Tuesday evening’s New School panel “Anti-Semitism and the Struggle for Justice” featured some of the most virulent anti-Israel voices in the activist world, including Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian activist who has supported convicted terrorists and once claimed, “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.”
Leading up to the panel that took place in New York Tuesday evening, countless Jewish and Zionist voices protested the event, including over 20,000 people who signed a petition to stop the event and a New School benefactor who said he would cut funding if the school didn’t withdraw sponsorship of the panel.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted, “Having Linda Sarsour & head of JVP leading a panel on #antisemitism is like Oscar Meyer leading a panel on vegetarianism.”
Having Linda Sarsour & head of JVP leading a panel on #antisemitism is like Oscar Meyer leading a panel on vegetarianism. These panelists know the issue, but unfortunately, from perspective of fomenting it rather than fighting it. https://t.co/s4tvBrvjBj 1/2
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 13, 2017
He continued, “There’s not a single Jewish organization that studies this issue and/or fights this disease [that] would take this panel seriously.”
Seriously there’s not a single Jewish organization that studies this issue and/or fights this disease (such as @adl_national) would take this panel seriously, let alone the institution that put it together. It’s a sad day for the @theNewSchool. 2/2
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 13, 2017
Protests centered around Sarsour’s participation in the panel, as she is widely considered an anti-Zionist extremist whose support for convicted terrorists and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel encourages and spreads anti-Semitism.
While Jewish supporters of Sarsour suggested that her fundraising $100,000 for a damaged Jewish cemetery proves the baselessness of her alleged anti-Semitism, Sarsour is an open supporter of convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmeah Odeh, a mastermind behind the murderous terrorist attack against an Israeli grocery store in 1969. Odeh’s attack resulted in the deaths of two Jewish students, just 20 and 21 years old.
She has stated that Zionists cannot be true feminists and has suggested that Somali activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was forced to suffer female genital mutilation under Sharia law at five years old, should “have her vagina taken away” for being a Zionist.
However, widespread opposition was not enough to stop the event, hosted by extreme leftist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), Haymarket Books, and Jacobin Magazine. The panel garnered 500 attendees and another 1,200 watching on live stream.
The panel was moderated by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and featured Sarsour, JVP’s executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson, Leo Ferguson, founder of Jews of Color Caucus, and Lina Morales, a Jewish anti-Zionist activist and JVP Education Chair.
When Sarsour was introduced, she received the loudest applause from the audience. She criticized the White House for being the biggest existential threat to the Jewish people and spoke about the intersection of bigotry, ultimately arguing, “We must all commit to dismantling anti-Semitism.”
The event description maintained that while Anti-Semitism is “harmful and real,” when critics of Israel are called anti-Semitic, those who are anti-Israel become accused of Jew-hating. As such, the panelists addressed the argument that anti-Zionism does not equate anti-Semitism.
While Leo Ferguson recognized the traumatic legacy of anti-Semitism but criticized the right wing for exploiting the trauma for political gain, Vilkomerson criticized the “institutional Jewish community” for “trading its crucial responsibility to fight anti-Semitism…for support for Israel.”
Islamophobia rears its ugly head, Vilkomerson said, when any Palestinian who criticizes Israel is considered to be anti-Semitic, suggesting Jewish opposition to Sarsour as a prime example.
She continued, commenting on a “virulent, Trumpist form of Zionist anti-Semitism,” that “if the past year has taught anything, it’s that loving Israel does not equate to loving Jews.”
Morales, who is known to conflate Zionism with white nationalism, criticized Israel’s “cultural genocide” of Jewish communities that “don’t fit its blueprint for European Jewishness.” She then rebuffed the equation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, saying, “Because I care about Jews, I’m anti-Zionist.”
