Article originally published July 13, 2023 on northjersey.com

Link to Original Article by Hannan Adely

When Anna Ben-Hur was a college junior, controversy gripped her campus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst when a handful of pro-Israel organizations tried, unsuccessfully, to cancel a panel about free speech and Palestinian rights.

The organizations, one of which sued to stop the 2019 event, said the panel would promote antisemitism and make Jewish students fearful. Ben-Hur, who grew up in Teaneck in a Jewish Israeli family, said the attacks on the event and its supporting groups made her feel less safe.

“UMass was putting out statements that were anti-Palestinian, all in the name of protecting Jewish students,” she said. “As a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, I didn’t feel protected at all. I didn’t feel that demonizing pro-Palestinian organizations did anything to help me.”

She was more concerned, she said, about far-right extremists appearing on campus, adding that “those were the times I felt unsafe.”

Today, students and activists worry that efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian voices will intensify amid a growing push at statehouses, universities, town halls and the White House to adopt what’s known as the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the measure has sparked controversy because it would label many criticisms of Israel as antisemitism.

The national debate has landed in New Jersey, where legislators have, for a second time, introduced a bill that would formally adopt the guidance as the “working definition” of antisemitism. The bill is still in committee, but it has already sparked a flurry of dueling opinion columns and an online petition with more than 1,000 signatures asking state legislators to reject it.

Supporters say the measure is needed to combat right-wing bigotry as well as anti-Israel activity on the left that sometimes crosses the line into antisemitism. Opponents say the wording is so broad that it can be used — and has been used — to discredit and silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies.

“In this country, we’re permitted to criticize our own U.S. government,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “What this definition does is prevent us from criticizing a foreign government. It limits the free speech of Americans.”

‘Double standards’

The IHRA created the definition to provide guidance about antisemitism at a time when Jewish Americans face a rise in hate crimes, bias incidents and anti-Israel activity. It describes antisemitism as calling for violence against Jews, demonizing or making stereotypical allegations about Jews and denying the Holocaust.

It also states that it is anti-Semitic to compare Israeli policy with that of the Nazis, to apply “double standards” to Israel not demanded of other nations; or to deny the Jewish people “their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

Some Jewish activists say the disproportionate focus on Palestinian rights advocacy undermines the fight against antisemitism, focusing on progressive activists despite evidence showing that anti-Jewish beliefs are more prevalent in right-wing circles, especially among young conservatives.

The lead author of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, has spoken against its use in official law or policy. It was intended to serve as a tool for monitoring and discussion. Instead, it “stops academic freedom and, I think, harms Jewish students,” Stern said at a congressional hearing on extremism and antisemitism in Teaneck in October.

“There’s debate in the Jewish community about whether being Zionist is required to be inside the tent,” Stern said. “I don’t know how that’s going to be decided, but I sure as heck don’t want government to decide it.”

‘Gives a person so much power’

Palestinian advocates worry that the adoption of the IHRA definition could deepen hostility they face, including lawsuits, harassment and online blacklists that accuse them by name of supporting antisemitism or terror.

When students sued Fordham University over the denial of a Palestinian rights club, pro-Israel groups cited the IHRA definition in court briefs supporting the school. The students, who came from different faith and ethnic backgrounds, had their names, photos and information published on an anti-Palestinian page that turns up first in web searches.

“For me, personally, I can handle it, but for many of my classmates and peers, especially Palestinian ones, it was particularly awful for them,” said Veer Shetty, who graduated in 2021. “There was one student who was particularly vicious, emailing us and calling us anti-Semites. The messages were threatening and angry.”

A student organizer with Fordham Students for Justice in Palestine — still an unsanctioned club — spoke to The Record and USA TODAY Network on the condition of anonymity. He said he worried that his involvement would land him on an online blacklist that could hurt him in a job search or cause Israelis to deny him entry to Palestinian territories.

“Imagine one person angry about what I say could ruin my chances and prohibit my ability to enter Palestine,” said the student, a senior from Brooklyn. “It gives a person so much power, for what, defending my homeland?”

For similar reasons, a recent Rutgers graduate from Bergen County also declined to use his name. At Rutgers, Students for Justice in Palestine asked the administration to erase names and emails of its leaders on the club’s page because of harassment, he said.

The Rutgers Student Assembly passed a resolution in support of IHRA in 2021. “If it is enforced on a university level, then that could directly impede upon SJP’s right to protest on behalf of Palestinian rights,” the student said.

Palestine Legal, an advocacy group, has responded to more than 1,700 incidents between 2014 and 2020 targeting speech supportive of Palestinian rights. The incidents included discrimination, legal threats, disciplinary investigations, censorship and false accusations of antisemitism, according to their website.

A chill on free speech

Academics are often the target of such claims. Earlier this year, a Westfield district parent filed a complaint with the New Jersey Schools Ethics Commission against Sahar Aziz, a Board of Education member, over tweets on her personal Twitter account. The Deborah Project, a pro-Israel legal group, later joined the lawsuit.

The complaint noted that Aziz retweeted an article that referred to “master-race democracy” in Israel and retweeted a post stating that Israel practices apartheid and is a colonialist state. The complaint also notes that Aziz was among thousands of academics who signed an online letter that expresses support for an international boycott campaign and for Palestinian scholarship on campus.

The ethics complaint cites the IHRA definition to allege she engaged in antisemitism. Aziz, professor of law and Middle East Legal Scholar at Rutgers Law School, researches and writes about race, religion and civil rights and is a frequent commentator on such issues.

“The School Ethics Complaint against Sahar Aziz, the first Arab American and Muslim member of the Westfield Board of Education, is actually a veiled and concerted effort by the Deborah Project to smear Professor Aziz and silence her academic scholarship that is in any way critical of the human rights record of the State of Israel,” read a statement from her attorney, Matthew Giacobbe.

Westfield is one of several New Jersey municipalities that has adopted the IHRA definition at the local level, although its board of education has not done the same. The definition is being considered by the Clifton City Council.

Similar complaints, filed by a bevy of far-right pro-Israel groups, are being filed across the country. Advocates worry these kinds of complaints will grow if IHRA definition is adopted as law or policy.

The backlash has put people at risk, Ayoub said. Extremists have surveilled academics, sharing their private information online, including their home addresses, he said. One client was followed to a hotel where she was speaking at a medical conference. Outside, people she did not know drove a truck with a billboard bearing an image of her face, while calling her an anti-Semite.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said that it contacted the FBI in May because of escalating threats and intimidation against clients. The group also issued an advisory urging community activists and organizations to consider security measures when planning events, specifically public events and events held on college campuses.

A changing climate

The IHRA campaign comes a time when the Palestinian rights movement has grown nationally, especially on college campuses, and Democrats’ sympathies in the Middle East shift toward Palestinians. The shift is driven in part by a far-right turn in Israel by leading politicians, reports about human rights violations and social media activism.

Supporters say it is intended to tackle hate speech and bias at a time when Jewish Americans, especially students, report harassment on campus and say they are collectively blamed for Israel’s actions. The Record and NorthJersey.com documented their experiences with harassment and bias in a recent series.

“Every week that goes by is another example of Jewish student rights to an equal educational opportunity not being protected,” Rabbi Esther Reed, executive director of Rutgers Hillel, said at the hearing in Teaneck in October.

Reed said students worried about appearing “too Jewish” or wearing clothing with the word Israel on it. “No student should be afraid to express their Jewish identity in New Jersey,” Reed said.

Anti-Israel rhetoric often crosses the line into antisemitism by demonizing and applying double-standards to the only Jewish state in the world, say organizations that support the codification of the definition.

In this climate, Jewish groups are calling for more action on antisemitism. The American Jewish Committee, one of the leading advocates for the IHRA definition, said in an online statement that “it is foremost a flexible educational tool intended to help people recognize antisemitism − not sanction speech.”

But critics, including some progressive Jewish groups, say the measure goes too far. Citing the definition, pro-Israel groups have accused leading human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli B’Tselem of antisemitism over their findings that Israel is practicing apartheid against the Palestinian population. Individuals who repeat the claim are accused of antisemitism.

Individuals and groups engaging in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, popular among activists, are also labeled anti-Semitic. Modeled after the South African anti-apartheid movement, supporters say it is intended to pressure Israel to end its occupation and human rights violations. Critics say it singles out and tries to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Under the IHRA measure, universities, groups and individuals fear they could be the subject of investigations, fines, defunding and attacks on their reputation.

The backlash can be intimidating, said Abire Sabbagh, a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University and staff member at the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton. She has worked for a politician who received threats and hate messages over support for Palestinian causes. She has been threatened at her current job. Her information, too, has been shared on Canary Mission, a website that compiles dossiers on activists.

“You are constantly living with the worry — is this going to affect my career?” Sabbagh said. “Am I going to be able to do anything else later on? It adds to activist burnout. It affects and discourages others from being part of movement.”

“It makes you scared to stand up for your own people and your own rights, because of these types of definitions that make you think if you criticize Israel, you will automatically be called anti-Semitic.”

Around 40 countries, the U.S. State Department and some U.S. states and universities have already adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. People have lost jobs, reputations have been damaged and artistic and academic events have been canceled in its wake, reports in the U.S. and Europe show.

Stern, the definition’s lead author, said was it “never intended to restrict free speech” or infringe on academic freedom. Universities and other institutions should instead work to foster inclusive environments that promote empathy and understanding, he said.

“There is a difference between being harassed and intimated and shut down, which should never happen, and having to engage with difficult ideas,” Stern said. “… You want to pull together students who are Zionist and anti-Zionist and give them tools to have credible discussions and figure out why we have such differences.”