Hannah Rosenthal

Since 2009, Hannah Rosenthal has been Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the U.S. Department of State. In a historically mixed metaphor, she has been called the "antisemitism czar" of the Obama Administration.

Prior to coming to State, she was on the Board of Directors for Americans for Peace Now and the advisory board of J Street, organizations that consider themselves pro-Israel but not supporting hard-line Israeli government policies; this made her appointment controversial.

After appointment
In the American Thinker, Ed Lasky on 11 November, posed the rhetorical question, "Who better to fight anti-Semitism for President Obama than someone who is not too keen on Israel defending itself from its anti-Semitic neighbors? " Aaron Klein, of WorldNetDaily, referring to her involvement in J Street, wrote shortly after the appointment that she was "on the board of a controversial Israel-lobby group accused of working against the Jewish state, while her writings suggest Israel's policies are to blame for anti-Semitism." Her predecessor in the George W. Bush Administration, Gregg Rickman, as well as Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, wished her well in the challenges facing the office. They said she would be under pressure from a variety of interests: U.S. officials who believed "friendly relations with a particular regime is more important than speaking out against anti-Semitism in that country" and fanatics who "try to mask their anti-Semitism as opposition to Israel or Zionism." Under the Obama Administration, the office was symbolically upgraded when it was physically moved to the same floor as the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

In an interview with Haaretz she said she opposed blurring the line between antisemitism and criticism of the State of Israel: "It is not 1939. We have the state of Israel. We have laws in countries that are holding people accountable." Rosenthal said it was "most unfortunate" that David Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., had declined to attend a J Street conference, and that Oren w "would have learned a lot" if he had been there, as she I came away realizing what a generational divide there is and I don't know how it is in Israel. Young people want to be part of the discussion, they feel they have fresh ideas and they feel that we have to end the stalemate.

Speaking of the need for different voices, she continued, "'We need to have as many people coming together to try and put an end to this crisis, the matzav [situation] can not continue - it's unacceptable and that's why I always paid my membership to AIPAC, but I have always paid my membership to Americans for Peace Now - because they all need to be supported and they all need to be at the table."

When asked to comment on the Goldstone Report, she told Haaretz, "I do believe that some of the criticism against Israel is anti-Semitism but not all of it is. And I think that healthy democracies - and Israel is one - has to do self reflection and the world looks at the light unto the nations and says I agree to this policy or I don't agree - that is not anti-Semitism. But having the UN single out Israel for 170 resolutions over the last five years - when everybody knows that Sudan is committing genocide and they have only five resolutions. When Israel is the only agenda item on the human rights council - I think it's legitimate to look at this singling out, holding Israel to a different standard than the rest of the world. I think that crosses the line to anti-Semitism."

"But it is not anti-Semitic to look at a certain policy of Israel and say - I disagree with it. Half of the population in Israel isn't anti-Semitic by not agreeing with policies."

Earlier criticism
Before the Presidential election, Abraham Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote an open letter, challenging her recollection of the National Israel Solidarity Rally in Washington in 2002, while she was executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. "You recall a day of speeches in which you heard only the constant drumbeat of 'narrow, ultra-conservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel..." You found yourself asking, "Where was the pro-Israel, pro-peace message? Why was the voice of so many American Jews absent from this rally'" Foxman said he remembered many pro-peace messages. " I remember you introducing Hugh Price, then president of the National Urban League, and I remember Mr. Price closing his remarks with a call to world leaders 'to give lasting peace a chance in the Middle East.'"

Background
Immediately before State, she worked as Community Relations Vice President at the not-for-profit Wisconsin Physician Service Insurance Corporation in Madison. From 2005 to 2008 Ms. Rosenthal was Executive Director of the Chicago Foundation for Women, where she led one of the largest women's funds in the world. Prior to that, she was Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs for five years, where she worked on domestic and international policy for the organized Jewish community in North America. She had been Midwest regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration and helped lead the Wisconsin Clinton-Gore campaigns in 1992 and 1996.

Her father is a Holocaust survivor.