Yet the campaign against alleged “antisemitism” has gone forward, adding criticism of Israel to the definition of the term. In Congress, the House of Representatives [date] passed a bill entitled “The Antisemitism Awareness Act.” It makes speech seemingly threatening the existence of Israel newly “antisemitic,” citing, for example, the cry, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as a call for the annihilation of the Jewish state and of the Jews in it. It makes no difference that Jewish students and people like the writers of this article have chanted that slogan, intending its meaning to be that Palestinians should be free within a redefined state.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a longtime supporter of Israel and a Zionist, has criticized the bill: “While there is much in the bill that I agree with,” he said, “its core provision would put a thumb on the scale in favor of one particular definition of antisemitism to the exclusion of all others to be used when the Department of Education assesses claims of antisemitism on campus.” He continued that the new definition includes “contemporary examples of antisemitism,” adding: “The problem is that these examples may include protected speech, in some contexts, particularly with respect to criticism of the State of Israel.”
Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, described by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide, is the author of an article entitled, “Weaponizing Language: Misuses of Holocaust Memory and the Never Again Syndrome.” In a recent dialogue with the Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, the two discussed antisemitism and “the perils of antisemitism and its current weaponization.”
In an April 30 interview on Democracy Now!, Bartov noted the peaceful nature of the University of Pennsylvania demonstration as well as the one at Brown University. Of antisemitism he said that it “is a vile sentiment, it’s an old sentiment, it has been used for bloodshed, for violence, and for genocide. But it has also become a tool to silence speech about Israel. And that, too, has quite a history, and numerous governments under Benjamin Netanyahu have been pushing this agenda of arguing that any criticism of Israeli policy, not least, of Israeli occupation policies, is antisemitic.” He added that there are Jewish students who feel threatened, for instance by the term “Intifada,” which literally means “shaking off,” as in the shaking off of the 57-year-long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. “But there’s nothing threatening about opposing occupation and oppression.”
The Antisemitism Awareness Act, which indeed weaponizes antisemitism against those protesting Israel’s savagery in Gaza and the cruelty of its overall occupation policies, is soon to be voted upon by the Senate. Its enactment would mark a giant step towards degrading the U.S. Constitution, in particular its protection of freedom of speech, assembly, and a free press. It also threatens the status of academia as a realm in which the free exchange of ideas can flourish.
[THE THREAT TO THE REMNANTS OF DEMOCRACY IS FULLY BIPARTISAN]
Fascism threatens American democracy embodied in a Republican Party that has long ceased to be a political party and is rather, according to Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of The American Enterprise Institute, “an insurrection.” The reelection of Donald Trump would import an Israeli-style fascism embodied by Netanyahu and Smotrich, while the reelection of Joe Biden will allow these smoldering tendencies to ignite the flames of that ideology within the U.S. If the Antisemitism Awareness Act is passed by the Senate, the erosion of civil liberties long anchored in the Constitution seems all but certain.
Like all forms of prejudice and ethnocentrism, antisemitism has no place in an enlightened society. But what about genocide? Is that an acceptable manifestation of a modern society? Are those denouncing protests against Israel’s genocidal and ethnic cleansing actions OK knowing that over 100,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed, wounded, and maimed in indiscriminate bombing raids across the Strip since Oct. 7th?
Meanwhile, all the focus on alleged antisemitism has diverted national attention from the genocide in Gaza and the barbaric settler actions in the West Bank. The official number of Gaza’s dead is close to 35,000 with another 8-10,000 people unaccounted for under the rubble. If 6,000 of these people were Hamas fighters, that still leaves a total of nearly 40,000 civilians dead.
News of atrocities within this holocaust continues. Recently, UN Special Rapporteur of the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanesestated, “I am extremely alarmed by information that Dr. Adnan Albursh, a well-known surgeon at #alshifa_hospital, has died while detained by Israeli forces in the Ofer military prison. While I acquire more information, I urge the diplomatic community to intervene with CONCRETE MEASURES to protect Palestinians. No Palestinian is safe under Israel’s occupation today.”
Israel is neither a democratic nor a peace-loving society. It is an arm of US regional hegemony and a US client state that receives $3.8 billion annually in military aid and that has received over $30 billion additional military aid since October 7th. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has received $158 billion in military support, making it the greatest recipient of US military aid in history.Israel has nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons the only such power in the Middle East to have this kind of arsenal. [We] suggest the next time someone complains that “little Israel” is “surrounded by enemies” (a false statement to begin with), people consider these facts. We need look no further than Tel Aviv to determine which nation is the real destabilizing force in the region.
If the Antisemitism Awareness Act passes the Senate, what will befall student protests? Will they all become acts of civil disobedience? What about the alternative press, whose independent organs have become invaluable given the corporate media’s pussyfooting or downright ignoring of the Gaza holocaust and West Bank atrocities? Will it be shuttered by the Federal government on the grounds of banned “hate speech”? Will what we write be rejected by publications that fear for their survival?
“As a Jewish person who stands hand-in-hand with my Palestinian brothers and sisters and works daily against anti-Arab hate, I find this weaponization of my identity particularly disgusting,” states Arab-American Antidiscrimination Committee staff attorney Chris Godshall-Bennet. “Criticism of Zionism and of the Israeli government is not antisemitic, and conflating the two only serves to provide cover for Israel’s numerous, ongoing human rights abuses and violations of international law, as well as its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Declares Palestinian poet Mohammad Al Kurd, “I am asked to have patience for these kinds of debates that tell me that words are genocidal. The Israeli regime is engaging in a war of attrition against the Palestinian people and yet we are asked to talk about chants and slogans… But this is about our moral obligation as human beings to reject genocide, the real genocide that is happening in real-time.”
Pro-Palestine Encampment on UW-Madison Library Mall, May 1, 2024
All people of conscience must keep this in mind. And we must maintain our focus on the agonies of Gaza and the West Bank, denouncing them and calling for an end to Israel’s assaults, to settler violence, and ultimately to the occupation of both the West Bank and Gaza.
We must honor the student demonstrators and all who champion them as the heroes they are, cease the opportunistic abuse of the term ‘antisemitism,’ and urge them to continue their protests.
Featuring Gabriel Rockhill
