President Trump signed yesterday an Executive Order empowering the federal government to crack down on campus organizing for Palestinian rights under the guise of combating antisemitism.
“This is our message to universities: If you want to accept the tremendous amount of federal dollars that you get every year, you must reject antisemitism,” Trump stated during a White House Hanukkah reception which doubled as a signing ceremony.
But Trump’s Executive Order has nothing to do with combating the scourge of antisemitism, the revival of which he is greatly responsible for by stoking white supremacy. Instead, it is primarily designed to pressure universities to disallow students to boycott for Palestinian rights.
This aim, however, is not self-evident in the text of the Executive Order, which omits any reference to Israel, Palestinians, or BDS. The true intent of Trump’s action is obfuscated in a brief mention that government agencies “shall consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and its associated contemporary examples of antisemitism in determining whether Jewish people have had their civil rights violated under Title VI of Civil Rights Act.
To be clear, the federal government should ensure that the civil rights of all religious minorities are upheld. And, also to be clear, what the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism describes, along with many of its contemporary examples, are unambiguously and unimpeachably anti-Jewish bigotry.
However, some of the IHRA’s examples of antisemitism touching upon criticism of Israel are problematic. These include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
These vague and subjective examples are designed to be flexible enough to cover large swaths of First Amendment-protected free speech. For example, campus Zionist groups could argue that Jewish students’ civil rights are being violated if a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter advocates for a single, democratic state in which indigenous Palestinians would have equal rights to Jewish Israelis; hosts an academic panel deconstructing Israel’s foundational racist policies and laws; or organizes a campus boycott of Israeli goods to protest Israeli governmental policies without simultaneously and with equal vigor organizing boycotts against every other single country in the world with a parliament.
While the text of the Executive Order requires this background knowledge to understand its real impact, the Trump administration’s dubiously entitled “fact sheet” accompanying the order necessitates no such digging.
Immediately under a bullet point noting “horrific acts of violence against Jewish Americans and synagogues in the United States,” the Trump administration oh-so-subtly pivots to a smear campaign against “18 Democrat [sic] Members of Congress [who] cosponsored legislation in support of the anti-Semitic ‘Boycott, Divest, Sanctions’ (BDS) movement,” claiming they “shockingly compared support for Israel to support for Nazi Germany.”
In fact, the resolution in question, H.Res.496, introduced by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), reaffirms in general terms the First Amendment right of people to engage in boycotts and maintains that “Americans of conscience have a proud history of participating in boycotts to advocate for human rights abroad,” including “boycotting Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust.”
These aptly-named bullet points are the quintessence of the Trump administration’s weaponization of antisemitism and its concomitant Islamophobia.
It is worth noting that the president resorted to this Executive Order only because a similar legislative effort has stalled in Congress due to First Amendment concerns. The order mirrors the misleadingly-named Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which is currently languishing in committee and has failed to pass previous congressional sessions.
It is also important to acknowledge that Trump’s Executive Order was not issued on a whim but as the culmination of a deliberate strategy to stifle campus organizing for Palestinian rights. On the campaign trail, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman menacingly pledged that “the Trump administration will ask the Justice Department to investigate coordinated attempts on college campuses to intimidate students who support Israel.” And the FBI has dutifully responded by siccing its agents on students who would threaten the supply of Sabra hummus in cafeterias.
The Trump administration stepped up its attack on students organizing for Palestinian rights by nominating Kenneth Marcus to be the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education. Marcus has spent the better part of his career filing baseless Title VI discrimination claims against student organizers for Palestinian rights, trying to defund Middle East Studies programs demonstrating insufficient fealty to Israel, and advocating for the IHRA antisemitism definition.
Last year, Marcus wrote a letter to the Zionist Organization of America announcing that the Office of Civil Rights was now unilaterally employing the controversial IHRA definition and examples of antisemitism in its investigations. This move was made absent regular interagency coordination or a public comment period.
Trump’s Executive Order provides Marcus with the post-facto regulatory justification he needs to bolster his hasty fiat.
The stage is now set for an even more unprecedented governmental crack down against student organizers for Palestinian rights.
I wonder for how much longer Jewish supremacists and their enablers and supporters will be able to get away with deliberately and unapologetically shitting on non-Jews in geographic Palestine and in countries around the world – and doing so quite loudly and anti-Semitically in the name of all Jews – before the blowback hits.
One thing’s for sure: Because Zionists are truly hateful and immoral people, when the blowback does hit non-Jewish Zionists and many Jewish Zionists won’t hesitate to point their fingers and shout, “That one over there! He’s a Jew!”
And with neither pride nor profit to retain his loyalty, it easy to imagine Donald Trump among those pointing and shouting the loudest.
Pro-Palestinian solidarity groups share one major flaw. They are explicitely pro-Palestinian or even anti-Israel. Which makes them an easy target for pro-Israel repercussions or the accusation of antisemitism. Or they get criminalized by pro-Israel or pro-Jewish laws etc.
But what’s wrong about talking about universal principles? About Human rights (including the right to return and nationality) in general? Or talking about co-existence between different people, a state that should be a state of all of its citizens, that there shouldn’t be a diffence between nationals and citizens land the right to equality? Or educating Americans about the first amendment, the right to free speech and boycott? Humanitarian and international law, etc.?
Nobody needs to even mention Israel. Nazism and South Africa under Apartheid will have just the same effect. What could the pro-Israel groups do against that? Especially if they can only talk about fabricated Jewish exclusive rights?
Just keep the presentation universal. Call the event “Americans against Racism and Fascism”.
Whenever I talk about universal principles Zionists are unable to response. The same happens if I ask them to formulate universal principles that could support their cause.
A much better deed would be to stifle Trump.
For the record:
As made clear in the U.N. Charter, Article 2, paragraph 4, which is binding on all UN members, “Israel” is legally bound to comply with (as restated in UNSC Resolution 242), the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”
As repeatedly affirmed by the UN Security Council (e.g., Resolutions 446, 465 and 476), the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, and in a ruling by the International Court of Justice in 2004, all lands occupied by Israel in June 1967 are illegally and belligerently occupied. Hence, by transferring its population into the occupied territories and creating therein Jewish settlement colonies, Israel is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention (ratified by Israel in 1951) along with subsequent human rights legislation, including, the Rome Statue of the International Court (1998) which defines “the transfer directly or indirectly by the Occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” as a War Crime, indictable by the International Criminal Court. Israel’s occupation is also in violation of the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both binding on all UN member states.
Also: “In its landmark 2004 advisory opinion, ‘Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall In the Occupied Palestinian Territory,’ the International Court of Justice repeatedly affirmed the preambular paragraph of Resolution 242 emphasizing the inadmissibility of territorial conquest as well as a 1970 General Assembly resolution emphasizing that ‘No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.’ The World Court denoted this principle a ‘corollary’ of the U.N. Charter and as such ‘customary international law’ and a ‘customary rule’ binding on all member States of the United Nations. It merits notice that on this crucial point none of the Court’s 15 justices registered any dissent.” (“Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Advisory Opinion (Int’l Ct. of Justice July 9, 2004), 43 IL M 1009 (2004), paras. 74, 87,117, Dr. Norman Finkelstein in “Important notes to be included in analysis of Resolution 242,” 28 December 2006, CounterPunch.org)
BTW, lest there be any doubt, in gross violation of the UN Charter, (Article 2, paragraph 4) and its commitments to Washington’s Johnson administration, Israel started the 1967 war:
At 7:45 AM on 5 June 1967, just four days after the conclusion of fruitful discussions in Cairo between Egyptian President Nasser and U.S. President Johnson’s special advisor, Robert Anderson, to end the confrontation that had developed between Israel and Egypt, Israel launched a land and air attack against Egypt and thereby, Jordan and Syria, each of whom shared a mutual defense pact with Egypt.
Israel’s invasion of Egypt was in violation of a pledge Prime Minister Levi Eshkol had cabled U.S. President Lyndon Johnson on May 30th. As agreed to by his cabinet during a meeting on May 28th, Eshkol acceded to Johnson’s request and agreed to hold back on attacking Egypt until June 11th – to give Washington sufficient time to seek a diplomatic solution.
To quote President Johnson: “As my advisers and I interpreted it, [the content of Eshkol’s May 30th cable]… meant that we had about two weeks to make diplomacy succeed before Israel took independent military action. This judgment was strengthened by information from other diplomatic sources.”
On June 2nd, Walt Rostow, Johnson’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, met with “a high ranking Israeli diplomat.” Rostow advised the president in a memo that the diplomat told him Israel “had made a commitment to hold steady for about two weeks. He would measure that from the Cabinet meeting last Sunday [May 28.] Therefore, he was talking about things that might happen in the week after next; that is, the week beginning Sunday, June 11 – although he indicated that there was nothing ironclad about the time period being exactly two weeks.” (Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963-1969, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 294)
It is important to note that the “high-ranking Israeli diplomat” did not indicate or even hint to Rostow that there was a possibility Israel might attack Egypt, as it did, just three days after their meeting.