they’re making it illegal to protest the gaza genocide through a new bill H.R. 6090
I am going to keep pounding this into people: It is shit like this that makes antisemitism worse. Israel claiming the Jewish label for itself makes it worse. The U.S. government saying criticizing Israel is itself antisemitism makes it worse. Israel and the U.S. government make things less safe for me through this genocide by emboldening bigots.
I’m definitely praying the most for the Palestinians right this second but I’ve been saying since this began that I’m also really not looking forward to antisemitism becoming cool again.
Right now we have to fight the federal government for the Palestinians and in the near future we may well have to fight Nazis for the Jews.
As someone who grew up in New Jersey, which has one of the world’s largest Jewish populations, so very much this. It was very befuddling to me when I realized that people conflate the two.
I had a number of Jewish friends growing up and none of their families associated themselves with Israel. They were practicing Jews (most of them, anyway), but that has nothing to do with some faraway land.
Tldr on the topic from another article I read:
Instead, the bill requires only the Department of Education, which is in charge of federal grants for financial aid and funding of schools, to consider the definition of antisemitism when investigating programs that receive federal funding. Essentially, it gives the Education Department the ability to pull funding if it finds discrimination “based on race, color, or national origin,” something known as a Title VI investigation.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/05/13/antisemitism-awareness-act-explain/
The definition used is an 11 point one explained in the above article. The gripes are basically that the definition is broad enough to include what many feel should be protected speech and this would curtail criticism of Israel.
What’s the problem, in China it’s illegal to protest against the government too and in Russia against the war. It’s just how it is in big countries. /s
