Tag: anti-semitism

New York governor proposes face-mask ban to combat anti-Semitism

New York state’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a legislative ban on face masks on the NYC subway system to combat acts of anti-Semitism, claiming criminals are concealing their identities using the face coverings.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, New York had a law banning face masks in public. However, that rule was suspended in 2020 in light of the pandemic and the city’s authorities made face coverings mandatory for all subway riders until September 2022.

Speaking to reporters during a news conference in Albany on Thursday, Hochul stated that she was in talks with lawmakers over details of a bill once again banning masks, noting that the policy has to be clearly defined to include “common-sense exemptions” for the use of face masks for health, cultural or religious purposes. 

“We will not tolerate individuals using masks to evade responsibility for criminal or threatening behavior,” Hochul said, adding that her team is “working on a solution.”

The Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, had also mentioned reviving some version of a mask ban and returning to the way things were before the pandemic, insisting that people should not be able to wear masks at protests.

Hochul explained that she was moved to propose the ban after receiving a report earlier this week about a group of people donning face masks that “took over a subway car, scaring riders and chanting things about Hitler and wiping out Jews.”

Keep reading

The “Antisemitism Awareness Act” Poses A Real Danger To The First Amendment

Totalitarianism rarely shows its true face when it arises. Instead, it often pretends to stand for good and decent values. A new bill claims to fight antisemitism, something all decent people oppose. But antisemitism—that is, bias and discrimination against Jews because of their religion or ethnic identity—is already barred under civil rights law. The real goal of the so-called “Antisemitism Awareness Act” is to suppress free speech.

This dangerous bill was already passed by the House of Representatives and now awaits a Senate vote. It outsources some of our constitutional rights to an outside organization, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, whose arbitrary definition of antisemitism poses a threat to civil liberties. It could be used to crush legitimate debate about Israel, its policies, and American policies toward it—policies that have given rise to one of the greatest acts of genocide since the Holocaust.

This bill could suppress historical research and ban the mention of facts that have been verified by international organizations. It could initiate lawsuits, funding cuts, and disciplinary action across all American “education programs or activities, and for other purposes.” (Those “other purposes” are not defined.) Student protesters, professors, writers, and even elected officials could face political repression and become legal targets.

It turns the USA’s much-celebrated sense of liberty into a funhouse mirror, a grotesque and distorted reflection of everything this country claims to see in itself. Its passage would make a travesty of everything America’s leaders claim to believe in.

The implications are enormous. The federal government spends more than $100 billion per year on education, including $85.3 billion for kindergarten through high school, $24.6 billion in federal student aid assistance, and $1.3 billion in congressional earmarks for colleges (for projects that range from equipment purchases and airport runways to prison education programs). All these expenditures could be used as leverage to stifle legitimate debate.

Despite its “antisemitic” branding, the bill targets Jews as well as non-Jews. As literature professor Benjamin Balthasar writes, it would effectively ban the teaching of “much Jewish history and culture.” Balthasar observes that Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Ed Asner, and “countless other Jews would now be considered ‘antisemitic’ under the new law.”

Keep reading

Using a Fictional Antisemitism Crisis to Support a Real Genocide

One of the most frustrating things happening in the world right now is the way people of conscience are doing everything they can to bring a stop to Israel’s US-backed atrocities in Gaza, and Israel supporters are responding to this by pointing at an epidemic of “antisemitism” which has no existence outside their own imaginations — but we’re all expected to pretend it’s real and worthy of respect.

TV’s “Dr Phil” McGraw flew to Jerusalem to give war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu an hour-long platform on which to justify his genocidal violence in Gaza to an American audience, shamelessly assisting the Israeli prime minister’s apologia with common hasbara talking points of his own.

The duo spent lot of time smearing anti-genocide protesters at US universities as evil Jew haters. At one point Netanyahu went so far as to advance the ridiculous suggestion that this sudden wave of support for Palestinians has nothing to do with Israel’s actions in Gaza at all, but is solely due to a massive “explosion” in antisemitism which just so happens to coincide with those actions.

“It’s not directed at what we do, it’s directed at who we are,” Netanyahu said of the protests, adding, “It’s an antisemitic explosion that threatens all of civilization.”

Keep reading

Beware of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act

The House of Representatives passed the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act” on May 2, by a vote of 320-91 in reaction to demonstrations on numerous university campuses and elsewhere against the brutal and genocidal policy of Israel in Gaza. The Act has now been sent to the Senate, where it seems certain to pass. This is an extremely dangerous bill that could criminalize the Bible, many Christian Churches, as well as any negative remarks about Israel and Jews. In brief, it threatens us with totalitarian thought control. We must do everything we can to oppose it.

First, let’s take an overview of the Act. It adopts the very broad definition of anti-Semitism of the “International Holocaust Remembrance Association.”  The Act calls this definition “a vital tool which helps individuals understand and identify the various manifestations of antisemitism.”

What does this definition say? “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed in hatred of Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” How you can be anti-Semitic toward someone who isn’t Jewish isn’t immediately apparent.

The authors of the definition give someone examples of what they consider anti-Semitic. These include saying that the Jews control the media and Congress, saying that Israel is a racist state, propagating the “blood libel” that the Jews killed Jesus, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, and claiming that Jews in America have “dual loyalty.”

As a number of writers including Tucker Carlson and John Zmirak have pointed out, the definition allows large parts of the Bible to be banned. The most famous such passage is Matthew 27: 25. “His blood be upon us and our children.” This is the “blood libel” that the Act wouldn’t let us teach!

You might object that the Act would never be enforced in this way. The American people would never stand for it! But it would always be there, like a sword of Damocles, hanging over our heads. And don’t be so sure it wouldn’t be enforced! The Scottish Hate Speech Act was passed in 2021, and people predicted it would never be enforced. Beginning in April 2024, though, it has been enforced, and many people have been fined and imprisoned for violating it.

Keep reading

BLM activist Quintez Brown who was arrested for trying to kill a Jewish mayoral candidate showed ‘allegiance to anti-Semitic causes including Lion of Judah Armed Forces’ on his social media accounts

A Black Lives Matter activist who was charged with attempted murder last week following an alleged assassination attempt on a Jewish mayoral candidate exhibited anti-Semitic views on social media.

Quintez Brown, 21, was arrested and charged with attempted murder shortly after Monday’s shooting in Louisville, Kentucky, in which Democratic candidate Craig Greenberg narrowly avoided the bullet.

But he was released from prison and placed under house arrest just two days after the shooting when a BLM chapter, the Louisville Community Bail Fund, posted his $100,000 bond. 

In the months leading up to the shooting, Brown’s social media posts showed an increasing interest in Black nationalist and pan-Africanist leaders, and last week he appeared to encourage his followers to join the Lion of Judah Armed Forces. 

The group shares similar ideas to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, which claims that Black Americans are the true descendants of the Biblical Hebrews and has been associated with several murders of Jews in the US.

Brown was one of 22 people chosen to meet the former President of the United States in 2019 as part of Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, which is aimed at closing achievement gaps facing young boys and men of color.

He also made regular appearances on the BBC to discuss race matters in the US, and was running as an independent candidate for Louisville’s metro council. 

Keep reading

Response to the “Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023”

What is happening on college campuses and what is being pushed through the Congress

The passage of the “Antisemitism Awareness Act” on May 1, the traditional day for celebrating the contributions of labor, by the House of Representatives, represents a dangerous effort to weaponize the laws and regulations established over the last 150 years to protect citizens against racial discrimination and to use them now to justify the absolute power of a corrupt government, doing the bidding of multinational banks and corporations, to punish anyone speaking out against the horrific actions taking place in Gaza. But the bill is not ultimately about Gaza, or about Israel. It is about giving the government the authority absent from the Constitution to punish citizens for speaking the truth about the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the government, or other governments around the world’.

The current dry run on the campuses of American universities of protests against the Gaza killings was intentionally watered down. It featured students wearing masks, backing corrupt Democratic Party “progressives,” who did not go far in their criticism of the state. It also had the university and the police who had been given instructions not to attack with the brutality that they are capable of in other actions.

The very fact that the campus protests were widely discussed on NPR, a controlled mouthpiece of the multinational banks which entirely ignores all spontaneous actions by citizens, tells us that these student protests were used as cover for passing this bill.

Once the “Antisemitism Awareness Law” is in place and can used to justify massive shifts in the Department of Education, and by extension American elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and graduate programs, we can be certain that the true steel fist in the velvet glove will get to work shutting down all questions about the special relationship of the United States with Israel not only in terms of protests, but in terms of the content of courses, the text books assigned, and, by extension, in the media as a whole.

And it will not stop there. Once the precedent is in place, all criticism of just about anything can be outlawed, or subject to onerous punishments.

Keep reading

US House Passes Controversial Bill That Expands Definition of Anti-Semitism

The United States House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would expand the federal definition of anti-Semitism, despite opposition from civil liberties groups.

The bill passed the House on Wednesday by a margin of 320 to 91, and it is largely seen as a reaction to the ongoing antiwar protests unfolding on US university campuses. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

If the bill were to become law, it would codify a definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

That is a federal anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. Adding IHRA’s definition to the law would allow the federal Department of Education to restrict funding and other resources to campuses perceived as tolerating anti-Semitism.

But critics warn IHRA’s definition could be used to stifle campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of 34,568 Palestinians so far.

Keep reading

Not in Our Name

Free speech is not a divisible concept. Either everyone is free to say what they want, no matter how noxious others find it, in order to create and sustain the free market of ideas—or else speech isn’t free.

Institutions that curtail speech—that make people’s social media postings grounds for expulsion, that ban or suppress speakers they disagree with, that penalize dissenting opinions in classrooms and workplaces with bad grades and HR reports—should not be allowed to then turn around and invoke the principles of free speech to defend problematic speech with which they happen to agree, let alone disruptive or illegal behavior.

And yet, recent years have seen the emergence of two different speech regimes, one for alleged oppressors and one for the allegedly oppressed. Huge swaths of often innocent speech by the former is deemed out of bounds, even criminal, whereas any speech coming out of the mouth of someone with a claim to victim status—including speech that actively incites violence—is considered sacrosanct.

As a result, there is now a great deal of confusion about freedom of speech, which is a very basic—and very central—principle of American history and society. For those interested in being de-confused, which we humbly submit should be all thinking American citizens, herewith: a primer.

Keep reading

Bipartisan bill would create “antisemitism monitors” at colleges

A pro-Israel House Democrat and Republican plan to introduce legislation creating federally sanctioned “antisemitism monitors” for select college campuses.

Why it matters: It’s the first bill introduced in Congress as a direct response to the pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked Columbia University and other colleges in recent days.

Driving the news: Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) are introducing the College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability Act – or COLUMBIA Act.

  • The bill would allow the Department of Education to send a “third-party antisemitism monitor” to any college that receives federal funding — and to revoke that funding for colleges that don’t comply.
  • The monitor, paid for by the school, would be charged with releasing a public, quarterly report evaluating “the progress that a college or university has made toward combating antisemitism.”
  • The bill was first reported by Jewish Insider.

Keep reading

Law College ‘Anti-Racism’ Fellow Caught on Camera Piling Vicious Hatred on ‘Ugly…Little Jewish People’

At some point in the last five years, we stopped merely studying history’s darkest moments and began experiencing them.

For instance, in an 11-second viral clip posted Wednesday to the social media platform X, a woman identified as Loyola Marymount University graduate student Grace Obi-Azuike effectively re-enacted a scene from Nazi Germany when she spewed venomous anti-Jewish hatred and, significantly, incurred no apparent rebuke from the younger people around her who attended an event featuring Israel Defense Forces members.

“Get the f*** out of here, all you ugly-a** little Jewish people in this b****,” the California law student appeared to say in a clip shared by the StopAntisemitism X account.

Obi-Azuike made the comment while seated and signaling in the direction of people who did not appear on camera.

Her insidious remark drew a look of astonishment but also an open-mouthed smile from an androgynous-looking person seated to her left. The male-looking person to her right wore the cloth mask of the COVID cult. His reaction, therefore — perhaps thankfully — remains a mystery.

But some attendees clapped or otherwise voiced approval.

“Oooooh, hooooo, yeah,” an unidentified female voice said.

At that point, an older, suit-wearing man walked over to Obi-Azuike and stood to her left. The camera did not capture what happened next, but he did not appear pleased as he rubbed his chin.

Keep reading