The U.S. State Department is offering to fund two projects “that counter the rise of anti-Semitism” in Europe and Central Asia. The State Department uses a new definition of anti-Semitism that includes criticisms of Israel. Among the alleged anti-Semitism will be “hateful or inflammatory speech in public discourse, traditional media and online…”
The Bill of Rights gives Americans the right to free speech, including the right to criticize any country on earth, including our own. But a Florida ‘hate crime’ bill working its way through the Florida legislature would interfere with Floridians’ constitutional right to make statements critical of one foreign country: Israel. Contact these Florida lawmakers now and tell them to vote no on this attempt to violate our freedom of speech!
Tennessee has just passed a resolution reaffirming Tennessee’s “unequivocal support” for Israel. State Senator Mark Pody pushed for its passage for “biblical” and other reasons..
Pro-Israel and Jewish response to Michelle Alexander’s recent NYT piece, “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine,” was predictably hysterical and demonstrated that “hardline Israeli propagandists are losing their ability to shape political discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” James Zogby examines what this means…
A bipartisan bill uses a new, Israel-centric definition of ‘antisemitism’ that experts say would censor information about Israel-Palestine in Florida public schools and colleges. This is the latest such effort in an international campaign on behalf of Israel…
Katherine Franke writes in the New York Review of Books that while Palestinian rights are getting more attention than ever, advocates of justice still face accusations of “anti-Semitism,” harassment, and most of all, censorship on college campuses….
Marc Lamont Hill, in Nazareth 2014. screenshot from Vimeo video. As is often the case with proponents of justice for Palestinians, Marc Lamont Hill was watched closely by Israel partisans as he spoke before the UN last week. They took a phrase – one phrase – from the speech and threw the rest aside, hoping…
Britain’s “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA0,” an organization equivalent to the ADL, has maneuvered British society into abdicating its core liberal values, intimidated the prosecutorial and judicial system, and silenced criticism of Israel in both social media and the mainstream media… in the last 18 months Britain’s largest political party has suspended and expelled over a hundred of its members for expressing their views on Israel or Jewish history…
Thirty-six Jewish groups have signed a statement condemning the conflation of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel. “As social justice organizations from around the world, we write this letter with growing alarm regarding the targeting of organizations that support Palestinian rights in general and the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in particular. These attacks too often take the form of cynical and false accusations of anti-Semitism that dangerously conflate anti-Jewish racism with opposition to Israel’s policies and system of occupation and apartheid…”
South Carolina is poised to be the first state to pass legislation to adopt an Israel-centric definition for “anti-Semitism.” This will then apply to the state’s campuses, potentially limiting discussion of Israel-Palestine to one-sided information that fosters U.S. policies that provide Israel $10 million per day. The bill has been heralded in Israel as a “a landmark bill” that will lead change across the U.S. and the world, while South Carolina lawmakers appear to have let it through in the belief that it isn’t significant legislation.