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Are you Jewish, or a person who would never discriminate against Jews? Even with these bona fides, if you dare to criticize Israel, the Zionist propaganda machine wants the world to believe you are anti-Semitic. Even if you are neutral on the issue of Palestine/Israel, but fail to come down hard enough on those who support Palestine, they will still label you an “anti-Semite.”
How could that be? Ask Liz Magill, former president of the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard. These two women were forced to resign their posts after ultra right wing New York Representative Elise Stefanik questioned their responses during a House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing late last year. “Does the call for genocide of Jews on your campus constitute harassment, yes or no,” Stefanik asked Magill and Gay, as well as MIT president Sally Kornbluff. Of course this was a purely rhetorical question, since nobody on their campuses had called for “the genocide of Jews.” So the three presidents offered a hypothetical and totally legal response. They said, “It depends upon the circumstances.” It turns out that what Stefanik was claiming as a “call for the genocide of Jews” was the chant “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free.” But this chant speaks for the equality of all people in Palestine/Israel and has nothing to do with killing anyone. One does not have to kill off the “enemy” in order to be free, especially when one wants this “enemy” to enjoy the same freedom. Not good enough, claimed Stefanik, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. And she blasted the three presidents on social media, causing the universities’ wealthy Zionist donors to threaten to withdraw their funding. Kornbluff survived the trumped up charges of anti-Semitism, but Gay and Magill were forced to resign. This phenomenon, conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, is known as the weaponization of anti-Semitism. It’s an interesting and obviously inaccurate concept, in light of the mobilization of thousands of Jews who have been rallying in support of Gaza and demanding a ceasefire of Israel’s assault on the Gaza – an assault that has already claimed the lives of more than 24,000 Gazans. Is a person anti-Semitic because they support the rights of everyone, including Palestinians? Common sense says, “no way.” But the Israel lobby says anyone who doesn’t unequivocally support Israel is an anti-Semite. A major tool in this attempt to conflate anti-Zionism, or any sort of support for Palestinians, with anti-Semitism, is a controversial definition of anti-Semitism promulgated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). In addition to the commonly accepted understanding of anti-Semitism as hatred of Jews or discrimination against Jews, the IHRA definition includes several examples of so-called anti-Semitism, which are actually criticisms of the Israeli government, not attacks on Jewish people. One such example is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” By that definition, the findings of Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, that Israel is an apartheid state, are anti-Semitic. An apartheid government is, by definition, a “racist endeavor.” Never mind that many of the people involved in writing and presenting these reports are Jewish. Unfortunately dozens of countries, and US states and municipalities, have either adopted or endorsed this IHRA definition. Although it is not a legally binding definition, it does serve to warn anyone willing to criticize Israel over its treatment of Palestinians that they had better watch their step. This is, of course, the main objective of the weaponization of anti-Semitism – to silence Israel’s critics and Palestine’s supporters. But there is also another problem with defining anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism. It dilutes the genuine danger of real anti-Semitism, which is on the rise. Currently the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is claiming that anti-Semitic incidents in the US have skyrocketed 360 percent over the numbers from 2022. And the mainstream media, ever eager for sensationalism, is buying it without taking a critical look at what that means. But, since the ADL characterizes any rallies “with anti-Zionist chants and slogans” as “anti-Semitic,” this figure now includes incidents critical of Israel but not of Jews or Jewish organizations. An investigation by the Jewish Forward found that 1,683 of the 3,000 incidents the ADL claimed as anti-Semitic were actually anti-Zionist. Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, originally founded to combat anti-Semitism in America, are so focused on the bogus definition put out by the IHRA that they are neglecting the genuine anti-Semitism, which is mostly practiced by white supremacists and other ultra right-wingers. And here’s another example of the danger of ignoring genuine anti-Semitism in favor of supporting Israel. A major Israel lobbying organization, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has dumped millions of dollars into the political campaigns of dozens of racists, election deniers, anti-Semites and homophobes, as long as they pledge to keep US funding flowing into Israel’s coffers. So the Israel lobby is supporting genuine anti-Semites while discrediting people and organizations that simply want justice for Palestinians. It seems Israel and its allies are playing a shell game that not only makes the world less safe for Palestinians and Jews, but for all of us. Lois Pearlman is a member of North Coast Coalition for Palestine and Sonoma County for Palestine.
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