I attended the funeral of a man named Ahmed just a few days after I
had arrived in Palestine. It took place in the El Ain refugee camp on
the outskirts of Nablus. The day before, Ahmed had been praying in the
camp mosque, and when he emerged from the mosque, Israeli soldiers
shouted at him to stop where he was. But Ahmed, who was mentally
handicapped, did not understand, and, becoming confused, he did not
comply. The soldiers responded by shooting him four times, once in the
chest and three times in the stomach.
Two months later, on one of my last days in Palestine, I watched as
an Israeli sniper team commandeered the house of a Palestinian family in
Hebron. The soldiers climbed onto the roof of the house, and waited,
their trigger fingers itchy, for over an hour, until they found a
suitable target. Two Palestinian teens were milling around on the roof
of a building about two hundred meters away. The teens were not doing
anything of note, but after twenty minutes one of them picked up a stone
and languidly threw it off the building. There were clashes nearby at
the time. The team immediately went into action and cut him down,
shooting him in the leg. The soldiers celebrated, clapping each other on
the shoulder, even mocking their hapless victim.
Both of these incidents constituted heinous crimes, and I felt the
world deserved to know about what was occurring in the Occupied
Territories. And so I wrote and published articles about these and many
other crimes that the Israeli authorities have committed and continue to
commit. Do my actions make me an anti-Semite? According to the US State
Department definition of anti-Semitism, they do.
Post-Election Incidents in the US
In the United States the number of incidents of harassment and
intimidation has spiked sharply in the weeks following the election
victory of Donald Trump. Spurred on by the hateful and divisive rhetoric
of his campaign, many Americans have been emboldened to act on their
racist, misogynistic and xenophobic sentiments. According to data
supplied by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 867 such incidents were
reported in the ten days following the election.
[1]
While the large majority of these incidents were not serious enough
to merit criminal investigation, they are nevertheless important to
study, as their number is a barometer of the country’s attitudes.
No group seems to be immune to the Trump-fueled venom. While the
plurality of the incidents has been directed at immigrants (32%), other
groups have not emerged unscathed. Blacks (22%), Jews (12%), members of
the LGBTQ community (11%), and Muslims (6%) have also been targeted.
The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act
On Thursday, December 1, the US Senate decided to act–but only to
protect Jewish targets of hatred–by passing the so-called Anti-Semitism
Awareness Act. Proposed by Senators Robert Casey and Tim Scott, both of
whom have received substantial funding from pro-Israel lobby groups,
[2] the legislation tackles anti-Semitism on university campuses. A statement on Casey’s website reads:
“It is incredibly important that we work together to
stamp out anti-Semitism and other forms of religious discrimination
across our country.”[3]
The senators claim that the Department of Education has been hampered
in its efforts to combat anti-Semitism partly because it is lacking an
understanding of what precisely constitutes anti-Semitism. The
legislation attempts to rectify this problem by codifying the so-called
State Department definition.
The State Department Definition of Anti-Semitism
On its website the State Department states that:
“Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may
be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical
manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish
individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions
and religious facilities.”[4]
This definition is relatively standard and uncontroversial. However,
the State Department ventures into dangerous territory by adding several
paragraphs dealing with examples of anti-Semitism in relation to the
state of Israel. It includes the so-called 3 D’s – demonizing Israel,
double standards applied to Israel, and delegitimizing Israel.
The definition is similar to one that was adopted by the European
Union Monitoring Centre (EMUC) following intensive Israeli lobbying
efforts. It was, however, heavily criticized and subsequently discarded
by the EMUC in 2013.
Conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of the State of Israel, is
extremely problematic. Many nations, including the United States and
Israel, sometimes engage in criminal or immoral behavior and need to be
censured for it. The ability to criticize a state’s actions is a crucial
and necessary element of any thriving democracy. In this country it is
also protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Perhaps realizing the outrageousness of its definition, the State
Department includes, seemingly as an after-thought, a short sentence at
the very bottom of the page.
“However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”
These considerations echo the sentiments of
New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, who wrote in 2002 that “criticizing Israel is
not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for
opprobrium and international sanction — out of all proportion to any
other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is
dishonest.”
[5]
Scholar Noam Chomsky disagrees with this assessment. Responding to a
question about linking anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, he said that the
former “is not a form of anti-Semitism. It’s simply criticism of the
criminal actions of a state, period.”
[6]
Anti-Semitism is clearly still a major problem in the United States
and beyond. One can easily imagine that a true anti-Semite might find
criticism of Israel to be a more socially acceptable outlet for his
anti-Jewish feelings, but it is an enormous leap in logic to conclude
the converse, that a critic of Israel must be an anti-Semite. But that
is what the codification of the State Department definition of
anti-Semitism does. The legislation seeks to punish those who seek to
call Israel to account for its behavior on the assumption that it is a
manifestation of anti-Semitism, when that can be far from being the
case.
Why Now?
The reasons for the timing of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act are
clear. Opinion polls show that while most Americans still tend to
sympathize much more with Israel than they do the Palestinians, the gap
has become significantly smaller in recent times, especially after the
2014 Israeli assault on Gaza, in which over 2,000 Palestinians, most of
whom were civilians, including women and children, lost their lives.
[7]
Together with the recent successes of the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) movement on university campuses and beyond, the trend
has pro-Israeli forces extremely worried, especially about the hearts
and minds of young Americans, who, according to the polls, exhibit
greater pro-Palestinian tendencies. While Israel has taken the battle
against BDS to state legislatures, where at least twenty-two states have
passed or considered anti-BDS laws,
[8] the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is an offensive specifically aimed at the younger generation.
The Effects of the Bill
The legislation was passed unanimously by the Senate, and it is
unclear what will happen if it is approved by the House of
Representatives and signed into law by the president.
Palestine Legal, an organization devoted to protecting the rights of
those who speak out on Palestinian issues in the US, states that
criticism of Israel on campuses is protected under the First Amendment,
and that the Department of Education has ruled in at least three
separate cases to that effect.
[9]
But the law is a powerful deterrent, regardless of how effectively it
can be used to prosecute offenders. What the lobby wants most is to
stifle debate about Israel. The hope is that the fear of legal
repercussions will prevent legitimate critics of Israel from raising
their voices.
The election of Donald Trump has had many negative consequences for
supporters of the Palestinian cause. In Palestine it has raised fears
that Israeli authorities will agitate for the annexation of some parts
of the West Bank, which would sound the death knell of a Palestinian
state.
[10]
In the US the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
similarly has withdrawn its support for a Palestinian state, dropping
language dealing with the two-state solution from its website.
[11]
Anti-BDS laws are being introduced in state legislatures, and now the
Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is threatening to silence all criticism of
Israel.
These are dangerous times on many fronts for all those who seek a
fair solution for the Palestinians, and it is important that the battle
for justice continue to be fought as vigilantly as ever in the face of
these obstacles.
Notes.
[1] https://www.splcenter.org/20161129/ten-days-after-harassment-and-intimidation-aftermath-election
[2] http://maplight.org/us-congress/interest/J5100/view/all
[3]
https://www.casey.senate.gov/newsroom/releases/with-attacks-on-the-rise-sens-casey-and-scott-introduce-bipartisan-anti-semitism-awareness-act
[4] http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/fs/2010/122352.htm
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/opinion/campus-hypocrisy.html
[6] https://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/27/noam_chomsky_at_united_nations_it
[7] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/23/5-facts-about-how-americans-view-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/
[8] http://mondoweiss.net/2016/11/bullard-opposed-measure/
[9]
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/548748b1e4b083fc03ebf70e/t/56e6ff0cf85082699ae245b1/1457979151629/FAQ+onDefinition+of+Anti-Semitism-3-9-15+newlogo.pdf
[10] http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-victory-spurs-israeli-talk-of-west-bank-annexation-1481106608
[11] https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/will-trump-help-israel-annex-west-bank
