You Might Be an Anti-Semite

Kenneth Marcus, head of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, is the Jeff Foxworthy of the American Israelist movement. When he says, "If you do X (call Israel a racist endeavor, express sympathy for Palestinian self-determination, support BDS, and so on ad infinitum), you might be an anti-Semite," he means: "You're definitely an anti-Semite."

TGIF: Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism: The Invidious Conflation

I and others have warned that enactment of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act now before Congress would threaten free speech and free inquiry on America’s college campuses and beyond. As I’ve explained, this bill incorporates a conception — a “definition” plus potential examples — of anti-Semitism that conflates criticism of Israel’s founding and continuing abuse of the Palestinians with anti-Semitism for the purpose inoculating Israel from such criticism. Anti-Zionist Jews and others have objected to this conflation for over 70 years. 

What makes us so confident in predicting a threat to free speech?

Read TGIF at The Libertarian Institute.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

Become a Free Association patron today!