.” The conference is being held from Feb. 15-17 by the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA).

Smith, a founding member and steering committee member of the ICCA, will lead the conferees with a main address on Tuesday. He worked with fellow ICCA steering committee members John Mann, a Member of British Parliament who chairs the Parliamentary Committee Against Anti-Semitism, and with Professor Gert Weisskirchen, a Member of the Bundestag (Germany Parliament) and its Foreign Affairs Committee, to help plan the event.

“We see an alarming trend in anti-Semitism,” said Smith, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Denials of the Holocaust, terrorist attack on the Chabad Jewish Community Center in Mumbai, and threats of the total destruction of Israel by Iran -- a soon-to-be nuclear state -- are only some of the challenges we face.”

The conference brings to Westminster more than 100 lawmakers from 35 countries who will work intensively with leading academics, legal experts and specialists in the field to devise ways by which parliamentary systems can work with government programs to combat anti-Semitism as a global threat.

The London Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism constitutes a rare venue for elected officials to have the opportunity to meet face-to-face, and break out into working groups with international experts from academia, law enforcement, information technology and security.

Today Smith chaired the “Working Group on Policing and Prosecution.” Lawmakers will also share knowledge, experiences, best practice and the latest information in the areas of internet hate, anti-Semitism in the international arena, anti-Semitic discourse and the “new anti-Semitism.”

“The timing of this event is an excellent way to underscore America’s responsibilities in promoting human rights both domestically and internationally,” Smith said. “While today, President’s Day, is thought of as an American commemoration, democratic leaders throughout the world study and admire America’s greatest presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.  It was Lincoln who warned the world of inaction or indifference to injustice. He said: ‘To sin by silence when they should protest, makes cowards of men.’ This conference is dedicated to protesting the scourge of anti-Semitism and we are here to work together to expose and combat it.”

For years, Smith has urged countries to adopt and replicate Holocaust education and awareness campaigns such as are done in New Jersey. In the U.S. Congress, Smith secured passage of an amendment which became law to create an office to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, established a U.S. Special Envoy to head our global anti-Semitism efforts, and required annual reporting on international incidents of anti-Semitism.

As the ranking member of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, also known as the Helsinki Commission) the Congressman has made Holocaust education a key part of the platform regularly considered by the representatives from the 56 countries that make up the OSCE. Headquartered in Vienna, the OSCE hosts various multilateral conferences and preparatory meetings each year.

Prior to this conference, Smith served as co-chair of the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Combating Discrimination and Promoting Mutual Respect and Understanding, a follow- up to the OSCE’s previous conferences on anti-Semitism.

Also attending the conference is Smith’s colleague, Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), the senior Democrat on the Helsinki Commission.

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