Amy Sara Clark
Times of Israel
August 10, 2017

They are (Jewish progressive) women, hear them roar.

The 1972 Helen Reddy song that became the anthem of feminism’s second wave could very well be the slogan of Zioness Movement — the brand-spanking-new progressive group, which makes its official launch on Saturday at Slutwalk Chicago.

“What we’re asking for is to be included in important movements in the United States. We are asking not to be excluded,” Amanda Berman, a 30-something attorney who lives in New York City, told The Jewish Week in the group’s first media interview.

“We are true progressives, this is sincere for us,” she added. “It’s something that [Zionist] progressive women have been struggling with for a long time.”

Unapologetic for either of their identities, Berman and between one and two dozen other co-founders launched the movement after organizers of the annual march against rape culture said publicly that people wearing Stars of David would not be “invited to participate.” The statement came in the wake of a decision by organizers of the Chicago Dyke March to kick out three women who were holding a rainbow flags with Stars of David last month.

“We are asking not to be excluded.”
SlutWalk Chicago has since reversed the decision, instead banning all nationalist symbols from the march — except for Palestinian flags, which they view as symbols of resistance rather than nationalism.

“For too long, we have allowed certain individuals to advance the idea that intersectionality excludes Jews and Zionists,” said co-founder Talia Shifron in a press release. The law student at Loyola University Chicago and president of her university’s chapter of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights added, “Zionism is a movement for self determination and civil rights, just like other movements who fight for these same causes, and it is time for us to join in solidarity to dismantle all forms of oppression.”

“For too long, we have allowed certain individuals to advance the idea that intersectionality excludes Jews and Zionists.”
Once Berman’s group decided to take action, they got the organization together in rapid-fire succession. They developed an image — a woman wearing a countenance of courage and a Jewish star around her neck — a Facebook page that, as of Wednesday early afternoon had 358 likes, a website and twitter and Instagram accounts. Between one- and two-dozen people, living in cities across the country, make up the core organizing committee.

“This really has come together in about two weeks,” Berman said.

As for what’s next, Berman and friends are taking it one step at a time. There are a number of directions the group could go in, and any would be good, as long as they’re heading left.

Original Post

Gary Bauer
American Thinker
July 28, 2017

A dominant narrative about the Trump Administration is that Donald Trump’s election ushered in a new wave of anti-Semitism. It’s an absurd claim, given that among Trump’s top advisors, eleven are Jews, including his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

That’s not to say anti-Semitism isn’t a problem. In fact, it is on the rise. But if you want to find where anti-Semitism is running rampant, don’t look to the Oval Office. Look instead to the place where you’re least likely to find a Trump supporter, the college quad.

I know this because at the recent Christians United For Israel Washington Summit, I spent time with student activists from CUFI On Campus. I listened to their harrowing stories of harassment and intimidation that Jewish (and Christian) students face from left-wing professors and Palestinian student groups whenever they speak up in support of Israel or resist misguided boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) schemes that single out the Jewish state for punishment.

While many in the media portray anti-Semitism as a phenomenon of the right, it is among young liberals that it is growing the most. Several recent studies demonstrate just how pervasive anti-Semitism has become on college campuses. An April report by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry found that there has been a 45 percent rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents on American college campuses between 2015 and 2016.

A study by the Anti-Defamation League found that such incidents rose by a third in 2016 from 2015 and increased 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017. Several other studies put the share of Jewish college students who experience anti-Semitism on campus at anywhere from half to three quarters.

The problem isn’t confined to students making threats against or hurling anti-Semitic slurs at Jewish students. A recent lawsuit suggests school administrators are partly responsible for creating an environment that’s unsafe for Jewish students.

In June, a group of current and former students sued San Francisco State University alleging that the university fostered a climate of anti-Semitism “marked by violent threats to the safety of Jewish students on campus.” The students complain that they were intimidated and prevented from holding events. The environment became so hostile that the students say they became afraid to do anything to indicate that they are Jewish, such as wearing Star of David necklaces.

In one incident in 2016, the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, was prevented from speaking at a student event because pro-Palestinian protestors shouted over him, yelling “Get the f-ck off our campus” and “Intifada! Intifada!” — a reference to the violent Palestinian uprising against Israeli citizens. Worst of all, the school’s administrators are accused of “systematically support[ing]” these groups.

Ken Marcus, who formerly led the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, recently said that while just a few years ago, there were some notable “hot spots” for anti-Semitism, today “it’s really all over.” Anti-Semitism “is so pervasive that in any given semester it could be virtually anywhere,” he added.

A big part of the problem is that groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Students for a Free Palestine have become more strident in their opposition to Israel and more hostile to Jewish students, especially those who support the Jewish state.

Recently, when a 23-year old female Israeli border guard was stabbed to death in Jerusalem by Palestinian terrorists, who were subsequently killed by Israeli police, the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine referred to the shootings of the Palestinian attackers as “executions” of “Palestinian teens” carried out by “Zionist occupation force.” They evinced little sympathy for the victim of the Palestinians’ heinous crime.

The BDS movement is strong on many college campuses. BDS targets Israeli institutions and companies and those that do business with them. But more and more, its goal is to silence pro-Israel voices on campus, which is the anti-thesis to what college is supposed to be about.

A new report called “Campus Free Speech, Academic Freedom and the Problem of the BDS Movement,” released by the nonpartisan American Council for Trustees and Alumni, describes the (BDS) boycott as “one of the greatest threats to academic freedom in the U.S. today.” The report states that anti-Israel rhetoric often edges into anti-Semitism and criticizes the BDS movement for focusing all its energy on Israel, while legitimate human rights abusers, such as China and Saudi Arabia, are ignored.

Anti-Israel sentiment has become such a fixture on the left that when Chicago recently held its annual Gay Pride Parade, a pro-Israel lesbian group was prohibited from taking part, a strange development given that Israel is about the only country in the Middle East that treats gays with humanity.

For some liberals, opposition to Israel, which often edges into anti-Semitism, can be a way to demonstrate solidarity with Muslims. For others, it is rooted in the ancient hatred of Jews. Whatever its origins, anti-Semitism has no place on our college campuses.

Original Article

Michaela Shapiro
Brandeis Blog
July 24, 2017

Earlier this week, both President Emmanuel Macron of France and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York made bold statements declaring their support of Israel, definitively condemning anti-Zionism as a modern manifestation of anti-Semitism.

President Macron in a ceremony on July 16 addressed growing religious tensions in French, as well as the French government’s complicity the Holocaust. In an unprecedented declaration, President Macron forcefully asserted that anti-Zionism is a “reinvented form of anti-Semitism,” dispelling any equivocation on the subject. As Professor William Jacobson, author of the Legal Insurrection blog and a member of LDB’s Law Student Speakers Bureau, noted, world leaders are beginning to call out anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism, and Macron’s refusal to “surrender to the message of hate” is incredibly powerful given the wave of anti-Semitic incidents across Europe.

The significance of the date was not lost on the audience: on July 16th-17th, 1942, over 13,000 French Jews were herded into the Vélodrome d’Hiver (or Vel d’Hiv) stadium in Paris. France’s politicians in the past have denied French responsibility for the Vel d’Hiv roundup, placing the blame on the Germans and the collaborative Vichy regime instead. However, Macron aims to draw attention to the French government’s direct role in the roundup, and to take responsibility for France’s wartime actions in order for the country to move forward. In the wake of rising anti-Semitism in France, President Macron’s statements serve as a strong declaration of support to French Jews.

The Senate Minority Leader, Senator Schumer of New York, applauded President’s Macron’s statement on anti-Semitism in his speech before the Senate on Monday, July 17. He praised Macron’s description of anti-Zionism as a reinvented form of anti-Semitism due to its denial of the Jews’ right to a homeland, and he cited multiple historical examples of prejudice towards Jews in Europe. A staunch supporter of Israel, Senator Schumer has also repeatedly advocated against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. In a speech before AIPAC earlier this year, he referred to Israel as a “humanitarian leader in the global community.” He further condemned the BDS movement as a “biased campaign” working to delegitimize the Jewish state. Cognizant of the rise of the BDS movement, particularly on college campuses, Senator Schumer forcefully urged politicians to take action against the BDS movement. New York’s Governor, Andrew Cuomo, signed an executive order in June of last year directing state agencies to divest public funds supporting BDS campaigns against Israel. Ohio, North Carolina, and numerous other states have signed similar bills.

The notion that anti-Zionism often manifests as anti-Semitism is not a new one. President of the Louis D. Brandeis Center, Kenneth L. Marcus has written extensively on the subject of modern anti-Semitism. In about 2004, Israeli politician and worldwide human rights leader, Natan Sharansky, outlined the so-called “3-D Test of Anti-Semitism” to distinguish criticism of Israel from outright anti-Semitic behavior. Under the 3-D Test, criticism of Israel crosses the line into anti-Semitism where it 1) Demonizes, 2) Delegitimizes, or 3) applies it to a Double standard. Variations of this test have been adopted by worldwide bodies including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the U.S. Department of State.

As Senator Schumer summarized, “the idea that all other peoples can seek and defend their right to self-determination, but the Jewish people cannot; that other nations have a right to exist but the Jewish state does not, that too is a modern form of anti-Semitism, just as President Macron of France said this weekend.”

Original Article

Michaela Shapiro
Brandeis Blog
July 11, 2017

On Thursday, June 29th, the Equality Court sitting in the South Gauteng High Court of South Africa found Bongani Masuku guilty of hate speech following his comments calling for Jewish lives to be made “hell,” among other incendiary remarks. Over twenty-five years since the end of apartheid, South Africa continues the fight to eradicate discrimination, and the landmark ruling has widespread implications for the global fight against anti-Semitism.

In March 2009, Mr. Masuku, the international relations spokesperson for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), threatened students in his speech at Wits University in Johannesburg during the “Israel Apartheid Week.” His controversial statements targeted South African families who had members serving in the Israeli Defense Force, and called for Jews in South Africa to be forcibly “removed” from the country. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) lodged a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in April 2009, which declared that the defendant’s comments qualified as hate speech, and ordered him to apologize.

However, Mr. Masuku refused to comply. The SAHRC subsequently brought the case to the High Court in order to enforce the ruling where a few days ago Judge Moshidi ruled that the 2009 statements constituted hate speech. Judge Moshidi also dismissed arguments by the Defense that the statements were about Zionists and thus not directed at Jews as a whole. In its press release, SAJBD commended the fact that “in terms of judgment, threats and insults against Jews who support Israel cannot be justified on the alleged basis that such attacks are aimed not at Jews but at ‘Zionists.’”

In his ruling, Justice Moshidi declared that the defendant’s statements violated section 10 of the Equality Act 4 of 2000, the comprehensive South African anti-discrimination law prohibiting hate speech. The Act holds the courts and state accountable for hate speech prevention, and ensures agencies abide by the terms of international and constitutional human rights law. Mr. Masuku must now apologize to SAJBD, the overarching organization for the South African Jewish community, within 30 days.

South Africa’s Equality Court has set a strong example that anti-Semitism, just like all forms of hate and bigotry, is unacceptable.

Original Article

Rachel Frommer
Algemeiner
July 10, 2017

Three major pro-Israel groups have claimed that University of California-Irvine (UCI) students committed criminal acts at a protest of a Zionist event in May and have now called on the administration to hold the perpetrators “accountable.”

In a letter sent on July 6 to UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman and Douglas M. Haynes, the vice provost for academic equity, diversity and inclusion, Students Supporting Israel (SSI), StandWithUs (SWU) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law alleged that individual members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) committed “the misdemeanor of Disturbing a Public Meeting,” and were also guilty of “violating multiple UCI policies.”

The letter came after the three organizations contacted UCI about SJP’s role, as a group, in the sustained shout-down of an IDF “Reservists on Duty” panel on May 10, and the resulting call by program organizers for a police escort to lead attendees out of the building though a side door.

The incident occurred almost exactly a year after SJP disrupted an Israel-related film being shown on campus, for which SJP was issued a warning that SWU lawyer Yael Lerman told The Algemeiner amounted to a “slap on the wrist.”

This time, pro-Israel leaders are hoping for more, especially given that individual students involved in this most recent incident have been identified through the extensive video footage available online and accused of “illegal and discriminatory disruption.”

Ilan Sinelnikov — founder of the grassroots activist network SSI, whose UCI chapter hosted the May program — said SJP had “crossed all the lines.”

“Our initial anticipation was that SJP needs to be suspended from campus,” he said.

SSI has also come under investigation by UCI administrators, after allegations that the visiting soldiers “verbally threatened, sexually harassed and followed members” of SJP, according to an email sent to SSI seen by The Algemeiner.

Sinelnikov rejected the accusations against the soldiers, who he said he knows personally, and was incredulous that SSI was being investigated.

“There are people who did the wrong thing and people who did the right thing [at the May 10 panel],” he said. “SJP did the wrong thing. But instead of holding the people who did wrong responsible, they [UCI] say there’s no black and white.”

Sinelnikov said he did not expect UCI’s SSI to be suspended.

Canary Mission, an anonymous campus watchdog, compiled a dossier earlier this month on 13 anti-Israel activists at UCI involved in the May incident, five of whom the group identified as also being members of the school’s student government.

They included Jeanine Erikat, an at-large senator for the student government’s advocacy committee, who shouted at the reservists during the panel that the IDF is “a military where they murder kids and families and they arrest children.”

Canary Mission also released information on the ostensible leader of the protest, Celine Qussiny, who guided the demonstrators in chants that included calls in favor of violence.

Qussiny was one of the recipients of UCI’s reprimand last year of SJP, in which she was cited as an “authorized signer” for the group. She has expressed support for convicted Palestinian terrorists on social media, including lauding those behind stabbing attacks as heroes and martyrs.

Original Article

Ben Cohen
Algemeiner
July 3, 2017

A high-level official at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has accused the Israeli government of exploiting antisemitism so as to secure greater Jewish immigration to Israel – leading one senior Jewish human rights advocate to counter that the veteran civil rights organization is actively compromising the fight against anti-Jewish prejudice.

“He has an important position within the ACLU and one would hope he would use that platform to fight antisemitism, rather than making it harder for those of us who are trying to do so,” antisemitism expert Kenneth Marcus told The Algemeiner on Monday, following a tweet on Sunday from Jamal Dakwar – the director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program – that “Israeli leaders exploit horrible acts of anti-Semitism to encourage Jews to move to Israel.”

Dakwar added, “Judaism ≠ [does not equal] Zionism, Anti-Zionism ≠ [does not equal] Anti-Semitism.”

The tweet was a comment attached to a short video on the nature of antisemitism by the British pundit, Mehdi Hasan, that was broadcast by the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera network. Acknowledging that antisemitism is a form of racism – “no ifs, no buts” – Hasan then presented the problem as largely concerned with the far right, tying it heavily to the election of US President Donald Trump last November. Antisemitism on the left was mentioned in passing, while antisemitism among European Muslims was not discussed at all, with Hasan describing the terror attack on the Hypercacher supermarket in January 2015 as “the attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris,” without mentioning that the perpetrators were Islamist terrorists.

Hasan’s fundamental point – which recycles a favored theme of past Soviet and Arab anti-Zionist propaganda – is that Israel’s “cynical” leaders welcome eruptions of antisemitism as an opportunity to urge Jews to immigrate en masse to the State of Israel.

When it came to those engaged in “conflating” the Jewish people with Zionism and Israel, Hasan concluded, “maybe let’s not forget to include as well some of the irresponsible, and yes, cynical leaders of the State of Israel.”

Marcus – President and General Counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and the author of “The Definition of Antisemitism,” published by Oxford University Press in 2015 – expressed amazement that, in sharing Hasan’s video, Dakwar was buying into a definition of antisemitism coined by Al Jazeera.

“He is not wrong to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, nor is he incorrect that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are different conceptually,” Marcus explained. “But he has borrowed from Al Jazeera a simplistic and distorted understanding of the relationship between them.”

Marcus continued: “It’s extraordinary that he relies on Al Jazeera‘s conception of antisemitism and then criticizes (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu for failing to follow it. It is as if he assumed that anti-black racism is entirely what white supremacists define it to be, and then castigated black leaders for holding a different view.”

Marcus also pointed out that the ACLU – founded in 1920 – “has been leading the battle against the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which is one of the most important current legislative efforts to fight antisemitism in colleges and universities.”

The Act – passed by the Senate in December 2016, but still to be considered by the House of Representatives – uses the definition of antisemitism approved by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which provides guidance on how to determine whether anti-Zionism has crossed into antisemitism, as is frequently the case. But the ACLU believes that Act will clamp down on First Amendment free speech rights for pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionist groups on campus such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which supports the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel through the creation of a single Palestinian state.

“The ACLU should be leading this battle,” Marcus argued. “But they’ve gotten on the wrong side of it.”

Original Article

Portland Tribune
June 26, 2017

Anti-Semitism is on the rise again in America — and Oregon — according to the director of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Portland.

But unlike past occurrences, Bob Horenstein says the attacks are coming from the political left, not just the right, even though some of the attacks come from self-styled supporters of President Donald Trump.

Horenstein said Monday (June 26) at a Washington County Public Affairs Forum luncheon in Beaverton that he doubts Trump is anti-Semitic.

“But his lack of decorum, his nastiness, his personal insults have mainstreamed that type of behavior now, so it’s coming out of the woodwork. We’re seeing it in the Jewish community,” he said.

“The political landscape in America is so poisoned by the deep divisions found within the political culture that it gives license to forms of negative social expression.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks more than 900 hate groups across the country, including 11 in Oregon and four in the Portland area.

Horenstein said examples of anti-Semitism can be found in Portland, where swastikas — a symbol of Nazi Germany — were carved into a dorm-room door and drawn on a bathroom wall at Portland State University.

A poster in the cafeteria at Lake Oswego High School depicted Nazi extermination of Jews — 6 million Jews died in the World War II genocide known as the Holocaust — and an overpass banner on Interstate 205 in Portland proclaimed “Jews did 9/11” before it was taken down the first weekend in June.

“Some say there is a cycle of hate in our country,” Horenstein said.

He referred to the 1920s, when a resurgent Ku Klux Klan — founded after the Civil War to advocate white supremacy over blacks — took on hostile overtones toward Catholics, Jews and immigrants.

(In Oregon, voters elected a governor with KKK support and banned private and parochial schools by initiative in 1922, although the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ban in 1925.)

During the era, federal laws restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe by setting national quotas, which were finally abolished in 1965. Federal authorities also deported many immigrants, including some Jews, accused of being Communists during the first Red Scare between 1917 and 1920.

Horenstein mentioned two studies, one in 2015 by the Louis D. Brandeis Center at Trinity College in Connecticut, the other in 2016 conducted by the Amcha Initiative.

The first study found that 54 percent of the 1,157 Jewish students questioned had experienced bias. The second counted 287 anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses during the first half of 2016, an increase of 45 percent from the same period in 2015.

Attack from the left

Horenstein said that a resurgence of traditional anti-Semitism from the far right is coupled with the surge of anti-Israel sentiment on the far left.

“It is deeply insidious — and I think actually more dangerous than the old-fashioned, undisguised hatred of white supremacists — because we are starting to see it seep into the mainstream,” he said.

“They have had success in getting their anti-Semitic campaign of delegitimation to take hold within certain segments of mainstream society.”

It is known popularly as the BDS (boycott, delegitimize, sanction) Movement.

He said Oregon examples are a 2016 resolution by the student senate at Portland State University — despite criticism by now-departed president Wim Wiewel that it was “divisive and ill-informed” — and activist pressure on the Portland City Council to divest itself of investments in Caterpillar, which supplies bulldozers to the Israeli armed forces. (The council voted in April to drop all corporate investments.)

The Portland State student resolution was largely symbolic, because the Oregon State Treasury — not individual campuses — manages state investments.

“On the left, Israel is depicted as a gross violator of human rights and is a pariah state that does not belong to the family of nations,” Horenstein said.

He said some have gone as far as comparing present-day Israel with Nazi Germany or apartheid-era South Africa — and some of that stance can be traced back to a 1975 United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism, and a 2001 UN conference that Israel and the United States walked out of because of its narrow focus.

But Horenstein said such critics go beyond opposition to Israeli policy and align themselves with opposition to Israel’s existence as a nation. He said that stance is decried by people such as Pope Francis, Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid — an Israeli political commentator — and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop.

“Others have recognized this is not just the Jewish community crying wolf,” he said.

“If I want to read legitimate criticism of Israel, all I have to do is go to the Israeli press or listen to the Jewish community.”

Original Article