Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons On February 5th, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the appointment of Elan Carr to serve as the Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism. Carr, a Jewish Iraq War veteran and lawyer, will be the first Special Envoy to serve during the Trump administration. Carr’s appointment has garnered widespread bipartisan support. As Special Envoy, a position that was created during the George W. Bush administration in 2004, Carr will advance US foreign policy on anti-Semitism, developing and implementing policies and projects to support efforts to combat anti-Semitism abroad. Carr is uniquely qualified for such a task, since he not only has the professional expertise needed, but also has a personal connection to anti-Semitism. After the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Carr’s grandfather was forced to participate in a staged trial in Iraq. These anti-Semitic trials targeted Jewish civilians, and his grandfather was convicted on false charges of distributing communist propaganda and sentenced to prison for five years, two of which were for “calling Muslim witnesses liars.” During his prison sentence, the rest of his relatives (including his mother) were able to flee to Israel in 1950. A descendant of Adballah Somekh, the chief Rabbi of Baghdad in the 19th century, Carr received a Jewish education at a Jewish day school in New York. He spoke Hebrew at home and traveled to Israel throughout his childhood. While getting his undergraduate degree from University of California, Berkeley, he joined Alpha Epsilon Pi, where he would later serve as international president. Carr went on to study law at Northwestern University, where he frequently recalled his grandfather “naively attempting to exculpate himself in an Iraqi court that was never intended to be a fair tribunal.” Carr’s grandfather continued to serve as his role model, admiring that “he actually had the audacity to defend himself.” After law school, Carr practiced commercial litigation at a law firm in New York before becoming a legal adviser to Israel’s Ministry of Justice in the 1990s. In 1997, Carr returned to the US and joined the military in an attempt to “shoulder a portion of the burden of defending the United States.” In 2003, Carr was deployed to Iraq where he served as an anti-terrorism officer and as a judge advocate. While he was deployed, Carr managed to maintain his Jewish identity. He regularly led Shabbat services for his fellow soldiers and even lit Hanukkah candles at one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces. While speaking of the experience he said, “What a privilege it was to express myself Jewishly and provide Jewish services to Jewish soldiers in as unlikely a place as Baghdad, from which [Scud missiles] were launched into Israel only a few years before. We lit a Hanukkiah and said, ‘Banu hoshekh legharesh — we have come to banish darkness.’” Since finishing his military service in 2004, Carr has served as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, and has also traveled across North America and Israel to lecture on terrorism and the Middle East. In 2014, he ran as a Republican candidate representing California’s 33rd congressional district and in 2016, Carr he ran to represent the 5th Supervisorial District on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Carr’s appointment has garnered widespread support. Groups like the American Jewish Committee, the Israeli-American Council, and the Anti-Defamation League have all praised his appointment. Additionally, his appointment has garnered bipartisan support. Democrat Rep. Nita Lowey has stated that the appointment is “long overdue” and is hopeful that “he will work with Congress to ensure that the US remains a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism.” The Republican Jewish Coalition has also stated their support, saying that Carr is “a principled, fierce fighter against injustice, oppression, and hatred.” Carr’s predecessor, Ira Forman, has also praised the appointment, saying that Carr’s political skills, military service, Jewish upbringing, mixed Mizrahi-Ashkenazi heritage, and his fluency in Arabic and Hebrew make him a “great fit” for the position. US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Chair Tenzin Dorjee said, “With anti-Semitism on the rise, especially in Europe, it is more important than ever that this special envoy position be filled and properly staffed. We wish Mr. Carr well in this vital position and look forward to working with him to fight the scourge of anti-Semitism around the world.” The Brandeis Center has joined a growing coalition of organizations and individuals in their support for Carr’s appointment. Combat Anti-Semitism is a new non-partisan effort to “offer moral support to the envoy and all those in the US government active in the very important mission to combat global anti-Semitism and to encourage civic society to continue to stand up to hate and bigotry in the world, and specifically anti-Semitism.” Over 20,000 individuals and organizations have signed Combat Anti-Semitism’s pledge, declaring that “anti-Semitism is a scourge upon our world and pledge our full commitment to its eradication.”