A fierce debate that started in Durham last year over what is and is not anti-Semitism has spread to the state’s Human Relations Commission—and it could move to the General Assembly.
At the state HRC’s September 26, 2019, meeting, representatives from the North Carolina Coalition for Israel asked the commission to encourage the legislature to adopt the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism.
Adopted in May 2016, this definition includes several components related to the state of Israel: Claims that Israel’s existence is racist, requirements that Israel do things not demanded of other democratic nations, and insinuations that Jews are collectively responsible for Israel’s actions are all considered anti-Semitic. However, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”
But at another HRC meeting last Thursday, members of Jewish Voices for Peace pushed back, arguing that changing the definition would shut down dissent over Israel’s policies and Palestinian rights.
“It’s flawed logic to label critics of Israel as anti-Semitic,” Trude Bennett told commissioners. “It portrays me as having a failed loyalty and Palestinians as criminals.”
This controversy originated in 2018 with a Durham City Council statement that its police would not participate in international exchanges that included military-style training. That decision followed pressure from the coalition group “Demilitarize! Durham2Palestine,” which asked the city not to allow its police to undergo counterterrorism training in Israel.
While the council’s statement covered exchanges with any country, an opening paragraph quoted Chief C.J. Davis saying there had been no effort to initiate exchanges with Israel. That—along with an understanding of where the statement came from—sparked a firestorm.
The N.C. Coalition for Israel sued the city when it refused to remove the mention of Israel from the statement. It was one of three lawsuits, in fact; another argued that the council had violated the Open Meetings Law by discussing the statement in group emails. All three have been dismissed, most recently the N.C. Coalition for Israel’s in December. The group plans to appeal.
In September, Coalition members made it clear why they wanted the state’s definition of anti-Semitism to change.
“We ask that you protect us,” Jerome Fox, who is part of the Coalition’s lawsuit, told the HRC. “How can you do that? You can encourage the North Carolina legislators to adopt the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism. That could go a long way in preventing the Durham situation for occurring in other unsuspecting North Carolina towns.”
They didn’t buy the argument that criticism of Israel is a separate thing. “Make no mistake,” said Amy Rosenthal. “When these groups say Israel, they mean Jews.”
Durham isn’t the only place where this debate has surfaced in North Carolina. In March 2019, the U.S. Department of Education investigated a conference held by the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies over accusations of bias and because several speakers were involved in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.
“I don’t see how you can talk about the conditions in Gaza without talking about its relationship to Israel,” says UNC professor Elyse Crystall, an adviser to Students for Justice in Palestine.
The conference was also criticized for a performance by Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar, who started a song by calling it his “anti-Semitic song.” Crystall says Nafar was being satirical, calling attention to the notion that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism.
“If your song is anti-Semitic, you’re not going to say that,” Crystall says. “The song was about being in love with a Jewish woman.”
The Department of Education’s investigation, instigated by Republican congressman George Holding, led to threats to cut the Middle East studies consortium’s Title VI funding—$235,000 in total.
“We do not see how these activities support the development of foreign language and international expertise for the benefit of U.S. national security and economic stability,” said Robert King, assistant secretary for postsecondary education. King also alleged that the consortium was treating Islam more favorably than Christianity and Judaism.
In December, President Trump signed an executive order classifying discrimination against Jews as a Title VI violation, which refers to discrimination based on “race, color, or national origin.” The order also expands the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism to include college campuses.
“What a Jew is, is now redefined as a national identity, as if all Jews come from Israel,” Crystall says. “What connects us as Jews is not national origin.”
In 2017, Governor Cooper signed into law a bill banning the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel—an indication that, were the HRC to push the new definition, lawmakers might adopt it.
This, Fox says, would be a victory for the Jewish community. In his view, you can’t separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism.
As he told the HRC in September: “Although the anti-Israel cohorts who influenced the city council members have not drawn swastikas on my doors, I contend that denying the Jewish people, one of the oldest nations on the planet, a right to a sovereign state of their own, in their ancestral homeland, is tantamount to anti-Semitism.”
Globally, anti-Semitism has been on the rise, with far-right political parties taking power in Brazil, Poland, and Hungary. All three of those countries, however, maintain close ties with Israel.
“The Israeli government, which says it is for the protection of Jewish people, ignored the cries of Jewish people,” John Luke Kurucz, of Jewish Voice for Peace, told the HRC last week.
The HRC didn’t indicate which way it was leaning, though committee member Angelo Mathay asked Jewish Voices for Peace representatives last week if they had a different definition of anti-Semitism.
They pointed toward the definition used by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which says in part: “It has functioned to prevent the prevailing economic system and the almost exclusively Christian ruling class by diverting blame for hardships onto Jews. The myth changes and adapts to different times and places, but fundamentally it says that Jews are to blame for society’s problems.”
Comment on this story at [email protected]. Correction: The print version of this story says that the Durham City Council passed the statement “last year.” It happened in 2018.
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