(Everett, Washington - January 18, 2023) -- StandWithUs praises Snohomish County, Washington Councilman Nate Nehring and the other council members for voting (5-0) to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism for County agencies on January 18, 2023. Snohomish is the third largest county in Washington state and the first in the state to take such a strong stand against antisemitism.
John Michael Graves, StandWithUs Northwest High School Regional Manager, spoke at the council hearing, conveying his first-hand experience with antisemitism and the urgency of taking action against what has been called “The World’s Oldest Hate.” He urged the adoption of IHRA and its eleven guiding examples so that “government agencies, leaders, and citizens learn to recognize antisemitism not only as it manifested itself in 1943, but as we experience it in 2023.”
The resolution recognizes the county’s responsibility to protect all its citizens and that the adoption of IHRA will give it the definitional tools to identify, monitor, investigate and engage in effective policy-making. Graves not only praises Councilman Nehring for “assuming a position as one of WA state leaders in the fight against discrimination, he also encourages other counties in Washington and the state as a whole “to define antisemitism as a first step towards defeating it.”
Also attending the hearing were Randy Kessler, StandWithUs Northwest executive director and Jennifer Adut, associate director.
To learn more about the resolution, click here: Signed copy of the resolution
About StandWithUs
StandWithUs (SWU) is an international, nonprofit and non-partisan Israel education organization that works to inspire and educate people of all ages about Israel, as well as challenge misinformation and fight against antisemitism.
Through university fellowships, high school internships, middle school curricula, conferences, materials, social media, educational films and missions to Israel, StandWithUs supports people around the world who want to educate their schools and communities about Israel.
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Los Angeles, the organization has chapters and programs throughout the U.S., in Israel, the UK, Canada, South Africa, Brazil and the Netherlands.
For the last eleven years, SWU has consistently received the highest possible ratings from Charity Navigator and Guidestar, two charity watchdog groups that assess hundreds of thousands of charities in the United States.
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