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.

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Why we are anti-Zionist Jews

JUDITH LAITMAN AND TSELA BARR — GUEST COLUMN, JUNE 14, 2023

This year on April 26, millions celebrated the 75th anniversary of Israel’s creation on Israel Independence Day. However, we, as anti-Zionist Jews, did not celebrate.

Instead, on May 15, we stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people by commemorating the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” The Nakba was the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians prior to and following the official establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. It was the direct result of a deliberate campaign by Israel to expel the region’s indigenous people.

During that period, an estimated 13,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces or terrorist gangs. More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed. In just a few months, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris, 34 massacres of Palestinians occurred. As a result, 731,000 Palestinians fled and were never allowed to return to their homes.

While the Holocaust created an urgent need for a safe haven for Jewish refugees during and after World War II, the establishment of Israel was the culmination of the Zionist movement that began a half-century before. This movement sought an exclusive homeland for the Jewish people, a group that had faced persecution and displacement for much of their history.

Ironically, Palestine had long been a place that accepted Jewish immigrants. In fact, by 1931 Jews were approximately 17% of Palestine’s population. Zionists, however, wanted more. In 1958, Israel Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion told the country’s lawmakers that in just a decade of existence Israel had “redeemed thousands of Jews from poverty and degeneration in exile, and transformed them into proud, creative Jews.”

Sadly, the Zionists’ dream became the Palestinians’ nightmare. Indeed, the Nakba that began 75 years ago has never ended.

The reality is that Zionism is not and never has been a redemption for the Jewish people. Rather, it has been a colonial project of displacement, theft of land and subjugation of one set of people by another. The truth is that Israel is a democracy only for Jews. In January 2021, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem issued its report called “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” It described Israel as a state that has a different set of rights for Palestinians that is “always inferior to the rights of Jews.”

This year, an extreme right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has escalated attacks on Palestinians and greenlighted additional illegal Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land. This government has removed even the veneer of democratic discourse in Israel, with some government officials openly espousing racist policies and inciting violence. As of mid-May, Israeli forces had killed at least 123 Palestinians, including at least 27 children.

Even worse, Israel continues to commit its crimes against the Palestinian people with impunity. Instead of being sanctioned for its human rights abuses, Israel receives over $4 billion a year in U.S. tax dollars to help ensure it has one of the world’s most powerful militaries. The U.S. also provides Israel with political cover when its human rights violations come up in the U.N.

One reason for this impunity has to do with the branding of criticism of Israel as “antisemitic.” This lie is designed to silence and shame critics. But criticism of Israel is not antisemitic; it is demanded by Jewish ethical teachings.

As Jews, we applaud new efforts in Congress to condition U.S. aid to Israel on ending its oppression of Palestinians. U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum recently re-introduced the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. This legislation would prohibit Israel’s government from using U.S taxpayer dollars for the detention or abuse of Palestinian children, or from seizing or destroying Palestinian property.

Americans can act now to be on the side of the oppressed by contacting Congress in support of this bill.

Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr are members of the Madison chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Tsela Barr is a founding member of Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.

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.

 

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.

Continue reading

California cancels Palestinians

Weaponizing Anti-Semitism
to Silence Criticism of Israel

 

Israeli lobby groups redefine antisemitism to include criticisms of Israel as a means of stifling speech

A baseball cap with the words: Make Israel Palestine Again
Activists warn that the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism will stifle speech on Palestine. (Justin L. Stewart, ZUMA Press)

In September, the West Hollywood City Council unanimously passed a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

The council was following a global trend. Institutions around the world are increasingly adopting the IHRA definition which purports to be a tool for identifying and combating anti-Semitism.

In reality, it is merely the latest attempt to criminalize support for Palestinian liberation. Indeed, the West Hollywood City Council’s vote – and the public outcry it generated – provides valuable insight into the growing threat the adoption of this flawed definition poses to political activism and education.

The council’s actions were foreshadowed by the West Hollywood Public Safety Commission which, on 8 August, voted to recommend that the City Council adopt the IHRA definition. During that meeting, Public Safety Commissioner Tony Berger asked fellow commissioner Robert B. Oliver, who brought the proposal, what the purpose of a safety commission making such a recommendation would be.

“It’s not in our purview to do anything like this,” Berger said. “Aren’t we trying just to protect everybody?”

Oliver, who is currently running for West Hollywood City Council, said his proposal was to recommend to the City Council that the city adopt the IHRA definition as a “non-legally binding working definition to inform the different agencies of our city what anti-Semitism is.”

The West Hollywood move came after both Manhattan Beach and Beverly Hills city councils voted to adopt the IHRA definition. Oliver cited the latter as a reason for West Hollywood to follow suit.

During public comment on 19 September – when the West Hollywood City Counci eventually voted to pass the IHRA definition in accordance with the public safety commission’s recommendation – Palestinian West Hollywood resident Rami Kabalawi said he felt the IHRA definition silenced Palestinians and was concerned with prohibiting criticisms of Israel rather than authentically challenging anti-Semitism.

Kabalawi told the council: “If it’s codified, it will position Palestinian freedom of speech as explicitly anti-Jewish and create a situation of divisiveness that is fueled not about ending bigotry, but classifying our right to speak out as a form of it.”

Recycled language

Many fear that Kabalawi is right.

What is the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, and why is its passage by the West Hollywood City Council such a troubling development?

The story behind the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism begins with a working definition of anti-Semitism conceived of by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenobophia – a European Union agency – in the early noughties.

While the EUMC working definition is uncontroversial, it features several alleged examples of “anti-Semitism” that are simply criticisms of the Israeli state. This working definition was never formally endorsed by the EUMC.

However in 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental organization formed in the late 1990s, adopted the EUMC’s definition of anti-Semitism as its own.

Despite its relatively unofficial status, the EUMC definition went on to form the basis for other non-binding definitions of anti-Semitism, such as that initially displayed by the US State Department on its website. The State Department now lists the IHRA definition on its website.

Recycled language conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism culled from this definition continues to be used in updated attempts to censor speech in support of Palestinian liberation. Just as Zionist organizations pushed for the University of California to adopt the so-called State Department definition of anti-Semitism in 2015, today there is a concerted push by Zionist organizations and individuals to ensure that governments and local councils adopt the IHRA definition.

The IHRA definition gives 11 examples of alleged anti-Semitism but seven of these are about criticism of Israel:

  • Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
  • Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
  • 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.
  • Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  • Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
  • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
  • Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

As the rights organization Palestine Legal puts it on its website, Israeli lobby groups have consistently used the strategy of redefining anti-Semitism to include criticisms of Israel as a means of stifling speech, and each version of these redefinitions is “fundamentally the same.”

Rowan Gaudet writes that the IHRA definition, which has repeatedly been used as a cudgel to silence and stigmatize international activism for Palestine since its adoption in 2016, is a “dangerous weapon” and “a grave threat to the Palestinian solidarity movement the world over.”

Voicing dissent

Small wonder that organizers felt compelled to voice their dissent.

A member of the local chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), who has requested anonymity, said that upon hearing of the effort to adopt the IHRA definition, PYM immediately forged a coalition with SoCal Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine at University of California – Los Angeles, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA to take action.

Akhil Gopal from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition told The Electronic Intifada that opposing the adoption of the IHRA definition was in line with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s work around opposing racist and discriminatory surveillance practices being implemented by government and police bodies throughout Los Angeles.

“The adoption of the IHRA definition is connected for us to the LAPD’s Providing Alternatives to Hinder Violent Extremism (PATHE) program or the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, because with the adoption of IHRA, the state is trying to weaponize existing bureaucracy and infrastructure used for civil rights or to maintain a ‘multicultural’ set of liberal values to stigmatize Palestinian resistance as a form of bigotry,” Gopal said.

According to the anonymous PYM organizer, the organization co-created a call to action along with the aforementioned organizations and reached out to the community to encourage individuals to call into the Public Safety Commission meeting to ask the commission to reconsider their recommendation and to explicitly denounce the IHRA definition.

On 11 September, JVP UCLA tweeted a message urging followers to oppose the West Hollywood City Council’s adoption of the IHRA definition. The tweet included a link to a digital toolkit explaining how individuals could express their criticisms to the council.

The Public Safety Commission moved forward with its decision, regardless and despite the fact that a majority of community members spoke out against the council’s potential implementation of IHRA during public comment.

Strikingly familiar

Continue reading

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

An open letter to UW-Madison regarding anti-Zionist chalking

In keeping with the Jewish practice of tokhehah, which could be translated as “calling-in,” we are asking you to recognize and redress the damage that these responses have caused.

This letter also appeared in The Cap Times on November 29, 2022 as Memo to UW: Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing.

Bascom.jpg
Photo by Taylor Wolfram | The Daily Cardinal

Stepha Velednitsky , Ri J. Turner , Joshua Garoon , Tsela Barr and Annie Sommer KaufmanThe Daily Cardinal, November 28, 2022

Dear Chancellor Mnookin, Vice Chancellor Reesor, and Chief Diversity Officer Charleston,

We are writing as Jewish members of the UW-Madison community in response to the recent anti-Zionist chalkings on our campus, and especially to the reactions from your offices, UW-Madison Hillel and other campus organizations, and media on and off campus.

As Jews, we care deeply, both about our own experience of “inclusion and belonging” (as Chancellor Mnookin has put it) in the UW-Madison community, and about the well-being of Palestinians on and off campus. The responses in question — including, but not limited, to the blame Chancellor Mnookin and Vice-Chancellor Reesor inappropriately placed on the UW-Madison chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — were harmful to both. In keeping with the Jewish practice of tokhehah, which could be translated as “calling-in,” we are asking you to recognize and redress the damage that these responses have caused.

We understand that past experiences may have inclined you to seek those responsible for this incident among UW student groups. In the recent past, Jews on campus have been upset, justifiably, when members of UW-Madison student groups — including leaders of the undergraduate student government — have not acted with respect for Jewish religious practice when it comes to campus actions on Israel and Palestine.

We agree that “education and accountability” are critical in such situations. The statements from your offices, however, provided neither. Instead, they impatiently and inaptly condemned the small and only recently reconstituted UW-Madison chapter of SJP for actions its members deny conducting — contributing to their scapegoating in the media. Those students deserved more from you.

We agree that it is antisemitic to hold all Jews accountable for the acts of the Israeli government, regardless of their connection or lack thereof to Israel. That treats Jews as a monolith and conflates Jewish identity with blanket support for Israel. But here we must ask: who in this situation truly conflated Jewishness with the political ideology of Zionism?

Two of the organizations called out in the chalkings, the UW-Madison chapters of Hillel and Chabad, are indeed Jewish organizations. The primary function of both is to support the religious life of Jewish students on campus. Simply attending the religious services at those two organizations — the only ones that offer them on campus — does not justify attacking Jewish students, and we urge those carrying out pro-Palestinian actions to respect such religious events and spaces.

At the same time, both the Hillel and Chabad chapters have identified themselves as explicitly pro-Israel. This combination of Zionist politics with Jewish religious practice has become the norm for Jews on campus and across the country. Yet many Jews do not consider support for Israel to be essential to their Jewish identity. On the contrary, for some Jewish students, the perception of being “required” to espouse pro-Israel positions as a precondition for participating in Jewish life on campus dissuades them from participating at all. In fact, Hillel has so constrained Jewish student speech and organizing on Israel and Palestine that Jewish students who felt alienated from Jewish life on campus as a result formed an “Open Hillel” movement, and in particular Open Hillel’s Judaism on Our Own Terms initiative, to try to create more space on campus for diverse Jewish viewpoints.

When organizations explicitly prohibit participation of organizations, groups, or speakers — including Jewish ones — on the basis of their political stance, they can no longer claim that they are apolitical, “big tent” Jewish organizations that define themselves primarily around Jewish identity.  To insist that their critics strictly separate the religious and the political, then, is disingenuous and hypocritical.

What’s more, three of the organizations the chalkings criticized (J Street U at Wisconsin, TAMID, and Badgers for Israel) do not self-describe as Jewish organizations. (In fact, the last of the trio explicitly describes itself as “nonreligious.”) Their primary function is to support Israel. And while criticizing such organizations for being Zionist might be controversial, it is not antisemitic. Nor is it antisemitic to claim that Zionist organizations should be held accountable for Zionism’s ills, or that racist and genocidal acts have been committed in the name of Zionism.

So we must reject UW Hillel’s charges that the chalkings were antisemitic because they were “targeting student organizations because of their connection to Israel” and thus constituted “an attack on the identity of Jewish students.” Similarly, we must reject your offices’ claims that the chalkings were antisemitic because they “attribute broad actions or beliefs to Jewish student groups.” In both cases, it was Hillel’s and the university administration’s statements, not the original chalkings, which conflated Jewish identity and practice with support for Zionism within and beyond Jewish communities.

We call on you to apologize to the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for scapegoating them for this incident without evidence that they were responsible for it.  We call on you to refrain from conflating Zionist viewpoints with Jewish identity — a move that exacerbates the exclusion of non-Zionist Jews from Jewish life on campus, and normalizes the suppression of free speech about Israel and Palestine within campus or campus-adjacent organizations, including Hillel.  We also ask you to educate yourselves about the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism more generally. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was signed by about 200 scholars of antisemitism and related studies from around the world, including Israel, is a good place to start.

Finally, we call on Jewish individuals and organizations on and off campus who share our perspective to express support by signing on to this letter. 

Sincerely,

Ri J. Turner, graduate student, History
Joshua Garoon, Assistant Professor, Community and Environmental Sociology
Tsela Barr, staff, International Division
Annie Sommer Kaufman, alumna, ’01
Stepha Velednitsky, graduate student, Geography

Additional Signatories, UW-Madison-affiliated:
Susan Nossal, UW-Madison academic staff
Zayne Chrysanthemum, student
Cora Segal, graduate student, Gender & Women’s Studies 
Jacqueline Krass, graduate student, English
Daniel Levitin, graduate student
Melissa Marver, PhD Candidate and alumna, Population Health
Heather Rosenfeld, Smith College (PhD from UW, 2019)
Asher Bruskin, alum, ’08
Jeffrey Schiffman, former employee
Esty Dinur, retiree
Elizabeth Conn, alumna, ’07
Ace Lynn-Miller, alum ’08
Paul Cotton, graduate school alum ’73
Lynne Kavin, alum ’89, member of JVP Chicago
Lynne Joyrich, former professor in the UW System
Elaine J. Cohen, daughter of alum
Judith Laitman, alum
Betsy Buczakowski, alum ’19
Liza DiPrima, alum (BS in Elementary Education)
Marc Rosenthal, UW alum, BS in Nursing 

Additional Signatories, Organizations:
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA
Jewish Voice for Peace-Los Angeles
Jewish Voice for Peace-Milwaukee
Ithaca Committee for Justice in  Palestine/Jewish Voice for Peace
Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA
Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago

Additional Signatories, Individuals:
Rabbi Salem Pearce
Elizabeth Bolton, Reconstructionist Rabbi (RRC ’96)
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, JVP Rabbinic Council
Rabbi Noam Lerman, UW-Milwaukee alum
Rabbi Ariana Katz 
Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg
Rabbi Brant Rosen   
Dr. Benay Blend, retired professor (PhD University of New Mexico)
Sarah Combellick-Bidney, Augsburg University
Elsa Auerbach, University of Massachusetts-Boston
Merry Maisel, UC San Diego
Daniel Segal, Professor at Pitzer College
Alice Rothchild, MD, Harvard University
Mark LeVine, UC Irvine, Dept of History, Global Middle East Studies
Benjamin Kersten, graduate student, UCLA Department of Art History
Charles Manekin, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland
Ivan Huber, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ, Madison, NJ
Emmaia Gelman, Sarah Lawrence College
Hassan Melehy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jodi melamex, Marquette University
freygl gertsovski, Jewish cultural worker
Ari Pollack, Madison native
Benjamin Ben-Baruch,  Retired Jewish educator
Alan Levien, civil rights lawyer
Elizabeth Ingenthron, Jewish scholar and activist
Judith Utevsky, Jewish resident of Madison 
Barbara Parmet, JVP member
Eve Hershcopf, Member of JVP – Bay Area
Rick Chetoff, JVP Los Angeles member
Bob Herbst, JVP member
Beth Harris, member of Ithaca JVP
Burton Steck, UVP
Rachel Rubin, JVP, Health Advisory Council
Jena doolas, member of JVP Chicago
Carol Muskin, member of JVP Chicago
Jon Moscow, member of Northern New Jersey JVP
Cinda Rubinstein, member of JVP
Shelley Cohen Fudge, member of JVP-DC Metro Chapter
Nicole Cohen, member of JVP NYC
Munk Munk, member of JVP
Alice Golin, member of Northern New Jersey JVP
Harry Soloway, member of JVP Westchester
Rachel Ida Buff, UWM/Milwaukee JVP
Martin Levine, member of JVP – Chicago
Mara Horowitz, member of JVP Westchester 
Lawrence R. Wolf, member of JVP Westchester
Laura Myerson, Educator, member of JVP
Steve Golin, member of JVP
Wendy Fisher, member of Northern New Jersey JVP
Lesley Williams, JVP member
Trude Bennett, JVP member
Sue Saunders, member of JVP – Sacramento, CA
Elizabeth G. Lent, Episcopal Peace & Justice
Sandra Castillo
Mary Fox
David H Slavin, PhD
Oren Maximov
Alan Meyers
Andy Stitt
Sam Friedman 
Seth Morrison 
Estee Chandler
Nina Stoller 
Cindy Shamban
Andrew Courtney
Steve Siegelbaum 
Joe Sokolinsky
Bobbi Siegelbaum
Priscilla Read
Zackary Sholem Berger
Ed Oltman
Stephen R. Shalom 
Lex Rofeberg
Sophia Sobko

ACLU Challenges Cancellation of Palestine Mural


A mural that was conceived and painted by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) and Art Forces. The mural was censored by the SFPL and the ACLU claims there are First Amendment concerns with the censorship. Courtesy Megan Wilson/Clarion Alley Mural Project

Sarah Wright, The San Francisco Standard, July 14, 2022

A new letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California raises First Amendment concerns after the San Francisco Public Library decided to omit a line it called antisemitic from a Palestine-focused mural in an exhibit that was supposed to appear this summer. 

The exhibition, which was canceled in March as a result of the controversy, was focused on racism and xenophobia against marginalized groups, including Palestinians. The mural in question featured a sign with the phrase “Zionism is racism.”

The library raised concerns about the phrase and discussed removing it with the curators, according to an SFPL statement sent to The Standard. The group declined to make changes to the exhibition, said Christopher Statton, co-director of Clarion Alley Mural Project, the Mission District-based group that organized the mural exhibition. 

“It may create discussions that are difficult and messy, but it’s harmful not to have these discussions,” Statton said. 

In her letter, ACLU Staff Attorney Hannah Kieschnick agrees, arguing that the library, as a public space that often promotes and displays speech that doesn’t represent its views, cannot discriminate that speech by its viewpoint or concerns it is controversial. 

“Instead of cancelling what the library perceives to be a controversial exhibition, I urge you to use the exhibition as an opportunity, consistent with the library’s role as a center for information and learning, to welcome diverse perspectives and foster open dialogue about the viewpoint expressed in the Arab Liberation Mural,” Kieschnick wrote in the letter.

The SFPL declined to comment on the ACLU letter specifically, but its statement to The Standard reaffirms its decision to ask the artists to edit their work before its presentation in service to their mission to “provide a safe and welcoming space for our entire community.

“Presenting expressions, such as ‘Zionism is Racism,’ which are widely viewed as antisemitic are counter to that mission and would set a precedent that would justify the exhibition of other viewpoints harming minority communities and identities based on race, gender, national origin, sexuality, or religion,” the library’s statement reads. “The Library presents a panoply of viewpoints on a wide range of topics, but we draw the line at a public display of speech that negatively targets any specific race, ethnic or religious community.”

According to Statton, several alternative venues that he declined to name have reached out to the group offering to display the exhibition in its entirety.

“The library’s decision to censor our mural without connecting with the community—it was disrespectful,” said Sharif Zakout, an organizer at the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. “Our community was left out of it completely.”

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism

 

 


Introduction

We agree with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) of March 25, 2021, “a tool to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism as it manifests in countries around the world today.” The Declaration holds that “while antisemitism has certain distinctive features, the fight against it is inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender discrimination.”

Defining antisemitism as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)”, the JDA gives clear examples of what is, and what is not, antisemitism, paying particular attention to why criticism of Israel or Zionism is NOT inherently antisemitic.

We urge you to read the entire Declaration.

 


“Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).”

People of goodwill seek guidance about the key question:
When does political speech about Israel or Zionism cross the line into antisemitism and when should it be protected?

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism is a tool to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism as it manifests in countries around the world today. It includes a preamble, definition, and a set of 15 guidelines that provide detailed guidance for those seeking to recognize antisemitism in order to craft responses.

It was developed by a group of scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to meet what has become a growing challenge: providing clear guidance to identify and fight antisemitism while protecting free expression. It has over 200 signatories.

Preamble | Definition | Guidelines | Signatories | FAQ | About JDA | Videos

Preamble | Definition | Guidelines | Signatories | FAQ | About JDA | Videos

Preamble

We, the undersigned, present the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, the product of an initiative that originated in Jerusalem. We include in our number international scholars working in Antisemitism Studies and related fields, including Jewish, Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, and Middle East Studies. The text of the Declaration has benefited from consultation with legal scholars and members of civil society.

Inspired by the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the 1969 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the 2000 Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, and the 2005 United Nations Resolution on Holocaust Remembrance, we hold that while antisemitism has certain distinctive features, the fight against it is inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender discrimination.

Conscious of the historical persecution of Jews throughout history and of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, and viewing with alarm the reassertion of antisemitism by groups that mobilize hatred and violence in politics, society, and on the internet, we seek to provide a usable, concise, and historically-informed core definition of antisemitism with a set of guidelines.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism responds to “the IHRA Definition,” the document that was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016. Because the IHRA Definition is unclear in key respects and widely open to different interpretations, it has caused confusion and generated controversy, hence weakening the fight against antisemitism.

Noting that it calls itself “a working definition,” we have sought to improve on it by offering (a) a clearer core definition and (b) a coherent set of guidelines. We hope this will be helpful for monitoring and combating antisemitism, as well as for educational purposes. We propose our non-legally binding Declaration as an alternative to the IHRA Definition. Institutions that have already adopted the IHRA Definition can use our text as a tool for interpreting it.

The IHRA Definition includes 11 “examples” of antisemitism, 7 of which focus on the State of Israel. While this puts undue emphasis on one arena, there is a widely-felt need for clarity on the limits of legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel, and Palestine. Our aim is twofold: (1) to strengthen the fight against antisemitism by clarifying what it is and how it is manifested, (2) to protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine. We do not all share the same political views and we are not seeking to promote a partisan political agenda. Determining that a controversial view or action is not antisemitic implies neither that we endorse it nor that we do not.

The guidelines that focus on Israel-Palestine (numbers 6 to 15) should be taken together. In general, when applying the guidelines each should be read in the light of the others and always with a view to context. Context can include the intention behind an utterance, or a pattern of speech over time, or even the identity of the speaker, especially when the subject is Israel or Zionism. So, for example, hostility to Israel could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian person feels on account of their experience at the hands of the State. In short, judgement and sensitivity are needed in applying these guidelines to concrete situations.

Preamble | Definition | Guidelines | Signatories | FAQ | About JDA | Videos

Definition

Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).