Beverly Hills mayor to attend Antisemitism Summit in Athens

Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse will be among the municipal leaders from 53 cities and 23 nations attending the second annual Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism which begins Wednesday in Athens in Greece.

Antisemitic flyers have been distributed three times in Beverly Hills since last December, most recently on Oct. 23.

Bosse pledged to “speak louder” to counter what she called “hate meant to silence us,” following the Oct. 23 incident, which came one day after the antisemitic group Goyim Defense League draped signs on a San Diego (405) Freeway overpass near Los Angeles International Airport.

Bosse taped an appearance on “Dr. Phil” Nov. 9, “discussing this important issue that truly shaped me into who I am today,” she tweeted. Bosse is the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

Tanaz Golshan, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s liaison to the Jewish and Iranian communities, is set to speak Thursday during a session titled “Intercommunal Challenges and Opportunities to Ensure Diversity.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is set to speak at Wednesday’s opening dinner, along with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and Enes Kanter Freedom, who played for five NBA teams from 2011-22.

The is the first time the summit is being held on an in-person basis. The inaugural summit conducted in 2021 was an online event, hosted by the city government of Frankfurt, Germany.

Mayors, deputy mayors and municipal representatives from such cities as Paris and Vienna will share their challenges and solutions to counter antisemitism, hatred and bigotry.

“Athens is the birthplace of democracy, and the significant rise of hate and antisemitism we are witnessing around the world is a threat to our cherished democratic values,” said Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis, the summit’s chair.

“That is why this event is so important and timely. We see an insidious spread of antisemitism, so there is a need to fight this scourge at the local level as well as to see how these trends are global, and learn best practices from each other towards combating them.”

The summit is co-hosted by the Combat Antisemitism Movement and the Center for Jewish Impact in partnership with the Jewish Federations of North America.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement bills itself as “a global coalition engaging more than 600 partner organizations and nearly two million people from a diverse array of religious, political and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred.”

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