Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Like many regular readers of the Jewish News, I recently came across what later turned out to be a controversial interview with Rep. Rashida Tlaib published on this very website.

Not for a single moment did it cross my mind while reading it that the mere decision to interview her was in and of its own problematic, let alone outrageous or shameful, as some readers suggested.

In fact, the more polarizing a topic is I naively thought the more important it is to put it on the table, examine it from all possible angles and let unpleasant opinions surface, rather than swipe them under the carpet.

This is not to say that freedom of speech shouldnt have its limits. Yes, its a difficult task to determine where exactly those limits should pass, but allow me to not deteriorate into Godwins Law by saying straightforwardly: Interviewing Ms. Tlaib falls well within acceptable boundaries.

Pull out your Jew-O-Meter

Correct me if Im wrong, but Tlaib is serving as the U.S. Representative for Michigans 13th Congressional district, which includes the western half of Detroit, along with several of its western suburbs. This means that she, as a politician, has a direct influence on the people living in those areas, among whom are you guessed it Jews, even if they happen to disagree with her.

If you are rolling your eyes now, mumbling to yourself that I must be one of those self-hating Jews, allow me to add fuel to your fire.

A brief glance at my CV will reveal an Israeli, secular, atheist, left-leaning Jew who willingly chose to relocate to Germany, which means your ready-to-pull Jew-O-Meter will show a terrible score when grading my Jewishness. Maybe youll immediately dismiss my claims.

But wait a second, not so fast. I served in an IDF combat unit; volunteered for 1.5 years with Israels Shnat Sherut scouting program before my three-year military service; will serve in the army reserves until Im 45; and was a member of a Zionist youth movement my entire childhood. That must give me some extra points.

Oh, actually, you know what, never mind. I avoid buying anything produced in settlements, vote for a party which includes Arab lawmakers and have some Palestinian friends with whom believe it or not I actually agree on many issues. Guess my Jew-O-Meter grade got lowered again.

The point is clear: Much to many bigots surprise, it turns out that Jews are, after all, humans, and as such they also have different opinions even especially when it comes to controversial issues, such as the mere existence of Israel, its relationship with the U.S., its settlement policy or the BDS movement, to name but a few.

Walking among us are also Jews who seem to be, heaven forbid, socialists. Others are apparently capitalists even Libertarian. Some support BDS, while others are fiercely against it; some live in settlements, others question their right to exist; some denounce Antifa, others are Antifa protesters themselves; some are proudly Zionist, others refer to themselves as anti-Zionists with the exact same pride. Such diversity! Who would have thought?

Not one layer

Indeed, as such diverse individuals, it should come as no surprise that some Jewish readers saw the interview with Rep. Tlaib as a shocking and appalling decision, as they made sure to clarify in their letters to the editor. No doubt it is their absolute right to hold such opinion. Others were grateful, however, calling the discussion necessary and labelling Tlaib as a righteous person.

It seems like Jews hold so many varying opinions, as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore. You could almost conclude that each Jew is an individual with their own beliefs and values a revolutionary concept our greatest haters would love to dismiss. Do not give them that pleasure. We are not one layer defined solely by our Judaism.

I and I believe you, too would rather live in a world where both an article featuring a Muslim woman politician who doesnt mince words criticizing Israel and the fierce reactions to that article can find a home in a Jewish media outlet, than in a world where neither is possible.

Dana Regev is an Israeli-born journalist who reports on global affairs for Deutsche Welle in Germany and is a contributor to the Jewish News

Continue reading here:
Guess What? Not All Jews are the Same Detroit Jewish News - The Jewish News

Category: Zionism | Comments Off on Guess What? Not All Jews are the Same Detroit Jewish News – The Jewish News
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

(July 28, 2020 / JNS) Words matter. But like so much of the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what one word means to progressive American Jews often means something entirely different to Palestinians. This can lead to confusion, at best, and bloodshed, at worst.

For example, as previously postedhere, most progressive American-Jewish commentators and Palestinians call for an end to the Israeli occupation.

But by occupation, most progressive Jews mean Israels control of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). For most Palestinians, on the other hand, ending the occupation means the liberating of historic Palestine from the river to the sea (the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea), in other words, all of present-day Israel. The difference in interpretation of the word occupation is of existential significance.

A similar conflict has recently arisen regarding the meaning of the term one-state solution.

Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicateby email and never missour top stories

In a shockingop-edin The New York Times, titled I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State, Peter Beinart, political commentator and prodigal son of Zionism, suddenly abandoned his long-standing support for a two-state solution to the conflict (independent Jewish and Palestinian states). Instead, he called for the replacement of the State of Israel with a bi-national state populated by both Jews and Palestinians living equally, he imagines, in harmony under a benevolent democratic regime.

In a longerarticlein Jewish Currentsfrom which the Times op-ed was condensedBeinart waxes poetic in his portrait of the kumbaya state of Israel-Palestine. He imagines a country where on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jewish and Palestinian co-presidents lower a flag at Yad Vashem as an imam delivers the Islamic prayer for the dead, while a similar memorial ceremony is held at the site of the future Museum of the nakba with a rabbi reciting the Jewish prayer for the dead.

It all sounds so promising.

However, critics, including this author, previouslyhave demonstrated that Beinarts vision of a peaceful bi-national state is delusional, given the more than a century of Arab efforts to annihilate the Jewish State through relentless wars, horrific terrorism and single-minded ethnic cleansing.

This article will focus on the manner in which Beinarts version of a bi-national state differs dramatically from the Palestinian version, just as is the case with the meaning of the term occupation discussed above.

In his call for a bi-national state, Beinart references Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American writer based in Washington, D.C. Munayyer has been advocating for a one-state solution long before Beinart awoke to the idea.

In his seminalarticleThere Will Be a One-State Solution, But What Kind of State Will It Be?Munayyer sets forth his vision for a single state that departs significantly from Beinarts view. Rather than being grounded in equality, as is Beinarts, Munayyers state is founded on retribution or what he calls restorative justice.

He insists on a constitution that would recognize the wrongs done to Palestinian refugees and begin a process to repatriate and compensate them.

Munayyer emphasizes that the new state would need a truth-and-reconciliation process focused on restorative justice and that for inspiration, it could look to past efforts in South Africa and Rwanda.

Taking the truth-and-reconciliation process from South Africa as a model, as Munayyer does, gives serious cause for concern. That process included a restorative justice court where victims of human-rights abuses sought reparations, and the alleged perpetrators of abuses could seek amnesty from civil and criminal prosecution.

The results of South Africas truth-and-reconciliation process are mixed. However, the mere analogizing of Israels vibrant democracy with the horrific institutional system of apartheid (a common ploy of anti-Zionists) is far-fetchedandodious. The prospect of Israeli political leaders, academics and military officers, not to mention ordinary citizens, standing before a South Africa-style truth-and-reconciliation court in an effort to restore justice does not bode well for the proposed one-state formula.

Of course, at the end of the day, Beinarts solution to the conflict is nothing more than a progressive Upper West Side Jews pipe dream, and would normally warrant little attention. However, his screed has crossed an otherwise impregnable red line that threatens to spread if left un-quarantined.

Prior to Beinarts conversion, even to question the legitimacy of the Jewish State was considered beyond the pale. Everyone, including Beinart, respected that red line (questioning Israels existence as a Jewish State is akin to spitting in the face of people I love). But Beinart now concedes that he has crossed that red line.

The current question is whether Jewish leaders and organizations will normalize Beinarts heresy by giving him a platform to spread his message of destruction. Will the matter of Israels very survival become part of the normal conversation in civilized discourse?

Shortly after Beinarts op-ed was published in The Times, he appeared in conversation with a leading rabbi on the Jewish Broadcasting Service. The moderator expressly refused to vilify Beinart, treating him quite deferentially and inviting him back to discuss his position further.

In sharp contrast, the noted historian Daniel Gordiswho had previously debated Beinart on numerous occasions, and even shared a podcast with himdeclared Beinart to be a traitor to the Jewish people and a pariah.

Gordis stated emphatically, after the Times piece appeared, that he would refuse to appear on the same stage with Beinart from now on.

Beinart, of course, is free to say whatever he wants to whomever will listen to him. The rest of us, however, are equally free to refuse to normalize a conversation about terminating the only Jewish state in the world.

Steve Frank is an attorney, retired after a 30-year career as an appellate lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. His writings on Israel, the law and architecture have appeared in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel and Moment magazine.

Go here to read the rest:
Which one-state solution are we talking about and why? - JNS.org

Category: Zionism | Comments Off on Which one-state solution are we talking about and why? – JNS.org
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

TWO WEEKS AGO, an open letter published in Harpers Magazine and signed by more than 150 public figures, most of them writers or academics, ignited a new round of debate over cancel culture and its discontents. The letter portrayed freedom of expression in the United States as dangerously imperiled: We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. A week later, Bari Weiss, one of the letters high-profile signatories, resigned her position at the New York Times op-ed desk and self-published her resignation letter. Echoing the Harpers letter, Weisss statement decried an increasingly illiberal environment in public discourse writ large and at the Times in particular. She wrote that her colleaguesand the publichave become unwilling to accommodate views that dont adhere to the new orthodoxy.

Yet, as some critics have noted, Weiss has a long history of claiming to support free speech while trying to curtail the speech of Palestinian rights advocates, from her college days through her years at the Times. And she is not the only signatory of the Harpers letter who has sought to silence those with whom she disagrees. Cary Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, is a prominent opponent of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and has written extensively about the need to combat anti-Zionist scholarship in the name of academic freedom.

These figures attempts to shut down speech while advocating for free speech are certainly hypocritical. But more importantly, their failure to recognize the tension between their free speech advocacy on the one hand, and their pro-Israel advocacy on the other, reveals an unwillingness to reckon with the relationship between speech and power. What [the Harpers] letter is missing is the power dynamics, said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, where she oversees the nonprofit organizations casework on free speech, academic freedom, and censorship. The real problem is the problem of the state coming down on people who are speaking out on Israel/Palestine.

Weiss and Nelson not only rigorously police the boundaries of acceptable discourse while simultaneously lamenting that the boundaries have become too narrow; they do so with far more cultural, financial, and even governmental support than the Palestinian rights advocates they seek to silence or the Black Lives Matter activists whose perceived excesses they lament. What their exclusive focus on the boundaries of acceptable debate obscures is the very real threats to political speech in the USespecially speech in support of Palestinian rightsand how their own efforts give rhetorical cover to those threats.

For more than a decade, Israel-advocacy organizations have employed the rhetoric of free speech and academic freedom to shut down criticism of Israeli government policies in the public sphere, and especially on university campuses. Through accusations of incivility or insufficient objectivity, these organizations and those who work with them have attempted to and at times succeeded in blocking hires, denying tenure, and even getting people fired. Now, with backing from the Trump administration, this crusade against support for Palestinian rights has morphed from an effective public relations strategy, which relied on public pressure for results, into a concrete framework for government assaults on free speechfrom the anti-BDS laws sweeping state legislatures to the executive order designating criticisms of Israeli government policy as forms of anti-Jewish discrimination.

Using a tactic perfected by Israel-advocacy groups like the Lawfare Project, which have been spearheading this legal campaign, both Weiss and Nelson have long framed their own Israel-advocacy efforts as attempts to protect free speech, rather than to limit it. As an undergraduate at Columbia University in the mid-aughts, Weiss co-founded a group named Columbians for Academic Freedom; supported by outside Israel-advocacy organizations like the David Project and Campus Watch, it claimed that combatting a supposed anti-Israel bias in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) department would lead to a freer academic climate. In a 2018 Twitter thread, Weiss said that she never advocated for any professors to be fired while in college and that she had simply exercised her own right to free speech. However, Columbians for Academic Freedom did demand that the administration change the departments curriculum and make it easier to file complaints against professors, measures that would have affected certain scholars responsibilities and duties, as well as their future job prospects. The New York Civil Liberties Union said that the students crusade jeopardized academic freedom.

As an undergraduate, Weiss also asked for invitations to controversial speakers to be rescinded. In one case, she wrote an op-ed for The Columbia Spectator about a proposed event featuring then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, arguing that condoning hate is not an academic exercisethe same argument that campus activists often make today when advocating against invitations to controversial speakers, and which Weiss often criticizes. (Weiss did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)

Cary Nelson, an outspoken opponent of the BDS movement in academia, has also justified his activism on the grounds that it bolsters academic freedom. Nelson defended the University of Illinois trustees 2014 decision to deny tenure to Palestinian-American scholar Steven Salaita, and he has written extensively about what he sees as the pernicious effects of anti-Zionist scholars on the academic climate. In his articles and booksmost recently Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State (2019)Nelson charges that prominent anti-Zionist academics, such as Jasbir Puar, Saree Makdisi, and Judith Butler, have engaged in pseudo-scholarship, and that the ferocity of anti-Zionist convinction in their books and essays unfortunately means that they often cross the line to anti-Semitism. In a related essay titled The Devils Intersectionality: Contemporary Cloaked Antisemitism, Nelson argues that these anti-Zionist scholars, alongside the BDS movement, are making rational dialogue impossible. For Nelson, its not only these scholars alleged antisemitism that threatens academic freedom but their lack of objectivity and irrationality. In an interview last week, Nelson said he thinks anti-Zionism is a political perspective that people have a right to. But, he added, I think they can still be judged about whether they are rational, if their politics carries over into their teaching and research.

This line of argument is a common one. Accusations of insufficient objectivity or rationality are often wielded against Palestinian, Arab, and anti-Zionist scholars, especially those whose work relates to Israel/Palestine, as a way to silence them, framing political grievance as concern for academic standards. In 2007, for instance, Palestinian American anthropologist Nadia Abu el-Haj won a bitter battle for tenure at Barnard College after an intense alumni campaign attempted to discredit her work, including her book Facts on the Ground, which explored how Israel uses archaeology in order to bolster its exclusive claim to territory in Israel/Palestine. Weiss complained about Abu el-Hajs tenure in an op-ed for Haaretz, framing her concern as an objective evaluation of Abu el-Hajs scholarship rather than a political disagreement. This is not just another round between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists, she wrote. This is about the nature of truth, and the possibility of, well, facts themselves.

But who gets to be objective, and who does not, is a function of power; it is, in other words, political. In light of the significant power differentials between Israel-advocacy organizations and grassroots Palestinian rights activists, its hardly surprising that strong political commitments are almost never disqualifying for Zionist academics, or that Zionist academics ability to be rational is rarely systematically questioned like that of their Palestinian, Arab, and anti-Zionist peers. Nelson himself has clear ideological commitmentsthe final chapter of Israel Denial is devoted to A Proposal to Rescue the Two-State Paradigm. Yet Nelson does not see his own Israel advocacy or his commitment to a two-state solution as a sign that he lacks the necessary distance or objectivity to participate in scholarly debate. Likewise, at Columbia, Weiss argued that professors in the MEALAC department lacked the requisite objectivity to teach and imbued their learning environment with incivility. Yet her side had its own ideological agenda and its own disruptive tactics. A Columbia University panel convened to assess the charges levied by Weisss group found no evidence that any professors had issued antisemitic statements; it did find, however, that pro-Israel students had heckled professors during classes and lectures on Middle East studies and were partially to blame for a lack of civility on campus.

The Harpers letter signatories are not wrong that there is a war on political speech in the US. But its not the one most of them have in mind. It is, instead, the one in which Weiss, Nelson, and other anti-BDS partisans are active participants, fighting on the rhetorical front in tandem with a well-funded, state-aligned apparatus working to make support for BDS and anti-Zionism not only unacceptable but illegal. They have already won significant victories. Across the US, 32 states have enacted legislation banning or restricting boycotts in support of Palestinian rights. In North Carolina, the federal government threatened to defund the joint Duke-UNC Middle East studies consortium after Israel-advocacy groups complained about the speakers at an academic conference on Gaza. The US governments adoption of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitismwhich equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and designates criticism of Israeli policy as forms of anti-Jewish discrimination under Title VIhas emboldened an entire network of Israel-advocacy groups that file legal complaints against Palestine-related events on campuses, sometimes even before they have happened.

What the free speech and cancel culture discourse advanced by the Harpers letter obfuscates, then, is how signatories like Weiss and Nelson use that rhetoric in political struggles with very real, material consequences. Indeed, while the letters signatories locate cancel culture in the virtual realm of social media, conjuring the image of the mob, Israel-advocacy organizationsincluding those that Weiss and Nelson have worked withare using terms like free speech and academic freedom to shut down real-life events on university campuses and to turn the legal apparatus of government against supporters of Palestinian rights.

Mari Cohen is an assistant editor at Jewish Currents.

Joshua Leifer is an assistant editor at Jewish Currents.

See the rest here:
The Real War on Free Speech - Jewish Currents

Category: Zionism | Comments Off on The Real War on Free Speech – Jewish Currents
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

JERUSALEM, July 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Friends of Zion Museum hosted the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus for the relaunch for the 23rd Knesset, which was broadcast worldwide to millions of followers on social media.

Speakers at the event included: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Founder and International Chairman of the Friends of Zion Museum Dr. Mike Evans, Israel Allies Foundation President and KCAC Director Josh Reinstein, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and KCAC Chair MK Sharren Haskel, MK Gideon Saar, MK Bogie Ya'alon, US Congressman Doug Lamborn, Australian Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert, Guatemalan Congressman Fidel Reyes Lee and Nigerian MP N. Ossai.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the event: "Over the years, the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus has helped bolster the ties between Jews and Christians. My government remains dedicated to working together with our Christian friends from across the globe to further enhance the partnership between us, and I welcome this initiative in continuing to strengthen even further the bridge between Israel's Knesset and Christian leadership worldwide.

"Earlier this year, President Trump publicly launched his vision for peace. The American plan has the potential to overcome past failures by offering the Palestinians the path of peace and reconciliation and allowing us to reach the secure borders that Israeli governments have long sought. The plan also acknowledges that Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in Judea and Samaria, areas that are also an integral part of your Christian identity and of our common heritage."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "I am proud that the United States and Israel have never been closer than they are today. What we have accomplished over the last three years was almost unimaginable then, President Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing the reality that the holy city is and always will be Israel's capital. We recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan. I was honored to be in Jerusalem on the day that policy was announced. We told the truth, that Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank are not per say inconsistent with international law. We've championed the President's vision for peace, it's the best and most realistic path forward to end the bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinian people, and to achieve enduring security, freedom and prosperity for both sides. There is one moment that I will never forget as a diplomat, as an American, and as a Christian praying at the Western Wall with the Prime Minister of Israel. It showed the strength of this alliance. The American Christian support for Zion is unshakeable and we are proud to stand by our brothers and sisters in Israel."

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman: "We are in desperate need of unity. Israel faces challenges like never before. It is the only one nation that is still called upon to defend its right to exist, whether from the far right or the far left, whether from radical Shia Islamists to radical Sunni. People who cannot agree on anything else seem to find common ground in attacking, vilifying and ultimately seeking to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. But, Israel thank God is not alone, in the Christian community it has found true friendship, support and trust. Hundreds of millions of Christian Zionists now stand proudly with Israel and collectively deliver an important, an invaluable and unprecedented message. Simply put they say, 'Israel you are not alone'. Never underestimate the importance of Christian Zionism, they played an important role in Israel's creation, and it continues to play perhaps an even more important role today. The Friends of Zion Museum, founded by Dr. Evans, does a wonderful job in presenting this incredible phenomenon."

Dr. Mike Evans, founder and chairman of the Friends of Zion Museum, commented on the event and praised the importance of the KCAC and its efforts: "Last November, the Friends of Zion Museum inaugurated an innovative communication center with the most advanced technology, in order to bring Israel closer to the world, to as many people as possible, as we witnessed in the event that took place today, which was broadcast to millions of followers on social media." Evans added, "Our goal is to inspire the next generation to continue this work in shaping the image of the State of Israel as a Jewish state. We were excited to host this event, which marks the Knesset's efforts to advance its ties with Christians around the world. We run a digital community that includes 73 million members on Facebook alone! This was the event of the year for Israel on social networks. "

The Knesset Christian Allies Caucus was established in 2004 and consists of 17 members of Knesset from 7 political parties. The caucus aims to build direct lines of communication between Knesset members and Christian leaders, organizations, and political representatives around the world.

Founded in 2006, The Israel Allies Foundation is dedicated to promoting communication between parliamentarians and legislators who share a belief that the State of Israel has the right to exist in peace within secure borders. Today, the IAF coordinates the activities of 43 Israel Allies Caucuses around the world.

For more information or interview interest, please contact PR360 at +972-3-5449494 oroffice@pr360.co.il

Link:
Friends of Zion Hosts Leaders From Around The World To Promote The Relations Between Israel And Christian Communities Across The Globe - WFMZ...

Category: Zionism | Comments Off on Friends of Zion Hosts Leaders From Around The World To Promote The Relations Between Israel And Christian Communities Across The Globe – WFMZ…
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

JTA Mort Klein didnt know much about Ice Cube when he got on the phone with him on Monday afternoon, but by the end of their two-hour conversation, Klein said he was convinced the rapper was not anti-Semitic.

In fact, the president of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America said, the rapper had invited Klein and his wife to dinner once the pandemic is over.

He called me Mort, Klein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He told me to call him Cube.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top storiesFree Sign Up

Strange bedfellows would be too mild a term to describe the new relationship between the two men.

Ice Cube has drawn widespread condemnation after repeatedly tweeting anti-Semitic images and support for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has disparaged Jews over the years, including comparing them to termites. Meanwhile, members of a leading Jewish group have filed complaints against Klein and the Zionist Organization of America for tweets and statements they say were Islamophobic and racist.

The phone call, which Klein said was set up by a mutual friend he declined to name, is the latest in a series of public rapprochements between Black celebrities accused of anti-Semitism and prominent Jews. Earlier this month, Nick Cannon sat down with a Los Angeles rabbi to learn about Judaism. The host of the reality singing competition show The Masked Singer had made anti-Semitic comments on his podcast for which he later apologized.

This call was different from others for several reasons, in part because Klein himself has been accused of making bigoted comments, including about Black people.

Cube told me he supports condemning Black&all antisemitism& I condemned all racism, he wrote in a tweet describing the conversation.

The pair also did not share a recording, as others have done. But Ice Cube acknowledged the conversation in a tweet Tuesday in which he praised Klein for his advocacy.

Going into the call, Klein did not know the extent of Ice Cubes support for Farrakhan, including in some recent tweets.

Told late Monday about a Twitter exchange last month in which the rapper told Jake Tapper to watch your mouth after the CNN anchor tweeted about Farrakhans propensity for hate speech, Klein said he would ask Ice Cube about it.

Thats troubling, Klein said. Please send that to me, Im not aware of this.

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) president Morton A. Klein (Joseph Savetsky/courtesy of ZOA)

By Tuesday morning, he spoke with the rapper again. Klein said Ice Cube told him he deeply regrets putting that out and that he admitted to wrongly ignoring Farrakhans anti-Semitism because of his support for Farrakhans message of Black self-reliance. But Klein said he would not be satisfied until Ice Cube put out a statement condemning Farrakhans anti-Semitism, which he hoped would happen.

On the earlier call, Klein said, the two discussed Farrakhan in broad terms in addition to criticism the rapper has faced for tweeting other anti-Semitic messages and images. In June, the rapper tweeted a picture of a mural showing a group of white men with large noses sitting around a card table held up by Black men. The mural was removed after critics accused the artist of depicting the men at the table with stereotypically anti-Semitic features. Klein said Ice Cube told him he hadnt realized the mural was anti-Semitic.

All he said is Im not a Farrakhan follower and I dont support any of this, Klein said.

Klein said Ice Cube appreciated a story he told about how he had been a decent athlete in the Black neighborhood of his youth, but when he moved to a white Jewish neighborhood he became an outstanding one.

The two also discussed the Black Lives Matter movement, according to Klein, who has called the movement an antisemitic, Israel hating Soros funded racist extremist Israelophobic hate group and a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating, conservative Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros funded extremist group of haters.

Klein said he told Ice Cube about the horrible Black Lives Matter platform, referring to the 2016 platform by the Movement for Black Lives, an activist group represents some groups but not the entire Black Lives Matter movement. Some Jewish groups have described the platform as anti-Semitic for accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid. Klein said Ice Cube had agreed that the platform was terrible, though the rapper has repeatedly tweeted his support for the movement.

Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam speaks at Saint Sabina Church, May 9, 2019, in Chicago. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

While the rappers long affinity for Farrakhan disturbed Klein, he said he believes Ice Cube is sincere in his condemnation of anti-Semitism. He even told Klein that he supports the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, which excited the right-wing Zionist.

Hes not everything I would want him to be, Klein said. But hes moving in that direction.

Read more from the original source:
Call me Cube: ZOA chief Mort Klein talks with Ice Cube after Farrakhan tweets - The Times of Israel

Category: Zionism | Comments Off on Call me Cube: ZOA chief Mort Klein talks with Ice Cube after Farrakhan tweets – The Times of Israel
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

The Stop Hate for Profit campaign began in the U.S. with a trickle that became a flood. Brands like REI, Ben & Jerry's and Patagonia were among the first to sign on. Even bigger names followed suit, including Verizon, Ford, Honda, Levi Strauss and Walgreens.

Organizers say the way the campaign has expanded around the globe is evidence that it is getting traction. At least 220 organizations outside the U.S have signed on, based on a POLITICO analysis of their social media accounts.

"There's been more interest from overseas than we ever anticipated," said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the groups behind the boycott.

Taking the campaign international creates more pressure points for Facebook. Not only did the company collect more than 50 percent of its $70 billion in revenue from outside the U.S. and Canada in 2019, the boycott organizers hoped their campaign would also grab the attention of regulators overseas.

But the international adoption has been mixed. Several of Canada's largest banks and retailers, including the Royal Bank of Canada, MEC, Arc'teryx and Lululemon, have joined the effort. In Germany, global brands such as Puma, Adidas, Bayer and Volkswagen have put their weight behind it. But few companies from France and Italy, two of Europe's powerhouse economies, have decided to pull their advertising from Facebook.

Since the boycott started, Facebook pledged to hire staff with civil rights experience and review the experience of its minority users. But those efforts were already in the works before the boycott and fall short of what the organizers are demanding, such as a C-suite executive with a civil rights background and teams to review submissions of identity-based hate and harassment.

The North Face, one of the first companies to join the campaign, will resume advertising on Facebook and Instagram in August, spokesperson Samantha Wannemacher said. But, she added, both The North Face and other brands owned by VF Corp. which include Eastpak and Timberland will continue to press Facebook for policy changes.

We are encouraged by the initial progress and recognize that change doesnt happen overnight. Thats why we will continue to engage in dialogue with Facebook to hold them accountable for the actions they plan to implement, Wannemacher said.

The boycott organizers have continued to urge advertisers to join the effort throughout July and are pushing to keep the pressure on, though they have not said what form that will take. That decision, they say, will likely be influenced by whether Zuckerberg addresses their concerns in his testimony on the Hill on Wednesday or on the companys earnings call the next day.

There is a lot happening this week and, as we look into August, were looking for companies to stick with us, said Jessica Gonzlez, co-CEO of Free Press, a group that advocates for net neutrality and social justice issues in media. Were giving Facebook time to meet our demands, and were staying vigilant.

Zuckerberg has taken the campaign seriously enough that he and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg spoke with a number of the advertisers to try to head off the effort. Gonzlez said Facebook reached out to organizers again last week, but did not commit to key demands like removing accounts that post hate or disinformation, or stopping algorithms from automatically spreading such content.

"Facebook is under the microscope and they can either take a carrot or take a stick," she said.

The J.M. Smucker Co., the company behind Smucker's, Jif and Meow Mix, among other brands, said it won't resume advertising until the demands of the Stop Hate for Profit organizers are met.

"To date we have not been satisfied that Facebook has conveyed an adequate plan to eliminate hate speech and discriminatory content from its platforms," said spokesperson Frank Cirillo. "Our advertising pause will continue until Facebook commits to taking meaningful steps to address these important issues."

But with most of Facebooks ad revenue coming from smaller advertisers, it would take a much larger number of companies joining the boycott to make a significant dent in the companys revenue.

And some companies that have decreased advertising have done so quietly, without laying claim to any sort of movement. Walt Disney, for example, stopped Facebook ads at the beginning of July, according to data analytics firm Pathmatics, but did not announce a reason. Walmart, Geico and Delft, Netherlands-based Ikea also stopped ads on the platform but are not included in the list of companies that have joined the official campaign. Verizon said this month that its boycott is independent of the multicompany effort.

British-Dutch consumer goods conglomerate Unilever created a splash when it canceled social media spending in the U.S. through the end of the year. But its social media advertising in the rest of the world remains intact. A spokesperson for Unilever said the company also does not consider itself part of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign.

Wed like to see more companies in Europe take part, said Imran Ahmed, CEO and founder of U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has supported the advertising boycott. The defense of Black people, Jewish communities is not a U.S. issue or a European issue, its a universal one.

Ahmed added it was disappointing that European companies such as Unilever did not take broader action. There is no good reason for any company to limit the geography for which they have a ban, he said.

Of the five leading Europe-based advertisers Unilever, Heineken, Nestle, LOreal and Reckitt Benckiser only Dutch brewing company Heineken confirmed it paused Facebook ads globally. Heineken did not reply to follow-up questions about whether it would continue the ban in August. Nestle, LOreal and Reckitt Benckiser did not reply to requests for comment.

One key difference is that Europe, unlike the U.S., has dealt for years with online hate speech through government legislation and regulation, so advocates for stricter content moderation on Facebook may be more likely to lobby government policymakers than to use boycotts to pressure the company directly. The existing rules governing online content in Europe could also reduce the urgency for European businesses to respond to pressure from advocates.

Its an a-ha moment in the EU because the discourse about the power of platforms and their role as arbiters of speech has been much more usual part of the conversation, said Raegan MacDonald, head of EU policy for the open-source software developer Mozilla, one of the Stop Hate for Profit organizers.

While the European Commission is currently drafting the Digital Services Act a legislative proposal targeted at online platforms expected to tackle issues such as content moderation and curation and algorithmic transparency there are less legislative hooks in the U.S.

The boycott has found a particularly chilly reception in France.

French multinational LOreal said it would remove words like whitening and lightening from skincare product packaging, but the beauty conglomerate, which is the fourth largest advertiser globally, stopped short of announcing Facebook ad boycotts.

In France, there is sometimes a tendency to say that [systemic racism] is not our problem and is far away, as if everything was fine at home, said an organizer at Sleeping Giants France, where its workers operate anonymously because of a history of online harassment and threats. Sleeping Giants, a U.S.-based organization that has conducted a number of advertiser-led pressure campaigns, is one of the organizers of the Facebook boycott.

We often need to do groundwork to raise awareness before we can convince brands to engage in such movements. Other countries are more reactive, the organizer added.

Rmi Devaux, a French researcher and analyst at data science company Ekimetrics who focuses on targeted advertising, said the effort may seem more urgent in the U.S. because American advertisers have a higher risk of seeing their ads featured next to inflammatory political content or hate speech because of the 2020 presidential campaign. That could change when high-profile elections loom in Europe, he said.

In the short term, the electoral cycle is much more unfavorable for advertisers in the U.S. compared to the current political climate in Europe, he explained. We might see more ad boycotts in France during the 2022 presidential election."

U.S. civil rights groups have been pushing for changes at Facebook for years, but found a new pressure point following the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests over racial injustice. They leaned on brands that were keen to show their support for Black Americans to pull advertising from the social network until it addresses concerns about misinformation and hate speech aimed at minority communities.

Facebook simultaneously completed a two-year audit of its civil rights policies earlier this month and vowed to make changes as a result, including hiring a vice president with civil rights expertise. Even more recently, the company created internal teams to study racial bias on its networks and to better understand the experiences of minority users. Facebook did not attribute these changes to the advertising boycott, and in some instances had them planned well before.

Hate speech has no place on our platform and while we have invested in technologies and teams over the years to combat hateful content, we clearly have more work to do," said Carolyn Everson, Facebook's vice president of global marketing solutions, in a statement.

POLITICO NEWSLETTERS

Technology news from Washington and Silicon Valley weekday mornings, in your inbox.

Some brands have said their timeline on the boycott will depend on how Facebook handles the pressure. Levi Strauss, for instance, doubled down on its prior commitment: "When we re-engage will depend on Facebook's response."

But many seemed uncertain of what comes next. Walgreens, Patagonia, Denny's and Pfizer, for instance, all declined to give updates.

In the meantime, the civil rights groups organizing the boycott are upping their effort to publicly shame Facebook into action. The groups released a Dear Mark video last week that makes a personal appeal to the CEO.

Are you finally going to listen to us, Mark? the video asks. It continues: Are you willing to stop profiting from hate? Can we trust you at all?

The rest is here:
The moment of reckoning for the Facebook advertiser boycott - POLITICO

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on The moment of reckoning for the Facebook advertiser boycott – POLITICO
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

The Anti-Defamation Leagues Cleveland office launched an initiative July 27 the Ohio Legal Assistance Project to support victims of anti-Semitism and extremism who are interested in using civil litigation as a tool to combat hate in Ohio.

At a time of rising anti-Semitism and extremism across the country, including here in Ohio, we want to make sure that we at ADL are doing all that we can to support victims who may be interested in taking legal action, said James Pasch, regional director of ADL Cleveland in a news release. Civil litigation can be an incredibly powerful tool not only to hold perpetrators accountable for their conduct, but also to send a clear message that hate and extremism are not welcome in Ohio. We have accordingly put together a small panel of attorneys who stand ready and willing to provide legal services, at no cost, to victims in appropriate cases.

ADLs Ohio Legal Assistance Project will operate out of ADLs Cleveland office. Ohio residents who are interested in learning more about the program can visit the offices website at bit.ly/2EpXQrz to learn about the types of cases ADL may accept and to complete an intake form requesting a referral to a pro bono attorney.

ADL is best equipped to help victims of anti-Semitic vandalism, extremist-motivated violence, severe and pervasive harassment or stalking on or offline; swatting, i.e., the reporting of a false emergency at the home of a victim in order to prompt a law enforcement response; civil rights violations; defamation; and/or privacy violations, according to the release. Victims can include individuals, family members, businesses or organizations that have experienced harm.

From ADLs perspective, this project could not come at a better time, Pasch said. Over the past five years, ADL has documented a 150% increase in anti-Semitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment here in Ohio. Hate online has also skyrocketed, with 53% of American adults now reporting experiencing some form of online harassment.

Pasch said this year there have been bomb threats targeting Jewish community centers, extensive anti-Semitic graffiti on college campuses and anti-Semitism arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, including the sign displayed during a stay-at-home protest in Columbus that depicted a rodent with the Star of David on its side and the words The Real Plague.

Extremists are also taking advantage of COVID-19 to spread their hateful ideologies here in Ohio, Pasch said.Enough is enough. We must be using all tools at our disposal, including the tool of civil litigation, to send a clear message that our state is no place for hate.

Visit link:
ADL to use civil litigation to fight anti-Semitism in Ohio - Cleveland Jewish News

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on ADL to use civil litigation to fight anti-Semitism in Ohio – Cleveland Jewish News
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

David Aronds The One and Only Jewish Miss America is among the 40+ films featured at this years Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival. The documentary film tells the story of Bess Myerson, a young Jewish woman from humble beginnings in the Bronx who would go on be crowned Miss America.

But Myersons story isnt the ordinary tale of the underdog, who abandons her roots to surpass the competition. Rather, Myerson rejects all attempts to suppress her Jewish identity and conform with traditional notions of American beauty. Early on, for example, she is asked to change her surname from Myerson to something less Jewish. But Bess, a daughter of poor Yiddish immigrants, embraces the whistleblower spirit and stays steadfast to the truth in refusing to change her name.

After winning the title Miss New York City, Myerson is invited to compete as one of forty contestants in the 1945 Miss America pageant, on the heels of World War II and the genocide of European Jewry. She is unexpectedly approached by masses of Jewish admirers who insist, you have to win so you can show everyone we are not victims. Despite attempts to manipulate judges into voting against the Jewish contestant, Bess charged into the competition with newfound purpose and defeated all odds by claiming the title.

But during her year traveling the country as Miss America, Myerson experienced constant antisemitism. She was denied hotel accommodations and refused entry at country clubs while corporations slowly pulled their sponsorships. Rather than engage with the corrupted and prejudiced pageantry circuit, Bess returned to her beloved New York, where she committed herself to blowing the whistle on racism. With support from the Anti-Defamation League, Bess performed her lecture You Cant Hate and Be Beautiful at educational institutions around the country.

To get the full scoop on Bess Myersons valiant efforts to expose prejudice in America, register today for the 9thAnnual Whistleblower Summit or clickhere for more information.

See the article here:
Annual Whistleblower Film Festival to Feature The One and Only Jewish Miss America, Documentary Film about an anti-Prejudice Whistleblower -...

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Annual Whistleblower Film Festival to Feature The One and Only Jewish Miss America, Documentary Film about an anti-Prejudice Whistleblower -…
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Written by Neha Banka, Edited by Explained Desk | Kolkata | Updated: July 29, 2020 6:00:23 pm Yair Netanyahu pushes content on social media that appeals to his fathers right-wing political base, a group of ardent supporters who are called Bibists, a play on the prime ministers nickname Bibi. (Photo: Twitter/ @YairNetanyahu)

Yair Netanyahu, 29, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has no formal role in Israels government but he is never far from controversy and ensuing headlines. In his latest gaffe, the younger Netanyahu shared a Twitter image of Goddess Durga superimposed with the face of Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit and the tiger superimposed with that of prosecutor Liat Ben Ari, who are both investigating an ongoing corruption case involving his father. Below the photo was a caption in Hebrew that read: Know your place you despicable people. The deitys arms were morphed to show the middle finger.

Following criticism for his tweets, particularly from Indian social media users, Netanyahu deleted the post, writing: Ive tweeted a meme from a satirical page, critizing political figures in Israel. I didnt realize the meme also portrayed an image conected to the majestic Hindu faith. As soon as I realised it from comments of our Indian friends, I have removed the tweet. I apologize to all our Hindu brothers and sisters for this mistake. (sic)

What role does Yair Netanyahu play in furthering the prime ministers agendas?

Yair is considered to be a very influential social media figure (in Israel) and has a large number of followers on different platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. He is considered to be an informal spokesperson of his father on social networks and many times we see that some controversial opinions and messages his father cannot say, he can express freely, says Edan Ring, a lecturer in communications and social change at Ben-Gurion University, in an interview withindianexpress.com. He has boasted that he single-handedly changed public opinion in Israel through social media.

Netanyahu pushes content on social media that appeals to his fathers right-wing political base, a group of ardent supporters who are called Bibists, a play on the prime ministers nickname Bibi. We can see how hundreds of right-wing trolls on social media follow him and share or retweet his messagesThey are willing to share and publish every single lie or smear that can help his father and hurt his enemies, says Ring.

Netanyahus modus operandi on social media is similar to that followed by other leading populist leaders around the world, Ring says, from Trump to Hungarys prime minister Viktor Orbn and Brazils Bolsonaro. He usually uses social media to attack liberal elites and focuses mainly on mainstream media, calling them leftist and fake news, the legal system and the Supreme Court, saying they are deep state trying to overthrow his father, and of course the opposition and the Arab minority.

To an outside observer, Netanyahus iconoclasm doesnt appear to leave any institution or individual untouched if he deems them to be critical of his father. To his fathers supporters and by extension his, some of Netanyahus most serious controversies are at times dismissed as the result of him being brought up in the public gaze, ever since his father first became Israels youngest prime minister in 1996, when Yair was five years old.

Since 2017, following the launch of investigations concerning corruption charges involving his father, Netanyahu had stepped in more prominently into the public sphere, using his social media platforms to tell these investigating authorities and his fathers opponents exactly what he has to say about them. On many occasions, very much like investigations into his parents alleged wrongdoing dominating news cycles in Israel, Yair Netanyahu too finds himself under similar scrutiny.

What are the controversies in which Yair Netanyahu has been involved?

Most lately, Netanyahu has been furiously tweeting against protests in Israel that have been ongoing for weeks, where Israelis have been protesting against the governments mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak and its impact on the countrys economy.

Also Read | Explained: Why Israel has been witnessing weeks of large-scale protests against PM Netanyahu

He has been very busy with false accusations and fake posts about the massive protest against his fathers government.He even posted a fake photo, not from Israel, trying to blame the protesters for defecating in the streets next to his familys home, says Ring.

Last week, Yair stirred fresh criticism and controversy for responding to a tweet by MK Nitzan, the head of Left wing-party Meretz, featuring a photo of protests in Tel Aviv: I hope the elderly people who die following this protest will be from your (leftist) bloc.

Over the past few years, the younger Netanyahu has angered many, both in Israel and overseas, says Ring. Some (posts) were intentional and some mistakes. Many of his posts and tweets are (deleted) not long after he posts them, but still the damage is done. It is very clear that he doesnt think too much before he pushes the publish button.

In 2017, he was accused of posting anti-Semitic imagery when he published a Facebook post depicting a food chain featuring US billionaire George Soros dangling the world from a stick in front of a reptile and caricature former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, to imply that both individuals were manipulating the world. Both Soros and Barak have been critical of Benjamin Netanyahu. At that time, the Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish non-governmental organisation based in the US, had denounced the cartoon and called it anti-Semitic. Themes that portray Jewish businessmen controlling the world are considered to be anti-Semetic.

Yair Netanyahus support for Trump and right-wing public figures in the US is also well documented. Last year, in an interview with a right-wing U.S. broadcaster BlazeTV, he defended Trump, claiming the US president was a real rock star in Israel. In the same interview he championed Trump as the best friend that Israel aond the Jewish people ever had in the White House and added that Trump will be remembered in Jewish history forever for moving the embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Jerusalem and recognizing the Golan Heights.

Express Explainedis now onTelegram. Clickhere to join our channel (@ieexplained)and stay updated with the latest

In 2018, Yair Netanyahu came under fire after recordings surfaced where he and his friend, the son of Israeli tycoon Kobi Maimon, were heard discussing everything from a $20 billion deal that the prime minister had arranged for Maimon, to searching for prostitutes late into the night.

Why Yair Netanyahus rants matter

Observers say Netanyahu has been increasingly trying to promote himself as a leading populist right-wing figure in Israel and even overseas. He has become more visible in the public sphere by delivering public speeches and by accompanying his father on official trips, like his visit last year to the US.

However, it would be an oversimplification of Yair Netanyahus political ideology if he were to be considered a right-wing figure only attacking the left given that that no one seems to escape his wrath. He often attacks and smears right-wing figures if he thinks they are a threat or if they criticize his father. The only thing he is loyal to is his fathers power, says Ring.

He is more extreme than his father not only in rhetoric but also in ideology and many people think that he is planning to follow in the footsteps of his father and become a politician soon. That is something that many people fear because it means more polarisation for society in Israel.

After the latest controversy over the morphed image of Goddess Durga, Yair Netanyhau published a series of tweets to highlight his love for India and perhaps to emphasise diplomatic ties between India and Israel.

The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines

For all the latest Explained News, download Indian Express App.

IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd

Excerpt from:
Durga meme row and other reasons why Israeli PMs son Yair Netanyahu is always in news - The Indian Express

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Durga meme row and other reasons why Israeli PMs son Yair Netanyahu is always in news – The Indian Express
Tags:

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Donald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and far-left fascism a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades.

A new database of nearly 900 politically motivated attacks and plots in the United States since 1994 includes just one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to fatalities. In that case, the single person killed was the perpetrator.

Over the same time period, American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database.

More broadly, the database lists 21 victims killed in leftwing attacks since 2010 , and 117 victims of rightwing attacks in that same period nearly six times as much. Attacks inspired by the Islamic State and similar jihadist groups, in contrast, killed 95 people since 2010, slightly fewer than rightwing extremists, according to the data set. More than half of these victims died in a a single attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.

The database was assembled by researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a centrist thinktank, and reviewed by the Guardian.

Its launch comes as Trump administration officials have echoed the presidents warnings of a violent leftwing revolution. Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent and extremist agenda, the attorney general, William Barr, said amid nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd. A new justice department taskforce on violent anti-government extremists listed antifa as a major threat, while making no mention of white supremacy.

Defining which violent incidents constitute politically motivated acts of terrorism, and trying to sort political violence into leftwing and rightwing categories, is inherently messy and debatable work. This is particularly true in the US, where highly publicized mass shootings are common, and some have no clear political motivation at all.

Stated political motives for violent attacks often overlap with other potential factors, including life crises, anger issues, a history of violent behavior and, in some cases, serious mental health conditions.

While researchers sometimes disagree on how to categorize the ideology of specific attacks, multiple databases that track extremist violence, including data maintained by the Anti-Defamation League, and from journalists at the Center for Investigative Reporting, have found the same trend: Its violent rightwing attacks, not far-left violence, that presents the greater deadly threat to Americans today.

Leftwing violence has not been a major terrorism threat, said Seth Jones, a counter-terrorism expert who led the creation of CSISs dataset. .

Most of the deadly extremist attacks the CSIS researchers categorized as leftwing were killings of police officers by black men, many of them US military veterans, who described acting out of anger or retribution for police killings of black Americans.

These shooting attacks include the murder of two police officers in New York City in 2014, after Michael Brown and Eric Garners killings; and the murders of five officers in Dallas, Texas, and three officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2016.

Some of the gunmen who killed police had connections to black nationalist groups, which extremism researchers at CSIS and elsewhere said they typically categorize as leftwing, largely because in the 1960s, influential black nationalist groups like the Black Panther party were anti-capitalist and considered part of the New Left.

Making that categorization is less straightforward today, some researchers acknowledge, since some prominent black nationalist organizations express homophobic, misogynistic and antisemitic views, values that set them in opposition to the current American left.

Mark Pitcavage, a senior fellow at the ADLs Center on Extremism, noted that Gavin Eugene Long, who staged an attack on police in Baton Rouge, had ties to black nationalism and was also part of an offshoot of the sovereign citizens movement, an anti-government ideology that is typically categorized as rightwing.

In several of the high-profile leftwing attacks included in the CSIS list the only fatality was the perpetrator. A mass shooting attack on a group of congressional Republicans during a baseball practice outside of Washington DC, in 2017 left the Republican congressman Steve Scalise seriously injured, and three other people shot.

The gunman, James Hodgkinson, 66, was the only one killed in the attack. Hodgkinson had deliberately targeted Republicans and had expressed disgust with Trump.

Many of the other leftwing attacks or plots in the CSIS database, including by anarchists, environmental groups and others, resulted in no deaths at all. Often, leftwing plots, particularly by animal rights activists, have targeted businesses or buildings, and their primary weapons have been incendiaries designed to create fires or destroy infrastructure not kill people, said Jones, the researcher who led the creation of the data set.

The one deadly anti-fascist attack listed in the database occurred in July 2019, when Willem von Spronsen, a 69-year-old white man, was shot dead by police outside an Ice detention center in Tacoma, Washington. Authorities said von Spronsen had been throwing molotov cocktails, setting flares, that he set a car on fire and that he had a rifle. Local activists told media outlets they believed he had been trying to destroy buses parked outside the facility that were used to transport people who were being deported.

Von Spronsen, who had previously been arrested at a protest outside the detention center, was involved in a contentious divorce, and both a friend and his ex-wife had described him as suicidal. In a letter he wrote to friends before his death, Von Spronsen called detention centers concentration camps and said he wanted to take action against evil, BuzzFeed News reported. I am antifa, he reportedly wrote.

No one was harmed in the attack except Von Spronsen, according to media reports.

Researchers who monitor extremist groups at the Anti-Defamation League and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said they, too, were not aware of a single murder linked to an American anti-fascist in the last 20 to 25 years.

Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said some leftwing groups were known for more radical and violent tactics in the 1960s, adding: Its just not the case today.

Mark Pitcavage said he knew of only one killing, 27 years ago, that might potentially be classified as connected to anti-fascist activism: the shooting of a racist skinhead, Eric Banks, by an anti-racist skinhead, John Bair, in Portland, Oregon, in 1993.

Given the discrepancies between the deadly toll of leftwing and rightwing violence, American law enforcement agencies have long faced criticism for failing to take the threat of white supremacist violence seriously, while at the same time overstating the risks posed by leftwing protesters. After a violent rally in California in 2016, law enforcement officers worked with neo-Nazis to build criminal cases against anti-fascist protesters, while not recommending charges against neo-Nazis for stabbing the anti-fascists.

Antifa activists have been the targets of domestic terror attacks by white supremacists, including in a terror plot early this year, in which law enforcement officials alleged that members of the neo-Nazi group the Base had planned to murder a married couple in Georgia they believed were anti-fascist organizers.

Antifa is not going around murdering people like rightwing extremists are. Its a false equivalence, said Beirich.

Ive at times been critical of antifa for getting into fights with Nazis at rallies and that kind of violence, but I cant think of one case in which an antifa person was accused of murder, she added.

The new CSIS database only includes attacks through early May 2020, and does not yet list incidents connected with the massive national protests against police violence after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, including the killings of two California law enforcement officers by a man authorities say was linked to the rightwing boogaloo movement.

Today, Jones said, the most significant domestic terrorism threat comes from white supremacists, anti-government militias and a handful of individuals associated with the boogaloo movement that are attempting to create a civil war in the United States.

Daily interpersonal violence and state violence pose a much greater threat to Americans than any kind of extremist terror attack. More than 100,000 people have been killed in gun homicides in the United States in the past decade, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US police officers shoot nearly 1,000 Americans to death each year. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be shot by the police as white Americans, according to analysis by the Washington Post and the Guardian.

But the presidents rhetoric about antifa violence has dangerous consequences, not just for anti-fascists, but for any Americans who decide to protest, some activists said.

Yvette Felarca, a California-based organizer and anti-fascist activist, said she saw Trumps claims about antifa violence, particularly during the George Floyd protests, as a message to his hardcore supporters that it was appropriate to attack people who came out to protest.

Its his way of saying to his supporters: Yeah, go after them. Beat them or kill them to the point where they go back home and stay home afraid, Felarca said.

Read this article:
Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years - The Guardian

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years – The Guardian
Tags: