Religious Intolerance

House Committee Budget Proposes Another Million Dollars To Fight Global Antisemitism

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The House Appropriations Committee proposed Tuesday to add $1 million in funding for the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, according to a report.

The House’s Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs issued a report detailing its request for an additional $1 million to be added to the special envoy’s 2024 budget. The funding would increase the total budget to $2.5 million and far exceeds the White House’s requested $1.7 million in its recent national strategy to combat antisemitism.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers issued a joint statement on the funding proposal, according to Jewish Insider.

“This significant increase in funding for the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism will go a long way to address the tangible and growing threats faced by both the American Jewish community and Jewish communities around the world,” a statement from lawmakers reads. “The dangerous and distributing rise in antisemitism requires unprecedented investments in the Office of the Special Envoy so that the Special Envoy has the staffing and resources it requires to accomplish its work.”

The committee, however, declined to elaborate on the funding proposal after a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The department’s special envoy, Deborah Lipstadt, was heavily criticized in June for defending working with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group with a long history of antisemitism, on the U.S. strategy to combat antisemitism. Previously, the State Department was similarly criticized in March for providing funding to an organization in Israel that has been working to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas called out the department and the Biden administration in March for their criticism of Netanyahu and Israel.

“Leading Democrats have called [Netanyahu] a ‘reactionary,’ a ‘racist,’ an ‘ethno-nationalist,’” Cotton said. “They’ve accused him of committing ‘war crimes’ and of leading an ‘apartheid state.’ President Biden has called him ‘extreme’ and said they ‘don’t agree on a damn thing.’ Strong words.”

A State Department spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that “as a general matter, we do not comment on pending legislation.”