Ellie Cohanim

Prior to her position at the United States Department of State, she was a Special Correspondent and Senior Vice President for Jewish Broadcasting Service (JBS) and an Executive at Yeshiva University, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and UJA-Federation of New York. [2] [3][4]

Cohanim earned her B.A. in Political Science from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she graduated Cum Laude. She conducted graduate studies in International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. [5] [6]

Cohanim was born in Tehran, Iran to a Jewish family that fled the country at the start of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and found refuge in the United States. [7]

Cohanim has been a staunch critic of the Iranian Regime and what she has termed their "obsessive anti-Semitism". [8] Cohanim has also condemned governments and regimes for human rights violations, including the Houthi Militias in Yemen whom she slammed for their persecution of Yemen's Jews and Bahai religious minorities; as well as Hezbollah in the Middle East and Latin America. [9]

On March 25, 2020, Cohanim warned Jewish communities never to be complacent in the face of anti-Semitism and that "everything can turn overnight" in societies, citing as evidence the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that forced her and her family to flee their home country. [10]

On July 30, 2020, in an interview with Fox and Friends, Cohanim criticized the social media company Twitter over what she deemed their hypocrisy in refusing to censor the Twitter account of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who has published countless anti-Semitic tweets calling for the "genocidal" elimination of the State of Israel, while simultaneously censoring the Tweets of President Trump. Cohanim went on to call upon Twitter to completely ban Khamenei from their platform. [11][12]

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cohanim proclaimed that the emerging conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the global outbreak and spread of the Coronavirus are a "modern-day blood libel", and admonished government figures in Iran, Turkey, and the Palestinian Authority for spreading these conspiracy theories. [13]

Cohanim has also condemned the terrorist-designated group Hezbollah, citing their ties to Iran, and has publicly stated that the US praises countries which follow the US in designating Hezbollah a terrorist group and freezing their assets. [14] [15]

Cohanim was a member of the US delegation headed by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to Poland marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. [16]