Uncategorized
A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Tucked in the far corner of a large, brightly-lit exhibition hall on the ground floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, there is a delicate-looking piece of art with a strong political message.
At first glance, it appears to be three circular vases with flowers in them. The ceramic vases sit on shelves attached to the wall, and colorful collages hang above them. On closer inspection, visitors will notice that the flowers are made out of paper and that affixed to each vase is an image of the Palestinian flag printed on foam board.
A nearby label written by the curators of the exhibit, titled “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves,” explains that the piece was inspired by a conversation the artist, Tosha Stimage of Berkeley, had with a Palestinian man. He told Stimage about the plants that are native to Palestine — “a place which he can no longer access due to the ongoing conflict in the region,” the curators write.
The label also includes a note about the flag: “Some may find its presence at The CJM troubling or confusing, while others may find it appropriate and forthright. Stimage recognizes the potential for these divergent responses and hopes to use them as a means of generating dialogue.”
On a Sunday afternoon in October, Maury Ostroff read the label and walked away without inspecting the artwork.
Visitors to the “Tikkun” exhibit are encouraged to share their responses to the artwork via comment cards. (Andrew Esensten)
Asked how the presence of the flag made him feel, Ostroff, who is Jewish and lives in Muir Beach, in Marin County, replied, “Unhappy.”
Why?
“It’s not offensive to me in the same way that a swastika is. My skin is a little bit thicker than that. But I wish it weren’t here.”
He added, “What’s so Jewish about this? What’s so ‘tikkun olam’ about all of this?”
For the “Tikkun” exhibit, which opened Feb. 17 and runs through Jan. 8, the CJM invited both Jewish and non-Jewish Bay Area artists to contribute new works on the theme of repair, however they chose to interpret it. “No one is listening to us,” the piece by Stimage, who is not Jewish, is the first work of art featuring the Palestinian flag to be shown at CJM in recent memory; the museum could not say when or if the flag has been displayed on its walls before.
The piece prompted several internal conversations among CJM staff when it was first submitted and, since it has been on display, has generated a variety of responses from museumgoers who have left comments in a box at the entrance to the exhibit. Intentionally or not, Stimage has raised numerous questions with the artwork, including: Does a work of art that is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle for statehood belong in a Jewish museum? And what is the role of a contemporary Jewish museum, anyway?
“To truly be a contemporary art museum, meaning embedded in the contemporary issues of our day, our job is to provide a platform for dialogue and to share a diversity of perspectives on our walls,” said Chad Coerver, CJM’s executive director since September 2021. “If any institution [like ours] took the path of withholding artwork that troubled our staff, our board or our community, it would be very difficult to mount exhibitions.”
CJM is a member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, a network of 76 museums across the country. CAJM does not have guidelines about the kind of art its member museums can and cannot display, according to Executive Director Melissa Yaverbaum.
J. reached out to several CAJM member museums in New York, Los Angeles and other places by email to ask if they had ever shown artwork with Palestinian iconography or works by Palestinian artists. The museums declined to answer or did not respond.
In recent years, two Jewish museums have been embroiled in controversy over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago staged an exhibit in 2008 on Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland that included maps and portraits of Palestinians. Following outcry from members of the local Jewish community who felt the exhibit presented Israel in a negative light, the museum decided to close the exhibit after only a few weeks. And in 2019, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin resigned after the museum tweeted a link to a pro-BDS article in a German newspaper. (The museum previously came under fire for welcoming anti-Zionist scholar Judith Butler and representatives of Iran.)
In a joint interview with J., two CJM staffers who worked on “Tikkun” — co-curator Qianjin Montoya, who is not Jewish, and a Jewish senior curator who served in an advisory role, Heidi Rabben — shared the story of how Stimage’s piece came to be in the exhibit. (Montoya’s co-curator for the exhibit, Arianne Gelardin, no longer works at the museum.)
Since 2009, CJM has invited local artists from different backgrounds to create new work as part of the museum’s annual Dorothy Saxe Invitational. The idea for “Tikkun” was hatched before the pandemic put the planning process on hold. Once the CJM and Saxe — a local philanthropist and art collector — agreed on the theme, the co-curators invited artists “already engaged in healing through their relationship to community or in their practice of daily life,” Gelardin told J. last February.
The 30 artists who accepted the museum’s invitation were given only four months to conceive of and submit new works. That was likely the shortest timeline in the history of the invitational, which has been held 11 previous times, according to the museum. Each artist received a packet of materials compiled by CJM staff, with input from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a non-degree granting Jewish education center, to guide their thinking on “tikkun.”
Stimage was invited to participate because she is “very active” in the Bay Area and because “her work reflects ideas of community and connection,” Montoya said.
The curators said Stimage’s inclusion of the Palestinian flag in her submitted piece came as a surprise and prompted challenging conversations. However, they noted that they found the content of some of the other artists’ work surprising, too, and that it’s not unusual for contemporary artists to push the envelope in their work.
“I wouldn’t say we expected to receive a piece about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we weren’t steering anyone away from that, either,” Rabben told J., adding that the submission guidelines did not place any topic off limits. “That’s a commitment from the museum to authentically represent the creative spirit of the artists that we’re working with,” she said.
Still, the curators said they engaged in a dialogue with Stimage in order to better understand each aspect of her piece and her overall intentions. Through those conversations, the curators learned that Stimage wanted to explore a moment of “rupture,” and that through her piece she hoped to communicate “that before healing or repair might happen, you have to first acknowledge that rupture,” Rabben said.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is showing “Tikkun,” an exhibit of works by Jewish and non-Jewish artists on the theme of repair. (Andrew Esensten)
Coerver, who was involved in some of the conversations, stressed that “careful consideration” was given to including the piece in the exhibit. “We felt an artwork addressing the plight of the Palestinians was appropriate in an exhibition on healing and repair,” he said. (No work submitted as part of the Dorothy Saxe Invitational has ever been outright rejected, the museum said.)
Stimage did not respond to interview requests from J. According to a CV on her website, she was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a past fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was an artist-in-residence at Facebook in 2018. She also owns a floral gift shop in Oakland called Saint Flora.
Her work often touches on Black identity; she created a piece honoring Sandra Bland, an African-American woman whose 2015 arrest and death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, and contributed to a 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibit on the Black Panther Party.
“I have a responsibility to create things that will, to the best of my present knowledge, do more good than harm, heal, inspire and uplift other humans,” she told the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper in 2015.
Stimage’s precise views on Israel are unknown. CJM referred J. to her artist statement for “No one is listening to us,” which reads: “Olive, sage, and sumac are flowering plants native to the Mediterranean (including regions of Gaza and the West Bank) that have a direct relationship to contested ancestral land and affect the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers and families caught in the conflict. They are positioned in the space of The Contemporary Jewish Museum as a metaphor for the ongoing conflict over land rights and the desperate need for restoration and healing of an age-old wound.”
The curators told J. that during their conversations with Stimage about her piece, they asked her why including images of the Palestinian flag was important to her but did not request that she remove them.
“We determined that none of [the piece’s] components in and of themselves signified something problematic or concerning,” Rabben said. “Of course, we had the awareness that the symbol [of the flag] will be read in a variety of ways by a variety of people.”
(Rabben pointed out that the exhibit includes other works with national symbols rendered in provocative ways, such as a black-and-white photograph of an American flag that was torn apart and partially reassembled by Mexican-American artist Jose Arias.)
The Palestinian flag — which contains the Pan-Arab colors of black, white, green and red — was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. Since then, it has been the primary symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
For decades, the PLO was considered an enemy organization by Israel, and anything associated with it “had no place in Israeli public life,” said Eran Kaplan, an Israeli-born professor of Israel studies at San Francisco State University. Israel never went so far as to ban the flag. However, during the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli soldiers sometimes followed orders to confiscate the flag from protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.
With the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel and the PLO recognized each other as negotiating partners. Yet the Palestinian flag remains a contentious symbol in Israel today. Kaplan noted that it recently served as a flashpoint during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American broadcaster who was killed in the West Bank in May. (The IDF conducted a review and admitted that the Israeli soldier who shot her had most likely misidentified her as an armed militant.) After warning Abu Akleh’s family not to display the flag, Israeli police attacked mourners in East Jerusalem, ripping flags out of their hands and off of the vehicle carrying her casket.
Today, the flag holds different meanings for Israelis and American Jews from different generations and political persuasions.
“There are large segments in Israeli society who view any form of Palestinian national identity as a threat to the existence of Israel,” Kaplan said. “There are others who view the PLO as legitimate partners in any form of negotiations [over the creation of a Palestinian state], but there’s an absolute split over those questions.”
Given the sensitive nature of Stimage’s work and others in the exhibit, the curators decided to solicit feedback from visitors via comment cards available at the entrance to the hall. Rabben said the museum has received a number of comments specifically about “No one is listening to us,” most of which were positive. “The majority of those comments were ‘Thank you for offering space for this topic at the museum,’” she said.
Last month, a security guard sitting in the “Tikkun” exhibition hall told a reporter that he had not witnessed any expressions of outrage or protest through the first nine months of the exhibit. “When we opened we were afraid of negative reactions, but they’re not stressed about it,” he said of visitors. “We have shown worse things here.” The guard, who has worked at the museum since it opened in 2008, mentioned a 2010 exhibit, “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf,” which included a copy of Hitler’s autobiography. “Some people were cussing us out” for displaying the book, he recalled.
Meanwhile, on the same floor as “Tikkun,” there is another, smaller exhibit containing potentially offensive art. A sign outside of the room warns visitors that inside is a Hitler marionette created by the parents of puppeteer Frank Oz. “Our intention in displaying this object is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the objects and firsthand stories of those who experienced its persecution, and to encourage conversation and education about the ongoing horrors of antisemitism and authoritarianism today,” the sign says.
Coerver, CJM’s executive director, said he was proud that the museum’s three current exhibits — “Tikkun,” “Oz is for Oznowicz: A Puppet Family’s History” and “Gillian Laub: Family Matters,” which includes photographs that Laub took of her Trump-supporting relatives — are raising “challenging questions” and providing opportunities for both visitors and museum staff to “expand our horizons.”
“We’ve been wading into some issues that I think are a little thicker than maybe we’ve been confronting in the past,” he said, “and I hope that continues.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
—
The post A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Can Netanyahu win again? The secret to his political survival – and why it may finally fail him
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was once dubbed “King Bibi” for his remarkable ability to win elections, starting with his surprise victory in 1996 at age 46. The number of political rivals who have risen and fallen during his decades in power is almost impossible to count.
But with the Oct. 27 election just days away – three years after Israel’s worst security failure under his watch and amid deep divisions at home and declining international support — could this finally be the 77-year-old Israeli leader’s last stand?
Recent polls show Netanyahu’s Likud party trailing former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party. Several right-wing and religious parties are also polling below the 3.5% threshold needed to enter the Knesset, threatening to waste thousands of votes that Netanyahu may need to secure a majority. Meanwhile, the opposition appears more organized and motivated than in previous elections, posing a serious threat to his nearly two-decade dominance of Israeli politics.
Netanyahu has spent much of his political career proving predictions of his demise wrong. In 2015, he defied polls and led the Likud Party to a surprise victory after warning on Election Day that Arab voters were heading to the polls in droves. In 2021, after 12 consecutive years as prime minister, he was forced into the opposition by an unlikely coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. He returned to power less than two years later, almost immediately igniting mass protests over his judicial overhaul agenda, which his rivals said would concentrate power and eviscerate Israeli democracy.
Then came Oct. 7, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Israelis were furious over the security failures that allowed Hamas to breach the border and kill about 1,200 people. Families of hostages demanded the immediate return of their loved ones, and even longtime supporters questioned whether he could remain prime minister after the end of the military campaign in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s political future appeared bleak. Mazal Mualem, a political commentator and author of Cracking the Netanyahu Code, said in an interview that everyone close to Netanyahu whom she spoke with in the weeks after the attack believed it was over. “Bibi was the only one who thought he would survive,” she said, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
But Netanyahu refused to resign. He kept his right-wing coalition together through the war in Gaza, survived nationwide protests and hearings in his ongoing corruption trial. In a remarkable political achievement, he became the first Israeli prime minister in more than 50 years to lead a government through its full four-year parliamentary term — something he himself had never accomplished before in his long career.
How did Netanyahu survive?
In interviews with the Forward, Mualem and another Netanyahu biographer, Anshel Pfeffer, reflected on how Netanyahu has survived when his political career appeared doomed. They offered different explanations, but agreed on one thing: Netanyahu can never be counted out.
Pfeffer, a correspondent for The Economist and author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, said that while there’s “no equivalent” to his political instincts and campaign skills, Netanyahu also lacks certain human instincts, including “shame” and “introspection,” that might otherwise have forced him to step aside. “He has no shame,” Pfeffer said.
Netanyahu’s ability to hold on to power, Pfeffer added, also relied on a political system he spent decades building, in which the political careers and financial interests of his allies are tied to his success. That helped him keep far-right partners such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, along with the Haredi parties, in his coalition despite disagreements over the war and military draft exemptions.
Mualem sees another reason Netanyahu survived: He transformed. “It’s almost as though he killed the old Bibi and a different person was born,” she said.
Netanyahu, once known for his risk-averse doctrine and being at times moderate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, became more willing to take bold military action. Under his leadership, Israel killed the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, launched strikes against Iran and expanded its military presence in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Mualem argued that this transformation helped Netanyahu win back voters who had turned against him after Oct. 7 and strengthen his standing among his political base. “He went to war for himself and for the country,” she said. “He didn’t give up.”
Can he do it again?
Netanyahu is now counting on those same political skills to carry him through another difficult election.
Recent polls show the parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc holding an average of 55 seats, short of the 61 needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The two Arab lists — the United List, a coalition of three Arab Israeli parties, and Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas — are generally counted outside either bloc. But their projected 13 to 15 seats could determine whether Netanyahu’s opponents can form a minority government or at least unite to elect a Knesset speaker from their ranks, giving them significant influence over the legislative agenda. Opposition leaders remain divided over whether they should cooperate with Arab lawmakers.
With little chance of winning over voters firmly opposed to him, Netanyahu is focusing on right-wing voters who supported him in previous elections but are now considering staying home. His goal is to convince them that the alternative to his leadership is too risky.
Netanyahu’s campaign slogan, “It’s the right or Palestine,” is tapping into post-Oct. 7 fears about the establishment of a Palestinian state, warning that an Eisenkot-led government dependent on Arab support will lead to Palestinian statehood. He made a similar claim in 1996 when he suggested Shimon Peres would divide Jerusalem.
Mualem said Netanyahu is approaching this race as if it were his first campaign. “Netanyahu’s secret isn’t magic,” she said. “It’s hard work and a refusal to give up. He never raises his hands in surrender.”
Shalom Lipner, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East program, said Netanyahu has another important advantage: As prime minister, he can largely shape the national conversation. When attention turns to issues that expose his political weaknesses, including Haredi military exemptions or his government’s responsibility for Oct. 7, Netanyahu can redirect the focus to Hamas, Iran or other security threats.
Lipner, who served under seven consecutive Israeli prime ministers between 1990 and 2016, compared it to President Donald Trump’s political style. Both leaders, he said, are skilled at drawing attention to issues that favor them.
Earlier this week, Trump endorsed Netanyahu for reelection, giving his longtime ally another opportunity to highlight their partnership in confronting Iran. “If Israel has the wrong leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Netanyahu seized on the endorsement to rally his base and try to persuade undecided voters that his close relationship with Trump is essential to Israel’s security. “We have a job to finish,” he told Trump during a phone call that was turned into a campaign clip.
Lipner believes Netanyahu’s tactics face greater limits than in previous elections because Israeli voters have become increasingly skeptical and entrenched in their views.
Still, Netanyahu has little reason to stop trying.
Israeli political commentator Amit Segal suggested that the statement about working with Trump for the coming two years was aimed at swing voters tired of Netanyahu, but who “will find it easier to support him for final arrangements for one last job,” with the implicit expectation that this would be his final term.
The day after the election
For both Netanyahu and his opponents, winning more votes on Election Day is only half the battle. The bigger challenge is finding a way to form a government afterward.
Under Israel’s electoral system, the 37 parties running in this election cycle must win at least 3.25% of the national vote to enter the Knesset. Votes cast for parties that fail to cross that threshold do not translate into seats, potentially costing their political allies crucial seats available for redistribution.
That makes the fate of smaller right-wing parties, including one led by retired general Ofer Winter and a reservist-backed, economy-focused party led by former minister Yoaz Hendel, particularly important in determining the balance of power.
Voter turnout and first-time voters will therefore be critical to the makeup of the political map.
Even if Netanyahu does not win 61 seats, he could still benefit if the opposition cannot agree on a government. Polls show that a majority of voters want a different prime minister, but those voters are spread across parties with sharply different ideologies and priorities.
Eisenkot has suggested establishing a minority government with Arab lawmakers abstaining to allow it to be sworn in without formally joining the coalition. Other opposition figures, particularly Avigdor Lieberman, are opposed to alliances with Arab members.
These divisions are Netanyahu’s greatest hope. If the opposition can’t come to an agreement, that could set the stage for another election, leaving Netanyahu as prime minister until a replacement government is sworn in.
Is this his last stand?
All three experts said it is too early to predict whether this election will mark the end of Netanyahu’s career.
“At one point it’s going to be your last stand,” Lipner said. “I just don’t know if this is it.”
“Netanyahu has found so many ways to come back against all the odds against him,” Pfeffer said. “So you certainly can’t count him out, and I’m not going to try to.”
Mualem suggested that even if Netanyahu loses power, he may simply return to the opposition and wait for his rivals to fail. “Netanyahu doesn’t have another life,” she said. “Politics is the only life he has.”
The post Can Netanyahu win again? The secret to his political survival – and why it may finally fail him appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
While AIPAC’s critics rejoice as lobby shifts strategy, its defenders push back
(JTA) — AIPAC’s critics gloated on Thursday after the pro-Israel lobby announced that it was ending direct contributions and candidate endorsements. But defenders of the storied Washington institution pushed back at that characterization, saying instead that the organization had made a smart course correction amid strong political headwinds stoked at least in part by antisemitism.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee announced the decision in a letter to its members on Wednesday, explaining that the lobby would now shift its focus to mobilizing individual donors. The abandonment of direct PAC contributions and candidate endorsements marks a significant reversal in a strategy that AIPAC launched in 2021, ahead of the 2022 election cycle. The letter informed donors that AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, also launched in 2021, would continue to operate.
The move came in an increasingly tense political cycle for AIPAC, which it called “one of the most challenging environments in recent memory.” The lobby has become a target for progressive candidates, particularly Democratic Socialists of America members, who have sharply criticized candidates who receive donations from AIPAC. In turn, the organization has become a symbol of undue political influence among some voters.
The DSA responded to the lobby’s policy shift by saying that “AIPAC has realized what we all already knew: working people do not want their tax dollars to fund apartheid and genocide.”
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and a staunch Israel critic, wrote that AIPAC’s decision shows that “candidates don’t want its backing,” while the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace posted that AIPAC was now deeming itself “too toxic.”
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal pro-Israel lobbying group J Street, which has frequently tangled with AIPAC on social media, argued in a statement that “AIPAC can’t save its brand by folding its PAC.” Describing AIPAC as “a once-revered organization,” he said the lobby became toxic not due to its support of candidates but “because of the policies it asks those candidates to defend.”
But those with ties to AIPAC defended the move as one that will actually help the lobby fortify its impact. “It’s a marker of institutional health when they can look around at the reality, see it for what it is and change themselves accordingly,” Jonathan Greenberg, director for combatting antisemitism at Defending Education and a former AIPAC staffer, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They recognized that their political ground had shifted and that they needed to change with that shift,” added Greenberg, who served as AIPAC’s Midwest political director until 2011 and ran for state office in Illinois as a Republican a year later.
Calling out what he described as a “horrifying demonization campaign” against AIPAC in Washington, he said he believes that the lobbying group made this strategic decision in an effort to continue operating amid widespread antisemitism.
“The pro-Israel community is still going to be deeply involved in campaigns,” added Greenberg, who identifies as a political conservative but no longer a Republican. “AIPAC is just wisely understanding that the way the organization operates can change, so that it can still be the voice that it’s always been on Capitol Hill.”
Recognizing that the U.S. political landscape is undergoing profound changes amid deep dissatisfaction across party lines, a former AIPAC spokesperson who requested anonymity to speak freely pointed out that institutions must evolve to stay effective. Other major interest groups, such as the pharmaceutical, hospital and real estate industries, are advancing their priorities with a variety of tactics, including lobbying, direct contributions, super PACs and networks of donors, the person noted.
In fact, one point of agreement on Thursday between AIPAC’s supporters and detractors was that the 72-year-old institution wasn’t going anywhere. “Mobilizing greater resources for AIPAC, pro-Israel candidates, and our super PAC is critical,” the AIPAC letter stressed, as it pledged to reinvest in its long-standing network of members nationwide.
“AIPAC staff and local leaders will continue working with you on political fundraising efforts, recommending contributions to candidates who are worthy of your support, and ensuring your resources are deployed in the most effective ways possible,” the letter added.
Indeed, opponents of the lobby indicated that the change in approach did little to satisfy them – and potentially opened up new lines of attack. DSA charged that AIPAC would “try to bankroll the same candidates under a different name.”
“You can’t hide AIPAC,” the DSA added. “The world has woken up.”
J Street’s Ben-Ami maintained that AIPAC’s decision to keep its super PAC even as it dropped its PAC “only doubles down on the dark money politics that helped create its problem in the first place.” Traditional PACs can contribute a maximum of $5,000 to individual candidates in each race, while super PACs can spend unlimited funds to independent political communications that serve to support or oppose candidates. Both have to disclose their donors, but super PAC donors aren’t always transparent about the origins of their money.
Tali deGroot, J Street’s vice president of political and digital strategy, likewise assessed that AIPAC’s influence wouldn’t disappear in the next election cycle.
“Instead, AIPAC’s donors and its super PAC will keep spending heavily in our elections, only now voters will have a harder time seeing where that money comes from,” deGroot said.
Defending Education’s Greenberg acknowledged that AIPAC’s choice to increase its reliance on its super PAC could fuel even more opposition to the lobby.
“But I don’t think fashioning ourselves to placate antisemites gets us anywhere,” he continued. “What we know about antisemites, from thousands of years of dealing with them, is that if we don’t give them this reason, they’ll find another reason.”
The former AIPAC spokesperson said the jury was out on whether the AIPAC pivot would improve its public image. “The question is whether AIPAC’s shift reflects a broader evolution in how organizations and interest groups engage politically, and whether changing its approach will change how the public perceives its influence,” the former spokesperson noted.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post While AIPAC’s critics rejoice as lobby shifts strategy, its defenders push back appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools
(JTA) — The U.K. has adopted sweeping measures to combat antisemitism in English schools, prompting pushback from the country’s largest teachers’ union.
The move came after a new government-commissioned review found that three in five Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism in English schools. The most common incidents were jokes, stereotypes and comments about Jewish people. About half of respondents who witnessed or experienced antisemitism said the incidents were not reported, most often because they did not think they would be taken seriously.
The government on Wednesday accepted 27 recommendations from the report, including dedicated antisemitism training for leaders and staff, improved recording of antisemitic incidents and moves to build a better understanding of Jewish life, identity and contemporary antisemitism.
The government commissioned the report following a spate of high-profile attacks on Jews in Britain, including an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year that left two men dead.
The report’s author, Sir David Bell, the vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland and former chief inspector of schools in England, recommended addressing antisemitism distinctly from other forms of racism. He argued that antisemitism was a “uniquely complex” problem because of intertwined racial and religious dimensions, since Jewish identity can encompass both an ethnicity and a religion, along with expressions of prejudice that hold all Jews responsible for the actions of Israel.
The government will also encourage English schools to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The definition is supported by many mainstream Jewish organizations and has been adopted by 47 countries, including the U.K., but critics say that it conflates some forms of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.
British Education Secretary Lucy Powell called Bell’s review a “generational moment” and said that “implementation is now my priority.”
However, the National Education Union, the largest union representing teachers, lecturers, teaching assistants and support staff in the United Kingdom and Europe, raised concerns on Wednesday about recommending the IHRA definition for schools. NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said in a statement that the definition “risks deepening the problem rather than tackling it, and actively undermining efforts to confront antisemitism.”
“The IHRA’s contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza, leaving teachers with uncertainty when they need clarity,” said Kebede. He cited a risk that “children who cannot critically explore issues through classroom discussion will instead seek their answers in online and unsafe groups.”
Kebede also encouraged Britain’s Department for Education to strengthen guidance on all forms of racism, not only antisemitism, saying that 65% of teachers report they have not received any antiracism training in the past year.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella organization for British Jewish communities, celebrated the antisemitism report and the government’s adoption of its proposed measures. The group specifically praised the report’s “clear recommendations that schools and local authorities follow government guidelines by adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a tool to deepen understanding of contemporary antisemitism.”
“We remain concerned about undue external influence on schools driven by narrow political agendas, and tendentious materials seeping into schools and increasing disharmony, and we will continue to press for vigilance against this,” said the Board of Deputies.
The post UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools appeared first on The Forward.
