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Germany could criminalize denying Israel’s right to exist. Could the U.S. follow?
As Germany considers an unprecedented law that would criminalize denying Israel’s right to exist, American free speech advocates worry the proposal could spark similar efforts in the U.S. to curb Israel-related speech.
The proposed law, which passed Germany’s upper house of parliament last week, would make publicly denying Israel’s right to exist a crime, with a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
“We’ve now seen a trend of what’s been happening in Europe can come over to the United States,” said Kevin Rachlin, vice president of government relations at the Nexus Project, which describes its mission as both fighting antisemitism and protecting free speech.
He said denying Israel’s right to exist can be antisemitic, yes, but not always.
“If we are going that whole step of making it punitive and punishable by law — that’s why we have our First Amendment to protect us from that.”
The bill specifies that the speech would be criminalized only if it would reasonably encourage “a willingness to commit acts of antisemitic violence.”
But not everyone will agree on what that means, said Michel Rosenfeld, a professor of law and comparative democracy at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law. A memo accompanying the bill includes as examples chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” or displaying maps in which Israel is replaced by a Palestinian state.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an American free speech watchdog, has warned that similar laws could come to American soil.
“We can expect similar bills and regulations to pop up across borders,” the foundation said in a statement. “That’s why the First Amendment is so vital — it can act as a bulwark against speech restrictions that have advanced in other nations from doing the same here.”
In the United States, such a law would be a blatant violation of the First Amendment, scholars say. But Germany, where Holocaust denial, Nazi symbols, and even public insults are already criminal offenses, has long drawn the boundaries of protected speech differently.
“Under German law, antisemitic pronouncements amount to hate speech and can be criminalized,” Rosenfeld said. “In the United States, you can say antisemitic things as much as you want. It’s free speech.”
In Germany, supporters of the bill have argued that antisemitism is occurring “openly on our streets” and pointed to the surge in antisemitic incidents post-Oct. 7 as evidence that stronger measures are needed. Just this week, a 65-year-old German man was assaulted and left with life threatening injuries after an argument over an Israeli flag pin he was wearing, according to German authorities.
Those incidents are why Shannon Seban, director of European affairs for the Combat Antisemitism Movement, hopes the German bill will serve as a model.
“Our judicial system needs to evolve in order to adapt to this new reality, and to the fact that you have contemporary forms of antisemitism,” Seban told the Forward. “I hope that plenty of other European countries will now adopt such a law.”
But that prospect worries some Jewish Americans, who argue that prison time for anti-Zionist speech is a bridge too far. Even organizations that have argued anti-Zionism can veer into antisemitism have generally not envisioned such speech as the basis for criminal prosecutions.
“I have a real issue of criminalizing any thought or speech, regardless of what it is,” Rachlin said.
The German context
According to Rosenfeld, the bill should be understood in the context of Germany’s postwar constitutional order. In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied powers outlawed the Nazi Party and banned its symbols as part of the country’s “denazification.” Those restrictions were later incorporated into German law, reflecting the country’s commitment to preventing the reemergence of Nazism.
That history shapes Germany’s relationship with Israel. The two countries maintain what German officials describe as a “special relationship,” borne out of Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust, with Berlin defining Israel’s security as part of its Staatsräson, or reason of state.
“In Germany, the Jewish state and standing for the Jewish state is particularly important in that it’s, if you wish, an inescapable outgrowth of the Nazi period,” Rosenfeld said.
Israel’s Ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, lauded the bill as a signal that “those who deny Israel’s right to exist and spread antisemitic incitement will not get away with it unpunished.”
The legislation may also reflect broader anxieties about Germany’s political trajectory. The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, whose leaders campaigned on belittling Germany’s efforts to atone for the Holocaust, is now the second-largest party in the country’s parliament. A campaign to ban the party as unconstitutional has gained momentum, though faces an uphill battle given the AfD’s popularity.
But even this latest bill to criminalize denying Israel’s right to exist might not pass Germany’s constitutional test.
According to Rosenfeld, whether German courts uphold the proposal will depend in part on how they characterize anti-Zionism. If judges conclude that denying Israel’s right to exist is necessarily antisemitic, they would be more likely to view the restriction as constitutional and a part of Germany’s historic responsibility, he said.
On the other hand, if a judge understands anti-Zionism as political speech, then the bill would likely be struck down.
“It would be unconstitutional because not only is that a political opinion, but it would single out Israel,” he said. “In other words, to say that the United States should not exist, or that Cuba should not exist and the United States should take it over, that Canada should be the 51st state of the United States — you can say all these things, but you can’t say that Israel should not exist?”
But others don’t see any inconsistency. Seban, a French politician who spoke out against antisemitic comments directed at her during her campaign, maintains she supports free speech as “a fundamental principle of our democracy.”
At the same time, Seban said she doesn’t view the language the bill targets as deserving of legal protection.
“When you would like to erase a country from the map, a country that has been recognized by international organizations and such, it’s no longer free speech. It’s a call to violence. It’s a call to destroy states. It’s a call to erase people,” Seban said. “So there is no free speech anymore.”
‘Non-legally binding’
For years, antisemitism watchdog groups like the Anti-Defamation League have advocated for U.S. states to pass legislation adopting a definition of antisemitism that treats most expressions of anti-Zionism as antisemitic.
But it was always with a caveat: the definition, written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, would be “non-legally binding.”
In practice, that meant institutions such as schools, branches of government, or law enforcement could use the definition as a training tool or guideline to help identify antisemitism — not for criminal prosecution.
For example, on its website, the ADL says it “does not support the adoption and application of the IHRA Definition in a manner that would create new categories of legally prohibited speech that are subjected to either civil or criminal penalties – something we believe the First Amendment and principles of free speech would prevent.”
The ADL did not respond to the Forward’s question about its stance on the German bill, instead directing the Forward to speak with the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which backs the bill.
“Freedom of expression is a fundamental right of the utmost importance and a vital safeguard of our democracy,” Katharina Glinder of the Central Council of Jews in Germany wrote in a statement to the Forward. “Yet it, too, is subject to legal limits and must yield where human dignity is violated. Anyone who calls for the annihilation of peoples or the destruction of entire nations must not be allowed to hide behind fundamental freedoms with impunity.”
Glinder added that the bill could “serve as a model for other liberal democracies to follow.”
Remko Leemhuis, director of the Berlin office of American Jewish Committee, which also supports the IHRA definition as “non-legally binding,” said in a statement that AJC supports the German bill, “provided it is designed to withstand constitutional scrutiny.”
Meanwhile, the Nexus Project — which wrote an alternative definition of antisemitism that does not classify all anti-Zionism as antisemitism — has argued that lawmakers undermine the premise that IHRA is “non-legally binding” when they codify it in legislation.
Rachlin said Germany’s proposed bill illustrates that slippery slope, calling it the logical next step after the country codified the IHRA definition into law in 2017. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if such a proposal to criminalize anti-Zionism cropped up in the U.S. — though that doesn’t mean it would pass constitutional muster.
“Could this happen at the federal level? Maybe. Could it happen at the state level? I could see that happening,” Rachlin said. “Would it be challenged? Yes.”
Yet Rachlin also acknowledged that his commitment to a more absolutist version of free speech stems from what may be a distinctly American tradition.
“I can hate what you say, but I’ll defend it because you have the right to say it,” Rachlin said. “That’s kind of the American viewpoint on this. In Europe, it’s a very different game.”
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The rabbi’s son who drew an antisemitic mural on Wilshire Boulevard
The mural went up in a day in the mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles. By Thursday morning, Los Angeles Jews who saw it expressed outrage, calling it hateful and incendiary. The artist who drew it, meanwhile, told me he is the son of a Jewish father who didn’t mean to offend, just start a conversation.
Welcome to the bizarro world of antisemitism, circa 2026.
The 40-foot by 12-foot mural depicts Jews dancing on caskets and holding missiles above the heads of grieving mothers, rows of tanks and a sign that reads: “Buy More Things,” alongside images of diamonds and televisions.
One section depicts parents who appear to be Muslim holding their children and weeping. Five bodies of children are laid out on an altar-like table beside a figure with a yarmulke holding a missile. As your eyes move to the left, there’s a dollar sign and the words, “Freedom has Never Been Free.”
The piece, drawn in chalk against painted slate on a long panel of plywood construction fencing, combines the graphic scope and drama of Picasso’s “Guernica” with antisemitic caricatures straight out of the pre-World War II Nazi periodical Der Sturmer.
I’ve seen photos and videos of the mural, located at 5376 Wilshire Blvd. between Cloverdale Street and S. Detroit Street next to The Heart LA Church and just a few blocks from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. My wife, Rabbi Naomi Levy, received the video via an urgent text message on Thursday from a congregant who came across it on her morning walk.
The “grotesque expressions on their faces, surrounded by images of war/suffering/greed,” the congregant wrote, play into “the worst antisemitic propaganda imagery.”
She’s not wrong. The congregant reported the mural to the city’s 311 complaint line. The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles confirmed it also fielded complaints.
The location is close to L.A.’s Orthodox Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood and just over a mile east of the headquarters of the city’s Jewish Federation and Shalhevet, a large Jewish day school.
The mural isn’t signed by the artist, but a phone number appears in the same chalk on an adjoining panel. David Sabastian, long a fixture in the L.A. fashion, music and art scene, posts the same phone number on his Instagram account bio.
So I called him.
“Right now there’s people who are offended by you simply saying ‘Free Palestine’,” he told me. “So can somebody be offended? Hell yeah! I offend people when I go to Whole Foods sometimes and I’m like wearing shorts. People get offended for everything.”
Sabastian said he doesn’t see the mural as antisemitic, or even that political.
“I’m not some radical pro-Palestine or pro-anything,” he said. “I’m an artist who simply illustrates my human experience.”
Sabastian told me he likes art that provokes conversation and stands for something. That’s one way to describe the mural. Another is that it crosses the line to hate.
“That would be a vast exaggeration and an irresponsible one,” he said. “But it is art. It could be interpreted in many ways, but I don’t think that way.”
When I pointed out that Jews I spoke with took offense, he told me he didn’t see it as representing all Jews.
“My father was a Hasidic rabbi,” he said.
Sabastian’s given name is David Miklatski. A 2016 profile of Sabastian in the L.A. Weekly reported that his father was a gallery owner who had recently died. Sabastian told me his father had a brief liaison with his mother, who lived in Watts. Then his father became very religious. He led a synagogue in the Pico-Robertson district — Sabastian couldn’t recall the name — and then moved to Israel.
“That story goes deep,” said Sabastian, who is in his late 30s. “He pretty much disowned me when I was a child.”
I told him there was a long history of antisemitic cartoons fueling hate and violence, and many people would see what he drew as offensive, just as they would stereotypical images of Blacks or Latinos. What does he see as the line between symbolism and vilification?
He answered me with a question of his own.
“I’ve lived the Black experience growing up in Los Angeles, right?” he said. “If I wanted to paint a picture that kind of dealt with that human experience of racism, and I chose to include a white person in it, am I villainizing all white people?”
I brought up George Floyd. The images that spread after his murder, a white foot or a white hand on Floyd’s neck, were clearly about the officers who killed him. They weren’t an indictment of all white people.
But his mural, I said, reads as an indictment of all Jews when it’s the Israeli army fighting the war.
“If you know who are murdering and slaughtering Palestinians, is it Mexicans? Is it Chinese?” he said. “It’s the Israeli army. Do the majority of them happen to be Jewish? Sure. So that’s just the drawing. If it was Black people doing it, then I would draw Black people or whatever the case may be. It’s simply like a political cartoon.”
Of course, it’s not so simple, given the way antisemitic images get weaponized to incite violence against Jews.
In our conversation, Sabastian himself wasn’t sure who he was targeting. He called the dancing figures “Jews,” not “the Israeli army.” Then, defending the piece, he said he’s drawing “the Israeli army” and that most of them “happen to be Jewish.” That shift from Israeli army to Jews and back is the exact line that is so easily blurred when criticism of Israel bleeds into antisemitism.
If that’s a matter of interpretation, it’s clear from the comments in Sabastian’s Instagram post of the mural how others are reading the artwork, which he titled, “Palestina.”
“You forgot to put them on there the ancient families that pull the strings while everyone fights on religion color or where they were born,” wrote one commenter.
“Now do a star of David symbol with a swatzika [sic]and a heart,” read another, followed by laughing emojis.
No word yet on any institutional response, but the social media popularity the mural has already garnered — more than 2,000 likes shortly after he posted it — will complicate any attempt to address it, to say the least.
So much of antisemitism these days comes down to a judgment call, especially when it comes to the line between criticizing the government of Israel and attacking all Jews. This mural, even if Sabastian didn’t intend for it to endanger Jews, isn’t a close call. That puts Jews in the no-win position of living with a work in their neighborhood that regurgitates and broadcasts age-old antisemitic tropes, or being seen as the enemies of artistic freedom.
It’s not a simple problem. Just consider the rapper Macklemore — who received massive support and attention for saying “Free Palestine” at an Ed Sheeran concert. Macklemore, by the way, follows Sabastian on Instagram.
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‘Vote him out’: Israeli-Americans rally against Netanyahu, plan to return to Israel to vote against him
Gripping Israeli flags in Union Square, a crowd of roughly three dozen chanted “Vote him out,” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to speak before the United Nations on Thursday.
“It’s really an embarrassment that he’s even at the U.N.,” said Israeli-American protester Steve Lax, who is planning to fly to Israel to vote in the upcoming election.
UnXeptable, an organization founded by Israeli expats who say they are striving to save Israeli democracy, organized the demonstration. While those protesting opposed the Netanyahu government, the rally was intended more broadly to support change in Israel as the election looms. Roughly three dozen Israelis, Israeli-Americans and Jewish-Americans joined the protest.
Lax, who splits his time between Israel and America, said he supports Yair Golan and the Democrats. The main issues driving his vote are government corruption, settler violence in the West Bank and “the lack of hope for peace.”
“Jewish terrorism is creating more Arab terrorism,” said Lax, chairman of Naot Worldwide. “The settlers are totally out of control, and unfortunately some of the Israeli army, and certainly [Itamar] Ben-Gvir, have been supporting the settlers in what they’re doing.”
Israeli citizens living abroad may vote in the election if they are physically in the country to cast their ballots and have resident status. This is different from America, where citizens can vote by absentee ballot while outside the U.S.
Change, for those at the protest, means supporting one of the many opposition blocs. Offir Gutelzon, the Israeli-American co-founder of UnXeptable, is supporting the Gadi Eisenkot bloc. Critics of Eisenkot question what significant changes he will bring, as he aligns with Netanyahu on opposing Palestinian statehood. However, Gutelzon said Eisenkot’s stance on internal issues is what really matters to Israelis.
These include opposing judicial overhaul, setting term limits for prime ministers and drafting the Haredim into the military.
“I know that from the outside, everyone is looking at what will be different with Palestinians, what will be different in Gaza,” Gutelzon, who moved to America in 2011 for business reasons, said. “Most Israeli voters don’t think about that right now. They want to secure the country as a Jewish and democratic state, and then start talking about other things.”
But for Israeli-American Leora Agron, Gaza is one of the main reasons she is flying back to vote.
“Innocent people are dying,” she said. “Let them live. Give them support to do it, because everything is broken.”
Agron moved to Argentina in 1987 at age 30 to be with her husband. The couple considered moving back to Israel when they had children, but were discouraged by then opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, which inflamed tensions with Palestinians.
What’s at stake?
Gutelzon is confident Netanyahu won’t remain in power. Even so, he says the stakes couldn’t be higher, and that if the PM doesn’t change, the country will slip into a “messianic theocracy.” This is in part due to brain drain, the concept of highly educated citizens emigrating.
Nearly 300,000 Israelis have left the country for at least three months since 2023, suggesting a mass emigration trend, according to a study from Tel Aviv University. Professor Itai Ater, who led the study, said the country is currently able to sustain itself despite these numbers. However, if the trend continues, emigration will severely harm the nation’s security and economy.
“We see that it’s many, many physicians, engineers, tech people and academics,” Ater told i24 News. “This is the best of Israel in a sense. The Israeli economy depends on human capital.”
Citing Ater’s study, Gutelzon noted healthcare would be impacted by physicians leaving, along with education if academics emigrate. Additionally, this group of people is paying the highest taxes, he said. They also serve in the military, and are needed given the exemption for Haredim.
Yonatan Schwartz, 19, participated in the protest and said he is reconsidering immigration to Israel. Schwartz, an American with two Israeli parents, attended the UnXeptable protest and said he had been planning to join the Israel Defense Forces. But if Netanyahu is reelected – or a different “right-wing extremist” wins – he said he’ll likely stay in America and go to college instead.
Supporting Israel, not the government
UnXeptable was initially inspired by the 2020 Balfour protests when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to streets and bridges demanding Netanyahu resign after he was indicted on corruption charges.
“The Balfour protests started with a very simple statement that said that an indicted prime minister is unacceptable,” said Gutelzon, explaining how UnXeptable got its name.
The Bay Area-based organization wanted to show Israelis back home that those in the diaspora supported them. So they demonstrated at their own bridge, the Golden Gate.
Now, the protests have gone beyond showing solidarity with Israelis back home. As Gutelzon puts it, UnXeptable wants to show the world “the other Israel,” one that’s looking “for change.”
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A candy crisis has cast a pall on upcoming bar and bat mitzvahs
Ahead of my New Jersey synagogue’s first bar mitzvah this weekend, we learned that Sunkist Fruit Gems, the popular sacred confection lovingly lobbed at the end of many services to shower the b’nai mitzvah boy or girl with sweetness, had been discontinued by its candy maker.
I dreaded delivering this news to my son and daughter, Max and Rose, who are beginning to celebrate their classmates’ bar and bat mitzvahs and prepare for their own. For children, even those on the brink of adulthood, fruit-flavored gummies matter.
This also deals a blow to a silent protest that had already begun to percolate last spring when I celebrated my own bat mitzvah. When my classmates and I asked where we should take cover when our fans pelted us with the traditional fruit-flavored gummies, we were promptly informed that candy had been banned from the sanctuary.
A candy ban? I audibly gasped.
“This is unacceptable,” Rose declared when I told my kids the news. “We have to do something.”
The Los Angeles-based Ben Myerson Candy Company introduced Fruit Gems in 1955 after working with Sunkist on pectin candies, or natural fruit gels. Sunkist began putting its name on the label in 1966.
To focus more attention on wine and spirits, the Myerson family sold the candy business in 2006 to Jelly Belly Candy Co., which 17 years later was acquired by The Ferrara Candy Company. Apparently, Fruit Gems could not compete with Ferrara’s other products, which include Atomic Fire Balls, Fun Dip, Nerds, Pixy Stix and Lemonheads. And so, in May, Ferrara retired the Gems.
But an Atomic Fire Ball to the head is no way to celebrate a job well done. And lightweight Pixy Stix can not be lobbed hard enough to clear 10 rows of pews and hit their target. In fact, none of those confections can truly replace the sugar-coated, cellophane-wrapped Fruit Gem, which by the way, is also kosher.
While tossing sweets isn’t a sacred ritual, it does add a dose of cathartic joy for children at the end of a two-hour religious service and for the bar or bat mitzvah and their family at the end of a stressful occasion. Scholars trace the practice back to a passage in the Talmud, which mentions throwing grains and nuts at a couple during wedding celebrations.
As other milestones have taken on greater importance, a similar custom has spread to bar and bat mitzvahs in which jelly candy is used to bestow joy and sweetness on the teen as they transition into maturity.
I asked Kenneth Feibush, our temple’s former cantor, how the tradition there started. Now the cantor of Congregation Beth Israel in Houston where no one throws sweets, Feibush said it’s actually more common in Conservative and Orthodox congregations than Reform temples. But a handful of families at Temple Sholom introduced it on their own and it caught on. He had seen it before at a temple in Alaska where he had interned. There, the bar or bat mitzvah would don a helmet or open a parasol to shield themselves from the projectiles.
When I asked our spiritual leader, Rabbi Laurence Groffman, how the tradition ended, he said Temple Sholom prides itself on being an inclusive congregation but there are limits. “Unfortunately, ants don’t make the cut,” he said.
Turns out ants had infested the piano ahead of our Purim spiel last year. And as our temple readied for a costly renovation to our sanctuary, the powers-that-be said no more food fights.
So now that Sunkist Fruit Gems are no longer an option, is the protest against the candy ban a moot point? Is there a way to do a symbolic Gatorade dump to salute the sweat that went into the proverbial win? That’s precisely what our religious school director Cara Moroze recommended.
“I like a good compromise,” she said. “How ‘bout Rose dumps all the candy at once over her brother’s head? Then the kids come up to get the candy. No errant Twizzlers buried in a piano.”
I warned her that she had just reignited the protest movement.
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