On October 1 Barbra Streisand (who has almost 800,000 Twitter followers) tweeted, “When does anti-Zionism bleed into broad anti-Semitism?” and linked to an op-ed from the pro-Israel Jewish Journal headlined, “Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones.”
The opinion piece was written by Kenneth Marcus. He’s the founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights, a pro-Israel group that seemingly spends most of its time suing universities over allegations of antisemitism. Marcus was the assistant secretary for civil rights under Donald Trump, where he sought to expand the definition of antisemitism to include criticism of Israel. He believes that the BDS movement is an attempt to “resist the normalization of the Jewish people.”
The story here is that a student organization at University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law (Law Students for Justice in Palestine) wrote a bylaw in support of the BDS movement and Palestinian liberation. They called on dozens of campus groups to adopt it and nine did. Part of the bylaw commits organizations to not inviting speakers that express Zionist views or hosting events “in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.”
The Marcus op-ed claims that the move establishes “Jewish free zones.” He pushes the same narrative that he’s been promoting for years: anti-Zionism is antisemitism and criticizing an apartheid state is antisemitic. Some Israel supporters make some caveats in this area, but not Marcus.
“Anti-Zionism is flatly antisemitic,” he declares “Using ‘Zionist’ as a euphemism for Jew is nothing more than a confidence trick. Like other forms of Judeophobia, it is an ideology of hate, treating Israel as the ‘collective Jew’ and smearing the Jewish state with defamations similar to those used for centuries to vilify individual Jews.”
“This ideology establishes a conspiratorial worldview, sometimes including replacement theory, which has occasionally erupted in violence, including mass-shooting, in recent months,” he continues. “Moreover, Zionism is an integral aspect of the identity of many Jews. Its derogation is analogous, in this way, to other forms of hate and bigotry.”
Newsweek ran an op-ed by Toronto-based writer Laura Rosen Cohen that also uses the term “Jew Free Zones” in the headline and claims that they are the “new progressive trend.” She believes that the move is antisemitic and warns readers of impending “civilizational decline” unless things change. She also finds a way to partially blame Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) who was recently attacked for saying true progressives don’t support apartheid.
“Is it any surprise that law students think it’s ok to bar Jewish speakers when a member of Congress feels comfortable doing the same thing for the progressive movement writ large?,” writes Cohen. “This isn’t something progressives are ashamed of, but something they are proud of. Which is why society more broadly must firmly reject this discrimination when it comes for Jews.”
On August 25 School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky sent out an email to student leaders saying that the opposition to Zionist speakers and events could be seen as antisemitism by members of the Jewish community and pointing out that, as a supporter of Israel, he would be barred from speaking. However, even he says the “Jew free zones” allegation is ridiculous.
“To state it plainly: There is no ‘Jewish-Free Zone’ at Berkeley Law or on the UC-Berkeley campus,” he explains at Daily Beast. “The Law School’s rules are clear that no speaker can be excluded for being Jewish or for holding particular views. I know of no instance where this has been violated.”
Chemerinsky also takes aim at the media coverage, which has promoted the lie. “Ironically, most students and faculty in the Law School were unaware of this controversy or paid little attention to it,” he explains. “After the first couple of weeks of the semester, it was virtually never mentioned. But some media outlets have brought it worldwide attention.”
“I am convinced it is because they have a narrative they want to tell about higher education generally—and Berkeley, in particular—being antisemitic. They wanted to use this incident to fit their narrative, even though the facts simply don’t support the story they want to tell.”
The facts certainly haven’t stopped people from continuing to tell the story. On October 3 a number of pro-Israel groups put out a statement condemning the move and calling on the school to sanction the nine organizations if they refused to rescind the bylaw. You can probably guess most of the groups involved here. AIPAC, AJC, DMFI, CUFI, JNF, Simon Wiesenthal Center, etc etc.
“Jewish faith and identity for millennia have been anchored by the desire to restore sovereignty in our indigenous homeland, the core idea of Zionism,” reads the statement. “Like observing Shabbat and kosher dietary laws, Zionism is vital to the consciousness of many, if not most, Jews.”
Anti-Zionists Jews are never factored into these narratives of course. They’re “flatly antisemitic” in Marcus’s words. They somehow discriminate against themselves and need not be taken seriously.
Halper Firing
Last week we wrote about Katie Halper, who was first censored by The Hill TV and then lost her reoccurring gig on its morning broadcast, “Rising”, for submitting a commentary defending Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s recent comments and explaining how Israel is an apartheid state.
While anti-Palestine censorship clearly exists throughout mainstream media, the Halper situation does point to some developing fault lines. We’ve seen occasional criticisms of Israel eek through in recent years and even the New York Times has begun to cover the country’s victims in more depth. So it was refreshing to see the Daily Beast give Halper the opportunity to tell her story.
“In the last year, several Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces. The prominent Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is perhaps the best-known example, which the Israeli government initially tried to cover up,” writes Halper. “But she’s not the only one. Ghufran Harun Warasneh was shot on her way to work and Yousef Abu Hussein was killed in an airstrike last year in his Gaza home.”
“The stories of these murdered journalists, and the future stories they did not live to report on, still need to be told,” she continues. “Censorship and cancellation and firings have a chilling effect—that’s their purpose. We can find our own purpose in fighting back.”
At Jacobin Branko Marcetic makes a very interesting observation. Last year Hill was purchased by the Nexstar Media Group for $130 million. Last month Psagot Value Holdings Ltd., an investment firm based in Tel Aviv, bought over $1 million worth of shares at Nexstar.
“If Nexstar is being driven by a pro-Israel slant that it enforces in its programming, it’s a serious concern,” writes Marcetic. “After buying Tribune Media in 2019, Nexstar became the largest local broadcast TV owner in the country, outstripping the explicitly right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group. According to an August 2022 filing with the SEC, the company now reaches nearly 40 percent of all US television households, and it owns, operates, and provides services to 199 television stations and one AM radio station across Washington, DC, and thirty-nine states. In the filing, the company notes the Supreme Court’s April 2021 striking down of FCC limits on local media ownership.”
Odds & Ends
? At the site Mitchell Plitnick writes about some recent examples of Israel supporters working to shut down dissent, highlighting the cases of Booking.com, Katie Halper, and Berkeley Law: “Looking at each of these incidents and then putting them together, it becomes evident that the growing awareness of the apartheid nature of the Israeli regime is leading the Israeli propaganda machine to double down on draconian tactics that endanger the principle of free speech and even public safety. They’re doing it because the facts, which have never been on their side, are becoming more widely understood, so they have no other tactics to turn to.”
? The New York Times dismissed Palestinian photographer Hosam Salem, who has been freelancing from Gaza for the last four years. Here he is explaining what happened:
After years of covering the Gaza Strip as a freelance photojournalist for the New York Times, I was informed via an abrupt phone call from the US outlet that they will no longer work with me in the future.
As I understood later, the decision was made based on a report prepared by a Dutch editor – who obtained Israeli citizenship two years ago – for a website called Honest Reporting.
The article, which the New York Times had based its decision for dismissing me, gives examples of posts I wrote on my social media accounts, namely Facebook, where I had expressed support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation…
My aforementioned posts also spoke of the resilience of my people and those who were killed by the Israeli army – my cousin included – which Honest Reporting described as “Palestinian terrorists”
Nieman Lab’s Joshua Fenton on Twitter: “I’m so old I remember the top NYT editor saying it was okay for their Jerusalem bureau chief’s son to enlist in the IDF — because a few complaining readers shouldn’t ‘be allowed to deny the rest of our audience the highest quality of reporting.'”
? GOP incumbent Kimberly Yee is attacking her Democratic challenger, state Senator Martin Quezada, for his alleged connections to the BDS movement. At one point during a recent debate, amid touting her longtime support for Israel, Yee criticized Quezada for using a ‘Free Palestine’ hashtag on Twitter. “It’s very clear that you do not support the people of Israel and that is antisemitic, it’s discriminatory and it’s wrong,” she told Quezada.
✉️ Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Raimondo claiming that the Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is anti-Israel.
?? There was a congressional hearing on the on the humanitarian impacts of sanctions. Concerns about this issue seem to slowly growing among lawmakers in recent years. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) made some great points.
?️ Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) will lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Middle East, North Africa and Global Counterterrorism subcommittee. He’s replacing Ted Deutch who is becoming of head of the pro-Israel American Jewish Committee.
? CAIR legal research intern Hamzah Khan writes about anti-BDS laws: “Boycotts have long been instrumental to political movements from the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. to the anti-apartheid boycotts of South Africa. The fact that so many U.S. states have decided to fall on the side of apartheid is a dystopian foreshadowing of the ease with which fundamental rights can be taken away.”
Stay safe out there,
Michael
