‘McCarthyite backlash’ to criticism of Israel

Senate suppression of pro-Palestinian voices

October 27, 2023American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) expresses deep concern over the recent Senate resolutions condemning antisemitism led by U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen, Marsha Blackburn, Jacky Rosen, James Lankford, and Josh Hawley. While we unequivocally condemn all forms of hatred, including antisemitism, the language and framing of these resolutions present a dangerously one-sided narrative that risks stifling critical discourse about Israel’s actions and policies. We are concerned that the one-sided approach contributes to fueling Islamophobia and Palestinephobia. 

We are alarmed that the resolutions do not delineate between antisemitism and the legitimate right to criticize the actions of the Israeli government. In doing so, these resolutions would not only further enable the suppression of pro-Palestinian voices in academic institutions but will contribute to a climate of fear and self-censorship among students and faculty at a time when Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity every day in Palestine. 

In particular, the call to “investigate pro-Palestinian student groups’ potential ties to Hamas” serves to demonize peaceful activists and student organizations that strive for justice and human rights for Palestinians. This not only impacts freedom of speech but also exposes these individuals to undue scrutiny, intimidation, and, potentially, legal repercussions.

We urge Congress to consider the broader impact of these resolutions. Suppressing critical voices under the guise of combating antisemitism creates a chilling atmosphere that stands in opposition to the values of freedom, equality, and justice that the United States claims to uphold. 

In light of the preceding, we call on academic institutions to safeguard freedom of speech and protect the right to engage in peaceful activism without fear of reprisal or intimidation. We also call on U.S. media to be responsible in its coverage, present the facts as they are, without manipulation or falsification, and foster an environment that allows for nuanced debate and discussion on Israel-Palestine issues without labeling critical voices as antisemitic. 

We believe that dialogue and critique are crucial elements of any democratic society. AMP remains committed to fighting all forms of discrimination while advocating for the right to critique governmental policies and actions, including those of Israel.

Signed,
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)

 
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging & educating Americans on Palestinian rights and the Israeli occupation. AMP is a premier national organization in the Palestine solidarity movement.

American Muslims for Palestine
6404 Seven Corners Place Ste N | Falls Church, Virginia 22044
703.534.3032 | info@ampalestine.org

Follow AMP on Social Media


 

Report: Blinken Urged Qatar to Censor Al Jazeera on Gaza

The outlet has been a crucial source of on-the-ground reporting from Gaza.

 
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives for a press conference in Tel Aviv, on October 17, 2023, after an overnight meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (JACQUELYN MARTIN, POOL, AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In a meeting on Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a group of U.S. Jewish community leaders that he has urged the Qatari government to suppress coverage of Gaza from major Middle East outlet Al Jazeera, according to an Axios report.

Three people who attended the meeting told Axios that Blinken said that he has asked the Qatari prime minister to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement.” He told them that he brought this up as an example of how the Qatari government could reconsider its relationship with Hamas, the attendees said, though Blinken didn’t specify which coverage he specifically took issue with.

According to Axios, Blinken appeared to be talking about suppressing coverage from Al Jazeera Arabic, rather than Al Jazeera English.

The outlet has been a critical source of information amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza and throughout much of the decades-long Isareli occupation and apartheid, featuring reports from journalists on the ground in Palestine even as journalists in Gaza are at risk of being shelled and killed by Israeli forces.

The Al Jazeera Media Network is funded by the Qatari government but says that it maintains editorial independence.

More


RELATED STORY


Blinken’s request to suppress Al Jazeera comes after Israel approved emergency regulations last week that could pave the way for shuttering the outlet, which Israeli officials have deemed “enemy propaganda.”

Israel has long sought to shut down Al Jazeera, one of the few international media companies with a physical presence in both Israel and Gaza. In 2017, Israel announced plans to close Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem office and stop the outlet’s broadcasts, due to what officials called “incitement.” In 2022, Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh; after months of denying that Israeli forces killed her, the Israeli military ultimately admitted that it was “highly possible” that it was responsible for her death.

Free press advocates have said that banning Al Jazeera is a dangerous move, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Israel to reconsider.

“We are deeply concerned by Israeli officials’ threats to censor media coverage of the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, using vague accusations of harming national morale,” Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for CPJ, said in a statement. “CPJ urges Israel not to ban Al-Jazeera and to allow journalists to do their jobs. A plurality of media voices is essential in order to hold power to account, especially in times of war.”

Like everyone else in Gaza, journalists on the ground are in danger of losing their lives. Due to the Israeli siege on the region, Gazan journalists have had to resort to desperate measures to broadcast their reports; with no internet or electricity, and with some journalists’ offices bombed, press experts and journalists have raised concerns that there could be a media blackout in Palestine, which could serve to sow doubt regarding the extent of Gazans’ suffering and Israel’s genocide.

On the same day that news broke about Blinken’s comments, an Al Jazeera journalist learned that an Israeli air raid had killed his entire family. Wael Dahdouh, bureau chief for Al Jazeera Arabic in Gaza, was on-air when he learned the news. He then went to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza — the only hospital still functioning in the area — to find that his wife, son and daughter were dead. His grandson was declared dead two hours later.

“If those cameras stop rolling, the world will not know what’s happening here,” Wajeeh Abu Zarifeh, a Gazan journalist whose office was bombed and destroyed during the first week of Israel’s current attacks, told Wired. “If we lose the electricity, if we lose the internet, we will stop. This is what Israel wants, to do everything in the dark.”

Blinken’s support for censorship of Al Jazeera’s Gaza coverage comes as he and other Biden administration officials have been stoking the war and seeking to increase U.S. aid to Israel, including weapons, as it carries out ethnic cleansing in Gaza. So far, at least 24 journalists have been killed in the war, according to CPJ, including one Lebanese reporter, three Israelis, and 20 Palestinians, all of whom were killed by Israeli air and missile strikes.

This story has been edited to include the news of the killing of an Al Jazeera journalist’s family on Wednesday.


THE STAKES HAVE NEVER BEEN HIGHER (AND OUR NEED FOR YOUR SUPPORT HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER).

For over two decades, Truthout’s journalists have worked tirelessly to give our readers the news they need to understand and take action in an increasingly complex world. At a time when we should be reaching even more people, big tech has suppressed independent news in their algorithms and drastically reduced our traffic. Less traffic this year has meant a sharp decline in donations.

The fact that you’re reading this message gives us hope for Truthout’s future and the future of democracy. As we cover the news of today and look to the near and distant future we need your help to keep our journalists writing.

Please do what you can today to help us keep working for the coming months and beyond. As we work to raise $21,000 in the next 24 hours, your gift matters even more.

Donate

 

Podcast with Jeff Halper & Huwaida Arraf censored

 

J.G. Michael, Producer and Host of Parallax Views, reports that his recent podcast with Jeff & Huwaida has been flagged as “spam” and “hatespeech” on FaceBook.  Michael says, “Both of you called for a one, democratic state solution. Nothing hateful. Neither of you made for expulsion of Jewish people from that land, but rather a call for Palestinians and Jews to be able to live together as equals. Again, neither of you said anything hateful. You both called for an end to violence and bloodshed. I’m devastated by this along with everything else happening.”


 

Hilton Hotel Capitulates to Hate, Cancels Palestinian Voices

Seize-The-Moment-USCPR-Conference 800

Houston, TX | www.uscpr.org | October 18, 2023 – Yesterday, the Hilton Houston Post Oak Hotel, capitulating to external pressure from hate groups, unilaterally canceled the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights’s (USCPR) upcoming conference. The cancellation was made with very little notice or advanced warning. Our experience is not an isolated incident. Across the country we have seen a concerted effort to vilify and silence anyone who speaks up for Palestinian human rights. 

USCPR Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid said, “The breach by Hilton is clearly an act of ethnic, racial and religious discrimination. Further, canceling the conference because of our organization’s political positions goes against our First Amendment rights. Not only has Hilton breached their agreement with us, they have also sent a strong message that they stand on the side of hate and bigotry. Moving forward we will explore all options to remedy this. We will fight back and remain undeterred in our mission to advocate for justice, equality, and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”

Following the breach by Hilton, an alarming tweet by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, which attacked our organizers, and dehumanized Palestinians, put our staff, volunteers, and participants in harm’s way. The Governor’s rhetoric, and actions by the hotel echo and inflame the sharp increase in hate incidents that are targeting Arabs, rhetoric that led to the murder of 6-year-old Wadie Al Fayoume.

We stand with countless others who have been subjected to similar unjust actions in the past. Such incidents remind us that we must persist in our efforts to shed light on the ongoing human rights abuses in Palestine and the need for international intervention.

Together, we will continue our efforts to bring about a world where justice, equality, and peace prevail.

Press Contact: Jennifer K. Falcon 
Email: jennifer@fossilfree.media 
Tel: 512-834-5334

EXPLORE MORE NEWS CATEGORIES:

 

Emergency Fund to Protect Palestinian and Arab Students on College Campuses

 
In the past several days, ADC has received an endless barrage of complaints and cases from students across college campuses in the United States tied to the War on Palestine. The bulk of these complaints are tied to the identity, dress and speech of students on campus and on-line.

This degree of discrimination is approaching post-9/11 levels. We are getting reports of students:

  • Being expelled,
  • Removed from classes
  • Asked to go home and change their clothes
  • Being monitored and policed for their social media posts
  • Subjected to violent attacks on campus
  • Losing job opportunities
  • Being placed on blacklisting websites
  • Targeted for pro-Palestinian speech and activism

In many respects college and university leadership are enabling this discrimination. As such, placing our students in the middle of institutional bigotry and violate from classmates.

Many of these students lack the knowledge and the resources to sufficiently defend themselves and are calling to ADC for help.

During this moment of crisis ADC is establishing an Emergency Fund to protect the civil liberties of our students, and to investigate litigation to ensure their sustained protection on college campuses across the country.

Given the gravity of the war and its duration, this discrimination will persist for the foreseeable future. This Fund will enable ADC to serve the needs of our students, vindicate their rights, and ensure their safety across American college and university campuses.

We anticipate that the preliminary budget for this Fund begins at $150,000.00. Thank you for your continuous support. 

In solidarity, 

Abed Ayoub
National Executive Director 

Facebook  Twitter  Instagram

Support ADC | Become a member   
1705 Desales St NW Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20036 
(202) 244-2990 | adc@adc.org
©2023 ADC. All rights reserved.
 

Have the People Protesting a Palestinian Literary Festival Read Any Palestinian Literature?

 
Sources Cited in this Video

  • The Palestine Writes Literature Festival, held last weekend.
  • A letter by University of Pennsylvania alums asking the university to denounce the festival.
  • A letter by the Brandeis Center claiming that the Palestine Writes festival will endanger Jewish students.
  • Why Zionists in the US and Europe express higher rates of antisemitism, as traditionally defined, than anti-Zionists.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. Our guest this Friday at noon EDT, our normal time, will be with Samuel Moyn. Our conversation will be with Samuel Moyn. Samuel is a professor of law and history at Yale. He’s written a really important new book, which has gotten a lot of attention, called Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times. It’s a portrait of a series of influential thinkers like Lionel Trilling and Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Judith Shklar, whose discourse he argues has had really profound and negative effects on the way Americans think about politics and liberalism in particular today. But for our purposes, it’s also interesting because he talks about the way they thought about Zionism, and the relationship between Cold War liberalism and Zionism. And so, the book, I think, has a lot to say also about the way that period in the middle of the twentieth century has influenced, shaped discourse in the US about Zionism too. So, that’ll be Friday at noon for paid subscribers who also get access to our library of previous calls with people like Ilhan Omar, Bret Stephens, Thomas Friedman, Noam Chomsky, and others.

I wanted to say something about this literary festival that was held this weekend the University of Pennsylvania. It’s the only North American Palestinian Literary Festival. And it elicited this letter from alums of the University of Pennsylvania, basically calling on the university to denounce it, and not saying it should be shut down, but basically saying that Penn and other institutions like that should basically make it harder for these kinds of things to take place. And I looked at the names of those folks and I thought, you know, I bet I know some of these people, and if not, they’re only one degree of separation away from me. We’re probably roughly the same age, me and these alums. I’m obviously Jewish too, and I went to a similar kind of university. And I feel like I wish I could speak to the folks who wrote that letter, and so this is kind of my effort to do so. And if you are one of those people, thank you for listening. And if you know some of those people, maybe consider passing this on to them.

And the question I would ask the folks who signed the letter is: how many novels by Palestinians have you read? How many books in general about Palestinians have you read? How many lectures have you heard Palestinians give? How much time have you spent talking to Palestinians about their experience, seeing their experience in the West Bank or even inside Israel proper? Now, there may be some folks on that letter for whom the answer is they’ve done that a lot. Good for them. But my assumption is going to be that for the vast majority, the answer is very little or not at all. Because that’s the norm in the organized American Jewish community is that listening to Palestinians is very unusual. Jewish organizations in general don’t expose their communities to Palestinian perspectives. And so, it seems to me, if that’s the case, there is a really sad, even tragic, irony in this, right? Because a group of people who have not exposed themselves to Palestinian cultural and literary production are basically going out to try to make it hard for Palestinians to speak publicly about Palestinian art, culture in the public square. And I really believe that if more of those folks who signed the letter actually had had the very experience that the Palestinian Rights Literary Festival is trying to create, they would not be trying to demonize it and trying to get the University of Pennsylvania to make it harder for it to operate.

And the reason is this. The discourse in this letter, which is typical of American Jewish discourse, is that the speakers in this literary festival, or at least some of them, are antisemitic and hateful because of what they say about Israel and Zionism. And generally, what they say about Israel and Zionism that people claim to be antisemitic and hateful is that a Jewish state is inherently immoral, and unjust, and it’s settler colonial, and it practices apartheid. These various kinds of things, right? These very hostile and fundamental critiques of the very notion of Israel and Zionism, and even some speakers have said that they support armed resistance against Israel. So, this is interpreted as antisemitism.

But if you listen to Palestinians talk about their own experience, then you have a fundamentally different context from which to understand these kinds of comments, right. Because Palestinians suffer brutal oppression at the hands of the Israeli state. And that’s not new, right? They have for a very, very long time. And so, if you understand that context, then these statements of hostility towards Israel and Zionism don’t necessarily seem antisemitic and pathological, they seem like a response to the Palestinian experience. But what happens in American Jewish discourse is the question of what has actually happened to Palestinians—what happened to Palestinians when most Palestinians were expelled in the Nakba in 1948, what it’s like for Palestinians to live today in the West Bank without the most basic rights, the right to be a citizen of the country in which you live—all of that is pushed to the side, not discussed at all. Or if it’s discussed, it’s discussed in a way that basically suggests that Palestinians are to blame for their own dispossession. And once that’s shunted to the side, there’s this claim that these statements of hostility to Israel and Zionism are antisemitic and endanger Jews.

But if we were to think about another group of people who experience oppression and the way they talk about their oppressors, we would immediately understand that this interpretation doesn’t make sense, right? So, if you were thinking about a Ukrainian literary festival, and the way they would talk about Russians, or a Uighur literary festival and the way they would talk about the Chinese state, right, and you saw that those literary festivals had speakers who had said, these states are fundamentally unjust. They’re fundamentally discriminatory. They are committing horrific acts of violence, right? And they use terms like colonial, or settler colonial, or apartheid, or racist, or whatever, or even a Nazi analogy, right? We might not agree with every particular statement, right? But we would recognize that it doesn’t come from pathological hatred. It comes from the experience of oppression. We would understand that that experience of oppression is central, right, to the hostility that you would see among Uighurs towards the Chinese state or Ukrainians towards the Russian state. And if somebody Ukrainian said they supported armed resistance against the Russian state, we would say we understand the reasons for that. And if they supported armed resistance against Russian civilians, I would say I oppose it just like I oppose armed resistance against Israeli civilians. But I would also understand that it comes out of a context in which these people are themselves the subject of tremendous violence. All of this would be kind of obvious, right? Because in American public discourse and Jewish public discourse too, it’s taken for granted, it’s accepted that Uighurs and Ukrainians are being denied basic rights. But when it comes to Palestinians, that central fundamental, foundational fact, right, is basically treated as irrelevant, or denied all together.

And so, I think that we have in this situation a kind of an effort by people inside the Jewish community to essentially reproduce our own ignorance. Because it is the ignorance of the Palestinian experience that I think leads people to not understand that there are very good reasons for Palestinians to have hostility to Zionism and Israel. Doesn’t mean that you have to agree with every particular statement that any particular person has made, but that you have to understand that that’s the foundational context, right? Just as you would understand that if you’re dealing with essentially discourse of Black Americans vis-à-vis white Americans, or any group of people that’s oppressed—or, you know, the way Jews thought about Polish or Ukrainian people a hundred years ago—that a context comes out of that. That there’s a context of oppression that you have to have to understand this discourse.

And so, instead what you see from this letter is this idea that Jewish students are endangered by this discourse, which I think is really nonsense. In fact, if you look at the best data that we have—and I’ve said this time and time again about antisemitism United States, antisemitism defined the old-fashioned way like statements about Jews as Jews, you know, are they disloyal? Are they dishonest, etc., etc.? It’s vastly, vastly higher on the right. In fact, I think there’s pretty compelling evidence that anti-Zionists in the United States have lower levels of antisemitism than do Zionists. And I’ll link to some of the stuff I’ve written about this. But instead, what we have is this fervent effort always to connect Palestinian critiques of Israel and Zionism with assaults on Jews, right, even though the data shows that in fact—and I’m quoting Hersch and Royden’s paper here, which is the best thing we have on the subject, that ‘antisemitic attitudes are rare on the ideological left but common on the ideological right.’

Despite that, we had this constant discourse of keeping Jewish students safe, which really, actually mirrors the kind of worst, most caricatured version of ‘woke’ safe space discourse. Jewish students at Penn are not threatened by Palestinian speakers talking about their experience. And the language of safety in this case is actually an effort to try to keep them ignorant of the Palestinian experience, right, and to try to get the university to make it less likely that they will actually listen to Palestinians. Which is fundamentally antithetical to the purpose of a university. What we should be doing is encouraging these Jewish students to go outside of their comfort zone and listen to Palestinians even though it’s going to be difficult, and produce cognitive dissonance for them, and be painful in some ways for them to hear that the state that they have been raised to love has actually done these terrible things to Palestinians. That’s not violence. That’s not a threat to someone’s safety. It’s education. This is what we should want all students to be experiencing while they’re at university. And it drives me crazy that many of the people who understand that point the most clearly and make it so often when it comes to the safe spaces of Black students or LGBT students or whatever. When it comes to Jewish students, they actually want to prevent that process of education because they describe the process of education vis-à-vis the Palestinian experience, as an experience of threat to the safety of Jewish students. It’s not. It’s actually an experience of education that we should welcome. So, again our call on Friday is going to be with Samuel Moyn at noon. I hope many of you will join us.

Subscribe to The Beinart Notebook

A conversation about American foreign policy, Palestinian freedom and the Jewish people. Thousands of paid subscribers.

 

Jewish doctor denied payment for refusing Israel pledge


Dr. Steve Feldman, pictured on a trip to the West Bank. Feldman was denied payment from the state of Arkansas for refusing to sign a pledge promising not to boycott Israel. (Courtesy of Steve Feldman)

ANDREW LAPIN, JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY, MAY 3, 2023

Dr. Steve Feldman, a dermatologist, delivered a Zoom lecture to University of Arkansas at Little Rock medical students in February, for which he was entitled to a $500 honorarium from the state. But Feldman said that the state is withholding payment because he refused to sign a pledge, required for public contractors under Arkansas law since 2017, to commit to not boycotting Israel.

“They have a law in place that makes contracts with Arkansas dependent on your agreement not to boycott Israel, which I think is wrong,” Feldman, who is a professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “To me, growing up Jewish, the very strong lesson of the Holocaust that I learned is it’s wrong to mistreat other people.”

Arkansas is one of dozens of states that have passed laws aiming to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. The laws either bar the state from investing in companies that boycott Israel or, as in Arkansas’ case, mandate that state contractors promise not to boycott the country. Most of those laws have been struck down by courts, but Feldman’s lecture took place the same month the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Arkansas’ law. His case is the latest example of how such laws are affecting what would otherwise be ordinary state business transactions.

Feldman has close relatives who live in Israel. But he said the pledge conflicted with his religious and moral views. In addition to his medical work, he is a pro-Palestinian activist who created the online-only Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience. The website says that the Jewish commitment to fighting injustice should lead Jews to stand up for Palestinian rights. Feldman said he does support boycotting Israel. 

“I think the only thing that will lead to Israel allowing Palestinian families to return to their homes, so that everybody can live together peacefully, will be some kind of boycott,” he said.

While the Arkansas law, passed in 2017, applies only to contractors earning more than $1,000 from the state, Feldman said he was still refused his $500 payment. The justification, he said, was that being added to the state’s vendor system would make him eligible for future assignments that could add up to more than $1,000.

Feldman told JTA he is exploring his legal options and wouldn’t rule out a lawsuit against the state as a means of advocating for Palestinian rights and challenging last year’s federal Eighth Circuit Court ruling that the law was constitutionally protected. “I would love to sue and have the Circuit Court either retract what they said, or go to the Supreme Court in order for people to see things that they didn’t know,” he said.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, has said the law combats discrimination on the basis of nationality. Following the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case, he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he works to “ensure that taxpayers aren’t required to pay for anti-Israel and anti-Israeli discrimination.”

Feldman’s story was first reported by the Arkansas Times, a publication that has itself become entangled in the state’s anti-boycott law. The paper’s publisher, Alan Leveritt, challenged the law in court after he was asked to sign the anti-boycott pledge so that the paper could run advertising from a state university. The suit, which is the one that reached the Supreme Court, argued that the law was a violation of the publication’s First Amendment rights and attracted support from progressive Jewish groups, as well as opposition from some pro-Israel groups. Leveritt argued that he doesn’t have strong feelings about Israel boycotts but that his paper does not take political positions in exchange for advertising. 

Since the inception of state-level laws prohibiting Israel boycotts, some state lawmakers have used them as a template for legislation barring other types of divestment campaigns, such as those targeting fossil fuels or the firearms industry. 

Feldman mused that he could have signed the pledge, taken the money and then engaged in an Israel boycott to see how the state would react, but concluded, “I can’t lie on a form. That also goes against my Jewish moral character.”

D.C. Court Dismisses Lawsuit Against Israeli Boycott

Court dismisses claims arising from 2013 Boycott Resolution as a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), siding with Steven Salaita and others


March 2, 2023, Washington, D.C. – The D.C. Superior Court yesterday dismissed a lawsuit against the American Studies Association (ASA) and some of its former leaders for a 2013 resolution endorsing the academic boycott against Israel. The court found that the claims primarily arose from advocacy on an issue of public interest and were not likely to succeed. Those targeted by the suit included Dr. Steven Salaita, an advocate for Palestinian rights represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which secured dismissal of all the claims against him under a D.C. law to deter SLAPPs, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. 

“I welcome the judge’s decision to dismiss this long-running lawsuit as a waste of time and money,” said Salaita. “I am happy to finally be freed of this burden and hope that the ruling will deter pro-Israel outfits with no means of winning a debate beyond harassment and defamation from trying to impoverish those of us committed to the wellbeing of the Palestinian people.”

In 2013, two-thirds of ASA members voted to join a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as part of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to generate opposition to Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians. Four professors originally sued the ASA and some of its leaders in federal court, claiming that the vote had violated the group’s by-laws and that its officers had breached their fiduciary duties. In 2018, they amended the suit to add several defendants, including Salaita, even though he had joined the ASA board two years after the vote. 

A federal court dismissed the lawsuit in 2019, and the plaintiffs promptly filed a nearly identical complaint in the D.C Superior Court. The court initially denied the anti-SLAPP motion, but in response to an appeal by Salaita and the other defendants, the D.C. Court of Appeals ordered the court to reanalyze the case, resulting in yesterday’s ruling.   

The purpose of anti-SLAPP laws is to deter lawsuits that target people who speak out on matters of public concern. Often, the goal of plaintiffs in such cases is not to win in court but simply to harass and intimidate advocates. Under the D.C. anti-SLAPP law, once the defendants show that the lawsuit is based on protected advocacy, plaintiffs must show that they are nonetheless likely to prevail in court; if they cannot, the suit is dismissed as it was in this case, and defendants may collect attorney’s fees from the plaintiffs. 

“This ruling should send a clear message to those trying to silence advocates speaking out against Israel’s human rights abuses: boycotts are legally protected, and attempts to stifle such advocacy through the misuse of courts will not be tolerated,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “These lawsuits will face strong opposition that will only grow the movement for justice and freedom in Palestine.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights also represented Salaita in his case against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which unlawfully fired him in retaliation for his criticism of Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza. The lawsuit against him and the other academics is part of a broader nationwide effort to suppress speech critical of Israel, advocates say. The Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal have documented censorship efforts on college campuses and at other institutions. 

Defendants Lisa Duggan, Curtis Marez, Neferti Tadiar, Sunaina Maira, Chandan Reddy, John Stephens, and the American Studies Association were represented by Whiteford, Taylor & Preston L.L.P., and defendants J. Kehaulani Kauanui and Jasbir Puar were represented by Mark Allen Kleiman and Richard Renner.  

For more information, visit the Center for Constitutional Rights’ case page

 

Victory! ABA removes controversial definition of antisemitism

Proposed resolution targeted Palestinian rights advocacy

In January, we sent letters urging the American Bar Association (ABA) to remove its reference to the “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism” in its proposed Resolution 514, explaining that rather than fighting antisemitism, the controversial IHRA definition is used to silence Palestinian rights advocates. In a victory for human rights and free speech, the ABA decided to drop the definition in passing its resolution.

Meanwhile, we continue to fight the use of IHRA as it is being pushed through in various arenas to suppress Palestinian voices. Virginia legislators are considering HB 1606 which would adopt IHRA, including its contemporary examples related to Israel, as a tool and guide for recognizing and combating antisemitic discrimination and hate crimes in Virginia. We joined Palestine Legal and other groups in a letter to legislators explaining the dangers of the definition, and how it has widely been used to suppress criticism of Israel, not to combat antisemitism. The bill passed out of committee on Friday, and the fight continues.

 

Harvard Reverses Course on Advocate Who Criticized Israel

Blocking the former head of Human Rights Watch stirred debate over academic freedom and donor influence


Kenneth Roth, the former director of Human Rights Watch, in New York last April. The Harvard Kennedy School recently reversed its early decision to reject his fellowship application because of his criticisms of Israel. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

Jennifer Schuessler and Marc Tracy, New York Times, Jan. 19, 2023

The Harvard Kennedy School reversed course on Thursday and said it would offer a fellowship to a leading human rights advocate it had previously rejected, after news of the decision touched off a public outcry over academic freedom, donor influence and the boundaries of criticism of Israel.

The controversy erupted earlier this month, when The Nation published a lengthy article revealing that last summer, the school’s dean, Douglas Elmendorf, had vetoed a proposal by the school’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy to offer a one-year fellowship to Kenneth Roth, the recently retired executive director of Human Rights Watch. At the time, Elmendorf told colleagues that he was concerned about perceptions that Human Rights Watch had a bias against Israel, according to two faculty members.

The revelation prompted sharp rebukes from prominent free expression groups; a letter signed by more than 1,000 Harvard students, faculty and alumni criticizing what it called “a shameful decision to blacklist Kenneth Roth”; and private complaints from faculty.

In an email to the Kennedy School community on Thursday, Elmendorf said his decision had been an “error” and the school would be extending an invitation to Roth.

Elmendorf, an economist who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2009 to 2015, also pushed back against the charge that donors had influenced his initial decision, which was suggested in the Nation article and reiterated in public statements by Roth.

“Donors do not affect our consideration of academic matters,” he said in the statement. “My decision was also not made to limit debate at the Kennedy School about human rights in any country.”

He did not specify why he had rejected Mr. Roth’s fellowship except to say that it was “based on my evaluation of his potential contributions to the school.”

As for Roth, who after Harvard’s about-face accepted an offer from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is now a fellow at Perry World House, Elmendorf said, “I hope that our community will be able to benefit from his deep experience in a wide range of human rights issues.”

Roth, reached by phone after the reversal was announced, said he was pleased by the decision, which he attributed to “overwhelming” concern from the faculty, and that he would use the fellowship to work on a book about his decades of human rights advocacy. But he also called for more transparency.

“Dean Elmendorf has said he made this decision because of people who ‘mattered’ to him at the university,” Roth said, referring to published accounts by faculty members. “He still refuses to say who those people who mattered to him were.”

And he called on Harvard to make a stronger commitment to academic freedom, including for people who aren’t in a position to mobilize public opinion.

“Penalizing people for criticizing Israel is hardly limited to me,” he continued. “What is the Kennedy School, and Harvard more broadly, going to do to show this episode conveys a renewed commitment to academic freedom, rather than just exceptional treatment for one well-known individual?”


The Harvard Kennedy School, a public policy school in Cambridge, Mass., is home to a dozen research centers, including the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. (Kayana Szymczak)

The incident was the latest flare-up in the ongoing debate about when criticism of Israel shades into antisemitism, and when charges of antisemitism, in turn, are used to shut down criticism.

In interviews (and on Twitter), Roth, a Jew whose father fled Nazi Germany as a child, said that Elmendorf’s initial decision reflected the influence of those who seek to delegitimize Human Rights Watch, which has monitored abuses in more than 100 countries, as an impartial observer on Israel. And he has described it as a case of “donor-driven censorship,” though he said he had no proof.

“It clearly looks like this is donor influence undermining intellectual independence,” he said in an interview with The New York Times last week.

(A spokesman for Harvard said the university and its president, Lawrence Bacow, had no comment.)

Donor influence can be murky, with the details of conversations held behind closed doors rarely coming to the surface. But Israel has been a particular flash point in recent years, as some donors concerned with what they see as antisemitic or anti-Israel trends in academia have sought to reverse gifts or sway hiring decisions.

In 2020, the University of Toronto halted the hiring of Valentina Azarova as the director of its law school’s human rights program, after a major donor contacted an administrator to express concerns about her academic work criticizing Israel’s human rights record. (After a public outcry, the university offered the job to Azarova with protections for academic freedom, but she declined.)

Last year, the University of Washington returned a $5 million gift, after a donor to its Israel Studies program expressed unhappiness with a professor who had joined other Israel and Jewish studies scholars in signing an open letter criticizing the Israeli government’s conduct toward Palestinians and Arabs in the country and the Palestinian territories. The donor, according to the university, had requested that the gift agreement be amended to forbid scholars supported by the donation from making statements “seen as hostile to Israel.”

Douglas Elmendorf, currently the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, testifying before the House Congressional Budget Committee in 2015. (Jabin Botsford/The New York Times)

The Kennedy School, a confederation of 12 centers and dozens of other initiatives, is one of the nation’s leading public policy schools. It’s also no stranger to controversy, often stemming not from its regular faculty but from its more than 750 visiting fellows, who include prominent figures from politics, government and media.

In 2017, Elmendorf rescinded a fellowship offered to Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who in 2010 leaked archives of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, following criticism from Mike Pompeo, then C.I.A. director, and others in the intelligence community. In 2019, Rick Snyder, a former governor of Michigan, withdrew from a fellowship after his appointment sparked a backlash on social media and from students who cited his role in the Flint water crisis.

As for partisan voices on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the school has hosted a variety of fellows in recent years, including Amos Yadlin, a retired top Israeli general, and Saeb Erekat, then the chief Palestinian negotiator and secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Roth had been recruited for the fellowship, which includes no teaching duties, by Mathias Risse, the director of the Carr Center. In an email to Carr Center students, faculty members, fellows, alumni and others following the Nation article, Risse called him “one of the most distinguished human rights leaders of our time” and said the fellowship rejection was “one of the lowest moments of my professional life.”

In interviews and emails with the The Times, Risse and another faculty member, Kathryn Sikkink, said that Elmendorf, in explaining his rejection of Roth, had cited the perception that Human Rights Watch was “biased” against Israel. He told them he had become aware of the issue following discussions with unnamed people within the university, they said.

Roth, right, at Ben Gurion Airport in 2019 with Omar Shakir, an American Human Rights Watch employee who was expelled by Israel. (Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

Donors, they said, were not mentioned. But they said a 2021 report by Human Rights Watch, which concluded that Israel’s policies toward Palestinians in the occupied territories met the legal definition of “the crime of apartheid,” was discussed.

Whether Human Rights Watch is fair to Israel has long been a source of contention, inside and outside the organization. In a 2009 opinion essay in The Times, Robert Bernstein, one of the group’s founders, charged that its criticisms of Israel were “helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

In 2019, Israel expelled the group’s director for Israel and Palestine and the lead researcher and author of the 2021 report, Omar Shakir, under a law barring foreigners who support a boycott of Israel or its territories. At the time, Shakir denied that either he or Human Rights Watch had called for a wholesale consumer boycott of Israel or its settlements.

With its 2021 report, titled “A Threshold Crossed,” Human Rights Watch became the first major international human rights group to apply the term “apartheid” to Israeli conduct. Six months later, Amnesty International followed suit in its own report. (In 2022, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic issued a similar, less-noticed report.)

Sarah Leah Whitson, a former Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said that the “apartheid” designation had come after “painful” internal debate.

“We had to work for years to build confidence among the senior leadership of the organization that this was an important place for us to go,” said Whitson, now the executive director of Democracy in the Arab World Now, or DAWN. There was a fear “that if you cross those red lines, they will try to decapitate you as an effective advocacy group.”

The Human Rights Watch report was assailed by Israel, whose ambassador to the United States said it bordered on antisemitism. The American Jewish Committee called it “a hatchet job” and accused Roth of harboring personal “animus toward Israel.” Some progressive Jewish groups who expressed concern at “vitriolic attacks” on the report also noted their own disagreement with the term “apartheid.”

A view of the West Bank village of Walaja, in December 2021, showing the Israeli separation wall. (Samar Hazboun for The New York Times)

The report did not characterize Israel, as some (including some Israeli groups) have, as “an apartheid state.” It used the term to refer not to the Israeli government’s character, but to specific discriminatory policies in the occupied territories, which it said met the definition of “the crime of apartheid” laid out in internationally ratified legal prohibitions adopted by the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

Roth said the point of the report, which he had “personally spent a lot of time editing,” was not to equate Israel with the racist former regime in South Africa but to apply legal definitions. And it reflected the reality, he said, that the peace process was “dead.”

“There’s no evidence that what’s happening today is going to go away,” he said. “That’s what led all of us to realize we have to change our paradigm.”

To some on campus, the issue is less about Roth or Human Rights Watch than the balance of discourse on campus.

“From a free speech perspective, yes, he should be entitled to a fellowship” if the Carr Center saw fit to invite him, said Natalie Kahn, a senior at Harvard College and the co-president of Harvard Students for Israel. “I do think, though, that there are so many people at Harvard who are espousing anti-Israel views that we really don’t need another one.”

Ahmed Moor, a 2013 Kennedy school graduate who helped organize an open letter from Palestinian alumni protesting Elmendorf’s initial decision, noted that the school had hosted Yadlin, the Israeli general, but also had “people like me.”

“That’s fine and appropriate for that kind of institution,” because representing numerous viewpoints is part of the purpose of a “premier public policy program.”

With the original decision, he added, “That’s where the current dean mucked things up.”

 

U.S. Palestinian Rights Group in Federal Appeals Court 

Confronts Challenge to Human Rights Advocacy

  

Last week a U.S.-based Palestinian rights organization asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the Jewish National Fund and several U.S. citizens who live in Israel. Citing the speech and expressive activities of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, including its support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, the lawsuit  had argued that the group provided “material support” for terrorism. 

In dismissing the suit in March 2021, the lower court said the arguments were, “to say the least, not persuasive.” The suit is part of a broader effort to criminalize and silence the political activities of supporters of Palestinian rights, advocates say. 

“The worldwide movement for Palestinian freedom is growing,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “USCPR’s work to advocate for Palestinian human rights is a critical part of that freedom struggle, or else right-wing forces allied with the Israeli government would not be repeatedly trying to silence us. All the more reason to keep up our work to build toward justice for all.”

Visit our website to learn more.

Distorted Definition: Redefining Antisemitism to Silence Advocacy for Palestinian Rights

One of the primary tactics opponents of the movement for Palestinian freedom have used to silence political debate is the branding of all support for Palestinian rights as anti-Jewish. Roughly half of the incidents of suppression Palestine Legal responds to each year include false accusations of antisemitism, totaling 895 incidents from 2014 to 2020.   

In an effort to add legitimacy to this tactic, Israel lobby groups have employed distorted definition of antisemitism that encompasses virtually all criticism of Israel and have attempted to entrench this definition through policy changes and legislation. 

This page tracks the evolution of the cynical ways Israel lobby groups have abused the definition and the definition’s impact on advocates for Palestinian rights.

We invite you to explore the following components:

 
2004 – 2008

Origins of a Politicized Redefinition

After decades of attempting to smear Palestine advocacy with false antisemitism accusations, Israel lobby groups develop a new Israel-centered definition of antisemitism. It is adopted by an EU body, and the U.S. State Department cites it in a report.

  • The European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) begins working with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups to expand the definition of antisemitism. The AJC encourages inclusion of criticism of Israel in this redefinition.

    At the same time, Israeli politician Natan Sharansky creates the “3Ds Test” which defines “delegitimizing,” “demonizing” or “applying double standards” to Israel as examples of antisemitism.

  • The EUMC publishes a “Working Definition of Antisemitism,” which includes criticism of Israel and the “3Ds Test.” The body posts the definition to its website as a “practical guide for identifying incidents,” but never formally adopts it. After the EUMC, now renamed the Fundamental Rights Agency, quietly drops the definition from the agency website in 2013, a spokesperson explains that the agency never viewed the document as a valid definition.

  • The U.S. State Department uses the EUMC redefinition in a report, but states that some international approaches to defining antisemitism would violate the First Amendment if used in the United States. The report states that the State Department “does not endorse any such measures that prohibit conduct that would be protected under the U.S. Constitution.”


2008 – 2014

Pro-Israel Groups Unsuccessfully Target Students in the U.S.

Lawyers affiliated with pro-Israel groups attempt multiple times to abuse U.S. civil rights law to claim that campus advocacy for Palestine is antisemitic, filing federal complaints against three University of California campuses and Rutgers University.

The complaints use similar language attempting to redefine antisemitism including the “3Ds Test.”

All of the complaints are dismissed.

  • The Department of Education opens an investigation into the
    University of California, Irvine following a complaint by the right-wing Zionist Organization of America that advocacy for Palestinian rights created an antisemitic climate. The complaint alleges among other claims that the university failed to discipline students for “distribut[ing] flyers attributing, allegedly falsely, an anti-Israel statement to Nelson Mandela” and for wearing t-shirts that say “UC Intifada: How You Can Help Palestine.”

  • Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, head of another right-wing Israel advocacy group AMCHA Initiative, files a complaint alleging that the screening of the documentary “Occupation 101” and a teach-in called “Understanding Gaza” created a hostile environment for Jewish students at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The Department of Education opens an investigation into the complaint in 2011.

  • This lawsuit argues that the University of California, Berkeley failed to stop speech and activity for Palestinian rights on campus, such as theatrical mock checkpoints and events critical of Israel’s policies, creating a hostile climate for Jewish students. After the case is dismissed by the court because it targeted First Amendment protected activities, the lawyers file the claims in a complaint to the Department of Education.

  • The Zionist Organization of America files a complaint against Rutgers University alleging that advocacy for Palestinian rights created an antisemitic climate. The complaint focuses primarily on an event sponsored by student groups that featured stories of Holocaust and Nakba survivors.

  • The Department of Education dismisses three complaints against Palestine advocacy at the University of California’s Berkeley, Irvine, and Santa Cruz campuses, emphasizing that this political activity is protected by the First Amendment.

  • The Department of Education dismisses a complaint by the Zionist Organization of America against Rutgers University, finding that the political activity complained of is protected by the First Amendment and that there is no evidence to support the allegations made in the complaint.

  • Despite continued efforts by the Zionist Organization of America and the AMCHA Initiative to push their theory that criticism of Israel is antisemitic, the Department of Education definitively denies two appeals challenging the dismissals of civil rights complaints filed against University of California campuses at Berkeley and Santa Cruz.


2015 – 2018

Efforts to Adopt Distorted Definition Fail in U.S., Gain Steam in Europe

After the Department of Education dismisses complaints against universities, pro-Israel groups seek official endorsement of the redefinition of antisemitism.

These efforts gain little traction with Congress, state governments, and universities.

Student governments, including at Indiana University, San Diego State, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison adopt the redefinition following lobbying by Israel groups.


2018 – 2021

Trump Administration Weaponizes Definition

Trump appoints a key player in efforts to use the redefinition to silence Palestine advocacy as head of civil rights at the Department of Education.

States begin to adopt the redefinition, but efforts in Congress remain stalled.

Trump eventually imposes the definition on federal agencies in a controversial executive order, leading to a rapid uptick in federal complaints and investigations against campus Palestine advocacy.

Following the exit of the Trump administration, advocates for Palestinian freedom and pro-Israel groups face uncertainty as to whether the Biden administration will extend Trump’s adoption of IHRA as a censorship tool.

Various state and local governments adopt the distorted definition, including Texas, Nassau and Suffolk counties in Long Island, and Sharon, Massachusetts.

An Israeli government official tries to pressure a public university to cancel a course on Israel/Palestine using the definition.

A right-wing group seeks to punish Ben & Jerry’s after they announce they will no longer sell their ice cream in settlements, claiming that respecting international law is discriminatory under IHRA.

Student governments, including at CUNY City College, Florida State
University, and Stanford adopt the redefinition following lobbying by Israel groups.

  • Despite opposition from civil rights groups and after months of delay, the Senate approves redefinition lobbyist Kenneth Marcus as head of the Department of Education’s
    Office for Civil Rights
    .

    Within weeks, Marcus reopens a seven-year-old complaint against Palestine advocacy at Rutgers University. In a letter announcing the reopening, Marcus states that the
    redefinition is in use
    by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

  • A provision tacked onto the state’s
    budget bill requires South Carolina public colleges and universities to consider the redefinition when investigating allegations of discrimination. Lawmakers in Tennessee also propose a bill to adopt the redefinition.

  • Florida adopts the redefinition for use in the state’s public schools. Under the new law, applying a “double standard” by, for example, “focusing peace or human rights investigations only on Israel” constitutes antisemitism. Lawmakers in
    Tennessee and New
    Jersey
    also propose bills to adopt the redefinition, but these bills fail to pass.

  • Trump signs an executive order that directs government agencies, including the Department of Education, to consider the distorted definition of antisemitism when investigating civil rights complaints. The order attracts widespread criticism.

  • In the weeks after Trump’s executive order, three federal complaints are filed against Palestine advocacy on campus, all citing the order.

    The Lawfare Project files a federal complaint against Columbia University for allowing Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to hold events, art installations and engage in other speech activity advocating for Palestinian freedom. A second complaint is also filed against Columbia within a week.

    A third complaint is filed against Georgia Tech by the right-wing, Christian evangelical American Center for Law and Justice after a student group successfully appealed a punishment they faced for refusing to allow a Hillel employee to disrupt their event on Palestine.

    In January 2021, the Hillel employee agrees to drop the case in exchange for Georgia Tech recognizing that under Trump’s executive order, the Department of Education considers the IHRA definition of antisemitism when evaluating intent in cases of discriminatory harassment.

  • Bills incorporating the distorted definition are introduced in Arizona, Illinois, and several other states. All of these bills fail to become law. The bills call for adopting the distorted definition, including the examples encompassing criticism of Israel, for use in hate crimes reporting and sentencing (Arizona), by state entities investigating acts of discrimination (Iowa), or by public schools and universities (Illinois, Tennessee, South Carolina). Some of these bills describe investigating Israel’s human rights abuses as an example of antisemitism.

  • Republican members of Congress cite Trump’s executive order when urging the Department of Education to investigate and potentially cut funding to Middle Eastern studies departments at the University of Arizona, University of California, Berkeley, and Yale because students and faculty at these universities support boycotts for Palestinian rights. Another Republican congressman had made a similar demand for investigation of Middle Eastern studies at Georgetown University in late 2019.

  • The student government at Florida State University adopts the IHRA definition following a state-wide
    political witch-hunt
    against FSU Student Senate President Ahmad Daraldik over social media posts Ahmad, a Palestinian-American, made as a child criticizing Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. The IHRA resolution comes after a failed attempt to remove Ahmad from office through a vote of no confidence.

    Following the IHRA resolution, pro-Israel students seek to remove Ahmad from office yet again, claiming his past posts constitute antisemitism under IHRA.

    Another student government leader is accused
    of antisemitism
    after arguing against the adoption of IHRA and explaining that Palestinians talking about their oppression is not antisemitism.

    FSU president John Thrasher later announces that the university would “recognize” the IHRA definition, including its contemporary examples.

  • Over 120 pro-Israel groups lobby Facebook to label criticism of Israel as hate speech under the IHRA definition. The Zachor Legal Institute, a pro-Israel group that engages in legal bullying, also lobbies Twitter and YouTube to use the IHRA definition and remove content critical of Israel.

  • The Department of Education closes an investigation at New York University (NYU) that was launched after the NYU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) received a school award for their on-campus organizing and coalition building. As part of a resolution agreement, NYU commits to prohibiting antisemitism in its policies and anti-discrimination trainings. The agreement refers to the IHRA definition in Trump’s 2019 executive order but excludes the IHRA contemporary examples, including those regarding Israel.

  • The Zionist Organization of America and StopAntisemitism.org file a federal civil rights complaint against CUNY after the latter organization targeted a Palestinian law student and activist with a cyberbullying campaign based on misinformation and false accusations.

    The student was subject to attacks by Zionist groups after she posted an old video of herself waving a lighter as a joke while criticizing a friend for wearing a T-shirt promoting the Israeli military.

    Act.il, an app with deep ties to Israeli intelligence and military, falsely claimed that the video depicted a violent threat against a fellow student on the basis of apparent nationality and provided a script for hundreds of people to call for CUNY to discipline the student.

    The student’s friend was neither Jewish, Israeli, nor a CUNY student and was filmed years before the student enrolled in law school. There was no violent threat involved.

    StopAntisemitism.org later named the student its ‘antisemite of the year’ based on these false and distorted accusations.

  • A spate of IHRA resolutions pass in local governments, including at least five across Florida and at least three in Long Island outside of New York City between 2020 and 2021. The New York measures and some of the Florida measures are driven by the American Jewish Committee, which helped craft the Israel-centric definition in 2004.

  • The State Department reportedly plans to designate three prominent advocacy groups as antisemitic due to their criticism of Israel’s violations of international law, claiming that the human rights activities of Amnesty
    International
    , Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam International meet the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The plan does not materialize before the Trump administration leaves office.

  • Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo releases graphics on social media stating that “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism” and announces plans to identify and target organizations that support BDS. The department does not announce a list prior to the end of the administration.

  • Following Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, pro-Israel groups lobby the Biden administration to continue Trump’s policy of using the IHRA definition. Progressive and liberal Jewish organizations come out against Biden maintaining the policy.

  • Having failed to pass a similar bill in 2020, Illinois lawmakers
    reintroduce a bill to amend the state’s Human Rights Act to adopt the IHRA definition for use in investigating acts of discrimination in public schools and universities. This bill describes investigating Israel’s human rights abuse as an example of antisemitism.

  • Student governments, including at Brooklyn College, Syracuse University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Texas, Austin adopt the IHRA definition.

  • In June, Texas joins Florida and South Carolina in adopting the distorted definition. Texas is the first state to explicitly say it is adopting IHRA, compared to FL and SC which used text similar to IHRA.

    Meanwhile in Arizona, lawmakers actually removed the IHRA definition from a bill on Holocaust education in the state’s public schools, recognizing that it’s possible to educate people on antisemitism without it.

  • Liberal and progressive democrats urge the Biden administration not to use the IHRA definition, including a coalition letter led by Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) to Secretary of State Blinken encouraging use of alternative definitions.

    Responding to the Schakowsky letter in June, a Biden admin rep calls IHRA a “gold standard” and indicates the State Department will continue to use IHRA.

  • Member of Congress Lee Zeldin (R-NY) urges the New York City Department of Education to enforce Trump’s IHRA executive order for the purpose of suppressing growing support for Palestinian rights and freedom following Israel’s May 2021 attacks on the Gaza Strip.

  • An Israeli consul pressures the University of North Carolina to remove a graduate student lecturer from teaching a history course on Israel/Palestine after claiming the instructor’s criticism of Israel was antisemitic under the IHRA definition.

  • Critically acclaimed Irish author Sally Rooney faces false accusations using the distorted definition of antisemitism after she declines to sell translation rights to a publishing house with ties to the Israeli government and announces that she is open to partnering with a Hebrew translator that is compliant with the institutional boycott principles established by Palestinian civil society.

  • Rightwing pro-Israel group StandWithUs accuses Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever of “corporate antisemitism” under the IHRA definition after the ice cream company announced it will no longer sell its products in Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements starting in 2023.

  • Pro-Israel groups launch a campaign to push state governors to adopt and promote the distorted IHRA definition as part of Hanukkah celebrations.

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine writes a letter to the state’s 111 college and university presidents urging them to create a culture…that does not tolerate “anti-Israel sentiments.”



2019 – 2021

The Movement Pushes Back Against the Definition

Advocates from North America, Europe and Palestine/Israel begin more coordinated work to pushback against the redefinition as a censorship tool targeting Palestinian freedom.

The definition faces pushback on campuses and defeat by student governments across the country due to the definition’s use as a tool of political suppression.

At Butler University, the IHRA definition is defeated after the only two Palestinians in student government were initially excluded from participating in discussions about the measure.

Fifty thousand people join a global campaign demanding that Facebook stop labeling Palestine advocacy as hate speech.

An explosive Oxford University report reveals that the leadership of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance knowingly misled and neglected to correct the public perception about the scope of the IHRA definition’s adoption in the EU.

  • Independent Jewish Voices in Canada launches a transnational NoIHRA Campaign in 2019 and publishes a report on IHRA’s impact on colleges and universities in 2020.

  • Hundreds of academics in Canada sign an open letter opposing the redefinition.

    Over 150 Jewish Candian scholars issue an additional statement opposed to IHRA.

  • Students at Santa Monica College successfully push to remove Israel-related content from an antisemitism resolution proposed in student government.

  • Dozens of scholars urge Facebook not to adopt the IHRA definition, after the social media company is lobbied by pro-Israel groups.

  • Students at Butler University succeed in defeating a student government measure to adopt the definition as a way of silencing Palestinians and their allies on campus.

    During the initial debate, members of student government exclude the only two Palestinians in student government from participating in discussions.

    The student leaders, both Palestinian women, are unable to share the direct impact the resolutions would have on Palestinians and Palestine activism on campus.

    Butler student groups, Indianapolis community organizers, and Palestine Legal push back against the campaign to vilify and silence student activism.

    After hearing from students and community advocates about the harmful impact these anti-Palestinian measures would have, the student sponsors withdraw the resolution.

  • A coalition of organizers hold an educational panel titled “Israel as a Racist Endeavour: Unpacking IHRA” to directly challenge the redefinition.

  • Over one hundred Palestinian and Arab scholars and intellectuals issue an open letter challenging the legitimacy of the definition.

  • Hundreds of British students sign an open letter opposing efforts by UK Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson to force UK universities to adopt the definition.

  • The academic board at the University College London
    rejects the IHRA definition adopted by UCL in 2019, calling on the university to “retract and replace [the] IHRA working definition with a more precise definition of antisemitism.”

  • A coalition of civil and human rights groups launches a
    campaign against Facebook labeling Palestine advocacy as hate speech. The tech giant is considering a policy that would treat criticism of “Zionists” as attacks against Jewish people, and therefore subject to censorship under their hate speech policies. The campaign’s petition amasses over 50,000 signatures.

  • Several alternatives to IHRA are proposed within the span of one month, further undermining claims that IHRA represents a consensus definition.

    The Jerusalem Declaration rebuts IHRA’s conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, but reinforces the structural problem of policing what Palestinians can say about their oppression.

  • Multiple student governments reject the IHRA definition in the span of a few weeks, including Michigan State University, Foothill College and Santa Clara University in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    At the City University of New York (CUNY), the Student Senate voted down IHRA following a vocal campaign from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Jewish Law Students Association (JSLA).

    The CUNY JSLA is the first explicitly anti-Zionist Jewish law students group in the country and issued an open letter calling IHRA “useless,” “overbroad,” “imprecise,” and “an attempt to silence Palestine-solidarity efforts by equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.”

  • An explosive Oxford University report reveals that the leadership of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance knowingly misled and neglected to correct the public perception about the scope of the IHRA definition’s adoption in the EU.

    At a May 2016 plenary, IHRA’s decision-making body adopted a two-sentence working definition of antisemitism while excluding contemporary examples of antisemitism, including seven which focused on criticism of Israel, because multiple member states objected to the examples.

    The report finds that “Senior IHRA officials and pro-Israel groups have misrepresented the IHRA Plenary’s decision in order to smuggle into the Working Definition examples that can be used to protect Israel from criticism.”

    Israel and its allies, including US politicians, used the presumed adoption of IHRA’s Israel examples in Europe to promote their usage in the United States.

  • The Canadian Association of University Teachers votes against adopting the IHRA definition.

    The association, which represents 72,000 members, recognizes the “need to safeguard the rights of scholars to critique all states, including Israel.”

 

Department of Education to investigate Berkeley Law School

Complaint from Israeli lawfare group prompts investigation over student group challenging Zionism

MICHAEL ARRIA, MONDOWEISS, DECEMBER 16, 2022