Category: antisemitism

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    AP: Jewish protesters flood Trump Tower's lobby to demand Mahmoud Khalil's release

    AP (3/13/25): “Demonstrators from [Jewish Voice for Peace] filled the lobby of Trump Tower…to denounce the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who helped lead protests against Israel at Columbia University.”

    In its coverage of Jewish Voice for Peace’s Trump Tower protest, Fox News obscured the Jewish identity of protesters—while echoing antisemitic conspiracy theories and racist tropes.

    JVP, an organization of Jewish Americans in solidarity with Palestinians, organized the March 13 sit-in of Trump’s Manhattan property in protest against ICE’s detention of Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestine protester Mahmoud Khalil.

    As Jewish solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide does not fit neatly into the channel’s narrative that pro-Palestine protests are inherently antisemitic, Fox’s all-day coverage of the protest either cast doubt upon the organization’s Jewish identity or minimized mentioning JVP by name altogether—all while painting demonstrators as antisemites.

    What’s more, discussion of the protest veered into unabashedly antisemitic conspiracy theories about how George Soros and his supposedly paid anti-American protesters seek to overthrow the West.

    The coverage comes as an absurd reminder that while right-wing fearmongers cynically paint opposition to genocide or violation of due-process as antisemitic, the most-watched US cable news network has no problem echoing Goebbelsian talking points.

    ‘Don’t give them any advertisement’

    Fox News: Now: Protesters occupy Trump Tower, Chant "Free Mahmoud, Free them all"

    “Look at some of the signage in here…. They hate Jewish Americans,” says Outnumbered host Harris Faulkner (3/13/25), while playing footage of protesters holding up signs proudly proclaiming their Jewish heritage.

    The argument made on other programs that the protesters were antisemitic, anti-American and aligned with Nazis, requires a specific hesitance towards profiling JVP probably best captured in an interview on the Story (3/13/25) with NYPD Chief John Chell. Asked who the group was that organized the protest, he responded, “We’re well-versed in this group, I don’t wanna give them any advertisement.”

    He only neglected to say the quiet part out loud—that a shout-out for JVP might advertise a reality in which protesters in solidarity with Palestine and campus demonstrators weren’t motivated by antisemitism.

    On Fox‘s Outnumbered (3/13/25), host Harris Faulkner and other panelists spent ample time portraying the protesters as antisemites—while intentionally obfuscating the overtly Jewish messaging of the demonstration.

    It’s not as though the panelists or reporter Eric Shawn were somehow unaware of who was protesting: About seven minutes into the coverage, panelist Emily Compagno read the back of one of the T-shirts, printed “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel.” Without missing a beat, she pivoted into an incoherent rant about how the Democratic Party and Ivy League universities venerate Hamas. A few minutes later, Eric Shawn stammered the group’s name once in passing, then never again.

    Unsurprisingly, these two incidental mentions were drowned out by relentless accusations that the protesters voiced overt hatred for Jews.

    Faulkner set the tone of the conversation with some of her leading remarks: “Look at some of the signage here…. They hate Israel, they hate Jewish Americans, they are Anti-American.” (Such virulently antisemitic signage included “Fight Nazis, Not Students,” “Opposing Fascism Is a Jewish Tradition” and “Never Again for Anyone.”) She then asked her audience, “If you are Jewish in that building, do you feel safe?”

    Guest panelist Lisa Boothe added that protesters “hate the West,” arguing that they “are supporting the Nazis.”

    ‘Some said they were Jews’

    Fox News: The Left is Torching Teslas and storming Trump Tower

    “Some said that they…were Jews,” the Five panelist Greg Gutfeld (3/13/25) stuttered, “but will the media check that? I doubt it! And they will not check…who paid for those signs, who paid for those T-shirts, and…who paid for the protesters.”

    When the Five (3/13/25) first mentioned the Jewish identities of the protesters about eight minutes into the broadcast, they did so to cast doubt upon the premise that Jews would engage in such an act: “Some said that they…were Jews,” Greg Gutfeld stuttered, “but will the media check that? I doubt it!”

    (It’s unclear who Gutfeld considers to be “the media,” given that he’s a panelist on the top-rated show at the most-watched cable news network.)

    Like on Outnumbered, the Five panelists accused protesters of supporting antisemitism while only mentioning the demonstrators’ Jewish identity in passing. Jesse Watters summarized the panel’s position best, stating that protesters were “supporting an antisemite” who “hates Jews” and “[blew] up Columbia.”

    The commentary hinges on the assumption that an Islamophobic audience will hear that an antisemitic crowd rallied at Trump Tower in support of Mahmoud Khalil “blow[ing] up Columbia”—and not follow up on who organized the rally, or why.

    Such buzzword-laden obfuscation reveals a paranoia in such coverage: If viewers do choose to follow up and learn more about the protesters, it might give the game away. The hoards of supposed antisemites might be raising perfectly reasonable questions about erosion of due-process and US bankrolling of genocide. Some such protests, like the one at Trump Tower, might even be Jewish-led.

    ‘Hands in many protest pots’

    Fox News: Figure: Jewish Voice for Peace's Funding Network, NGO monitor 2019-2021

    Fox News discussed George Soros as though he’s the Palestine movement’s top financier—though according to its own graphic (Will Cain Show, 3/13/25), Soros is only JVP’s fifth-biggest funder, donating a third as much as its largest donor, and accounting for less than 2% of the group’s total financing.

    Curiously, for all of their concern for antisemitism, Outnumbered, the Story, the Five, the Will Cain Show (3/13/25) and Ingraham Angle (3/13/25) all had one thing in common: a conspiratorial fascination with allegedly astroturfed leftist financing. Laura Ingraham was particularly explicit:

    The group Jewish Voice for Peace…bills itself as a home for left-leaning Jews…and it gets its biggest funding from groups associated with George Soros…. Soros himself has his hands in many protest pots, stirring up a toxic brew of antisemitism and anti-Americanism.

    She cited a graphic displayed on the Will Cain Show, which was also referenced on the Five. It depicted Soros’ Open Society fund as the fifth-biggest funder of JVP for 2019–21, contributing $150,000. Given that JVP has an annual budget of more than $3 million, this suggests that Soros is responsible for less than 2% of the group’s financing.

    Ingraham nonetheless felt the need to rail against Soros and the broader Jewish left. She also went on to characterize the pro-Palestine movement as “the overthrow-of-the-West cause.”

    So the “antisemitic” pro-Palestine protests are bankrolled by an anti-American Jewish billionaire seeking to overthrow the West? Like her peers on Outnumbered and the Five, Ingraham is empowered to advance such harmful tropes, so long as she also tacks on a spurious charge of “antisemitism.”

    Anti-Arab, anti-immigrant tropes

    Fox News: Radical Rage: Left-Wing agitators mob Trump Tower for mahmoud Khalil

    Five panelist and former Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro (3/13/25) condemned protesters “want[ing] Mahmoud [Khalil] to have all of his constitutional rights,” implying that violation of Khalil’s due process is legal because he “hates all of our Western values.”

    Fox’s obfuscation of the protest’s overtly Jewish messaging is underpinned by another assumption—that Palestinian-led or immigrant-led protest against the genocide is somehow less legitimate than Jewish American–led protest. Coverage not only obscured JVP’s role in organizing the protest, but used anti-Arab tropes and calls for deportation to smear the legitimacy of protesters’ demands.

    When Jesse Watters evoked fantasies of student protesters blowing up universities, or Outnumbered guest panelist (and former Bush White House press secretary) Ari Fleischer accused protesters of being illegal residents that “should all be deported from this country,” they played to the racist impulses of their audiences.

    Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian-Syrian immigrant—thus, his opposition to a genocide in which Israel has killed at least 51,000 Palestinians in Gaza, with another 10,000 presumed dead under the rubble, is illegitimate. And if JVP protesters are Arab immigrants too, then their opposition to repression and genocide is meritless and antisemitic.

    It’s another reason why it’s in Fox’s best interest not to identify the Trump Tower protesters—to allow for the assumption that they’re Arabs, or immigrants, which somehow discredits them.

    Enemies with no name

    JVP: If your focus is on Palestinian liberation, why do you focus on organizing Jews? Why not just participate in Palestinian-led efforts?JVP has a specific, critical role to play in the movement for Palestinian liberation. As Jews, we work to answer the call of our Palestinian partners to build a Jewish movement that can effectively form a counterweight to Jewish Zionist support for Israeli apartheid. That often includes defending our Palestinian partner organizations, when they are accused of antisemitism for criticizing the policies of the Israeli state. Our role in the movement for Palestinian freedom is to shake the U.S.-Israel alliance by fundamentally changing the financial, cultural, and political calculus of Jewish support for Israeli apartheid and for Zionism.

    As a Jewish-led organization in solidarity with Palestinians, JVP stresses the importance of challenging false antisemitism smears against their Palestinian partners and in creating a Jewish future divested from Zionism.

    Fox News’s hesitancy to identify JVP is a striking contrast to Fox’s general proclivity for naming enemies. A search on FoxNews.com for the “New Black Panther Party,” a fringe Black nationalist group, yields more than 100 results; compare that to less than 30 hits on AP‘s website. A Search for “Dylan Mulvaney,” a trans influencer who was targeted in a mass-hate campaign in 2023, yields more than 5,000 results on Fox, compared to AP’s 50.

    Fox News thrives upon enemies—but Jewish Voice for Peace is different. As an openly Jewish-American group, JVP challenges Fox News’ narrative that protests against genocide in Gaza are rooted in antisemitism.

    “We organize our people and we resist Zionism because we love Jews, Jewishness and Judaism,” JVP’s website says. “Our struggle against Zionism is not only an act of solidarity with Palestinians, but also a concrete commitment to creating the Jewish futures we all deserve.”

    To be clear, conservative and centrist outlets’ continued preoccupation with the supposed antisemitism of opponents of Israel’s genocide is never in good faith—as when the New York Times (4/14/25), reporting on “Trump’s Pressure Campaign Against Universities,” blithely claimed that “pro-Palestinian students on college campuses…harassed Jewish students,” without noting that many of the pro-Palestinian students were themselves Jewish. But the charge of antisemitism is even more ludicrous coming from an outlet that uses antisemitic tropes to make its own attacks on the pro-Palestine movement.

    And the charge is most ridiculous coming from a network that is too afraid to name its enemy, as if the mere acknowledgement that some Jews oppose US support for Israel’s genocide might shake the foundations of its whole narrative.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • While many are gathering this weekend to hold seders on the first nights of Passover, a number of Jewish organizations are inviting us back into the streets to take the message of liberation further. On Monday, April 14, the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) will lead over a thousand Jews in a Passover seder directly in front of the New York City headquarters of Immigration and…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Trump administration’s push to deport Palestine activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil is based on an accusation of “antisemitism,” according to a source who saw the government’s filing.

    Facing a court deadline to hand over evidence justifying Khalil’s, the Department of Homeland Security submitted a two-page memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio citing the Trump administration’s authority to expel noncitizens that have the potential to damage the foreign policy interests of the United States.

    The post Judge Says Trump Can Deport Mahmoud Khalil Over His Political Beliefs appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The White House announced Thursday that the Trump administration plans to withhold $510 million in federal funding from Brown University while it investigates the school’s response to alleged “antisemitism”— a term that is being weaponized to target protesters against Israel’s genocide in Gaza — as well as the university’s refusal to dismantle its diversity programs, which defy President Donald…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A federal judge in New Jersey will soon issue a ruling on where the deportation case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student who led the student encampment at Columbia University last year, can be litigated. On March 8, Khalil was abducted in New York by agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who told him his lawful permanent residency status had been “revoked.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A growing number of Jewish people stand for Palestinian liberation. Neither Khalil’s detainment, nor broader assaults on Palestine solidarity activists or continued attacks on Palestine, are protecting Jews.

    The post Jewish Supporters Rally For Mahmoud Khalil appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • If the secretary of state can simply declare a legal permanent resident deportable based on their constitutionally protected activities, the First Amendment no longer applies to noncitizens.

    This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.

  • Nine organisations who had previously engaged in good faith in Goldsmiths’ Inquiry into Antisemitism have published a statement publicly withdrawing their participation from the Inquiry, which has been ongoing since May 2023.

    Goldsmiths’ Inquiry into Antisemitism: lack of transparency

    The groups include the Goldsmiths’ Students Union, Goldsmiths UCU Executive, and the Goldsmiths research group Forensic Architecture, as well as civil society groups including the Muslim Association of Britain, and legal organisations including the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC).

    Their public statement cites ‘incoherent and contradictory statements’ from the College and the Chair of the Inquiry, and a ‘lack of transparency’ over ‘who and what is being investigated’ that has led to a widespread loss of confidence in the Inquiry from students, staff and civil society.

    One example they say is the Inquiry’s refusal to confirm even what definition of antisemitism it is applying to inform its work.

    The signatories say that the Inquiry has failed to meaningfully engage with the political context of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the legitimate question of how unfounded accusations of antisemitism are used to silence Palestinian voices and those who stand with them.

    They say the two-year process “marginalises Palestinians and adopts an approach which discriminates against them, and appears to target those who criticise Israeli policies and Zionism.” Goldsmiths has recently apologised and paid damages to a lecturer they wrongly suspended after complaints that constituted part of this inquiry.

    Violating the rights of other marginalised groups

    The Inquiry, which is investigating the period 1 September 2018 to18 May 2023, has not indicated when it is due to complete. Freedom of Information requests sent by Michael Rosen (Goldsmiths Professor of Children’s Literature) in May 2024 found that the Inquiry had cost Goldsmiths £128,872 up to that point.

    Ed Nedjari, Goldsmiths SU Chief Executive said:

    It is crucial to address the rise of antisemitism; however, these efforts must not violate the rights of other marginalised groups, such as Palestinians, nor hinder the free expression of those who criticise Zionism and Israeli state policies, particularly against a backdrop of an ongoing Genocide in Gaza and an expansion of Settler Colonialism in the West Bank. The growing list of concerns, including the lack of transparency and questionable decisions made by the inquiry, has eroded any remaining confidence in its fairness and impartiality, ultimately leading to our decision to withdraw our support and participation.

    We cannot, in good faith, support this inquiry while it advances without proper regard for the fundamental principles of equality and justice. Goldsmiths Students’ Union has consistently supported students’ critical engagement in their academic studies and civic activities. This inquiry contradicts our core values; we cannot risk complicity in restricting the freedoms of our members.

    Goldsmiths’ Inquiry into Antisemitism: deeply concerning

    Ben Jamal, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign said:

    It is deeply concerning to see universities attempting to intimidate students who are engaged in campaigning for Palestinian human rights, or who make legitimate criticisms of Israel’s apartheid system and genocidal attacks. British universities collectively invest almost £430million in companies complicit in Israeli violations of international law. Instead of targeting those speaking out against these grave violations of international law and undermining academic freedom, universities should be working to divest their money from apartheid and genocide.

    Dr Lewis Turner, Chair of the BRISMES Committee on Academic Freedom, said:

    BRISMES is deeply concerned that this Inquiry’s approach threatens freedom of expression and academic freedom on the question of Palestine, which have been under sustained attack on UK campuses, especially since October 2023. It is particularly concerning that the Inquiry has refused to confirm whether it will use the widely-discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism and its examples, which have been shown, in our September 2023 report with the European Legal Support Center, to clearly undermine freedom of expression and academic freedom in universities.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

  • SPECIAL REPORT: By Markela Panegyres and Jonathan Strauss in Sydney

    The new Universities Australia (UA) definition of antisemitism, endorsed last month for adoption by 39 Australian universities, is an ugly attempt to quash the pro-Palestine solidarity movement on campuses and to silence academics, university workers and students who critique Israel and Zionism.

    While the Scott Morrison Coalition government first proposed tightening the definition, and a recent joint Labor-Coalition parliamentary committee recommended the same, it is yet another example of the Labor government’s overreach.

    It seeks to mould discussion in universities to one that suits its pro-US and pro-Zionist imperialist agenda, while shielding Israel from accountability.

    So far, the UA definition has been widely condemned.

    Nasser Mashni, of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, has slammed it as “McCarthyism reborn”.

    The Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) has criticised it as “dangerous, politicised and unworkable”. The NSW Council of Civil Liberties said it poses “serious risks to freedom of expression and academic freedom”.

    The UA definition comes in the context of a war against Palestinian activism on campuses.

    The false claim that antisemitism is “rampant” across universities has been weaponised to subdue the Palestinian solidarity movement within higher education and, particularly, to snuff out any repeat of the student-led Gaza solidarity encampments, which sprung up on campuses across the country last year.

    Some students and staff who have been protesting against the genocide since October 2023 have come under attack by university managements.

    Some students have been threatened with suspension and many universities are giving themselves, through new policies, more powers to liaise with police and surveil students and staff.

    Palestinian, Arab and Muslim academics, as well as other anti-racist scholars, have been silenced and disciplined, or face legal action on false counts of antisemitism, merely for criticising Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine.

    Randa Abdel-Fattah, for example, has become the target of a Zionist smear campaign that has successfully managed to strip her of Australian Research Council funding.

    Intensify repression
    The UA definition will further intensify the ongoing repression of people’s rights on campuses to discuss racism, apartheid and occupation in historic Palestine.

    By its own admission, UA acknowledges that its definition is informed by the antisemitism taskforces at Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and New York University, which have meted out draconian and violent repression of pro-Palestine activism.

    The catalyst for the new definition was the February 12 report tabled by Labor MP Josh Burns on antisemitism on Australian campuses. That urged universities to adopt a definition of antisemitism that “closely aligns” with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

    It should be noted that the controversial IHRA definition has been opposed by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for its serious challenge to academic freedom.

    As many leading academics and university workers, including Jewish academics, have repeatedly stressed, criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism is not antisemitic.

    UA’s definition is arguably more detrimental to freedom of speech and pro-Palestine activism and scholarship than the IHRA definition.

    In the vague IHRA definition, a number of examples of antisemitism are given that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but not the main text itself.

    By contrast, the new UA definition overtly equates criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism and claims Zionist ideology is a component part of Jewish identity.

    The definition states that “criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic . . . when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.

    Dangerously, anyone advocating for a single bi-national democratic state in historic Palestine will be labelled antisemitic under this new definition.

    Anyone who justifiably questions the right of the ethnonationalist, apartheid and genocidal state of Israel to exist will be accused of antisemitism.

    Sweeping claims
    The UA definition also makes the sweeping claim that “for most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

    But, as the JCA points out, Zionism is a national political ideology and is not a core part of Jewish identity historically or today, since many Jews do not support Zionism. The JCA warns that the UA definition “risks fomenting harmful stereotypes that all Jewish people think in a certain way”.

    Moreover, JCA said, Jewish identities are already “a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel are not”.

    Like other aspects of politics, political ideologies, such as Zionism, and political stances, such as support for Israel, should be able to be discussed critically.

    According to the UA definition, criticism of Israel can be antisemitic “when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions”.

    While it would be wrong for any individual or community, because they are Jewish, to be held responsible for Israel’s actions, it is a fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former  minister Yoav Gallant for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    But under the UA definition, since Netanyahu and Gallant are Jewish, would holding them responsible be considered antisemitic?

    Is the ICC antisemitic? According to Israel it is.

    The implication of the definition for universities, which teach law and jurisprudence, is that international law should not be applied to the Israeli state, because it is antisemitic to do so.

    The UA’s definition is vague enough to have a chilling effect on any academic who wants to teach about genocide, apartheid and settler-colonialism. It states that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions”.

    What these are is not defined.

    Anti-racism challenge
    Within the academy, there is a strong tradition of anti-racism and decolonial scholarship, particularly the concept of settler colonialism, which, by definition, calls into question the very notion of “statehood”.

    With this new definition of antisemitism, will academics be prevented from teaching students the works of Chelsea WategoPatrick Wolfe or Edward Said?

    The definition will have serious and damaging repercussions for decolonial scholars and severely impinges the rights of scholars, in particular First Nations scholars and students, to critique empire and colonisation.

    UA is the “peak body” for higher education in Australia, and represents and lobbies for capitalist class interests in higher education.

    It is therefore not surprising that it has developed this particular definition, given its strong bilateral relations with Israeli higher education, including signing a 2013 memorandum of understanding with Association of University Heads, Israel.

    It should be noted that the NTEU National Council last October called on UA to withdraw from this as part of its Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution.

    All university students and staff committed to anti-racism, academic freedom and freedom of speech should join the campaign against the UA definition.

    Local NTEU branches and student groups are discussing and passing motions rejecting the new definition and NTEU for Palestine has called a National Day of Action for March 26 with that as one of its key demands.

    We will not be silenced on Palestine.

    Jonathan Strauss and Markela Panegyres are members of the National Tertiary Education Union and the Socialist Alliance. Republished from Green Left with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    An independent Jewish body has condemned the move by Australia’s 39 universities to endorse a “dangerous and politicised” definition of antisemitism which threatens academic freedom.

    The Jewish Council of Australia, a diverse coalition of Jewish academics, lawyers, writers and teachers, said in a statement that the move would have a “chilling effect” on legitimate criticism of Israel, and risked institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism.

    The council also criticised the fact that the universities had done so “without meaningful consultation” with Palestinian groups or diverse Jewish groups which were critical of Israel.

    The definition was developed by the Group of Eight (Go8) universities and adopted by Universities Australia.

    “By categorising Palestinian political expression as inherently antisemitic, it will be unworkable and unenforceable, and stifle critical political debate, which is at the heart of any democratic society,” the Jewish Council of Australia said.

    “The definition dangerously conflates Jewish identities with support for the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism.”

    The council statement said that it highlighted two key concerns:

    Mischaracterisation of criticism of Israel
    The definition states: “Criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel or all Jews or when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions.”

    The definition’s inclusion of “calls for the elimination of the State of Israel” would mean, for instance, that calls for a single binational democratic state, where Palestinians and Israelis had equal rights, could be labelled antisemitic.

    Moreover, the wording around “harmful tropes” was dangerously vague, failing to distinguish between tropes about Jewish people, which were antisemitic, and criticism of the state of Israel, which was not, the statement said.

    Misrepresentation of Zionism as core to Jewish identity
    The definition states that for most Jewish people “Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

    The council said it was deeply concerned that by adopting this definition, universities would be taking and promoting a view that a national political ideology was a core part of Judaism.

    “This is not only inaccurate, but is also dangerous,” said the statement.

    “Zionism is a political ideology of Jewish nationalism, not an intrinsic part of Jewish identity.

    “There is a long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, from the beginning of its emergence in the late-19th century, to the present day. Many, if not the majority, of people who hold Zionist views today are not Jewish.”

    In contrast to Zionism and the state of Israel, said the council, Jewish identities traced back more than 3000 years and spanned different cultures and traditions.

    Jewish identities were a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel were not, the council said.

    Growing numbers of dissenting Jews
    “While many Jewish people identify as Zionist, many do not. There are a growing number of Jewish people worldwide, including in Australia, who disagree with the actions of the state of Israel and do not support Zionism.

    “Australian polling in this area is not definitive, but some polls suggest that 30 percent of Australian Jews do not identify as Zionists.

    “A recent Canadian poll found half of Canadian Jews do not identify as Zionist. In the United States, more and more Jewish people are turning away from Zionist beliefs and support for the state of Israel.”

    Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer and the Jewish Council of Australia’s executive officer, said: “It degrades the very real fight against antisemitism for it to be weaponised to silence legitimate criticism of the Israeli state and Palestinian political expressions.

    “It also risks fomenting division between communities and institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A rally on the steps of the Victorian Parliament under the banner of Jews for a Free Palestine was arranged for Sunday, February 9. At 11:11pm on the eve of that rally, Mark Leibler —a  lawyer who claims to have a high profile and speak on behalf of Jews by the totally unelected organisation AIJAC — put out a tweet on X (and paid for an advertisement of the same posting) as follows:

    COMMENTARY: By Jeffrey Loewenstein

    As someone Jewish, the son of Holocaust survivors and members of whose family were murdered by the Nazis, it is hard to know whether to characterise Mark Leibler’s tweet as offensive, appalling, contemptuous, insulting or a disgusting, shameful and grievous introduction of the Holocaust, and those who were murdered by the Nazis, into his tweet — or all of the foregoing!

    Leibler’s tweet is most likely a breach of recently passed legislation in Australia, both federally and in various state Parliaments, making hateful words and actions, and doxxing, criminal offences. It will be “interesting” to see how the police deal with the complaint taken up with the police alleging Leibler’s breach of the legislation.

    In the end, Leibler’s attempted intimidation of those who might have been thinking of going to the rally failed — miserably!

    There are many Jews who abhor what Israel is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank) but feel intimidated by the Leiblers of this world who accuse them of being antisemitic for speaking out against Israel’s actions and not those rusted-on 100 percent supporters of Israel who blindly and uncritically support whatever Israel does, however egregious.

    Leibler, and others like him, who label Jews as antisemites because they dare speak out about Israel’s actions, certainly need to be called out.

    As a lawyer, Leibler knows that actions have consequences. A group of concerned Jews (this writer included) are in the process of lodging a complaint about Leibler’s tweet with the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission.

    Separately from that, this week will see full-page adverts in both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age — signed by hundreds of Jews — bearing the heading:

    “Australia must reject Trump’s call for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish Australians say NO to ethnic cleansing.”

    Jeffrey Loewenstein, LLB, was a member of the Victorian Bar and a one-time chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission and member of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria. This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations public policy journal and is republished here with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  •  

    Media outlets continue to print headlines about antisemitism based on Anti-Defamation League statistics known to be faulty and politicized. In doing so, they grant undeserved credibility to the ADL as a source.

    Producing statistics helps the ADL to claim objectivity when they assert that antisemitism is increasing dramatically, prevalent in all fields of society, and emanating from the left as well as the right. Those “facts” are then used to justify policy recommendations that fail to respond to actual antisemitism, but succeed in undermining the free speech rights of Palestinians and their supporters, including those of us who are Jews.

    Smearing Israel critics as antisemites

    Nation: The Anti-Defamation League: Israel’s Attack Dog in the US

    James Bamford (The Nation, 1/31/24) : “The New York Times, PBS and other mainstream outlets that reach millions are constantly and uncritically promoting the ADL and amplifying the group’s questionable charges.”

    While it frames itself as a civil rights organization, the ADL has a long history of actively spying on critics of Israel and collaborating with the Israeli government (Nation, 1/31/24). (FAIR itself was targeted as a “Pinko” group in ADL’s sprawling spying operation in the ’90s.)

    Though it professes to document and challenge antisemitism, it openly admits to counting pro-Palestinian activism as antisemitic: In 2023, the ADL changed its methodology for reporting antisemitic incidents to include rallies that feature “anti-Zionist chants and slogans,” even counting anti-war protests led by Jews—including Jewish organizations the ADL designated as “hate groups.”

    The ADL’s political motivations are clear in its advocacy for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which alleges that criticizing Israel based on its policies (e.g., “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” or “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis“) is antisemitic. The ADL and their allies also deem speech supporting Palestinian human rights to be coded antisemitism.

    Criticism of the ADL is increasing. In 2020, activists launched #DropTheADL to raise awareness among progressives that the ADL is not a civil rights or anti-bias group, but rather an Israel advocacy organization that attacks Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights in order to protect Israel from criticism. Last year, a campaign to Drop the ADL From Schools launched with an exposé in Rethinking Schools magazine, and an open letter to educators, titled “Educators Beware: The Anti-Defamation League Is Not the Social Justice Partner It Claims to Be,” that garnered more than 90 organizational signatories. These efforts build off research that exposes the ADL’s work to normalize Zionism and censor inclusion of Palestinian topics in the media, policy circles, schools and in society at large.

    In 2023, some of its own high-profile staff resigned, citing the group’s “dishonest” campaign against Israel’s critics. In June 2024, Wikipedia editors found the ADL regularly labels legitimate political criticism of Israel as antisemitic, leading the popular online encyclopedia to designate the group an unreliable source on Israel/Palestine.

    Critiquing the ADL’s statistics does not serve to argue that antisemitism is acceptable or less deserving of attention than other forms of discrimination. Rather, it demonstrates that we can’t rely on the ADL for information about the extent or nature of antisemitism—and neither should media.

    A dubious source

    NYT: Antisemitic Incidents Reach New High in the U.S., Report Finds

    This New York Times report (10/6/24) obscured the fact that many of the “antisemitic incidents” counted by the ADL were chants critical of Israel.

    And yet corporate media use the ADL uncritically as a source for reports on antisemitism. For instance, the New York Times (10/6/24) not only headlined the ADL’s assertion that “Antisemitic Incidents Reach New High in the US,” it chose to contextualize the ADL’s findings “in the wake of the Hamas attack,” and called the ADL a “civil rights organization.”

    Important media outlets like The Hill (4/16/24), with outsized influence on national policy discussions, ran similar headlines, failing to note the ADL’s highly controversial methodology.

    At least the Wall Street Journal (1/14/25) acknowledged that the ADL has been challenged for counting criticism of Israel as antisemitism. But it immediately dismissed the applicability of those challenges to the ADL’s Global 100 survey, which found that 46% of adults worldwide hold antisemitic views. (The ADL’s Global 100 survey was criticized for its flawed methodology as far back as 2014, when researchers found it “odd and potentially misleading.”)

    The media’s willingness to accept ADL claims without scrutiny is evident in CNN’s choice (12/16/24) not to investigate the ADL’s accusations of antisemitism against speakers at a recent conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, but rather to simply repeat and amplify the ADL’s dishonest and slanderous narrative.

    Methodological faults

    Jewish Currents: Examining the ADL’s Antisemitism Audit

    A Jewish Currents report (6/17/24) concluded that “the ADL’s data is much more poised to capture random swastika graffiti and stray anti-Zionist comments than dangerous Christian nationalist movements.”

    Even setting aside the ADL’s prioritization of Israel’s interests over Jewish well-being, the ADL’s statistics should be thrown out due to methodological faults and lack of transparency.

    Even FBI statistics, frequently cited by the ADL, don’t tell a clear story. Their claim that 60% of religious hate crimes (not mere bias incidents) target Jews is misleading, given the systemic undercounting of bias against other religious groups. Because of the history of anti-Muslim policing, Muslims are less likely to report than people of other religions.

    In fact, a national survey of Muslims found that over two-thirds of respondents had personally encountered Islamophobia, while only 12.5% had reported an incident. Almost two-thirds of respondents who encountered an Islamophobic incident did not know where or how to report it. When Muslims experience hate, it is less likely to be pursued as a hate crime.

    On the other hand, the ADL has an unparalleled infrastructure for collecting incident reports. It actively solicits these reports from its own network, and through close relations with police and a growing network of partners like Hillel International and Jewish Federations.

    Perpetrators’ motivations are also relevant and should not be inferred. In 2017, Jews were frightened by over 2,000 threats aimed at Jewish institutions in the United States. It turned out that nearly all came from one Jewish Israeli with mental health problems. Without this level of investigation, policymakers could enact misguided policy based on the ADL’s sensationalism, like CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s claim that “antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses.”

    Bad-faith accusations

    Zeteo: What Antisemitism? The ADL Prostrated to Musk and Trump

    David Klion (Zeteo, 2/4/25): “How did the ADL, which for generations has presented itself as America’s leading antisemitism watchdog, find itself prostrated before the most powerful enabler of white supremacy in recent American history?”

    Although critics have long argued that the ADL’s politicized definition of antisemitism and flawed statistics cannot be the basis of effective policy, policymakers continue to rely on media’s deceptive journalism.

    Massachusetts State Sen. John Velis cited ADL statistics to claim the state has “earned the ignominious reputation as a hub of antisemitic activity,” and therefore needs a special antisemitism commission. In Michigan, ADL reports of escalating antisemitism led to a resolution that will affect policy in schools across the state. In Connecticut, the ADL referenced its statistics in a government announcement about changes to the state’s hate crimes laws. The ADL’s statistics undergirded the logic of President Joe Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

    But how can politically distorted research be the foundation for effective policy?

    Antisemitism is surely increasing. Hate crimes have increased in general—most targeting Black people—especially since the first Trump presidency, and hate incidents generally rise during violent outbreaks like the war on Gaza, and during election periods. But since most antisemitism originates in the white nationalist right wing, why focus primarily on people—including Jews—who are legitimately protesting their own government’s support for Israeli actions against Palestinians? Or on Palestinians themselves, who have every right to promote the humanity and rights of their people?

    The ADL’s bad-faith accusations weaponize antisemitism to protect Israel at the expense of democratic and anti-racist principles. Anyone who doubted the ADL’s politics should be convinced by its abhorrent defense of Elon Musk’s Nazi salute (FAIR.org, 1/23/25) and its support for Donald Trump.

    To pursue effective public policy, policymakers and the public should refuse to cite the ADL’s flawed statistics, and instead develop thoughtful and nuanced ways to understand and address antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and discrimination. Media can play a key role by exposing the politicization of antisemitism by the ADL, including its prioritization of protection for Israel from criticism over the free speech that is fundamental to democratic discourse.

     

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • On Sunday 9 February, the Labour Partysacked and suspended” health minister Andrew Gwynne (sacked as a minister/suspended from the party). Why did they suspend him? Because leaked WhatsApp messages showed him being racist, sexist, and vile towards colleagues and older constituents – constituents he also wished death on for daring to ask Gwynne to do his job.

    While the things Gwynne said are sickening, they’re not surprising. As many have pointed out, the Forde Report uncovered Labour’s institutional racism years ago. It’s also clear from Labour’s decision to remove the Winter Fuel Allowance that they don’t care about the lives of old people.

    There is one thing that’s shocking, however, and that’s the fact that Labour have only suspended Gwynne – i.e. they haven’t expelled him for good. It’s particularly shocking because on 7 February Labour expelled a councillor following his public criticism of Keir Starmer:

    What sort of party can excuse racism but not criticism?

    Another Labour sicko exposed – this time, Andrew Gwynne

    The Daily Mail exposed Andrew Gwynne and his messages on 8 February, with the Guardian summarising what was revealed later that evening:

    The Gorton and Denton MP’s alleged messages include one in which he joked that he hoped a 72-year-old woman would soon die after contacting her Labour councillor about her bins.

    “As you have been re-elected, I thought it would be an appropriate time to contact you with regard to the bin collections,” she wrote.

    When the letter from the resident was shared in the WhatsApp group, Gwynne wrote a suggested response: “Dear resident, fuck your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you. PS: Hopefully you’ll have croaked it by the all-outs.”

    His reference to “all-outs” refers to local council elections in which the whole local authority is up for election. In many cases, only a third of a council faces elections each year.

    Among the other messages, Gwynne is alleged to have said someone “sounds too Jewish” and “too militaristic” from their name. He also asked: “Is he in Mossad?”

    He is also said to have made comments about both Diane Abbott, the veteran Labour MP, and Rayner.

    In 2019 in the WhatsApp group, called Trigger Me Timbers, Gwynne is alleged to have said support for Abbott’s historic appearance as a black woman at prime minister’s questions was a “joke”, apparently adding that her appearance was “because it’s Black History Month apparently”.

    Gwynne offered a half-arsed excuse on social media:

    “Badly misjudged” is how Wynne describes his comments.

    Given that Labour has actively created a hostile environment for old people and that Gwynne has voted in line with Starmer’s government, it’s clear this man doesn’t give a shit about human life, making it difficult to believe he was joking.

    It’s also hard to believe that Gwynne being repeatedly racist and sexist was a joke. He’s not Roy Chubby Brown; he’s a 50-year-old professional speaking to other professionals in a professional context. Beyond that, he’s a person with significant responsibility for the fair and equal treatment of the public. Even if we believe his comments were not reflective of his true feelings, Gwynne should be smart enough to realise that doing bigoted banter with colleagues is not going to be productive if his ambition is to promote social justice for all.

    The Forde Report

    As Samantha Asumadu wrote for the Canary, the Forde Report had already exposed the toxic attitudes which exist within the Labour Party:

    In 2020 Keir Starmer commissioned an investigation into antisemitism, racism, sexism, and bullying in the wake of a leaked document containing private WhatsApp messages exposing an insidious racist environment fostered by senior Labour Party workers.

    The Forde report exposes a hierarchy of racism denied by the Labour leadership. It came out to a tsunami of Labour PR approved tweets. Their response effectively was ‘the report says the party was out of control. Keir is now in control and everything is going to be ok now because he’s getting rid of those people’.

    However, racism in the Labour Party predates both the current and last Labour leader.

    It’s hardly surprising that Starmer would do nothing to improve things, as Asumadu wrote:

    As former director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer has a legacy of fast trials and night courts rigging the system so that Black and brown people served longer sentences after the England-wide riots in 2011. Thus the current leader of the Labour Party is finding it difficult to appease those he marginalised both at that time and now, as the left of the party accuses him of purges.

    Speaking after the release of the report, MP Dawn Butler wrote:

    IN APRIL 2020 I was notified by party staff that I was mentioned in a leaked internal report from Labour Party HQ.

    This leaked report would lead to an establishing of an independent investigation called the Forde Inquiry.

    The leaked report revealed that senior staff in the Party HQ had apparently mocked me for raising issues of racism within the Party.

    I often had a feeling that my concerns were not being taken seriously, but was afraid to say in case I was seen as paranoid. But seeing it written down in black and white, being mocked by senior members of staff within the party made me feel sad and let down.

    The Forde Report, now published, is a thorough and considered piece of work that vindicates my stance: the party did and does have an ongoing problem.

    As the Forde Report says: “there are serious problems of discrimination in the operations of the party”.

    This is not easy to acknowledge. I understand the resistance, but it is vital to acknowledge if we are to improve and move forward as a Party. We need to be our best selves as we get ready to govern the country.

    Butler wrote this in 2022. Sadly, it seems like nothing has changed since then.

    Response

    People reacted with revulsion to what Andrew Gwynne said:

     

    One user noted that the BBC seems to have stopped taking antisemitism seriously:

    Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani found an issue with some reporting:

    Gwynne may be glad to know that many online deadbeats agree with him when it comes to the racism:

    One rule for the racists, another for the critics

    On 7 February, Dudley News reported that Labour had “booted out” councillor Steve Edwards:

    Following his expulsion, Edwards said:

    I kind of expected it after I have been so vocal about Starmer, six or seven months before the general election, that he seemed to turn his back on the working class.

    Cllr Steve Edwards, a founder of Black Country Day which champions the region’s heritage and working class roots
    Cllr Steve Edwards, a founder of Black Country Day which champions the region’s heritage and working class roots

    I was apprehensive about what he would be like when he became Prime Minister but he made various promises, that our heating bills would go down, pensioners would be looked after, school children would be fed, that there would be no tax rises but within weeks of being elected he completely changed his mind.

    It filters from the top down and they are not listening to us from the bottom up, the working class are the wealth creators in this country, what Starmer is offering is no help at all.

    He has been treacherous to everybody. He is a massive liar.

    Before his expulsion, Edwards shared a letter on 3 February in which he accused Starmer of abandoning his election pledges:

    Edwards has further criticised Starmer and his Labour Party since his sacking:

    Andrew Gwynne: Starmerism all over

    Andrew Gwynne’s exposed comments are going to create problems for Labour because they crystallise what everyone already knows – that Starmer’s Labour actively despise the people of this country. It’s hard to imagine Starmer lasting a full term at this point, and if he goes, we can only hope that those speaking out against him are able to wrestle control of the party from these corporate sellouts.

    Featured image via Chatham House – Flickr / Sophie Brown – Wikimedia

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • When physician and human rights activist Suzanne Barakat was invited to give a keynote address at the People of Color Conference (PoCC) in December 2024, she was excited and did not anticipate that her remarks would elicit a barrage of hate. After all, friends had previously told her that the conference was one of the few places where educators of color and their anti-racist allies felt at ease.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.


  • This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to Elon Musk’s defense after the billionaire performed a salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration that is being widely celebrated by neo-Nazis as a Nazi salute. In a post on social media, Netanyahu said that Musk is being “falsely smeared” and suggested that Musk’s support of Israel is proof that he isn’t antisemitic — even as numerous Jewish…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Nazi salute of world’s richest man Elon Musk was hardly surprising, considering the way he’s been spreading racist disinformation and backing fascists all around the world in recent months. He’s apparently now funding the legal fight of British far-right figure Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), for example. But the BBC‘s ‘both sides’ response was awful – as was a supposedly Jewish organisation – the ADL.

    Elon Musk, the BBC, and the ADL

    The British public broadcaster simply said “Musk responds to backlash over gesture at Trump rally”. This was despite it quoting historians specialising in fascism as saying Musk’s “gesture” was clearly a Nazi salute.

    Even a confidant of Musk had reportedly praised the return of the “Roman salute” – which Benito Mussolini’s fascists used in Italy and then Adolf Hitler’s Nazis adopted in Germany. Whatever its pre-fascist historical origins, it is widely recognisable in the West as a commitment to the far-right cause.

    Musk of course has pushed back – saying “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired”. Yet he didn’t deny or give explanation as to why he did a Nazi salute – and the argument that he was ‘sending his heart out’ to people doesn’t wash when you watch the actual timing of events.

    Perhaps even more absurd, however, was the defence that the pro-Israel lobbyists at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) offered for Musk.

    The ADL, which has waged a battle against TikTok because it reflected the pro-Palestinian sentiment of its mostly younger users, clearly thinks Musk is the ‘right kind of antisemite’ as he, like most other multi-billionaires, supports Israel. Because it tried to play down the importance of Musk’s salute, tweeting:

    It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute

    It said people were “on edge” and that “all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt”.

    People were quick to point out that the ADL hasn’t given “grace” or “the benefit of the doubt” to people opposing the genocide in Gaza in the last 15 months. Its record has been quite the opposite.

    Just recently, for example, it criticised historians for calling out Israel’s mass destruction of the occupied Palestinian territory’s education system. And many people are fully awake to the ADL’s shameless hypocrisy and complicity with the resurgence of fascism:

    The right kind of fascist

    Even some supporters of Israel can see through the ADL’s double standards. Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, for instance, says the ADL fears holding Musk to account and that:

    They, and all major Jewish organizations will pursue any little powerless person with a Palestinian flag pin, but will not protect us from the real threats from powerful people.

    The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, meanwhile, rightly insisted:

    The use of an antisemitic genocidal signal by the world’s most powerful man, who has engaged in racism and antisemitism in the past, cannot be taken lightly or written off as a mistake.

    Considering the ADL describes the Nazi salute as “the most common white supremacist hand sign in the world”, you’d think it would have given Musk no grace at all. Clearly, though, when it comes to Zionists are are ‘the right type of fascists’.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Berlinale head, Tricia Tuttle, says some artists fear criticism of Israeli actions will be condemned as antisemitism

    A polarised debate about Gaza in Germany is leading some artists to shun one of the world’s top film festivals, its new director has said.

    Tricia Tuttle, the head of the Berlin international film festival, said a perception that Germany had been overzealous in its policing of speech about the Middle East conflict, and controversy over this year’s awards ceremony, were having an impact as she planned her first edition.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  •  

    NYT: Antisemitic Attacks Prompt Emergency Flights for Israeli Soccer Fans

    The New York Times (11/8/24), like other corporate media, framed the Amsterdam violence in terms of antisemitism—treating anti-Arab violence as an ancillary detail at best.

    When violence broke out in Amsterdam last week involving Israeli soccer fans, Western media headlines told the story as one of attacks that could only be explained by antisemitism. This is the story right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants them to tell: “On the streets of Amsterdam, antisemitic rioters attacked Jews, Israeli citizens, just because they were Jews” (Fox News, 11/10/24).

    Yet buried deep within their reports, some of these outlets revealed a more complicated reality: that many fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club had spent the previous night tearing down and burning Palestinian flags, attacking a taxi and shouting murderous anti-Arab chants, including “Death to the Arabs” and “Why is there no school in Gaza? There are no children left there” (Defector, 11/8/24).

    As Marc Owen Jacobs of Zeteo (11/9/24) wrote, the media coverage revealed

    troubling patterns in how racial violence is reported; not only is anti-Arab violence and racism marginalized and minimized, but violence against Israelis is amplified and reduced to antisemitism.

    Buried context

    Mondoweiss: ‘NYTimes’ biased coverage of Amsterdam soccer violence attempts to hide Israeli racism

    James North (Mondoweiss, 11/10/24): “You had to jump to paragraph 7, buried on an inside page, to learn that the Israeli fans had, in fact, been violent and provocative the night before.”

    “Israeli Soccer Fans Attacked in Amsterdam,” announced NBC News (11/8/24). That piece didn’t mention until the 25th paragraph the Maccabi fans’ Palestinian flag-burning and taxi destruction, as if these were minor details rather than precipitating events.

    Similarly, the Washington Post (11/8/24)—“Israeli Soccer Fans Were Attacked in Amsterdam. The Violence Was Condemned as Antisemitic”—didn’t mention Maccabi anti-Arab chants until paragraph 22, and didn’t mention any Maccabi fan violence.

    James North on Mondoweiss (11/10/24) summed up the New York Times article’s (11/8/24) similar one-sided framing:

    The Times report, which started on page 1, used the word “antisemitic” six times, beginning in the headline. The first six paragraphs uniformly described the “Israeli soccer fans” as the victims, recounting their injuries, and dwelling on the Israeli government’s chartering of “at least three flights to bring Israeli citizens home,” insinuating that innocent people had to completely flee the country for their lives.

    Also at Mondoweiss (11/9/24), Sana Saeed explained:

    Emerging video evidence and testimonies from Amsterdam residents (here, here and here, for instance) indicate that the initial violence came from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, who also disrupted a moment of silence for the Valencia flood victims.

    But despite that footage and Amsterdammer testimonies, coverage—across international media, especially in the United States—has failed to contextualize the counter-attacks against the anti-Arab Israeli mob.

    Misrepresented video

    Screengrab from Annet de Graaf's video of the Amesterdam football riot.

    Image from Annet de Graaf’s video showing violence by Israeli soccer fans—widely misrepresented as an example of antisemitic violence.

    Several news outlets outright misrepresented video from local Dutch photographer Annet de Graaf. De Graaf’s video depicts Maccabi fans attacking Amsterdam locals, yet CNN World News (11/9/24) and BBC (11/8/24) and other outlets initially labeled it as Maccabi fans getting attacked.

    De Graaf has demanded apologies from the news outlets and acknowledgement that the video was used to push false information. CNN World News‘ video now notes that an earlier version was accompanied by details from Reuters that CNN could not independently verify. BBC’s caption of De Graaf’s footage reads “Footage of some of the violence in Amsterdam—the BBC has not been able to verify the identity of those involved.”

    The New York Times (11/8/24) corrected its misuse of the footage in an article about the violence:

    An earlier version of this article included a video distributed by Reuters with a script about Israeli fans being attacked. Reuters has since issued a correction saying it is unclear who is depicted in the footage. The video’s author told the New York Times it shows a group of Maccabi fans chasing a man on the streeta description the Times independently confirmed with other verified footage from the scene. The video has been removed.

    ‘Historically illiterate conflation’

    Jacobin: Calling a Football Riot a Pogrom Insults Historical Memory

    Jacobin (11/12/24): “Far from acting like tsarist authorities during a pogrom, the police in Amsterdam seem to have cracked down far harder on those who attacked Maccabi fans than the overtly racist Maccabi hooligans who started the first phase of the riot.”

    It is undoubtedly true that antisemitism was involved in Amsterdam alongside Israeli fans’ anti-Arab actions; the Wall Street Journal (11/10/24) verified reports of a group chat that called for a “Jew hunt.” But rather than acknowledging that there was ethnic animosity on both sides, some articles about the melee (Bret Stephens, New York Times, 11/12/24; Fox News, 11/10/24; Free Press, 10/11/24) elevated the violence to the level of a “pogrom.”

    Jacobin (11/12/24) put the attacks in the context of European soccer riots:

    There were assaults on Israeli fans, including hit-and-run attacks by perpetrators on bicycles. Some of the victims were Maccabi fans who hadn’t participated in the earlier hooliganism. In other words, this played out like a classical nationalistic football riot—the thuggish element of one group of fans engages in violence, and the ugly intercommunal dynamics lead to not just the perpetrators but the entire group of fans (or even random people wrongly assumed to share their background or nationality) being attacked.

    But Jacobin pushed back against media using the word “pogrom” in reference to the soccer riots:

    Pogroms were not isolated incidents of violence. They were calculated assaults to keep Jews locked firmly in their social place…. Pogroms cannot occur outside the framework of a society that systematically denies rights to a minority, ensuring that it remains vulnerable to the violence of the majority. What happened in Amsterdam, however, bears no resemblance to this structure. These were not attacks predicated on religious or racial oppression. They were incidents fueled by political discord between different groups of nationalists….

    Furthermore, using that designation to opportunistically smear global dissent against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza as classically antisemitic only serves to trivialize genuine horrors. This historically illiterate conflation should be rejected by all who truly care about antisemitism.

    Breaking with the Netanyahu government’s spin, former Israeli President Ehud Olmert said that the riots in Amsterdam were “not a continuation of the historic antisemitism that swept Europe in past centuries.” Olmert, unlike Western media coverage of the event, seemed to be able to connect the violence in Amsterdam to anti-Arab sentiment in his own country. In a more thoughtful piece than his paper’s news coverage of the event, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (11/13/24) quoted Olmert extensively:

    The fact is, many people in the world are unable to acquiesce with Israel turning Gaza, or residential neighborhoods of Beirut, into the Stone Age—as some of our leaders promised to do. And that is to say nothing of what Israel is doing in the West Bank—the killings and destruction of Palestinian property. Are we really surprised that these things create a wave of hostile reactions when we continue to show a lack of sensitivity to human beings living in the center of the battlefield who are not terrorists?

    The events in Amsterdam called for nuanced media coverage that contextualized events and condemned both anti-Jewish and anti-Arab violence. Instead, per usual, world leaders and media alike painted Arabs and Pro-Palestine protesters as aggressors and Israelis as innocent victims.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.


  • This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Sky News has been caught in a storm over it’s deleting and then re-editing of a report on the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan’s rioting in Amsterdam. However, the original filmmaker who captured some of the footage it used has now come forward – and claims that it, and other media outlets, misrepresented it to shore up the narrative that the attacks were antisemitic.

    Maccabi Tel Aviv/Sky News

    On 8 November, media outlets and politicians decried “antisemitic attacks” on Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans, with some referring to the incident as a “pogrom”, and others comparing it to the events of pre-war Nazi Germany. These same outlets and politicians received criticism for leaving out significant context on what happened in the run up to the later violence – but at the time, this didn’t include Sky News:

    While there is evidence of violence being directed towards the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, the narrative that this was a Nazi-style pogrom just doesn’t hold up, as we reported ourselves. Another outlet which game some semblance of balance was Sky News, but the initial report they produced was later deleted:

    Sky News: a tale of two videos

    Marc Owen Jones is an associate professor and author of Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East. In a summary of an article he wrote for Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, he tweeted:

    The term ‘anti-Arab slogans’ has itself become controversial, with Reuters using the term in contrast to ‘anti-Israeli slurs’:

    Jones continued:

    In his Zeteo article, Jones wrote:

    So marginalized were stories attempting to explain violence from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans that one Amsterdam resident took to social media to call out the media bias. She described hiding in fear as Israeli supporters attacked her home for displaying a Palestinian flag, stating in Dutch, “I hardly see anything in the media about my experience – that letting loose agitated football hooligans with war traumas, from a country that commits genocide and engages in extreme dehumanization, in the city *regardless of whether there are counter-protests* is not a good idea.”

    Sky News’s reason for re-editing the video to remove the above context? Apparently it didn’t meet their “standards for balance and impartiality”:

    Jones captured both videos for those who want to see:

    Novara Media’s Rivkah Brown, meanwhile, highlighted that Sky News editor Sandy Rashty has been retweeting messages which align with the ‘Nazi pogrom’ version of reality:

    It gets worse somehow

    A photographer with the Twitter handle iAnnet captured footage of the violence in Amsterdam:

     

    Annet noticed that many outlets were ignoring and even reversing the context she gave them, with a picture of a “Maccabi mob” chasing pedestrians presented as antisemitic violence:

    Annet has been contacting outlets, questioning the use of her footage, and demanding retractions and apologies. She’s already had some success:

    At the time of writing, she has yet to report receiving a satisfactory response from Sky News:

    Manufacturing consent

    The West is responsible for funding and tolerating Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. As such, it suits the establishment to present a narrative that all Jewish people support Israel and that any attack against Israel or its people is an attack on Jewish people everywhere.

    Western media’s handling of this latest story is a textbook example of how they will ignore, edit, and delete context that doesn’t support their preferred narrative. What’s not so textbook is we now get to see these edits being made in front of our very eyes – like those of Sky News.

    Featured image via Sky News

    By The Canary

  • Western media, governments, and Israel have erupted in outrage after Israeli supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv FC got beaten up in Amsterdam. The BBC, like other outlets, particularly pushed the narrative that this was a solely antisemitic attack. Of course, in reality what actually happened was classic ‘chat shit, get banged’ – after the far-right, racist and Zionist football thugs went on the rampage in Holland.

    Maccabi Tel Aviv fans: the victims of an antisemitic attack?

    BBC News extensively covered the incidents. It reported that:

    Dutch and Israeli officials have condemned a series of attacks on Israeli football fans in Amsterdam overnight.

    Supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv were attacked in the capital as their team were in the city for Europa League match against Ajax.

    Police in Amsterdam have arrested at least 57 people.

    Footage circulating on social media shows a series of violent assaults on Israelis in the street, as well as people breaking into hotels apparently searching for Maccabi fans.

    Head of Holland’s far-right government Dick Schoof condemned the attacks as ‘antisemitic’ – as did Israel’s genocidal far-right PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He ordered planes to be sent to the Netherland to evacuate football fans. These were later cancelled.

    Now, the Canary wouldn’t condone violence against anyone. However, if you look at the Western media coverage of the attacks on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans – it’s clear that there’s a narrative being built. That is, that the violence was antisemitic and the Israeli fans were the victims.

    Except, that’s not quite the case – as even an unlikely source pointed out:

    A bunch of far-right racists from Israel in Amsterdam

    Because what came before the attacks on Israelis was blatant Islamophobia and genocidal intent:

    Some Maccabi Tel Aviv fans also refused to observe the minute’s silence before their match against Ajax for the victims of the Valencia floods:

    Amsterdam councilman (the equivalent of a British city councillor) Jazie Veldhuyzen told Al Jazeera that:

    [Maccabi Tel Aviv fans] began attacking houses of people in Amsterdam with Palestinian flags, so that’s actually where the violence started. As a reaction, Amsterdammers mobilised themselves and countered the attacks that started on Wednesday by the Maccabi hooligans.

    Of course, that’s not the impression you get if you read the Western corporate media. The BBC in particular was heavily pushing Zionist’s comparison to the Kristallnacht of WWII. Except Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have a history of racist violence:

    Some of the BBC’s coverage was forced to admit that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans may have started it:

    But overall, Western media and politicians were falling over themselves to paint the attacks as antisemitic and the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans as the victims.

    Maccabi Tel Aviv: an exercise in Zionist propaganda

    Once again, this kind of propaganda does nothing in the fight against actual antisemitism. And of course, victims Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were not – nor innocent civilians, some of them:

    Admittedly, if the BBC is to be believed then some innocent British citizens got caught up in the violence. If this is the case, then this is not acceptable.

    However, much like the 40 beheaded babies psyop we witnessed after 7 October, the violence in Amsterdam is arch Zionist propaganda – but with a twist:

    That is, it is a distraction. But what on earth could the Israeli settler colonialists be trying to draw attention away from?

    Let’s be real. What happened in Amsterdam was cause and effect. Far-right, racist Israeli thugs went on a rampage in someone else’s country (much like they’re doing in Gaza and Lebanon), and local people didn’t like it. A Kristallnacht this is not, and won’t be – however much the media and politicians tell us it is.

    They must think we’re fucking stupid.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  •  

    What are the limits of free speech on a college campus? The New York Times has deployed one of its highest-ranking soldiers in the culture war against liberalism to remind us that the speech of white supremacists must be defended, but criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian human rights are going too far.

    Times columnist John McWhorter, who teaches at Columbia University, is a part of the paper’s growing chorus of elite, pearl-clutching commentators (e.g., 6/7/18, 11/9/21, 3/18/23, 2/24/24) who blame society’s ills on an amorphous enemy of tyrannical “wokeness,” which McWhorter (3/21/23) presents as “an anti-Enlightenment program.” The Times embraces the idea, widespread in corporate media (Atlantic, 1/27/21; Newsweek, 7/25/23), that today’s social justice warriors are the true enemies of free speech.

    NYT: I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice.

    John McWhorter (New York Times, 4/23/24): “Why do so many people think that weeklong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?”

    McWhorter found a limit to free speech and academic freedom earlier this year. He wrote (New York Times, 4/23/24) that he decided not to subject his students to an exercise where they would listen to the sounds around them, because they would be forced to listen to pro-Palestine protesters’ “infuriated chanting.” He said:

    Lately that noise has been almost continuous during the day and into the evening, including lusty chanting of “From the river to the sea.” Two students in my class are Israeli; three others, to my knowledge, are American Jews. I couldn’t see making them sit and listen to this as if it were background music.

    I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans…. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus…. Why do so many people think that weeklong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?….

    The idea is that Jewish students and faculty should be able to tolerate all of this because they are white.

    He’s clearly trying to portray leftist protesters as hypocritical and applying double standards: They readily seek to shut down racist speech but find anti-Israel speech “permissible.”

    Yet McWhorter himself, so quick to condemn what he says is “a form of abuse” of Jewish students through the “relentless assault” of protesters’ Israel-critical speech—and with no words of reproach for the school president’s decision to “crack down” on the protests and their freedom of expression—applies a very different standard when the campus speech in question is racist, sexist or homophobic.

    ‘Flagrant unprofessional conduct’

    NYT: She Is Outrageous, Demeaning, Dangerous. She Shouldn’t Be Punished.

    For McWhorter (New York Times, 10/3/24), “upholding the ideals of free speech” requires not punishing a professor who publicly insults her Black students.

    In sharp contrast to his denunciation of pro-Palestine protesters’ speech, McWhorter (New York Times, 10/3/24) offered a full-throated defense of Amy Wax, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who has been sanctioned by the school for “flagrant unprofessional conduct,” including “a history of making sweeping, blithe and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and immigration status,” as well as “breaching grade privacy requirements” (Wall Street Journal, 9/24/24).

    A faculty panel unanimously recommended Wax be suspended for a year at half salary, publicly reprimanded and stripped of her named chair; Wax has appealed the recommendation and is still teaching.

    Wax has said that the US is “better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration” (CNN, 9/25/24). The Daily Pennsylvanian (8/10/17) wrote that, in an interview, Wax “said Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior”: “I don’t shrink from the word ‘superior’…. Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans.”

    Wax made public comments about Black students’ grades that were both a violation of confidentiality and, according to the Penn law school dean, false (Vox, 2/16/23):

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half. I can think of one or two students who scored in the top half of my required first-year course.

    The law professor has repeatedly invited white nationalist Jared Taylor to deliver guest lectures in her class, including this semester, after the faculty panel’s recommendation. She will be a featured speaker at a conference sponsored by Taylor’s white supremacist journal American Renaissance (Daily Pennsylvanian, 9/10/24)—where, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “racist ‘intellectuals’ rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.”

    Given McWhorter’s previously stated belief that Jewish students shouldn’t have to listen to speech like “from the river to the sea,” one might expect that he would similarly condemn Wax’s subjection of her Black and brown students to eugenicist, white supremacist speech.

    Instead, McWhorter uses the Wax affair to defend the right of free speech, a role he didn’t take on when his own school clamped down on anti-genocide protests (Columbia Spectator, 4/4/24). Her views might be “Outrageous, Demeaning, Dangerous,” his headline declared, but “She Shouldn’t Be Punished” for them.

    ‘Living with discomfort’—or not

    Daily Pennsylvanian: Amy Wax again invites white nationalist to Penn class, joins conference with ex-Ku Klux Klan lawyer

    “We regard this to be a case not of free speech, which is broadly protected by University policy…but rather of flagrant unprofessional conduct by a faculty member,” a U Penn faculty panel insisted (Daily Pennsylvanian, 9/10/24).

    McWhorter, as a part of the anti-woke media movement to frame liberalism as the opponent of openness, accepts Wax as a victim of the cancel mob: “Her suspension,” he said, “is a kind of ritual act, an unconvincing performance of moral purity.”

    He wrote: “Upholding the ideals of free speech means living with the discomfort—or even anger and injury—that offensive ideas can cause.”

    The contrast with his earlier column is striking. If a Black or brown student is subjected to white supremacist speech, by his account, that student’s “discomfort—or even anger and injury” is their problem, and of less importance than protecting free speech. But if a white student is subjected to anti-Zionist speech, McWhorter considers it a “form of abuse” that they should not be expected to simply “be able to tolerate.”

    Penn Provost John L. Jackson, Jr.’s statement on the matter makes clear that Wax isn’t being sanctioned for merely breaking liberal conventions of decorum. A faculty review board found that Wax “engaged in ‘flagrant unprofessional conduct’ that breached [her] responsibilities as a teacher to offer an equal opportunity to all students to learn” from her (University of Pennsylvania Almanac, 9/24/24). The decision resulting from the investigation, to which the statement links, also says that the inquiry board decided against recommending a much tougher punishment, “namely, termination from her faculty position.”

    McWhorter deems the disciplinary action “egregious,” yet he voiced no similar complaints about disciplinary actions taken by Columbia and other schools against pro-Palestine protesters. He was also quick to call for the ouster of Harvard President Claudine Gay, a Black scholar who had been hounded by right-wing congressmembers over allowing criticism of Israel on her campus (NPR, 12/12/23; FAIR.org, 12/12/23) before being pushed out in a plagiarism scandal. McWhorter (New York Times, 12/21/23) admitted that the school’s plagiarism “policy may not apply to the university’s president,” but said the vibes of the matter trumped procedure, saying “Gay would be denigrating the values of ‘veritas’ that she and Harvard aspire to uphold” if she stayed.

    Acceptable and unacceptable restrictions

    Columbia Spectator: Over 80 student groups form coalition following suspension of SJP, JVP

    Columbia University’s suspension of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters (Columbia Spectator, 11/29/23) apparently did not contradict “the ideal of free speech,” in McWhorter’s view, because the university had not “categorically prohibited criticism of Israel.”

    McWhorter recognized the parallels between the Wax affair and the pro-Palestine protests, but insinuated the usual, and false, media equation between pro-Palestine and anti-Black speech that paints anti-Zionism as antisemitism (FAIR.org, 12/15/23). He wrote that the protests are another example in which universities have struggled with “identifying the line between legitimate protest and threats or harassment”:

    Student clubs have been suspended, demonstrations have been pushed off campus and at least one professor has been fired for sharing anti-Israel sentiments. But no university has categorically prohibited criticism of Israel. That’s because, as uncomfortable as the debate about Israel can be, and as close to home as it hits for many students, letting them encounter ideas that differ from their own is an important part of their education that prepares them to take their place in a democracy.

    The idea that racism is so uniquely toxic that it should be an exception to the ideal of free speech is not self-evident. It is specific to this moment, and will probably seem unwise and arbitrary to future chroniclers. Especially for universities, if exposing people to potential discomfort is permissible when it comes to geopolitics, then it must also be permissible when it comes to race.

    McWhorter seems to be drawing a line between acceptable and unacceptable restrictions on speech: Suspending student clubs, “pushing” demonstrations off campus (with the help of police in riot gear) and firing professors for anti-Israel sentiments are apparently fine by McWhorter, whereas “categorical” prohibitions on anti-Israel speech would cross the line.

    It’s remarkable that McWhorter doesn’t see that firing a professor over anti-Israel views is quite obviously a much harsher punishment than Wax faces—or that suspending a professor for a year for specific actions that harmed students is not a categorical prohibition on racist speech.

    Enormous chilling effect

    Intercept: University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza

    Natasha Lennard (Intercept, 5/16/24): “Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, academics…have been fired, suspended or removed from the classroom for pro-Palestine, anti-Israel speech.”

    What’s more, while he claims there has been no blanket ban on pro-Palestine thought, there have been so many official actions against faculty and students that we now see an enormous chilling effect on speech.

    McWhorter did link to the Intercept story (9/26/24) on the firing of a tenured professor at Muhlenberg College for having

    shared, on her personal Instagram account…a post written not by herself but by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi calling for the shunning of Zionist ideology and its supporters.

    But there’s much more. New York University added “Zionist” to a list of “examples of speech that could violate the university’s Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policies” (Washington Square News, 8/26/24), which has FAIR wondering what impact this might have on professors who teach Middle Eastern history.

    Steven Thrasher, an acclaimed journalist who has commented here at FAIR, teaches social justice reporting at Northwestern University, where he may lose employment because of his activism against the genocide in Gaza. Democracy Now! (9/5/24) reported that the university “filed charges against Thrasher for obstructing police that were later dropped.” However, “students returning to Northwestern for the fall term will not see him in their classrooms, because he has been suspended as Northwestern says he is under investigation.”

    Hyperallergic (9/20/24) reported that at Barnard College, the women’s college associated with Columbia, the administration sent

    behavioral directives for Barnard employees, specifying that “messaging…supporting a geopolitical viewpoint or perspective while denigrating or remaining silent about an opposing geopolitical viewpoint or perspective” and posting political signs on office doors would go against the college’s community values.

    Telling sociologists, historians, political scientists and anthropologists to refrain from “supporting a geopolitical viewpoint” is like telling a quarterback not to pass the football. Once again, this is the kind of directive that undoes the kind of open discourse McWhorter says he supports.

    Tip of the iceberg

    Inside Higher Ed: New Policies Suppress Pro-Palestinian Speech

    Radhika Sainath (Inside Higher Ed, 9/16/24): “Trying to appease pro-Israel forces by preventing protests against Israel’s brutal war in Gaza…colleges are rewriting policies that will have dire consequences on university life for years to come.”

    This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to campus repression of anti-genocide activists—many of whom are Jewish, despite McWhorter’s attempt to treat criticism of Israel as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry. Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, wrote about the widespread erosion of freedom on campuses this year at Inside Higher Ed (9/16/24):

    Indeed, my office, Palestine Legal, is receiving a surge of reports of students being censored and punished as they return to school, often under the pretext that support for Palestinian rights (or wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, or scarves) violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by creating a hostile environment for Jews, even though Jewish students are at the center of many of the protests and wear Palestinian scarves. Often, no reason is given.

    On one campus, students were slapped with conduct violations for writing an op-ed discussing a Gaza encampment in positive ways. Potlucks for Palestine have been canceled. Professors who reference Gaza or Palestine in their courses are told those courses are not fit for the curriculum, or having their syllabi scrutinized—or turned over to Congress in a manner reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Adjuncts have been fired. Tenure-track professors suspended. Tenured professors investigated.

    If universities banned students from wearing Tibetan clothes or canceled “momo night” because these things might offend Chinese students, we could bet good money that McWhorter and the rest of the anti-woke pack would be up in arms, and rightfully so.

    But McWhorter is only fighting to protect conservatives, which are classified as political victims in liberal academic society. We have come to expect such hypocrisy from the New York Times and other media’s anti-woke moral panic (FAIR.org, 10/23/20, 7/23/21, 11/17/21, 3/25/22). But it’s remarkable that McWhorter feels comfortable being so contradictory and misleading in disingenuous pursuit of “free speech.”


    ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • The following article is a comment piece from the Peace and Justice Project

    Later this month, Tommy Robinson and the far-right are planning a demonstration in London. It’s aim is to spread fear and division in our communities. We cannot let these voices go unchallenged, which is why we will be there – to ‘Stop The Far Right’ and stop them marching and spreading their hateful ideology.

    Stop The Far Right

    Over the summer, we suffered the biggest racist attacks we’ve seen in a generation, with hotels housing asylum seekers set on fire, Muslims targeted on the streets and ugly, racist rhetoric on our streets and in the media.

    Our march is about resisting the rise of racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism.

    This counter-demonstration is backed by organisations from across the country including trade unions, religious organisations, social justice groups, charities in the refugees sector, and anti-racist campaigns:

    So join us to take a stand against racism, fascism, and the far-right’s hate.

    Details:

    • Date: Saturday 26 October.
    • Time: Assemble 11.30am.
    • Location: Piccadilly – Regent Street St. James’s, SW1Y, London (Piccadilly Circus).

    In July over 20,000 people joined Tommy Robinson’s last demonstration and this one is expected to be even bigger. That’s why many of us opposed to his politics of division must join the counter-protest and send a clear message that we reject the politics of hate.

    There will be coaches heading down to London from across the country to stop the far right.

    From Glasgow to Gateshead, from Bangor to Brighton we will turn up in our thousands to show the far-right they are not welcome here.

    You can book your seat here.

    Across Europe, the far-right is gaining ground, with Le Penn’s National Rally electing their largest ever group of MPs into the French Parliament, the AfD gaining power in local government in Germany and the far-right Freedom Party topping the polls in Austria.

    Finally, please share the demonstration on social media and with your friends and networks.

    Together, let’s show that unity trumps division, and solidarity will win over hate. Let’s Stop The Far Right.

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

  • On 6 October, the BBC published new data from the Anti-Defamation League Center for Extremism (ADL). This suggested that antisemitism reached record highs in the US. But in true BBC fashion, its headline is misleading.

    BBC antisemitism article: muddying the waters

    Towards the end of the article it stated that the figures also include anti-Zionism – which we all know is not the same as antisemitism. Similarly, data the BBC published back in August which related to antisemitism in the UK also used the same qualifier – but it completely failed to mention this then too:

    The ADL data suggests that there were more than 10,000 incidents of antisemitism in the year up to 24 September. This was more than a 200% increase compared to the previous year.

    Importantly though, over halfway through the article the BBC stated:

    Part of the overall increase comes from a change in methodology to include “expressions of opposition to Zionism, as well as support for resistance against Israel or Zionists that could be perceived as supporting terrorism”, the ADL said.

    Whilst we could argue it should have led with that, the important thing is that the BBC just repeated this ADL line. At no point did it question it, or let the readers know that anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism. As we have seen in other reports this week, the BBC is afraid of stepping out of line.

    So much for ‘impartiality’.

    On a deeper dive into the ADL report, it concluded:

    ADL’s preliminary data also found that over 3,000 of all incidents took place during anti-Israel rallies, which featured regular explicit expressions of support for terrorist groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), one of the most concerning antisemitic trends ADL captured since Oct. 7, 2023.

    Over the last year, we have seen countless media reports of antisemitism at pro-Palestine rallies:

    1,350 of these incidents (15% of the total) were included as a result of a methodology update that ADL implemented after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, when we saw an explosion of anti-Israel activism that incorporated expressions of opposition to Zionism, as well as support for resistance against Israel or Zionists that could be perceived as supporting terrorism or attacks on Jews, Israelis or Zionists.

    When they occur during public activism (such as at protests), in confrontations between individuals or in the form of vandalism (such as graffiti), these expressions constitute an implicit attack on the great majority of American Jews who view a relationship with Israel to be an important part of their religious, cultural and/or social identities.

    Such rhetoric can be traumatizing to many American Jews and has led to their exclusion from some spaces simply because of that element of how they define and express their Jewishness.

    However, this quote from ADL clearly conflates ‘anti-Israel’ with ‘antisemitism’. Obviously, if any country starts a genocide there will be an explosion of anti-whatever country started it. In this case, it’s Israel.

    Anti-Zionism, not antisemitism

    In August of this year, the BBC published an article titled:

    Big rise in antisemitic incidents in UK – charity

    The article stated that the Community Security Trust(CST) recorded 1,978 ‘anti-Jewish hate incidents’ from January to June 2024.

    It goes without saying, we should not tolerate antisemitism in any shape or form. The important thing here though, is that the BBC article made zero mention of the CST conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Upon reading the full report, it is clear they have.

    Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same. Criticising the state of Israel or Zionism is legitimate – especially when Israel has murdered, at medical professionals’ best guesses, over 118,000 Palestinians. If we can’t criticise a genocidal regime, then what really is the point in anything?

    Earlier this year, the World Socialist Web site (WSWS) commented that:

    The CST’s “Antisemitic Incidents Report 2023” was targeted at the movement against Israel’s genocide, at Muslims and left-wing opponents, as the main source of antisemitism. This reinforces the campaign by the Conservative government, backed by the Labour opposition, to criminalise opposition to the genocidal actions of the Israeli state by equating antizionism with antisemitism.

    The Canary also previously reported on the glaringly obvious bias from the Western corporate media and right-wing politicians, branding pro-Palestine protest demonstrations as antisemitic on multiple occasions.

    What do the figures really say?

    During the reporting period, CST noted that 1,026 (52%) of the antisemitic incidents referenced or were related to Israel, Palestine and the situation in the Middle East. Of these, 836 had ‘anti-Zionist political motivation’ and the terms ‘Zionist’ or ‘Zionism’ were used in 208 incidents. In which case, this article will be included in the next figures.

    This number is an increase of 547% from the first six months of 2023 – which was before 7 October and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Who would have guessed that when you start carpet bombing an entire country, you might face a bit of criticism?

    The CST report also stated:

    In at least 210 instances, the phrase “Free Palestine” was employed, either in speech or writing. CST does not regard this in itself as an antisemitic slogan but, in each of these cases, it was targeted at Jewish people or institutions – who had not solicited discussion about the Middle East – simply for being Jewish, or comprised part of a larger tirade that did include blatantly anti-Jewish hate.

    The report did not specify which institutions or people were targeted. However, it does mention ‘members of parliament’ and ‘public figures’. The important question has to be, whether people targeted these MP’s for being Jewish or for their support of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. If the latter is true, then we also know it’s true that people have also targeted plenty of non-Jewish MP’s for their unwavering support of Israel.

    Evidently, the ADL’s latest data is another instance where a pro-Israel lobby organisation is seeking to suppress Palestinian voices. The BBC’s reporting on this amounts to little more than shameless propaganda for Israel, and those in the US trying to shut down opposition to its horrific ongoing genocide.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  •  

    CNN‘s Jake Tapper took a baseless accusation made on X and elevated it to a national story, smearing Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib as antisemitic.

    Detroit Metro Times: Tlaib slams Nessel for targeting pro-Palestinian students at U-M: ‘A dangerous precedent’

    Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Detroit Metro Times, 9/13/24) described the indicted protesters as “people that just want to save lives, no matter their faith or ethnicity.” 

    In an interview with the Detroit Metro Times (9/13/24), Tlaib accused Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel of “biases” in her prosecution of pro-Palestinian protesters and not other protesters:

    “We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest,” Tlaib says. “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

    Tlaib went on to blame the influence of academic officials for the prosecutions: “I think people at the University of Michigan put pressure on her to do this, and she fell for it.”

    It’s a pretty straightforward charge that drew no particular notice for many days. A week later, Nessel—who is Jewish—posted on X (9/20/24): “Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as attorney general. It’s antisemitic and wrong.”

    ‘Quite an accusation’

    CNN: Michigan AG Nessel Accuses Rep. Tlaib of Antisemitic Remark After Tlaib Suggested Protester Charges Were Biased

    Referring to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s prosecution of pro-Palestine protesters, Jake Tapper (CNN, 9/22/24) asserted that “Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that…she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not.”

    Nessel’s accusation is clearly groundless, as anyone reading Tlaib’s actual quote can see. But CNN‘s Jake Tapper (9/22/24), interviewing Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, presented the false accusation as fact, and used that newly invented fact to try to force Whitmer to condemn Tlaib for something she didn’t do.

    Tapper quoted only one sentence from the Metro Times report—the one beginning “it seems the attorney general decided…”—followed by Nessel’s accusation. Tapper then asked Whitmer: “Do you think that Tlaib’s suggestion that Nessel’s office is biased was antisemitic?”

    When Whitmer tried to avoid the bait, Tapper pressed on:

    Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law, and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not. That’s quite an accusation. Do you think it’s true?

    Contrary to Tapper’s assumption, some of the protesters charged by Nessel are, in fact, Jewish (CAIR, 9/23/24).

    Tapper’s remarkable misrepresentation had ripple effects in corporate media, as other journalists (and their editors) repeated the smear without bothering to do any factchecking. Jewish Insider‘s Josh Kraushaar (9/22/24) reported on Tapper’s interview and mischaracterized Tlaib’s Metro Times interview as having “claimed that Nessel is only charging the protesters because she’s Jewish.” (The article later changed the word “claimed” to “suggested,” as if that were more accurate.)

    CNN‘s Dana Bash (9/23/24) brought Tapper’s interview up on air the next day, comparing Whitmer’s response to Sen. Tom Cotton refusing to condemn Donald Trump’s declaration that if he loses, “it’s the fault of the Jews.” CNN political director David Chalian responded, perpetuating the smear as fact: “It’s not very hard to say that Rashida Tlaib saying that Dana Nessel is pursuing charges because she’s Jewish is an antisemitic thing to say.”

    ‘Never explicitly said’

    USA Today: Tlaib makes antisemitic comments again. Whitmer's response isn't enough.

    USA Today‘s Ingrid Jacques (9/24/24) charged Tlaib with antisemtism even after Metro Times (9/23/24) confirmed that Tlaib never referred to Nessel’s ethnicity.

    The Metro Times published a factcheck (9/23/24) the day after Tapper’s interview, calling the characterization “spurious,” and clarified that “Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel’s religion or Judaism.” It noted that “Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims.”

    But even after that piece should have put the issue to rest, USA Today published a column by Ingrid Jacques (9/24/24) that repeated the falsehood in its very headline: “Tlaib Makes Antisemitic Comments Again.”

    Tapper’s initial segment warranted an on-air correction and apology. Instead, he doubled down, bringing on to discuss the matter the next day (9/23/24) the very person who initially smeared Tlaib. Only after giving Nessel a platform to repeat her baseless charge—”Clearly, she’s referencing my religion as to why she thinks I can’t be fair,” Nessel said—did Tapper tell viewers that he “misspoke” in the previous day’s segment, explaining, “I was trying to characterize [Nessel’s] views of Tlaib’s comments.”

    He then asked Nessel:

    What do you make of those today, noting that Congresswoman Tlaib never explicitly said that your bias was because of your religion, and so it’s unfair for you to make that allegation?

    “Explicitly”? Tlaib never said it, period, which is what any responsible journalist would point out.


    ACTION ALERT: Messages to CNN can be sent here. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.

    You can also sign a petition calling on CNN to retract its false report.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • During a campaign event on Thursday in Washington D.C., former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee for 2024, said he would partially blame Jewish voters if he loses the election to Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. “[I]f I don’t win this election…[then] the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” Trump said in his speech, which took place at an event…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • During a speech on Thursday at the Economic Club of New York, former President Donald Trump suggested that he would enlist multi-billionaire Elon Musk to work in his administration and help him make cuts to government spending. Musk, who owns Tesla, X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX, apparently made the suggestion to Trump himself, the Republican nominee for president explained.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

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    NYT: A Bookshop Cancels an Event Over a Rabbi’s Zionism, Prompting Outrage

    The New York Times (8/21/24), knowing that “outrage” sells, saves for the last paragraph the information that a supposedly canceled author turned down an offer to reschedule his talk in the same bookstore.

    Author and journalist Joshua Leifer is the latest scribe to be—allegedly—canceled. A talk for his new book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, at a Brooklyn bookstore was canceled when a member of the store’s staff objected to Leifer being joined by a liberal rabbi who was also a Zionist, although still critical of Israel’s right-wing government (New York Times, 8/21/24).

    Leifer’s book is doing well as a result of the saga (Forward, 8/27/24). Meanwhile, the bookstore worker wasn’t so lucky, when the venue’s owner said “he would try to reschedule the event” and said “that the employee” responsible for canceling the event “‘is going to be terminated today’” (New York Jewish Week, 8/21/24).

    It’s worth dissecting the affair and its impact to truly assess who can gain popular sympathy in the name of “free speech,” and who cannot, and how exactly Leifer has portrayed what happened.

    ‘One-state maximalism’

    Atlantic: My Demoralizing but Not Surprising Cancellation

    To Joshua Leifer (Atlantic, 8/27/24), opposition to platforming Zionists is “straightforwardly antisemitic.”

    Leifer is a journalist who has produced nuanced coverage of Israel and Jewish politics for Jewish Currents, the New York Review of Books and other outlets. Reflecting on the bookstore affair, Leifer said in the Atlantic (8/27/24) that Jewish writers like him are in a bind because of the intransigence of the left, saying “Jews who are committed to the flourishing of Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora, and who are also outraged by Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, feel like we have little room to maneuver.”

    He added:

    My experience last week was so demoralizing in part because such episodes make moving the mainstream Jewish community much harder. Every time a left-wing activist insists that the only way to truly participate in the fight for peace and justice is to support the dissolution of Israel, it reinforces the zero-sum (and morally repulsive) idea that opposing the status quo requires Israel’s destruction. Rhetorical extremism and dogmatism make it easier for right-wing Israel supporters to dismiss what should be legitimate demands—for instance, conditions on US military aid—as beyond the pale.

    The new left-wing norm that insists on one-state maximalism is not only a moral mistake. It is also a strategic one. If there is one thing that the past year of cease-fire activism has illustrated, it is that changing US policy on Israel requires a broad coalition. That big tent must have room for those who believe in Jewish self-determination and are committed to Israel’s existence, even as they work to end its domination over Palestinians.

    No ‘destruction’ required

    For me, personally, canceling Leifer’s talk was a bad move. No one would have been forced to listen or attend, and if someone wanted to challenge the inclusion of a moderate Zionist at the event, they could have done so in the question and answer session. Speech should usually be met with more speech.

    But Leifer is somewhat disingenuous about a “zero-sum” game that forces people into the “morally repulsive” concept that “requires Israel’s destruction.” Many anti-Zionists and non-Zionists believe that the concept of one state, “from the river to the sea,” means a democratic state that treats all its people—Arab, Jew and otherwise—equally. Leifer’s counterposing being “committed to Israel’s existence” with “one-state maximalism” suggests that the Israel whose “existence” he is committed to is one in which one ethnic group is guaranteed supremacy over others. People who are committed to the preservation of Israel as an ethnostate are probably going to have a hard time being in a “big tent” with those who “work to end its domination over Palestinians.”

    It is understandable, given the context, that some people might object to a Zionist speaker on a panel while a genocide is being carried out in Zionism’s name. Would the Atlantic have reserved editorial space if an avowed Ba’athist was booted from a panel on Syria?

    And Leifer is hardly being censored, and he has much more than a “little room to maneuver.” He has access to a major publisher and the pages of notable periodicals, and is pursuing a PhD at Yale University. His book sales are doing fine, and the event’s cancellation has, if anything, helped his reputation. (It got him a commission at the Atlantic, after all.)

    Free speech protects everyone

    New Republic: The Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism

    Osita Nwanevu (New Republic, 7/6/20) writes in defense of “freedom of association, the under-heralded right of individuals to unite for a common purpose or in alignment with a particular set of values.”

    Meanwhile, a bookstore worker who expressed a questionable opinion got fired. Free speech debates tend to value the importance and rights to a platform of the saintly media class—the working class, however, doesn’t get the same attention, despite the fact that “free speech” is meant to protect everyone, not just those who write and talk for a living.

    And expressing the opinion that a bookstore should not be promoting Zionism is just as much a matter of free speech as advocating Zionism itself. The First Amendment doesn’t stop publications, university lecture committees, cable television networks and, yes,  bookstores from curating the views and speech they want to platform. As FAIR has quoted Osita Nwanevu at the New Republic (7/6/20) before:

    Like free speech, freedom of association has been enshrined in liberal democratic jurisprudence here and across the world; liberal theorists from John Stuart Mill to John Rawls have declared it one of the essential human liberties. Yet associative freedom is often entirely absent from popular discourse about liberalism and our political debates, perhaps because liberals have come to take it entirely for granted.

    Whose speech is punished?

    Science: Prominent journal editor fired for endorsing satirical article about Israel-Hamas conflict

    eLife‘s Michael Eisen’s approval of an Onion headline (“Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas”) was deemed to be “detrimental to the cohesion of the community we are trying to build” (Science, 10/23/23).

    Worse is what Leifer leaves out. While his event should not have been canceled, he fails to put this in the context of many other writers who have suffered more egregious cancellation because they exercised free speech in defense of Palestinians. Those writers include Masha Gessen (FAIR.org, 12/15/23), Viet Thanh Nguyen (NPR, 10/24/23) and Jazmine Hughes (Vanity Fair, 11/15/23).

    New York University has “changed its guidelines around hate speech and harassment to include the criticism of Zionism as a discriminatory act” (Middle East Eye, 8/27/24). Artforum fired its top editor, David Velasco, for signing a letter in defense of Palestinian rights (New York Times, 10/26/23). Dozens of Google workers were “fired or placed on administrative leave…for protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel’s government” (CNN, 5/1/24). Michael Eisen lost his job as editor of the science journal eLife (Science, 10/23/23) because he praised an Onion article (10/13/23).

    Leifer’s Atlantic piece erroneously gives the impression that since the assault on Gaza began last October, it has been the pro-Palestinian left that has enforced speech norms. A question for such an acclaimed journalist is: Why would he omit such crucial context?

    ‘Litmus test’

    Atlantic: The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending

    The lead example of “antisemitism on…the left” offered by the Atlantic (3/4/24) was a high school protest of the bombing of Gaza at which “from the river to the sea” was reportedly chanted.

    Leifer has allowed the Atlantic to spin the narrative that it is the left putting the squeeze on discourse, when around the country, at universities and major publications, it’s pro-Palestinian views that are being attacked by people in power. The magazine’s Michael Powell (4/22/24) referred to the fervor of anti-genocide activists as “oppressive.” Theo Baker, son of New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, claimed in the Atlantic (3/26/24) that his prestigious Stanford University was overrun with left-wing “unreason” when he came face to face with students who criticized Israel.

    Franklin Foer used the outlet (3/4/24) to assert that in the United States, both the left and right are squeezing Jews out of social life. Leifer is now the latest recruit in the Atlantic’s movement to frame all Jews as victims of the growing outcry against Israel’s genocide, even when that outcry includes a great many Jews.

    Leifer’s piece adds to the warped portrait painted by outlets like the New York Times, which published an  op-ed (5/27/24) by James Kirchick, of the conservative Jewish magazine Tablet, that asserted that “a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel.” A great many canceled pro-Palestine voices would have something to add to that, but they know they can barely get a word in edgewise in most corporate media—unlike Kirchick, Foer or Leifer.

    Leifer’s event should not have been canceled, and I would have been annoyed if I were in his position, but he continues to have literary success and is smartly cashing in on his notoriety. He should not, however, have lent his voice to such a lopsided narrative about free speech.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.