Anti-Semitism panel features Rashida Tlaib, Marc Lamont Hill

NEW YORK — At a panel on anti-Semitism, four speakers known for their outspoken criticism of Israel — including Rep. Rashida Tlaib — said that they themselves do not hate Jews.

“Tell everybody, I don’t hate you. I absolutely love you,” said Tlaib, a Palestinian-American and Democrat from Michigan who supports the movement to boycott Israel. “If anybody comes through my doors or through any forum to try to push anti-Semitism forward you will hear me being loud with my bullhorn to tell them to get the hell out.”

The panel on Tuesday, Dec. 15, had sparked substantial criticism from Jewish commentators and pro-Israel activists when it was announced, both for giving anti-Zionists a platform to discuss anti-Semitism, and for being majority non-Jewish. Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion writer and editor, tweeted, “So ‘dismantling antisemitism’ is actually about dismantling *accusations* of antisemitism.”

An all-Jewish panel with a similar title, called “Dismantling Anti-Semitism: Jews Talk Justice,” was to be hosted the night after by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, a coalition of nearly 300 groups, most of them Jewish.

The anti-Israel panel, hosted by the political and advocacy arm of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, included, along with Tlaib, Marc Lamont Hill, a Temple University professor; Barbara Ransby, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor; and Peter Beinart, a Jewish essayist.

Hill and Ransby have also endorsed the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, known as BDS.

Beinart recently called for a single, binational Israeli-Palestinian state in place of Israel. Tlaib also supports a binational state.

The panel, called “Dismantling Antisemitism, Winning Justice,” was moderated by Rabbi Alissa Wise, a Jewish Voice for Peace leader.

The panelists on Tuesday all rejected the notion that pro-Palestinian advocacy, including support for an Israel boycott, constitutes anti-Semitism.

They all said that anti-Semitism comes predominantly from the right and agreed that it is best fought by allying with other oppressed groups in solidarity.

“Palestinians that advocate for Palestinian rights are not the enemy, those of us who advocate for BDS as a strategy to advance the rights of disenfranchised and exiled Palestinians are not the enemy,” Ransby said.

“The enemy is the kind of people who go into a synagogue in California, north of San Diego, and open fire to do deadly damage,” a reference to the synagogue shooting in Poway, Calif. last year.

“In a fundamental way, of course, we want a more just world for everyone,” she added later.

The event included plenty of criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. At one point, Ransby likened the dilemma over criticizing Israel while fighting anti-Semitism to the dilemma African-American leftist activists faced over whether to criticize Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean anti-colonial activist who became a dictator.

Hill, who was unable to attend the live event because of his father’s death but shared prerecorded responses, praised Jews who had worked with him in activist movements and said people need to call out anti-Semitism in their own ideological camps.

“I not only became aware of anti-Semitism as an idea but I began to hear it and see it in practice,” he said. “There were moments when I would be in movements or be in meetings, I’d be reading a book or pamphlet or literature and I would hear the way Jewish people were being smeared.”

He added, “I became keenly aware of how dangerous it is if we do nothing to stand in solidarity against anti-Semitism, to stand in solidarity with Jewish people as they fight for freedom, safety, dignity and self-determination.”

Beinart, who has for years argued that the Jewish community needs to welcome anti-Zionists, said he believes that, by the same token, “Zionist Jews should not be excluded from progressive spaces.”

“It’s very important that as we fight against the greatest anti-Semitic threat, which is the threat from the white nationalist right, that we also show a great concern to make sure that progressive movements are not tainted by anti-Semitism,” he said.

A counter event organized by the organized by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, in partnership with the Tel Aviv Institute was held Wednesday.

Among the speakers were Natan Sharansky, human rights activist, and Ellie Cohanim, US Assistant Special Envoy to Monitor & Combat Anti-Semitism.

Sharansky said that “There is an attempt to hijack the cause of human rights from Jews by so-called progressives. … For the so-called progressives, all the world is the fight between ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed.’ ‘Oppressors’ are always wrong, and the ‘oppressed’ are always right. There is no such thing as individual justice; it has to be for the group.”

He said in the eyes of these voices, “Jews are guilty of belonging to the wrong state—the State of Israel,” and that “Jews are accused as a group and Israel is accused as a Jewish state.”

Cohanim outlined her own personal and family background from Iran, emphasizing the hundreds of thousands of Jews originally from Arab and Middle Eastern countries. She said that there is a “pernicious new form of anti-Semitism” that seeks to erase this history.

“This erasure of history allows the accusation that Jews enjoy white privilege and are neo-colonialists,” she said.

Another speaker, Anila Ali, president and founder of American Muslims & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council said, “We believe that as Muslims we don’t get to define what anti-Semitism is. That is up to Jews.”

Relating specifically to the Dec. 15 panel, she said “when Rep. Tlaib’s office was contacted over this sham of an anti-Semitism conference, she only called out white nationalists.”

JNS contributed to this report.