BREAKING: The House just passed HR 6090, which expands the definition of antisemitism to include criticism of Israel.
Let me be clear. People have rights. State governments do not have rights. This terrible bill sets a dangerous precedent & does nothing to actually decrease or stop the scourge of antisemitism. The Senate should not pass this bill and Biden should not sign it into law.
Imagine criminalizing criticism of Pakistan or Iran, or Mauritania as Islamophobic because each nation starts with "Islamic Republic of." It would be absurd, precisely because state nations do not have rights, people do.
The same applies with antisemitism & criticism of Israel.
@QasimRashid It took me a moment to get how you got to that conclusion.
The bill (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6090/text) vaguely refers to the IHRA definition (https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism).
I take it that the problem is this line in that definition?
> 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.
Otherwise I don’t see anything in there that to me suggests you can’t criticize Israel.
@philip @QasimRashid It’s cutting it close. Whether the state of Israel’s stated goals of remaining a jewish state is racist should still be up for debate, because it is a debate that can be learned from. It’s useful because ethnicity was a thing on the ground through 1920 to 1990, even if technically one can convert to Judaism nowadays.
The conflict is based on deep ethnically-based divisions and violence in the past, and it isn’t a worthless argument.
I doubt it will get thru the Senate.
@QasimRashid agreed. Right now the people in the best position to address antisemitism at the protests are the protest organizers, should they wisely choose to do so.
What was the vote tally for this bill?
@QasimRashid ACLU statement in opposition a few days ago:
https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-urges-congress-to-oppose-anti-semitism-awareness-act
Even were the bill to legally and in full form declare that the State of Israel is not to be maligned, that is not the truth of these protests.
People are protesting its *actions.*
@QasimRashid The US government won't indulge in their citizenry criticizing their allies; *especially *justified criticism. US politicians won't indulge in their citizenry criticizing their campaign donors.
Bill sponsors, and relevant donations:
Lawler: $180K
Gottheimer: $827K
Miller (Ohio): $158K
Moskowiz: $129K
Kean (New Jersey): $115K
Jackson Lee: $0K
Fitzpatrick: $271K
Stefanik: $383K
Kustoff: $96K
Norcross: $57K
Brown: $73K
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?code=Q05&cycle=2024&ind=Q05&mem=Y&recipdetail=H
Israeli Holocaust Scholar Omer Bartov on Campus Protests: Antisemitism is Weaponized to Silence Dissent
1/N Thread
#StudentProtest #Gaza #Politics #Genocide #WarCrimes , It is not #anti-semitic or #antisemitic #palestine #solidarity #CeaseFireNow #StopArmingIsrael #Palestinelivesmatter
2/N Thread
“Obviously antisemitism . . . is a vile sentiment. It's an old sentiment. It has been used for bloodshed, for violence, and for genocide. No one should condone it and obviously none of us would ever condone it. But it also has become a tool to silence speech about Israel; and that too has quite a history. The current Israeli government, or rather the numerous governments under Benjamin Netanyahu have been pushing this agenda of arguing that any criticism of his Israeli policies, not least of Israeli occupation policies (this precedes, of course, the events in Gaza [Oct 7th] ) is antisemitic.” – Omer Bartov, Israeli Holocaust Scholar
#StudentProtest #Gaza #Politics #Genocide #WarCrimes , It is not #anti-semitic or #antisemitic or #antisemitism #palestine #solidarity #CeaseFireNow #StopArmingIsrael #Palestinelivesmatter
3/N Thread
“ I have been listening to some of the interviews with Jewish students who feel threaten. Often it appears to me (and of course we don't have good research on that at the moment) . . . that many appear threatened because they see a Palestinian flag. Because they hear people calling for Intifada.
“Intifada means – shaking off. There is a very similar word in Hebrew for it [unintelligible to me]. It's what a dog does when it shakes off water. It is to shake off the occupation. There are Jewish students often who are influenced by the Israeli friends who feel that is threatening.
“But there is nothing threatening about opposing occupation and oppression. That is not ani-Semitism. You can agree with it [occupation and oppression] or not.” – Omer Bartov, Israeli Holocaust Scholar
#StudentProtest #Gaza #Politics #Genocide #WarCrimes , It is not #anti-semitic or #antisemitic or #antisemitism #palestine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie3InYIVXF8
3/N Thread
4/N Thread
“. . . Even being anti-zionist is not anti-Semitic. There are hundreds of thousands if not more of ultra Orthodox Jews including some who are in the Israeli government who are anti-zionist, but they are not anti-Semitic. They see themselves as the epitome of Jewishness and Jewish tradition.
“So there is politics and there is prejudice and if we don't make distinction between the two, then what we are actually doing is enforcing a kind of silence over the policies that have been conducted by the Israeli government for a long time; and that ultimately culminated now in the utrter destruction of Gaza.” -- Omer Bartov, Israeli Holocaust Scholar
4/N Thread #StudentProtest #Gaza #Politics #Genocide #WarCrimes , It is not #anti-semitic or #antisemitic or #antisemitism #palestine #solidarity #CeaseFireNow #StopArmingIsrael #Palestinelivesmatter
5/N Thread
“. . . Over the last few months there have been many demonstrations in Israel against this governments policy. The government has taken to using water connon often in a really brutal manner that is firing it directly at the people's faces which is legally not allowed and using this kind of stinking - - water skunk in central streets in Tel Aviv, and in Jerusalem – again to shut down any debate in Israel. It is very sad to see that being also imported to American streets.
-- Omer Bartov, Israeli Holocaust Scholar
5/N Thread #StudentProtest #Gaza #Politics #Genocide #WarCrimes , It is not #anti-semitic or #antisemitic or #antisemitism #palestine #solidarity #CeaseFireNow #StopArmingIsrael #Palestinelivesmatter
7/N Thread
“. . . there was tragic case with a Palestinian professor of the Hebrew University: Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who was first sort of attacked by the university and later was arrested by the police and mistreated really badly. [She was] kept overnight in a jail, stripped, humiliated (This is a full professor in her 60's and a well known scholar) because she had expressed empathy with what was happening in Gaza. The main difference is that not only did the University leaders did not come out in support of their own faculty member, but there are many students at the universities that are actually supporting these kinds of policies.”
-- Omer Bartov, Israeli Holocaust Scholar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadera_Shalhoub-Kevorkian
8/N Thread
“ I think we should be proud that in American Universities, students actually are demonstrating in favor of those that are being oppressed and now being killed; and they are doing it, first of all, because it's the right thing to do, they are doing it also because they are American citizens. It is American taxpayers money that is paying for the arms the United States is shipping in vast amounts to Israel so is to destroy Gaza. They have every right. IN fact, they have a duty to protest against these kinds of policies.”
-- Omer Bartov, Israeli Holocaust Scholar
#StudentProtest #Gaza #Politics #Genocide #WarCrimes , It is not #anti-semitic or #antisemitic or #antisemitism #palestine #solidarity #CeaseFireNow #StopArmingIsrael #Palestinelivesmatter
So does this mean that I, as a Jew, could go to jail for "antisemitism" if I criticize Israel? Can I at least criticize Netanyahu? Or will I get accused of a hate crime for that, too? #GOP #US #RaptureTheGOP
@QasimRashid hahaha, of course they'll vote it in, and of course Biden, with a shit eating grin, will sign it in to law, with genocidal monsters flanking him.
American democracy was always a thin veneer of lies, but even that is gone now, with it becoming clear that America is to become the next fascist state, with both parties' blessing
That's insane.
@QasimRashid Also includes "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."
Because sealing a undesired population off into a ghetto, building a big wall around it and forcing them into poverty by isolation is... well, I can't really say that, can I. That would be antisemitic.
Just as it would be antisemitic to suggest that a state which is expressly founded as the home state of a specific ethnic group, and intentionally favors that group in immigration policy... hmm.
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