ABOUT US
The Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism (GFCA) is an active and worldwide alliance of statesmen, parliamentarians, diplomats, journalists, legal experts, NGO's and scholars led by the State of Israel. Our goal is to fight the growing expressions of antisemitism and other forms of racism as they manifest themselves around the world. We do so by learning best practices from experts and practitioners in the field, thus enabling us to fight current trends and prepare for future developments.
Over the millennia, antisemitism has taken on many forms, the latest being anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. Through this manifestation – the delegitimization of the State of Israel – antisemites are targeting the Jewish people through an attack on the ancient, yet current, national home of the Jewish people. To confront this ever changing, dynamic antisemitism, in addition to other, more ‘classic’ forms of antisemitism, the GFCA has become an absolutely necessity, and is now the largest international body coordinating efforts to counter global antisemitism.
The GFCA was established in 2000 by former ministers Natan Sharanky and Rabbi Michael Melchior, and has been consolidated by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through its Department for Combating Antisemitism. For the last few years, the GFCA has been co-chaired by both the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister in charge of world Jewish affairs – a move that indicates the priority and gravity that successive governments of the State of Israel place on combating and eradicating global antisemitism.
The GFCA convenes periodically at its international conference, which provides an opportunity to come together, exchange ideas and formulate effective, coordinated and wide-ranging strategies for dealing with the antisemitism that plagues our global society. It was at the 2008 GFCA International Conference, where it was first announced that an inter-parliamentary body was to be established where parliamentarians can share knowledge, experience, best practices, and recommendations in an attempt to deal more effectively with contemporary antisemitism. As a result, in London in early 2009, the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA) was convened for the first time under the auspices of the British parliament.