BY David Benger

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. On this day, we are taught not only to mourn the millions senselessly slaughtered in Nazi death camps, but also to honor their memory by vowing: “Never again.” Never again will Jewish innocents be targeted for mass extermination with impunity.

For that vow to be fulfilled, we must pair those words with action. For President Biden, on this Holocaust Memorial Day, the clearest signal he can send that he cares for the global Jewish community is to prioritize the nomination of the first ever Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.

The new Ambassador position was created by Congress early this year to elevate the importance of the position formerly known as Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Antisemitism, a position created by the Bush administration in 2004.

It is incumbent upon President Biden to appoint a dynamic, energetic, worldly person with charisma and courage to the role. Antisemitism is on the rise across the world, and the new Ambassador’s role will be cut out for them from Day One.

The Ambassador will have to cast away arcane labels of “left wing” and “right wing” antisemitism and address all actions that harm to Jews with equal gusto. Graffiti on a synagogue wall frightens Jewish congregants, whether the words say 'heil hitler' or 'free Palestine. Both acts of vandalism strike fear into Jewish hearts. In that spirit, the Ambassador will have three priorities topping their agenda.

First, the growing power of the BDS movement and its insidious stranglehold on debate regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be made a priority. BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, and its goal is to use economic isolation destroy the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel. It operates behind the façade of advocating for Palestinian rights. In reality, the movement does nothing for the rights of Palestinians (other than occasionally costing Palestinians their jobs) and instead makes Jews feel unsafe across the globe.

Recognizing BDS for the hateful movement that it is and marshalling resources to combat it will need to be top of the agenda for the new Ambassador.

Second, the Ambassador should pick up right where former Special Envoy Elan Carr left off in advocating for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to be adopted as widely as possible. This will mean lobbying foreign governments as well as private companies, and international organizations.

The IHRA definition is a multi-page document with a chapeaux section that explains its goals followed by many examples of antisemitism in action. The full definition (examples included) are a fantastic guideline for helping decisionmakers correctly to label antisemitic acts of hate.

Third, the Ambassador must build relationships with social media platforms to pressure them to protect at risk Jews in online fora. Consistent with the respective free speech and hate speech in a given complainant’s source country, the Ambassador’s office must help individual Jews all over the world pressure tech companies to take down content that makes Jews unsafe.

To be effective in the role, the Ambassador will have to put in extraordinary effort to build relationships from the very beginning of his or her tenure. The Ambassador should ask every State Department outpost across the world (embassies and consulates) to assign an antisemitism portfolio to one of their staffers, so that there is always a point person on the issue.

Next, the Ambassador will have to build deep relationships with the two organizations that are most plugged in to Jewish communities across the globe: Chabad and Moishe House. Though both organizations exist in central Jewish hubs such as Tel Aviv or London, they also service small peripheral Jewish communities, such as Phnom Penh and Almaty. As such, the intel provided by emissaries of Chabad and residents of Moishe Houses will be crucial in guiding the Ambassador to a clearer understanding of the pressing challenges on the ground.

There have already been rumblings about prospective nominees to the position, but nobody has come out as a clear winner yet.

Most recently, news coverage has converged on Nancy Kaufman as an option. Nominating Kaufman would be a grave mistake. Not only has she has garnered support from antisemitic organization “If Not Now” for her refusal to denounce the BDS movement, but her entire professional career has been oriented toward the domestic challenges of American Jewry, the only Jewish community on the planet that does not fall within the Ambassador’s purview.

Other names in the mix include holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, lawyer and Civil Rights activist Abe Foxman, philanthropy professional Karen Adler, and former Special Envoy Ira Forman. These four have many years of valuable experience, but it may be worthwhile for the Biden administration to look outside the box for a person with the creativity, energy, and fresh perspective to proudly represent the State Department in every corner of the planet where Jews are at risk.

David Benger is a research fellow at Harvard University. He is a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as the chapter president of Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, and the Events Chair of the HLS Alliance for Israel, as well as an editor on the Journal of Law and Public Policy and the HLS National Security Journal. Read full bio here.