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Civil Rights Leader Alyza Lewin Joins Combat Antisemitism Movement
Alyza Lewin (center), constitutional lawyer and former president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. She was recently announced as Combat Antisemitism Movement’s (CAM) new President of US Affairs. Photo: Israel on Campus Coalition.
Civil rights leader and constitutional lawyer Alyza Lewin will draw on her family legacy of Jewish resilience and advocacy in her new role as president of US Affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), one of the world’s leading nonprofits raising awareness about the global surge in anti-Jewish hatred, she told The Algemeiner in an interview this week.
CAM — whose recent work includes a new report showing a surge of antisemitic incidents on college campuses just over a month into the new academic year — announced Lewin’s joining the organization on Monday, calling her addition a move that “will elevate CAM to an even higher level.”
“I am incredibly proud that Alyza Lewin — among the foremost authorities on antisemitism in the US, with decades of unmatched experience safeguarding Jewish civil rights — will now, as CAM’s President of US Affairs, employ her personal expertise and vision in engaging American decision-makers so that they can better implement effective solutions to address the challenges facing American Jewry,” CAM chief executive officer Sacha Roytman said in a statement.
Lewin’s family history is rich with Jewish traditions of resistance to fascism and religious persecution, replete with stories of dead of night escapes from hostile countries, a grandfather who was murdered for publicly opposing Hitler during World War II, a grandmother born in Jerusalem during the Ottoman occupation, and victories in landmark legal cases, including Zivotofsky v. Clinton, which established the legal right of people born in Jerusalem to designate Israel as their place of birth on government documents.
“My father, Nathan Lewin, only knew one of his four grandparents because three of them perished in the Holocaust,” Lewin said, recounting her family history. “So, I grew up feeling as though the significant events in modern Jewish history were not just the history of the Jewish people, they were my personal history, my personal family history — you know, the Holocaust, the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel. And I went through a phase as a child in which I read every young adult historical fiction book about the Holocaust. It was as if I felt this need to really understand what that was and what that was about.”
Nathan Lewin’s influence on his daughter was formative, serving as a paragon of Jewish excellence in education and the professions. After college, she enrolled in law and later joined forces with him to fight, pro bono, a succession of cases brought by Jewish people whose rights had been violated or denied.
“We started working together on religious liberty cases when I came to his firm,” she explained. “For example, we brought the Boim v. Holy Land Foundation case, the first case brought under the US Anti-Terrorism Act on behalf of victims of terror. We sued groups providing material support for it, opening a legal avenue for victims to collect damages from those in the US who facilitate it.”
It was during this partnership with Nathan Lewin that Alyza worked on Zivotofsky v. Clinton, which, as she recalled, was a vanguard of recognizing Israeli rights in Jerusalem.
“Prior to President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Jerusalem, the city was treated as a city with no country from the time Israel was established. Even the part of Jerusalem that was under Israeli control was still not recognized as being in Israel for the purposes of US passports and other policies. Zivotofsky v. Clinton changed that finally, but official for the passports it changed in 2020. So, it took us 20 years, pro bono, to effect that change,” she said.
She continued, “We had cases that involved the right to put up a mezuzah in your housing complex; cases that involved the right to grow a beard while employed in the police force. These were cases that really spoke to me.”
In 2017, Lewin joined the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, taking over as president of the organization while its founder, civil rights champion Kenneth Marcus, served in government as assistant secretary for civil rights in the US Department of Education. She went on to serve in the role for nearly eight years, fighting civil rights cases involving campus antisemitism.
“We express our gratitude to Alyza for her dedication passion, and tireless efforts during her time at the Brandeis Center. CAM has made great progress in the fight against antisemitism and have served as such valuable partners to the Brandeis Center,” Marcus said on Monday.
The Algemeiner covered Lewin’s litigation efforts regularly, as they took on the forces of rising antisemitism long before the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, when most Americans had not yet registered the issue as a problem that needed to be addressed.
In February 2022, Lewin represented Cassandra Blotner, a Jewish student at State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz who was expelled from a sexual assault awareness group for expressing support for Israel. In August of that year, she precipitated a civil rights investigation of antisemitism at University of Vermont and later challenged its president, Suresh Garimella, when he minimized Jewish students’ accounts of bigotry and discrimination.
“He essentially chosen to blame the victims,” Lewin, backed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other groups she mobilized for a concerted response, said in a statement. “Instead of summoning the courage that other university leaders across the country have shown in acknowledging the problem or offering support for Jewish students who are fearful about identifying publicly as Jewish, the UVM president’s statement doubles down and refuses to take responsibility.”
In 2024, the Brandeis Center won rulings, rendered by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which verified claims of discrimination brought by Jewish students enrolled in the City University of New York (CUNY) colleges. One of the cases sought justice for Brooklyn College Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program students, who were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
“I witnessed a Jewish student get told by the professor in front of our whole class to get her whiteness in check,” a Jewish student and witness to the events described in the complaint told The Algemeiner at the time, speaking anonymously due to fears of retaliation. “The professor basically said, ‘You can’t be a part of this kind of conversation because you’re white and you don’t understand oppression.’”
The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.
Those cases and more created legal precedent and school of thought for recognizing antisemitism as a civil rights issue falling under the jurisdiction of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which aimed to abolish discrimination based on heritable traits such as race, religion, sex, and ethnicity. Lewin hopes to expand the “ecosystem,” holding all institutions, from large corporations to private schools, accountable for allowing hostile antisemitic environments to degrade to the point of causing irreparable harm.
“What I hope to do now at CAM is to expand the ecosystem of individuals and institutions that understand, utilize, and apply this same framing,” Lewin explained. “There are so many additional communities and constituencies in society that would benefit from being able to understand and recognize how contemporary antisemitism manifest.”
She added, “I’d like to be able to help ensure the safety, security, continuity, and flourishing of the Jewish people. And to the extent that I can do that by using the legal education I was provided, by using the Jewish education that I was provided, and by celebrating my own families, and, as an extension, my people’s history that I am so proud of. If I can combine all of that in a way that really helps the Jewish people, I couldn’t ask for anything more. I’m grateful to be in this position every day and to call it work.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists
After a pro-Palestinian protest at a New Jersey synagogue turned violent in October, the Trump administration took an unusual step — using a federal law typically aimed at protecting abortion clinics to sue the demonstrators.
Now, federal authorities are attempting to deploy the same law against journalists as well as protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the agency’s at times violent crackdown in Minneapolis.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, a local journalist, and two protesters were arrested after attending a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Justice Department officials said Friday. Protesters alleged the pastor at Cities Church worked for ICE.
The federal law they are accused of violating, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE, prohibits the use of force or intimidation to interfere with reproductive health care clinics and houses of worship.
But in the three decades since its passage in 1994, the law had almost entirely been deployed against anti-abortion protesters causing disruptions at clinics.
That changed in September of last year, when the Trump administration cited the FACE Act to sue pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange, New Jersey.
It was the first time the Department of Justice had used the law against demonstrators outside a house of worship, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, said at the time.
The novel legal strategy — initially advanced by Jewish advocacy groups to fight antisemitism — is now front and center in what First Amendment advocates are describing as an attack on freedom of the press.
“I intend to identify and find every single person in that mob that interrupted that church service in that house of God and bring them to justice,” Dhillon told Newsmax last week. “And that includes so-called ‘journalists.’”
How the law has been used
The FACE Act has traditionally been used to prosecute protesters who interfere with patients entering abortion clinics. Conservative activists have long criticized the law as violating demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, and the Trump administration even issued a memo earlier this month saying the Justice Department should limit enforcement of the law.
But in September, the Trump administration applied the FACE Act in a new way: suing the New Jersey protesters at Congregation Ohr Torah.
They had disrupted an event at the Orthodox shul that promoted real estate sales in Israel and the West Bank, blowing plastic horns in people’s ears and chanting “globalize the intifada,” a complaint alleges.
Two pro-Israel demonstrators were charged by local law enforcement with aggravated assault, including a local dentist, Moshe Glick, who police said bashed a protester in the head with a metal flashlight, sending him to the hospital. Glick said he had acted in self defense, protecting a fellow congregant who had been tackled by a protester.
The event soon became a national flashpoint, with Glick’s lawyer alleging the prosecution had been “an attempt to criminalize Jewish self-defense.” Former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick earlier this month.
The Trump administration sued the pro-Palestinian protesters under the FACE Act, seeking to ban them from protesting outside houses of worship and asking that they each pay thousands of dollars in fines.
At the time, Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS he applauded the Trump administration “for bringing this suit to protect the Jewish community and all people of faith, who have the constitutional right to worship without fear of harassment.”
Diament did not respond to the Forward’s email asking whether he supported the use of the FACE Act against the Minneapolis journalists and protesters.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a pro-Israel group that says it uses legal tools to counter antisemitism, did not express concern over the use of the FACE Act in the Minnesota arrests — and emphasized the necessity of protecting religious spaces from interference.
“The idea that ‘you can worship’ means nothing if a mob can make it unsafe or impossible,” Goldfeder wrote in a statement to the Forward. “So if you apply it consistently: to protect a church in Minnesota, a synagogue in New Jersey, a mosque in Detroit, what you are actually protecting is pluralism itself.”
Goldfeder has also attempted to use the FACE Act against protesters at a synagogue, citing the law in a July 2024 complaint against demonstrators who had converged on an event promoting Israel real estate at Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. That clash descended into violence.
The Trump administration Justice Department subsequently filed a statement of interest supporting that case, arguing that what constituted “physical obstruction” at a house of worship under the FACE Act could be interpreted broadly.
Now, similar legal reasoning may apply to journalists covering the Sunday church protest in Minneapolis. Press freedom groups have expressed deep alarm over the arrests, arguing that the journalists were there to document, not disrupt.
The arrests are “the latest example of the administration coming up with far-fetched ‘gotcha’ legal theories to send a message to journalists to tread cautiously,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Because the government is looking for any way to target them.”
The post How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists appeared first on The Forward.
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Nearly 90% of Turkish Opinion Columns Favor Hamas, Study Shows
Pro-Hamas demonstrators in Istanbul, Turkey, carry a banner calling for Israel’s elimination. Photo: Reuters/Dilara Senkaya
About 90 percent of opinion articles published in two of Turkey’s leading media outlets portray the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in a positive or neutral light, according to a new study, reflecting Ankara’s increasingly hostile stance toward Israel.
Earlier this week, the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Institute released a report examining roughly 15,000 opinion columns in the widely read Turkish newspapers Sabah and Hürriyet, revealing that Hamas is often depicted positively through a “resistance movement” narrative portraying its members as “martyrs.”
For example, Turkish journalist Abdulkadir Selvi, writing in Hürriyet, described the assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as “a holy martyr not only of Palestine but of Islam as a whole” who “fought for peace,” while portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the new Hitler.”
JPPI also found that most articles in these two newspapers took a neutral stance on the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, offering almost no clear condemnation of the attacks and failing to acknowledge the group’s targeting of civilians.
Some journalists even went so far as to praise the violence as serving the Palestinian cause, the study noted.
In one striking example, Hürriyet published an article just one day after the attack, lauding the “resistance fighters” who carried out a “mythic” assault on the “Zionist occupying regime” and celebrating the killings.
In other cases, some journalists went as far as to portray Hamas as treating the Israeli hostages it kidnapped “kindly,” denying that the terrorist group had tortured and sexually abused former captives despite clear evidence.
“There was not the slightest indication that the Israelis released by the Palestinian resistance had been tortured,” Turkish journalist Hilal Kaplan wrote in Sabah, denying claims that the hostages had suffered brutal abuse.
“They all looked exactly the same physically as they did on Oct. 6, 2023, more than a year later,” he continued.
Prof. Yedidia Stern, president of JPPI, described the study’s findings as “deeply troubling,” urging Israeli officials not to overlook the Turkish media’s positive portrayal of Hamas and denial of its abuses.
“We must not normalize incitement and antisemitism anywhere in the world – certainly not when it comes from countries with which Israel maintains diplomatic relations,” Stern said in a statement.
According to the study, nearly half of the columns expressed a positive view of Hamas, while approximately 40 percent took a neutral position.
The analysis also found that around 40 percent of opinion columns mentioning Jews or Judaism contained antisemitic elements, with some invoking “Jewish capital” to suggest global power, while others compared Zionism to Nazism or depicted Jews as immune from international criticism.
For instance, two weeks after the Oct. 7 atrocities, Turkish journalist Nedim Şener wrote in Hürriyet that global Jewish capital and control over media and international institutions had brought the United States and Europe “to their knees,” allowing Israel to carry out a “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
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ADL appoints former head of embattled Gaza aid foundation to its board
The Anti-Defamation League named Rev. Johnnie Moore, who led the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to its board of directors last week.
Moore became the public face of the foundation over the summer as it faced blame for hundreds of Palestinian civilians being killed while attempting to access aid at distribution centers that critics said were risky and inefficient.
But the ADL described the foundation, which was created with support from the U.S. and Israeli governments, as a “historic effort to provide nearly 200 million meals for free to the people of Gaza,” in a press release.
The ADL’s leadership has become more protective of Israel in recent years as it has shifted away from its historic work on civil rights issues unrelated to antisemitism. That change included a 2017 reworking of its governance structure, which had been run by a committee of several hundred lay leaders, to a more traditional nonprofit board.
The United Nations reported in August that 859 Palestinians had been killed near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, mostly by the Israeli military. Doctors Without Borders said that the centers had “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty” with children being shot and civilians crushed in stampedes.
Moore’s role involved defending the organization. He blamed Hamas and the United Nations for causing mass starvation in Gaza and presented the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as the best means of distributing food to civilians without allowing it to be diverted to militants.
“Hamas has been trying to use the aid situation to advance their ceasefire position,” Moore said during a July presentation to the American Jewish Congress.
The foundation shut down in December.
An evangelical leader and former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump’s with no background in international aid prior to his work with the foundation in Gaza, Moore brings a Christian perspective to the ADL’s board at a time when evangelicals are increasingly divided over Israel and antisemitism. “As a Christian, I consider it a responsibility to stand alongside ADL in this critical moment for the Jewish community and for our nation,” he said in the statement announcing his appointment.
He was appointed alongside Stacie Hartman, an attorney and lay leader based in Chicago, and Matthew Segal, a media entrepreneur who former President Joe Biden named to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. They join a mix of philanthropists and business leaders, including Jonathan Neman, the CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen, and Max Neuberger, the publisher of Jewish Insider.
The post ADL appoints former head of embattled Gaza aid foundation to its board appeared first on The Forward.