Panelists
Congressman Ted Deutch (US) – serving his third term in the U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of Florida’s 21st district, home to South Florida communities throughout western Palm Beach County and Broward County. He is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the House Ethics Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on which he serves as Ranking Democrat on the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee. members of the B’nai Torah Congregation. Prior to holding public office, Ted enjoyed a successful career as a commercial real estate attorney. Ted is the youngest son of Jean and the late Bernard Deutch, a World War II veteran who earned a Purple Heart at the Battle of the Bulge.
Prof. Irwin Cotler (Canada) – is the Member of Parliament for Mount Royal. He served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until the Liberal government of Paul Martin lost power following the 2006 federal election. He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in a by-election in November 1999, winning 92% of votes cast. Cotler has served on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and its sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development, as well as on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. In 2000, he was appointed Special Adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the International Criminal Court. He is considered an expert on international law and human rights law. As an international human rights lawyer, Cotler served as counsel to former prisoners of conscience Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Jacobo Timmerman in Latin America, Muchtar Pakpahan in Asia, as well as other well known political prisoners and dissidents. Cotler represented Natan Sharansky, who was imprisoned in the Soviet gulag for Jewish activism. Cotler tabled Canada’s first-ever National Justice Initiative Against Racism, in parallel with the government’s National Action Plan Against Racism.
Wade Henderson (US) – president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund. Mr. Henderson is also the Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., Professor of Public Interest Law at the David A. Clarke School of Law, University of the District of Columbia. Currently serves on the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion. Led the civil rights delegation to the 2014 OSCE Anti-Semitism Conference in Berlin.
Elisa Massimino (US) – President and Chief Executive Officer of Human Rights First, one of the US’s leading human rights advocacy organizations, established 1978. Human Rights First works in the United States and abroad to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law. Massimino joined Human Rights First as a staff attorney in 1991 to help establish the Washington office. From 1997 to 2008 she served as the organization’s Washington Director. Previously, Massimino was a litigator in private practice at the Washington law firm of Hogan & Hartson, where she was pro bono counsel in many human rights cases. Before joining the legal profession, she taught philosophy at several universities in Michigan. On 27 February 2013, Massimino testified in congress on the rise of antisemitism where she stressed the importance of strengthening religious freedoms in U.S. foreign policy, called for the Establishment of an interagency mechanism to deploy strategically the resources and programs from across the different U.S. government agencies to combat hate crime globally, Elevating the efforts to combat antisemitism as an important component of Bilateral Engagement and stressed the importance of Maintaining the international leadership of the United States in multilateral forums, particularly the OSCE (was a member of the US delegation to the 2014 Berlin OSCE Conference).
Prof. Robert Wistrich (Israel) – holds the Neuberger chair for Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. He was recently awarded for Lifetime Achievement by the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (The JSA). He is the author and editor of 29 books (The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph, Antisemitism: the Longest Hatred, Hitler and the Holocaust), several of which have won international awards. Between 1999 and 2001 Professor Wistrich was one of six scholars who were appointed to an international Catholic-Jewish historical commission to examine the wartime record of Pope Pius the XII. More recently, in June 2003, he initiated and acted as Chief Historical Adviser for a BBC film documentary on contemporary Muslim antisemitism, entitled “Blaming the Jews”.
