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americans for peace now
Jewish Groups Decry House Passage of Bill Defining Criticism of Israel as 'Antisemitism'
"Antisemitism is a serious problem, but codifying a legal definition could have dangerous implications for free speech," said one campaigner.
May 01, 2024
House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve legislation directing the U.S. Department of Education to consider a dubious definition of antisemitism, despite warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.
House members approved the
Antisemitism Awareness Act—bipartisan legislation introduced last year by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Max Miller (R-Ohio), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in the lower chamber and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate—by a vote of 320-91.
Both progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans opposed language in the bill. The former objected to conflating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, while the latter bristled at labeling Christian scripture—which posits that Jews killed Jesus—as antisemitic.
"Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, one doesn't need to look far to find it these days. But the supporters of this bill are looking in the wrong places," Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of the Jewish-led group Americans for Peace Now, said following Wednesday's vote.
"They aren't interested in protecting Jews," he added. "They are interested in supporting right-wing views and narratives on Israel and shutting down legitimate questions and criticisms by crying 'antisemite' at everyone, including Jews" who oppose Israel's far-right government.
"With this disingenuous effort, House Republicans have failed to seriously address antisemitism," Susskind added. "I hope the Senate does better."
The legislation—officially H.R. 6090—would require the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when determining whether alleged harassment is motivated by antisemitic animus and violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which "prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance," including colleges and universities.
Lawler's office called the proposal "a key step in calling out antisemitism where it is and ensuring antisemitic hate crimes on college campuses are properly investigated and prosecuted," while Gottheimer emphasized that "the IHRA definition underscores that antisemitism includes denying Jewish self-determination to their ancestral homeland of Israel... and applying double standards to Israel."
Critics say that's the trouble with the IHRA working definition: It conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and a "plausibly" genocidal war on Gaza.
As the ACLU noted last week in a letter urging lawmakers to reject the legislation:
The IHRA working definition... is overbroad. It equates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination, and enshrining it into regulation would chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the Department of Education's legitimate and important efforts to combat discrimination. Criticism of Israel and its policies is political speech, squarely protected by the First Amendment. But the IHRA working definition declares that "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor," "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis," and "applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation" are all examples of antisemitism.
Jewish Voice for Peace Action
slammed what it called IHRA's "controversial and dangerous mis-definition that does not help fight real antisemitism and is only a tool for silencing the movement for Palestinian rights."
"The Israeli government's bombardment and siege of Gaza has killed over 34,000 people in six months," the group said on social media. "Congress must stop attacking the students and faculty members who are trying to stop this genocide, and instead focus on ending U.S. complicity in Israel's attacks."
Israel's Gaza onslaught has sparked a wave of nonviolent student-led protests across the United States and around the world. Some of these protests have been violently repressed by police, while anti-genocide activists including Jews have been branded "antisemitic" for condemning Israeli crimes or defending Palestinians' legal right to resist them.
Sending in militarized police and snipers to stop students from exercising their First Amendment rights is truly disgusting.
Why are my colleagues and the mainstream media more outraged over these anti-war protests than they are about the over 35,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza? pic.twitter.com/EwLqRrS2we
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) May 1, 2024
Americans for Peace Now said that while it is "deeply concerned about the escalating antisemitism in the United States and globally," the legislation "poses a significant threat to free speech and open discourse."
"Equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism is a tactic used to stifle important discussions on Israeli policies and actions, thereby hindering the broader effort to combat true instances of hatred and discrimination against Jewish communities," the group added.
Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate and lead drafter of the IHRA working definition, warned years ago that "Jewish groups have used the definition as a weapon to say anti-Zionist expressions are inherently antisemitic and must be suppressed."
"Imagine if Black Lives Matter said the most important thing the [Biden] administration could do to remedy systemic racism is adopt a definition of racism, and that definition included this example: opposition to affirmative action," Stern wrote in 2020.
"Obviously, sometimes opposition to affirmative action is racist and sometimes it is not," he added. "The debate about systemic racism would be changed to a free speech fight, and those with reasonable concerns about affirmative action correctly upset that the state was branding them racist."
ADL Report Decried for Equating Anti-Zionism With Antisemitism
"This is a well-documented strategy by the pro-Israel camp to weaponize antisemitism to shield Israel from accountability," said one critic.
Jan 10, 2024
The Anti-Defamation League came under fire Wednesday after publishing a report that significantly expanded the group's definition of antisemitic incidents to include demonstrations against Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal war on Gaza.
"For the first time, the ADL is counting pro-Palestinian rallies that do not feature overt hostility toward Jews in its count of antisemitic incidents," Jewish Daily Forward antisemitism reporter Arno Rosenfeld noted on social media in response to the organization's new report, which lists what it claims are 3,283 anti-Jewish occurrences in the United States in the three months after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead and over 200 others taken hostage.
That three-month figure tops every full-year total except 2022 and represents a 360% increase over the same period a year ago. In an embargoed statement viewed by Rosenfeld, ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said that the tally highlights a threat to Jews that's "unprecedented in modern history."
Antisemitic—and Islamophobic—incidents have undoubtedly surged in the wake of the October 7 attacks and Israel's bloody collective punishment in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, in which more than 90,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing. However, critics accuse the ADL and many other pro-Israel groups and individuals of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
In a statement to the Forward, the ADL acknowledged that its report includes pro-Palestine protests at which "anti-Zionist chants and slogans" were observed. Rosenfeld said that these events appeared to account for 1,317—or over 40%—of the total incidents in the report.
Zionism is the settler-colonial movement for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A growing number of Jewish Americans are rejecting Zionism for what critics say are its inherent racism, settler-colonialism, and the illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide perpetrated by Israel in the name of divine right and favor. Jewish Americans and groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow have been at the forefront of pro-Palestine demonstrations since October 7.
"Today you will see many journalists and pundits promoting a number: 360%. It is from the ADL's report on the increase of antisemitism," Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of the Jewish-led peace group IfNotNow, wrote on social media Wednesday. "While antisemitism has risen, the number is vastly inflated because of the ADL's intentional conflation between anti-Israel and antisemitism."
"This is a well-documented strategy by the pro-Israel camp to weaponize antisemitism to shield Israel from accountability," Lieberman added.
IfNotNow co-founder Simone Zimmerman wrote: "There is no doubt that antisemitism in America has increased since October 7th. What is dubious is the reliability of data published by the ADL, who repeatedly makes clear that they care more about criminalizing pro-Palestinian speech and activism than fighting real antisemitism."
Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of the left-wing nonprofit Americans for Peace Now, said that "two things can be true at the same time. Antisemitic incidents have greatly increased, and the ADL is not a reliable source of determining what is or is not antisemitism."
Last month, just 13 U.S. House Democrats and one Republican voted against a resolution conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
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