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War, Antisemitism and Free Speech: A Critical Dilemma
The Constitution of the United States. Photo: Wikicommons.
JNS.org – Should governments and public institutions take punitive measures against groups or individuals who promote antisemitism through such measures as cutting funding, criminalizing aspects of their speech or even proscribing them outright?
Here in the United States, such a discussion is purely theoretical because the First Amendment protects all forms of speech, including Holocaust denial, and racist and antisemitic barbs. Because freedom of speech is a natural right, the American tradition promotes debate, fostering the optimistic, if often misplaced, notion among some that better arguments and clearly presented facts will invariably overwhelm lies and conspiracy theories. But in Europe, there is no right of absolute free speech, and in most countries, antisemitic and racist speech, as well as declared sympathies for terrorism or violence, can run you afoul of the law.
The current European dilemma is whether to tighten and strengthen these measures in a bid to bring a greater sense of security to Jewish communities facing a wave of antisemitism unprecedented in its intensity for nearly a century. The proximate cause was, of course, the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, but the themes incorporated in this discourse are much older, even ancient. In part because of their frustration at the sheer stubbornness of these toxins, politicians who sympathize with the plight of their Jewish constituents are examining legal means to stem the flow of antisemitic tropes.
Two weeks ago, Berlin’s State Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion, Joe Chialo, attempted to introduce a new measure that would deny funding to artists who promote antisemitism, including antisemitic depictions of Zionism and Israel. In order to determine what is and isn’t antisemitic, Chialo urged the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which includes several examples of when anti-Zionism crosses the line into antisemitism.
Last week, Chialo was forced to withdraw his proposal. “I must take the legal and critical voices that saw this clause as a restriction on the freedom of art seriously,” he said in a statement. “Let there be no doubt: I will continue to fight for a Berlin cultural scene that is free of discrimination.” To be clear, the problem here was not the substantive argument of the IHRA definition that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are frequently the same. Rather, it centered on the issue of whether measures in Germany taken to combat Holocaust denial are—in terms of jurisprudence—appropriate when it comes to denial of Israel’s right to exist. “The denial of the Holocaust is about denying a fact, while Israel’s right to exist is about denying a right,” Professor Stefan Conen of the German Lawyers’ Association told the German parliament’s legal affairs committee last week. Another witness, Professor Michael Kubiciel, forecasted a series of procedural headaches should the proposal advance, which could only be resolved, he said, through the adoption of a “more open wording … for example by also recording the right to exist of states to which the Federal Republic has made a particular commitment, such as the E.U. member states.”
None of these objections invalidate the underlying claim of a symbiosis between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and nor should we conclude that Chialo will abandon his efforts to banish antisemitism from the German arts scene because of one setback. However, the uncertainty around his proposal has bolstered the argument that the IHRA definition is not so much a means of understanding antisemitism as a tool for censoring Israel’s adversaries.
Last Monday, the Berliner Zeitung news outlet interviewed one of the co-authors of the IHRA definition in the context of Chialo’s stalled initiative. “The definition has often been misused as a blunt instrument to label someone as antisemitic for a variety of reasons, including criticism of Israel,” said Ken Stern, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College and a former American Jewish Committee (AJC) in-house expert on antisemitism.
Elaborating, Stern said that this “misuse” of the definition was more pronounced “not so much for disqualifying criticism of Israel as antisemitic, but rather, for pro-Palestinian attitudes. I may not agree with some of these attitudes or statements, but calling them antisemitic is wrong, even harmful.” Later in the interview, Stern clarified that while he opposed the “boycott, divestment and sanctions” campaign targeting Israel, he vehemently objected to calling anyone who supports it “antisemitic.”
“Do I think that supporting BDS makes you an antisemite? No, I don’t think so,” he said, before adding: “Although, of course, you can be an antisemite who supports BDS.” In other words, while the campaign may attract antisemites because of its obsession with the Jewish state, it is not inherently antisemitic.
I should say, at this point, that I knew Stern professionally some years ago when I worked with him on antisemitism issues at the AJC. My assessment, which hasn’t changed, is that his overarching goal was to persuade progressives to take antisemitism seriously, and he was willing to cut them all sorts of slack in order to achieve that. What he was unwilling to acknowledge is that making these allowances undermine the very definition he helped to write! Because while the definition doesn’t explicitly say that BDS is antisemitic, it does say that “[D]enying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is. That pretty much sums up the core philosophy of the BDS movement, which regards the boycott as an instrument to secure the eventual elimination of Israel as a sovereign state and makes no secret of this aim.
The most disturbing aspect of the interview was the sense that in his desire to mollycoddle progressive students and activists who regard as Israel as a colonial interloper, Stern has lost empathy with the actual victims of antisemitism. The atrocities and bestialities of the Hamas pogrom were straight out of the Cossack playbook of previous centuries, executed with the purpose of humiliating the enemy and denying their basic humanity because fundamentally, antisemites regard Jews as adjacent to, rather than belonging to, the rest of the human species. Yet all Stern could bring himself to say was that the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism within the IHRA definition was a product of the tensions around the U.N.’s 2001 Durban anti-racism conference. “I’m not saying that every form of anti-Zionism is antisemitic, but that was the climate at the time,” he remarked—the bizarre implication being that the climate in the 2020s, in the wake of the worst outburst of antisemitic violence since the Holocaust, is, in fact, more benign.
What makes the present situation different is that antisemitism is surging against the background of a war in the Middle East that could easily intensify and expand, and whose most vulnerable front consists of Jewish communities around the Diaspora who cannot be protected by Israel’s military might.
In such an environment, when there is an unmistakable correlation between antisemitic memes spread on social media, anti-Jewish invective at pro-Hamas demonstrations and actual violence—I am thinking of the brutal assault last Saturday night on three Israelis walking through London’s West End by a mob of thugs yelling “Free Palestine”—tougher measures, including censorship, are warranted in those cases where such tools are legally available.
While we didn’t choose this outcome (as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky said, “You don’t choose war; war chooses you”), we have no choice but to deal with it, as decisively as we can.
The post War, Antisemitism and Free Speech: A Critical Dilemma first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Occidental College Settles Antisemitism Complaint
A general view of the US Department of Education in Washington, DC, on Dec. 1, 2020. Photo: Graeme Sloan via Reuters Connect
Occidental College in Los Angeles has agreed to “sweeping reforms” of its handling of antisemitism to settle a civil rights complaint brought by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
According to the ADL, which issued an announcement of the agreement on Tuesday, the college will refer to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism during its investigations of antisemitic conduct and add a section on antisemitism to its educational programming on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevents education institutions receiving federal funds from practicing or allowing the practice of discrimination based on race, religion, and ethnic origin.
The ADL and the Brandeis Center jointly filed their complaint against Occidental College, a measure which allows for negotiating a resolution to the matter before the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) renders a ruling. The civil rights organizations charged in their claim that the college failed to correct a “pervasive and hostile environment” in which Jewish students were subject to “severe antisemitic bullying, intimidation, and physical threats” amid an explosion of anti-Jewish hatred precipitated by Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
“This agreement demonstrates Occidental College’s commitment to counter all forms of contemporary antisemitism and underscores their recognition that effectively combating antisemitism requires understanding the relationship between Jewish identity, Israel, and Zionism,” Brandeis Center president Alyza Lewin said in a statement. “We are gratified by the school’s engagement in meaningful discussions at the highest levels of the administration, and we are heartened that Occidental has committed to creating a safer environment for Jewish students. When implemented, this agreement will help ensure that Jewish students are able to learn and thrive in an environment free from antisemitic hate, discrimination, and harassment.”
ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt added, “This outcome demonstrates how the Title VI OCR process can work to effectively protect Jewish students. We are deeply grateful for the US Department of Education’s dedication and assistance in resolving this case. It is our hope that this resolution will lead to other college administrators implementing these or similar measures proactively to address antisemitism on campus.”
Occidental College’s settlement treads a path taken by other institutions of higher education against which legal action was taken to address a surge of campus antisemitism over the past year, amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
In June, Columbia University settled a civil lawsuit in which it was accused by a student of neglecting its obligation to foster a safe learning environment amid riotous pro-Hamas protests that were held at the school throughout the final weeks of the academic year.
The resolution of the case, first reported by Reuters, called for Columbia to hire a “Safe Passage Liaison” who will monitor protests and “walking escorts” who will accompany students whose safety is threatened around the campus. Other details of the settlement included “accommodations” for students whose academic lives are disrupted by protests and new security policies for controlling access to school property.
In July, New York University agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to settle a lawsuit brought by three students who sued the school for responding, allegedly, to antisemitic discrimination “with deliberate indifference.”
By resolving the case, NYU avoided a lengthy trial which would have revealed precisely who and which office received but failed to address numerous reports that — according to the court documents filed in November — NYU students and faculty “repeatedly abuse, malign, vilify, and threaten Jewish students with impunity” and that “death to k—es” and “gas the Jews” were chanted by pro-Hamas supporters at the school.
NYU did not merely pay money to quell the complaints of its accusers, however. Over a month after the settlement was reached it updated its Non-Discrimination and Harassment Policy (NDAH), including in it language which identified “Zionist” as a racial dog whistle that sometimes conceals the antisemitic intent of speech and other conduct that denigrates and excludes Jews. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the policy acknowledges the “coded” subtleties of antisemitic speech and its use in discriminatory conduct that targets Jewish students and faculty.
NYU went further, recognizing that Zionism is central to the identities of the world’s 15.7 million Jews, an overwhelming majority of whom believe the Jewish people were destined to return to their ancient homeland in the land of Israel after centuries of exile. “For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists,” the university said.
Anti-Israel activity on college campuses has reached crisis levels in the year that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, according to a report published by the ADL in September which revealed a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena. Titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024,” the document painted a bleak picture of an American higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“The antisemitic, anti-Zionist vitriol we’ve witnessed on campus is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past,” Greenblatt said in a statement accompanying the unveiling of the organization’s research. “Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the anti-Israel movement’s relentless harassment, vandalism, intimidation, and violent physical assaults go way beyond the peaceful voicing of a political opinion. Administrators and faculty need to do much better this year to ensure a safe and truly inclusive environment for all students, regardless of religion, nationality, or political views, and they need to start now.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Occidental College Settles Antisemitism Complaint first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Rashida Tlaib Uses Thanksgiving Message to Express Solidarity With ‘Palestine,’ Other ‘Indigenous People’
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) used the holiday of Thanksgiving to “mourn” the “indigenous people” of “Palestine” and elsewhere “fighting for freedom on their own land,” portraying one of America’s most storied celebrations in a negative light.
“This Thanksgiving we mourn the Indigenous people killed by European settlers and the United States in order to steal their land,” Tlaib reposted on Instagram. “From here to Palestine, we stand in solidarity with all Indigenous people as they fight for freedom on their own land.”
Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman elected to the US Congress, has long been an outspoken critic of Israel. The congresswoman was slow to issue a public statement acknowledging the Palestinian terror group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and since the onslaught, she has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “apartheid.” She has also alleged that American support for Israel stems from “anti-Palestinian racism.”
US Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA), another staunch critic of Israel and progressive lawmaker, also used Thanksgiving as an opportunity to take shots at America, arguing that the beloved holiday represents “stolen land and broken treaties” for Native Americans.
Lee has been on the receiving end of immense criticism over her anti-Israel rhetoric in the year following the Oct. 7 atrocities. In the weeks following the slaughter, Lee co-sponsored a resolution calling for a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. She has similarly accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. In a statement commemorating the anniversary of Oct. 7, Lee only wrote that she mourned “those killed one year ago and those massacred in the year since,” seemingly drawing an equivalence between Hamas’s terrorism and Israel’s defensive military operations.
“Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude and togetherness for many, but it’s also a reminder of stolen land and broken treaties for others. Today, let’s honor Native communities by committing to the fight for sovereignty, justice, and the promises this country has failed to keep,” Lee wrote.
In contrast, some other members of Congress called attention to the American hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza in their Thanksgiving statements.
“As we gather with family today, we must not forget the families who are missing their loved ones who were taken hostage by Hamas 418 days ago — including New York’s own Omer Neutra,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said. “Let us pray that by this time next year, they will be reunited safely with their families.”
“As you spend Thanksgiving with your family and friends, don’t forget the 100+ families whose loved ones are being held hostage by Iran-backed Hamas for the second holiday season in a row. It’’ been 419 days. Enough! Bring them home NOW!” US Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said in a statement, referring to the 101 hostages still in captivity in Gaza.
Of the remaining hostages, seven are Americans.
The post Rashida Tlaib Uses Thanksgiving Message to Express Solidarity With ‘Palestine,’ Other ‘Indigenous People’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Antisemitism in Berlin Surges to Record Levels This Year, New Data Show
Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
The number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin in just the first six months of this year surpassed the total for all of 2023 and reached the highest annual count on record, according to a new German report.
Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) on Thursday released data documenting 1,383 incidents of antisemitism in the German capital from January to June, averaging nearly eight a day.
The figure compiled by RIAS, a federally-funded body, was a significant increase from the 1,270 antisemitic outrages tallied in 2023 and the highest count for a single year since RIAS began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015.
Of the 1,383 incidents documented in the first half of this year in Berlin, two were cases of “extreme violence,” another 23 were attacks (six of which were against children), and 37 were targeted acts of property damage, including 21 acts involving memorials.
In the first extremely violent incident, a Jewish student in Mitte was punched several times in the face on the street and then kicked in the face after he fell to the ground in February 2024. The victim, a member of student groups working to combat antisemitism, had been doxed online as a “right-wing Zionist,” according to The Jerusalem Post.
The second incident also occurred in Mitte, this time in May, when a visibly Jewish Ukrainian was physically attacked by an unknown assailant while on the way to synagogue. The attacker yelled “Free Palestine” while assaulting the victim, and no one reportedly intervened.
RIAS also documented 28 threats, such as direct messages on social media, and 1,240 cases of abusive behavior.
“The content of antisemitism also continued to be more violent and uninhibited. Seventy-one incidents contained threats of annihilation, including graffiti that openly called for the killing of Jews,” the report noted.
In the first half of 2024, 74 antisemitic incidents were documented in educational institutions in Berlin, including 27 incidents in schools. “The nature of the incidents is alarming: Jewish or Israeli children were beaten, spat on, threatened, and treated with hostility by their classmates,” according to RIAS. “Antisemitic incidents occurred in schools in 9 of 12 Berlin districts.”
A striking 71.6 percent of all antisemitic incidents during the first half of 2024 in the German capital were related to Israel.
RIAS previously reported a major spike in antisemitic incidents across Germany since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
There have been 230 antisemitic outrages per month since Oct. 7, 2023, compared to around 50 such incidents per month before the onslaught.
“These data indicate a lasting change in the dynamics of incidents: the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin remained at a significantly higher level in the first half of the year than in the months and years before, starting with the sharp increase following Oct. 7,” RIAS summarized.
However, many antisemitic incidents had nothing to do with Israel or its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.
“It can be observed that in this context the boundaries of what can be said have shifted overall and some antisemitic statements seem to be acceptable even to [normative] society,” RIAS wrote. “They range from the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, to antisemitic conspiracy myths, trivialization of the Holocaust and reversals of perpetrator and victim, to open antisemitic insults.”
The antisemitism monitoring group concluded that rates of antisemitism show no sign of letting up in Berlin: “A downward trend is not foreseeable at the time of publication of the report.”
Europe has experienced an explosion of antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of last Oct. 7. In many countries, anti-Jewish hate crimes have spiked to record levels.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany last year, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
However, experts believe that the true number of incidents is much higher but not recorded because of reluctance on the part of the victims.
“Only 20 percent of the antisemitic crimes are reported, so the real number should be five times what we have,” Felix Klein, the German federal government’s chief official dealing with antisemitism, told The Algemeiner in an interview last year.
The post Antisemitism in Berlin Surges to Record Levels This Year, New Data Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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