An unfortunate symbiosis has developed between pro-Israel culture warriors like Republican Representative Elise Stefanik and the most self-indulgent fringe of pro-Palestinian campus protesters. Together they are, wittingly or unwittingly, shifting attention from the urgent emergency in Gaza, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to defy the United States and invade the southern city of Rafah, to the much smaller problem of campus antisemitism. The United States has none.” Within the movement, I imagine such rhetoric functions as a sign of total commitment, a no-going-back rejection of hollow liberal pieties. Since 2016, pro-Israel politicians have pushed versions of a bill called the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which would codify, for the purpose of enforcing federal civil rights law in higher education, a definition of antisemitism that includes rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. In the past, civil libertarians were able to head such legislation off, but that’s become harder in the current fevered climate.

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Persons: Elise Stefanik, Benjamin Netanyahu, “, ”, Panther, Kwame Ture, Stokely Carmichael, Israel, that’s Organizations: Palestinian, Columbia, National Lawyers Guild, United, Senate, Semitism Locations: Israel, Gaza, United States, Rafah, stoke