Sarah Stern

Sarah Stern has had a rather lengthy history of advocacy for the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Right after the Oslo Accords had been signed, she had been contacted by three former Israeli diplomats who had worked in the embassy in Washington under the reign of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

They told her that they harbored grave suspicions that Chairman Arafat was not going to live up to one iota of the Accords he had just signed. They asked her if she would be their conduit to Capitol Hill, and help them to get the truth out about what it was that Chairman Arafat was actually saying to his people, in Arabic and how it differed from what he was saying to Western diplomats and journalists. Sarah immediately agreed, and was thrust full throttle into the fulcrum of the Middle East debate.

After a few years of doing this, pro-bono, Sarah was hired by the Zionist Organization of America to be their National Policy Coordinator, (from 1998 through 2004). After that, she became the Director of the Office of Legislative and Governmental Affairs of the American Jewish Congress, (from 2004 through April of 2006). Sarah had played a major role in the drafting and passage of many pieces of legislation, including the Syria Accountability Act, the Koby Mandell Act, and the resolution in support of Israel’s right to build a security fence, and the inappropriateness of the referral to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

She has worked on many other issues which include; the stationing of US troops on the Golan Heights, the sale of the Harpoon block missiles to Egypt, the hiring of Hamas agents to teach at the UNRWA camps, the issue of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in our nation’s college campuses, the treatment of religious minorities by the Moslem world,reform of the United Nations, and energy independence for the free world.

She has testified before the Senate Working Group on Religious Minorities and Human Rights about the treatment of Christians and other religious minorities by the Palestinian Authority, and has testified before the United States Commission on Civil Rights on anti-Semitism on our nation’s college campuses.

Sarah was one of a panel of three expert witnesses on the issue of anti-Semitism on our nation’s college campuses. As a result of their testimony, the US Commission on Civil Rights has determined that :anti-Semitism on our nation’s campuses is a grave problem and that Jews are to be considered a protected minority.” They are now at work issuing concrete steps to help remedy the problem.

Sarah is a member of the Executive Committee of AJIRI, the American Jewish International Relations Institute., which works with various members of the diplomatic community in establishing deeper ties with the state of Israel.

Sarah’s effort in the drafting , lobbying for, and passage of the Koby Mandell Act has resulted in the opening of an Office for the American Victims of Terrorism abroad, in the Department of Justice. The purpose of this office is to ensure that all Americans, irrespective of where they have been injured or harmed by acts of terrorism, (even areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority), will receive an equal chance for the rigorous pursuit of justice under the law. And that the rigorous pursuit of justice will not be subordinated by diplomatic or political
concerns.

In 2008, Sarah was chiefly responsible for getting some amendments to Title VI of the Higher Education Act which aims to correct the anti-American and anti-Israeli biases in the Middle East Studies programs that have been funded, at taxpayers’ expense to the university. The amendments in the law call for the universities to, among other things,”reflect diverse perspectives and encourage a wide range of views.

Sarah has written many articles, and has been published in Commentary, The New Republic, InFocus, FrontPageMag.com, The Jerusalem Post, the Washington Jewish Week, The Middle East Quarterly, American Thinker and Breitbart. Sarah is the editor and author of the highly acclaimed book, “Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamist Terrorist Network: America and the West’s Fatal Embrace”, which was published by Palgrave MacMillan in November of 2011 and will be going into its second printing in May of 2012. Additionally, she is the author of one novel, “Cherished Illusions”, (2005, Balfour Books), and has written a chapter in Frank Gaffney’s widely acclaimed book, “War Footing” (Naval Press. 2006).