Amid pro-Palestinian demonstrations condemning Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza, the Antisemitism Awareness Act was passed in Congress. For former Ambassador of the United States to Saudi Arabia Chas W. Freeman Jr., the Israel lobby that pushed for the legislation is the “principal enemy” of the First Amendment.
The act passed in Congress by a vote of 320 in favor and 91 against. The bill would mandate that the Department of Education adopt the broad definition of antisemitism used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental group, to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
This would also strengthen the crackdown efforts on nationwide university protests. The proposal first defines antisemitism and then gives the Education Department the ability to suspend funding if it determines a school does not act against students who violate that definition. Once passed and rolled out, it will give the department new tools to threaten or punish schools that don’t take the department’s definition of antisemitism seriously.
The bill is seen by Freeman as another attempt to suppress denouncement of Israel’s genocidal attacks in Gaza.
“The principal enemies of the First Amendment in recent years have been… the Israel lobby,” he said in a May 4 “Dialogue Works” interview. “Basically, they have tried to prohibit any speech opposed to the state of Israel.”
He also pointed out that the redefinition of “antisemitism” conflates opposition to the mass killing and starvation of civilians with an irrational hatred of Jews. “Anti-Semitism is not the same as anti-Zionism and people who object to genocide or the conduct of that by a foreign government cannot be called antisemitic,” he said.
Hellbound and Down 