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Jewish progressive groups call out ‘massive attack’ on Israeli democracy in New York City rally
(New York Jewish Week) — American Jewish progressive organizations drew hundreds of New Yorkers out in the rain opposite the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan on Tuesday to show support for democracy in Israel and protest its government’s proposed court reform.
Hundreds of thousands of people across Israel have turned out to weekly protests opposing the plan, and smaller groups of Israel expatriates have held satellite protests abroad. Tuesday’s protest was different, organized and largely attended by American Jewish groups that support progressive policies in Israel.
“We are here because there is a massive attack on democracy that’s devised by extremist politicians who are corrupting Judaism to turn Israel into a fascist theocracy,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah, the liberal rabbinic human rights group that co-hosted the demonstration, said at the event as attendees sought shelter under umbrellas. “We are here to say that is not our Judaism, and that is not our Israel.”
The court reform plan advanced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government would give the governing coalition total control over the appointment of Supreme Court judges, and would enable a bare majority of lawmakers to override Supreme Court decisions, among other changes. Parts of the plan passed a key legal hurdle earlier on Tuesday.
American progressive Jewish groups held a rally today at the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan to show their support for democracy in Israel.
‘We’re here because there is a massive attack on democracy’ – Rabbi Jill Jacobs of @truahrabbis pic.twitter.com/CWaqHmFv9V
— Jacob Henry (@jhenrynews) February 21, 2023
Tuesday’s rally was hosted by the Progressive Israel Network, a coalition of liberal Jewish groups including T’ruah, J Street, the New York Jewish Agenda, Ameinu, the Jewish Labor Committee, the New Israel Fund and others.
Some of those groups now find themselves in the unusual position of advocating for a stance held by a majority of Jewish Israelis. Some of the co-hosts, for example, opposed President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem, which most Jewish Israelis supported, or supported the Iran nuclear agreement, which most Jewish Israelis opposed. Not so with the court reform: The groups at the rally, and the majority of Israeli Jews, have said they oppose the plan.
“The majority of Israelis are speaking out and I hope that changes will occur,” said Matt Nosanchuk, the outgoing executive director of the New York Jewish Agenda. “Even if these reforms pass, that doesn’t mean we stop protesting. We will keep finding ways for them to be reversed.”
Jacobs told the New York Jewish Week that stopping the court reform should also be important to people who support Palestinian rights.
“This will enable this government to move forward some truly terrible moves that will have an even greater effect on the human rights of both Palestinians living under occupation and Israeli Jews,” she said.
Israel’s control of the West Bank was mentioned at the rally. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish, called in his speech for “an end to the occupation” and said the Democratic party “cannot continue to toe the AIPAC line,” a reference to the influential pro-Israel lobby that assertively defends Israeli policy and counters criticism of Israel.
‘We cannot continue to write a blank check to an increasingly authoritarian regime,’ Lander said.
Comptroller @bradlander said that the future of Israeli democracy requires ‘an end to the occupation.’
He added that the Democratic party ‘cannot continue to tow the AIPAC line.’
‘We cannot continue to write a blank check to an increasingly authoritarian regime,’ he said. pic.twitter.com/oCiMINxwXD
— Jacob Henry (@jhenrynews) February 22, 2023
Jonathan Kopp, a J Street board member, said democratic values shared by Israel and the United States are “under assault by this right-wing government.”
“Just as President [Joe] Biden has made protecting American democracy here [a priority], we urge him to directly confront Netanyahu’s extremist plans, which would subvert democracy in the service of settlements, demolitions and occupation,” he said.
Some participants at the rally said they wished its message went further. Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, a Jewish organization that opposes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, felt advocacy for Palestinian rights felt lacking at the rally, which she said “could actually be a moment for the American progressive movement to coalesce.”
“I think that there weren’t a lot of signs about apartheid at this protest,” Borgwardt said, who was holding a sign that said “No Democracy With Apartheid.” Prominent human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have said Israel is guilty of apartheid in its treatment of the Palestinians.
“Especially with the current government, it’s becoming even more of a problem,” Borgwardt added. “We have to unify around the problem if we’re going to be powerful enough to actually achieve a solution.”
Shaul Franco, 38, an Israeli who has lived in New York for three and half years, said he came to the rally because “things have been going in a very bad trajectory for so long.” Franco added that he’s not sure if he will go back to Israel “anytime soon.”
“We want to see a much stronger pushback from the president,” Franco said. “But I don’t count on them doing Israel’s job.”
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Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism
(JTA) — Vanderbilt University has launched an inquiry into a mathematics lecturer whose classroom exercise about Palestinian territory drew criticism from the activist group StopAntisemitism.
Tekin Karadağ, a senior lecturer at the university’s department of mathematics, drew the ire of the antisemitism watchdog after it obtained a slide from one of his lectures that used a pro-Palestinian protest slogan and suggested that Israel was shrinking the Palestinian territory.
“Assume Palestine as a state with a rectangular land shape. There is the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the Jordan River on the east,” read the slide. “From the river to the sea, Palestine (…) was approximately 100 km. in 1946. The land decreases by 250 sq. km per year, due to the occupation by Israel. How fast is the width of the land decreasing now?”
Karadǎg, a Turkish national who received his PhD from Texas A&M University in 2021, included the question under “examples related to the popular issues” in a survey of calculus class, according to StopAntisemitism, which wrote in a post on X that Karadǎg was “bringing his anti-Israel, antisemitic bias into his classroom.”
In a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Vanderbilt said that the content had been removed and that an inquiry had been launched into Karadağ.
“The university has received reports alleging a member of the faculty engaged in unprofessional conduct related to content shared during course instruction,” the school said. “The content in question has been removed, and a formal inquiry has been initiated consistent with relevant university policy.”
In recent years, rhetoric about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses has grown increasingly fraught, with professors’ commentary on the region sparking heavy scrutiny and, at times, disciplinary measures when their universities have determined that they exceeded the bounds of academic freedom. A recent report by Columbia University’s antisemitism task force found that students frequently experienced pro-Palestinian advocacy in classes entirely unrelated to the Middle East — such as dance or math classes.
The inquiry was not the first time that Vanderbilt took swift action against the expression of pro-Palestinian sentiments on its campus.
In March 2024, the university, which has roughly 1,100 Jewish undergraduate students, was among the first universities to expel students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. This year, the school’s antisemitism “grade” from the Anti-Defamation League was bumped up from a “C” to an “A.”
The post Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism appeared first on The Forward.
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Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm
(JTA) — British actor Hugh Laurie pushed back against being labeled as a “Zionist” after facing a wave of online criticism for posting a tribute to the Israeli producer of the hit television show “Tehran.”
“Dana Eden, who co-created and produced ‘Tehran’, died on Sunday, seemingly by her own hand,” Laurie, who played a nuclear inspector in the show’s third season, tweeted last week. “It’s a terrible thing. She was brilliant, and funny, and an exceptional leader. Love and condolences to all who knew her.”
The seemingly innocuous post eulogizing Eden, 52, who was found dead while filming the latest season of the hit Apple TV+ series in Athens last week, quickly drew a volley of backlash on social media.
“She was part of the occupation force’s propaganda arm,” wrote one user in response to Laurie’s post. “What a shame, didn’t expect you to be a closet Zionist.” Another wrote that Eden “creates propaganda for Israel so that they can kill kids more effectively. People should have no sympathy for her.”
The award-winning series, which follows a young Israeli Mossad agent in Iran, was produced by the Israeli public broadcaster Kan and purchased by Apple TV+ in 2020 for roughly $20 million. Eden’s death, for which no cause has been announced, occurred during production of the show’s fourth season, which had already stalled following Oct. 7.
Laurie is not the first actor to spurn the “Zionist” label, as entertainers in recent years have increasingly faced pressure to declare their views on Israel. In December, Jewish actress Odessa A’zion pushed back on claims she was a Zionist after an image of her wearing an IDF shirt as a teenager circulated online.
On Friday, Laurie, who previously starred in the Emmy Award-winning medical drama “House,” shot back at the criticism.
“Nothing I have ever said or done could lead a sane person to believe that I am a Zionist,” wrote Laurie in a post on X. “However. If someone exults in the death of a friend of mine, yes I will block them. If you wouldn’t do the same in my position, you can f—ck off too.”
Laurie’s subsequent post also drew outcry, but this time from pro-Israel influencers who lamented the actor’s disavowal of the Zionist label, calling him “weak” and a “pathetic weasel” in the replies.
Freelance journalist Angela Epstein replied to Laurie’s post, writing, “Not Hugh Laurie as well. I thought he was one of the decent ones….”
“God almighty, why does no one understand English any more?” wrote Laurie in response to Epstein’s critique. “I have not spoken or written a word that would indicate pro or anti Zionism. That’s what those words mean. Blimey.”
The post Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm appeared first on The Forward.
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German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage
(JTA) — An anti-Zionist group in Germany has drawn condemnation after it announced plans for a protest against the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in response to a ban on pro-Palestinian symbols at the site.
The group Kufiyas in Buchenwald claims that the memorial has become a place of “historical revisionism and genocide denial.” It announced a demonstration for April 11, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp.
“Instead of honoring the persecuted and resolutely opposing every genocide, the memorial spreads Israeli propaganda and provides the ideological ammunition for the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” the group says on its website.
Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazis and one of the largest in the country, was the site of the murder of roughly 56,000 male prisoners, including 11,000 Jews, from 1937 to 1945.
Last year, a German court ruled that the concentration camp had a right to refuse entry to visitors who wear a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf that has been adopted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by a woman who attempted to wear the scarf to an event commemorating the concentration camp’s liberation.
The woman, who was only identified by her first name, Anna, posted a testimony about her actions on the Kufiyas in Buchenwald Instagram page in which she said she was inspired by the resistance of Buchenwald prisoners.
“Our fundamental principle is this: criticism of the Israeli government’s policies, settlement policy, or actions in the Gaza Strip is legitimate,” said the Buchenwald Foundation’s director Jens-Christian Wagner in a statement outlining the memorial’s protocols. “However, it becomes antisemitic when used to relativize the Holocaust and discredit its victims as perpetrators. We will not tolerate this at the Buchenwald Memorial.”
The campaign against the memorial has been signed onto by a host of pro-Palestinian groups, including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which has defended the protest on X as evidence of what “commemorating past German crimes has to do with rejecting current ones.”
In a post on Instagram announcing the protest earlier this month, the Kufiyas in Buchenwald group wrote that it would hold a “public protest” in Weimar, the German city located nearby the concentration camp. The group also said it planned to host lectures and a “tour that vividly illustrates the events in the former concentration camp.”
It was unclear whether the protest is intended to take place outside the memorial itself. Kufiyas in Buchenwald did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the location of the protest.
The protest quickly drew condemnation from German leaders, including the country’s antisemitism czar Felix Klein, who told the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung that the protest marked a “new low point in the unfortunately all-too-common reversal of perpetrator and victim roles.”
Michael Panse, the commissioner for combatting antisemitism for the German state Thuringia, where Weimar is located, told the outlet that the protest was “tasteless and historically ignorant.”
The protests also drew condemnation from the European Jewish Congress, which wrote in a post on X that the demonstration represents a “deeply troubling instrumentalization of Holocaust remembrance.”
“Holocaust memorial sites are places of solemn reflection and respect for the victims of National Socialism,” the post continued. “They must never be exploited to promote agendas that deny Israel’s legitimacy or glorify those who perpetrate violence against Jews.”
The post German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage appeared first on The Forward.