In February, Dr. Steve Feldman, a Jewish dermatologist in North Carolina, gave a lecture to Little Rock medical students over Zoom. Feldman was supposed to be compensated for the talk, but when he filled out the paperwork there was a small box he was required to check in order to receive payment.
Feldman had to sign a loyalty oath, promising that he wouldn’t boycott the state of Israel per Arkansas’s anti-BDS law. He refused and has never received his money. I caught up with Feldman and talked about the disturbing debacle.
What was your first reaction when you learned you weren’t receiving the money? Did you anticipate that happening after you saw the oath question on the form?
When I saw the oath question, I was a bit tickled, thinking that this was from one of those anti-First Amendment, anti-BDS laws that I had read about. When they told me I wouldn’t receive the money, I thought this might be an opportunity to make more people aware of how entire villages of Christian and Muslim Palestinian families were expelled and were made refugees from their homes in the founding of Israel.
In the Arkansas Times story it mentions that you’ve seen the way Palestinians suffer in the region. Can you expand on your personal experiences with that?
In Hebrew School, I was taught that we Jews begged Palestinian families to stay but that they fled to facilitate the killing of Jews. I believed it, because it was a story consistent with our Jewish moral values. When I learned that Israel was created by expelling hundreds of thousand peaceful Palestinian men, women, and children from their homes, it changed the way I viewed Israeli violence. It looks like apartheid to me. I’ve had many opportunities to visit my wife’s and my family in different parts of Israel. I had the opportunity to visit the West Bank and meet incredibly hospitable Palestinian people. My Jewish moral upbringing teaches me that it is wrong to treat non-Jewish Palestinian families any differently than we would want Jewish Israel families to be treated.
What are your thoughts on anti-BDS laws like this one?
I think the law is great, as having laws like this that restrict American’s peaceful speech will almost surely backfire and make more people aware that supporting Israel’s horrible mistreatment of Christian and Muslim Palestinian families goes against every American’s moral beliefs.
You’re Jewish and another thing you told the AT is that your religious and moral views prevented you from signing the pledge. The BDS movement is often framed by pro-Israel lawmakers as antisemitic. Can you talk about what you meant by your comment and what you think of this narrative from pro-Israel lawmakers?
I think people are generally good, including lawmakers who support Israel’s violence toward Palestinian families. Those lawmakers surely believe they stand on the side of peace and justice. I am optimistic that when those lawmakers see how Israel was created and recognize the humanity of Palestinian parents and children, those lawmakers will support peace, justice, and equality for all the people in the Holy Land, just as they would for people of different skin color, gender, and religion here in the United States.
Now that your story has gained media attention, what do you hope comes out of this?
I don’t have unrealistic hopes. I just hope and expect that Israel will invite Palestinian refugee families to return, to rebuild their homes and villages together, and to live together in peace, just as they used to do.
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Biden’s Antisemitism Plan
This week President Biden previewed his administration’s national strategy to combat antisemitism.
“This strategy reflects input from over 1,000 Jewish community members and other stakeholders, including Jews from diverse backgrounds and all denominations. It also includes members of Congress, businesses and civil society at the state and local officials and so many more,” Biden told a crowd of Jewish leaders at a White House event.
As Gabby Deutch and Marc Rod report in Jewish Insider, Biden is facing pressure from both sides when it comes to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) controversial working definition of antisemitism:
An individual with knowledge of the process said that major mainstream Jewish groups have been advocating for the IHRA definition’s inclusion in the White House strategy. Progressive groups have been urging that it be left out of the strategy — but said they would accept its inclusion if other alternative definitions of antisemitism that have been proposed by academics and activists on the left were mentioned. The source said it remains unclear what the final draft might entail, but that the White House has considered excluding IHRA entirely.
The individual said that the White House has been consulting with a range of both mainstream and progressive Jewish groups on how they would react to the inclusion or exclusion of the IHRA definition. They also said that Jewish groups have emphasized to the White House that they would accept a delay in the strategy’s release, if needed, to work through such issues.
We’ve covered the IHRA definition a lot in this newsletter. It’s vague enough to be wielded against Palestine activists and even contains “contemporary examples” of antisemitism that include criticisms of Israel. Many of its most ardent supporters admit that it’s simply a tool to stifle anti-Zionist speech of any kind.
“In the US you can attack Israel and not be called an antisemite, which we know is not the case,” Israeli-American Council for Action Chairman Shawn Evenhaim told the Jerusalem Post last year. “If we want to define if this person is an antisemite or not, it is now very simple: we can go to the IHRA definition for antisemitism. It’s been used by many governments across the world and in the US, and now we need to make sure that it becomes part of the law in many states, as many states as possible, so they can use it to enforce the law and to prosecute people that violate it.”
You’ll recall that some pro-Israel voices are losing patience with the Biden administration on this issue. The White House has signaled that it would embrace the same protocol, but so far they haven’t. In fact, they have since announced that they won’t be revisiting the issue until the end of 2023.
Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released a a fact sheet detailing protections for students who are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or of any other religious group. The document did not cite or incorporate the IHRA working definition.
Kenneth Marcus, chairman of the pro-Israel Louis Brandeis Center Chairman and head of the OCR, expressed his disappointment in a Newsweek op-ed at the time. “Imagine you have waited all year for a holiday present that was promised to you. But Christmas and Hannukah come and go, a new year is celebrated, and you get nothing,” he wrote. “Not even an explanation or apology. Another week passes, and you get a card. You tear open the envelope and pull it out. You read the card, and the blood drains from your face. The message is trite. Then it hits you. You look again at the envelope, and you get it. The envelope is the present you have expected. It’s a much more modest version of what you were promised. And then you read that the real present will arrive in a year.”
As Jewish Currents’ Alex Kane points out, Biden probably doesn’t want his antisemitism strategy engulfed by a debate about its definition. If true, this would be something of a win for the activists who have rallied against this definition in recent years. Just a couple years ago Secretary of State Blinken was telling the American Zionist Movement that The White House “enthusiastically embraces” the definition. Maybe they do, but they haven’t committed to it beyond rhetoric.
Odds & Ends
???? The 75th anniversary of the Nakba brought unprecedented coverage from the mainstream media.
???? Israeli and US officials push to have Nakba events stopped.
???????? Trita Parsi: “May 8..(was) the five-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. It is difficult to overstate how disastrous his exit from the agreement— and Joe Biden’s failure to re-enter it — has been for U.S. national security.
From Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapons option and its support for Russia against Ukraine to the loss of U.S. leverage over Iran and credibility with the global community, this decision will go down in history as one of the biggest strategic screw-ups in American history.”
???????? The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced legislation that would create a special envoy for the Abraham Accords.
???? From the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI):
PUMA shareholders are meeting next week to talk profits. Just in time, there’s a new website! ThisIsPUMA.com. PUMA’s old website was missing a lot of information. There was nothing about its complicity in Israeli apartheid, the growing Palestinian-led Boycott PUMA campaign, and the sports teams that have dropped PUMA over its complicity.
PUMA and its shareholders will also be celebrating the company’s 75th anniversary. Meanwhile, Palestinians are marking 75 years of Israeli oppression and dispossession while still reeling from apartheid Israel’s latest bombing campaign targeting besieged Palestinians in Gaza, killing at least 33, including 7 children.
Israel is able to rob Palestinian life, land, and liberty with impunity thanks, in part, to the complicity of companies like PUMA.
???????? In Axios Barak Ravid reports that the Biden administration wants to push for a Saudi-Israeli peace deal in the coming months:
Such a deal could be unpopular among Democrats and might cost Biden a lot of political capital. Biden once vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the kingdom’s human rights record and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence says Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for Khashoggi’s murder — an allegation Saudi Arabia denies.
???? Rep. Betty McCollum on Twitter: “Acknowledging the Nakba (“catastrophe”) that displaced Palestinian families is a first & necessary step towards a future with justice, safety, & freedom for all. Amid ongoing violence, we must ensure that our U.S. tax dollars are not funding human rights violations. #Nakba75.”
???? Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) is reintroducing his Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act, which would require the State Department to produce reports on the state of curriculum in Palestine. This would give congress “the information and tools it needs to finally fully reform” the educational system.
???? New York State assembly member Zohran Mamdani (Queens) and State Senator Jabari Brisport’s (Brooklyn) have introduced legislation that would prohibit local charities from funding illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“Despite the clear illegality of this pattern of conduct, which has led to the expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians from their land (often in a violent manner), this practice has continued,” reads the bill. “Moreover, these illegal settlement activities have been funded by organizations here in New York State. In fact, between 2017 and 2019 alone, organizations that are known to primarily fund illegal settler activities fundraised over $144 million in New York State..In short, New York State is effectively subsidizing illegal activity abroad, and has been complicit in violent dislocations of Palestinian people.”
is indeed an appalling and ongoing crime. I am curious to learn: are there any Palestinian families that aren’t composed of signed-up Bible- or Koran-believers? Israel’s Palestinian communities and the OPT seem to this Brit rather like Northern Ireland was for many decades, a place where every resident, even a baby, was defined by one of two religious identities. Would a Scientologist Palestinian have to state to strangers if they were a Christian or Muslim Scientologist? Likewise, an atheist, a Baha’i, a Jehovah’s Witness Palestinian? Are such people either non-existent, or are they ignored by apartheid Israel and its forces?