US House passes bill that expands definition of anti-Semitism to comparing Israel with Nazis
The United States House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would expand the federal definition of anti-Semitism, despite opposition from civil liberties groups.
The bill passed the House on Wednesday by a margin of 320 to 91, and it is largely seen as a reaction to the ongoing antiwar protests unfolding on US university campuses. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.
If the bill were to become law, it would codify a definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities”.
According to the IHRA, that definition also encompasses the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”.
The group also includes certain examples in its definition to illustrate anti-Semitism. Saying, for instance, that “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” would be deemed anti-Semitic under its terms. The definition also bars any comparison between “contemporary Israeli policy” and “that of the Nazis”.
Rights groups, however, have raised concerns the definition nevertheless conflates criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.
In a letter sent to lawmakers on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged House members to vote against the legislation, saying federal law already prohibits anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment.
“Instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/us-house-passes-controversial-bill-that-expands-definition-of-anti-semitismOpen linkView original on lemmy.ml
If the Israelis don't want to be compared to Nazis maybe they ought to stop acting like Nazis
It would also help if more than a handful of people in the House knew semitic is a pretty archaic term and would include Palestinians in Gaza as well as Israelis and people from several other countries as well.
Protected classes are race, religion, national origin, age, pregnancy status, gender, citizenship, disability or veteran, family status or genetic information. Nobody gets protections for genocide.
Edit: genetic not generic
So it's ok to call students that are protesting against a genocide Nazis but not the people actually committing the genocide. Got it.
It's OK to call anyone not aligned with the Republican Party a Nazi, because it's important that words have no real meaning. Once words have no meaning, the ideas behind them fade as well. This is double plus ungood.
The ideas don't fade, just get expressed via weapons since words lost meaning.
Like triplespeak.
That's what modern Nazis do - try very hard to defame their opponents as Nazis. Sometimes even their victims. Then any argument from that side is disadvantaged.
Why the fuck I'm even writing this here, it's obvious, only unless I find a way to kill some bad people doing this, I won't help things.
I mean, what do you call a person that performs ethnic genocide?
American?
😂😂😂😂😂
Hey!
Aw who am I kidding, I know my country's bloodstained history despite my public education. I wish I could say it was in our past and that we're better now, but we're literally funding this exact genocide. 🫠
Hey there, one of the good ones 👋🏽
I fucking can't stand that this is a thing. I experienced the same thing and honestly it was "earth shattering."
When you're a kid and you're brainwashed into believing "America the Great" and how we're always the Good Guys™ always Fighting for Democracy™ only to graduate and then learn on your own how absolutely fucking disgusting we are as a nation it absolutely fucks with your head and how you trust information.
These fucking morons can't figure out where so many conspiracy theorists come from? It's from people like me who find out their entire social studies class was a fucking lie to indoctrinate you and then fall down a rabbit hole when they start learning about actual history... Thankfully I was "smart" enough to dig my way out of that hole before becoming some crazed Neonazi but still... Damage was done.
He's out of line,
But he's right
So about that freedom of speech…
That's double-plus ungood wrongthink, citizen. Report for re-education.
What about it? You are still free to say exactly what the government wants you to say
I get the feeling a lot of our more vocal free speech absolutists are going to be conspicuously quiet on this one.
The campus crackdown is definitely going too far. Vietnam War protestors were treated the same way. It escalated, and the cops opened fire at Kent State.
The state guard fired on students at Kent State not the cops.
The difference today is kids got guns and will fire back.
Lmao this is a guilty conscience talking.
What the fuck?
Fuck zionists and their disproportionate amount of control over the world.
Good thing their silly religious stories will never come true.
Imagine being disappointed for eternity.
Zionism is a racist colonial ideology, merely using religion as a tool. Theodor Herzl, founder of zionism, said so himself
It used religion simply as a component of typical XIX-century romantic nationalism. It was a secular ideology until the last 10-20 years.
Bruh literal facism
Ah, free speech in the land of the free
Always the same map
A bit surprising that "israel" didn't vote against it, but that would be a bit too on the nose I guess.
Whiteness index map
Wild to me that China is not a part of "core world trade"
China didn't colonize the world like western Europe and Japan did, then make neocolonial institutions like the IMF and World Bank to preserve those colonial relations.
They've mostly escaped colonialism and become the manufacturing hub of the world now, but wealth isn't being extracted from the Global South / "former" colonies to China like they are being transferred to the imperial Core.
Always the same map
But Nazism is completely legal in the US?
Looking very much so.
Thereby rendering the definition of antisemitism meaningless.
Having it in the laws as something separate from racism was racist in the first place.
Zionists are also thieves because they are buying stolen Gaza land.
I have sat at passover with Zionists and they are the dumbest shittiest people just like the crazy evangelicals. Just shit people.
Good luck on getting them to admit any type of fault.
There are governments that support Palestine, including Spain and Ireland. I guess the latter two are anti-Semite then.
bro you need to chill out. I'm all for criticizing Israel but if you use a name that has a bad ring to it (for example nazi) but is defined on an entirely different era, set of crimes, and political landscape, you cannot put forward a well-reasoned argument. if people continue to get up in their feelings and stray from reality, they'll never change anything that is based in reality
There is a world of difference between taking issue with someone making a poorly received argument and a government deciding that making that argument is inherently illegal.
Shut up nazi
everyone who upvoted this comment is a brainlet social media activist and never did anything good for Palestine 👌😂 go on and confirm by downvoting here, polls are open.
Shut up nazi
shut up idiot 😂😂 (see, got it right. all i needed to do is use a dictionary, there's an entry for you)
Fine fine. They aren't Nazis. They are Ashka-Nazis
Hun, your slavish devotion to optics are shackles. Worse, you're policing your peers, prioritizing the abstract appeal of your optics to a hypothetical other over their reality anchored and literal praxis.
Kill the cop in your head, babe. We'll be over here when you're ready.
where's this from?
They didn't come here for cogent discussion, they came here for kneeejerk dumdum reactions. It makes them happy; it is their life.
Freedom of speech. Except the speech we don't like.
That's what happens when corrupt politicians are paid by AIPAC
Got your cart before the horse: the US controls Israel, the control Israeli lobbyists have over it is secondary to that.
If the US truly controlled Israel, they could force them to comply with UN resolutions, force them to ban settlements or force them into a ceasefire. The US built Israel, but these criminals are now strong enough not to have to listen to the US or anyone, not even the UN or the ICC.
Could, but why would they want to? They have a little buddy doing their dirty work for them.
How does the US benefit from Israel committing a genocide?
Does the US benefit from stopping them?
Yes. War always has a negative impact on the economy, and trust me, if the US care about one thing, then that is money.
The oil, the real estate?
Are all Israelis Jewish? The US is such a fucking joke at this point. And it's tedious to block community after community on lemmy to avoid the noise of vapidness. Good luck with your fucked up politics.
PS: I'd recommend excluding US specific news from "world news". Not sure if this stuff is moderated, or if those who do, give af about it.
The politics of the global hegemon affects the entire world, as much as we hate it. Specially when it's regarding a country they're currently committing genocide in.
3/4 are Jewish which is an overwhelming majority but I also think there are great reasons to separate the classifications of Israeli and Jew. Mainly because the state is not led by the religion but instead by elected leaders.
Though that separation of church and state does seem to be diminishing as Bibi and his far right ultraorthodox cronies do seem to be slowly turning it into more of an authoritarian state.
No, there are plenty of Muslim people in Israel too (18.1% apparently). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Israel
The 1% aren’t coming for the rest of the world either. Nope. They’ll stop here
Wonder what other things they'll make illegal to compare to Nazis. Cause once you're banning disparaging speech, why stop there?
As heavily as they're censoring outlets to the point a tiktok ban suddenly isn't laughable, I'm surprised they didn't pass a law making calling it genocide a hate crime.
The highest order of interference in the US comes from AIPAC, it must go
This was removed for bigotry?? Are mods following that policy already?
Edit: and the comments below it too.
Edit 2: the below comments didn't even have a call to violence. What's going on mods?
The comment said "I condemn Hamas" aka the group fighting back against an occupying force and an ongoing genocide. Also said some shitty things about Gaddafi.
They would be condemning the Viet Cong for using the exact same strategies Hamas does (taking hostages, using tunnels and guerilla warfare, etc) and having the same goal of driving out an occupying force to reunite their country, yet they had the audacity to pretend like they're antizionist.
Campus protests and the pigs dispersing them are also paralleling the Vietnam war.
So? Are those the magical words that justify removing any comment? Hamas isn't Palestine or Palestinians and condemning a group that killed hundreds shouldn't be a controversial statement, much less bigotry. And the irony of this happening in the thread about Isreal trying to pass a similar law for themselves..
I can understand you and other commenters expressing your opinions but the fact that not even the mods are keeping up the pretense of impartiality is insane
There is no impartiality for genocide.
The Viet Cong killed hundreds in the same way, and so have all successful revolutionary groups in the past. Decolonization is violent, if you don't like it don't colonize in the first place.
Edit: And Hamas, even with their far less precise gear and without military superiority, has done a far better job avoiding killing civilians than the occupation has. The final death toll from the Oct 7 retaliation is now thought to be 695 Israeli “civilians” (mostly unarmed IDF conscripts), 373 armed IDF members, 71 foreigners and 36 children. While Israel has killed over 30 thousand Palestinians, 2/3 of whom are women and children.
Fuck off with hiding behind "but genocide!" whenever someone disagrees with you and double fuck you for implying that I or those other people support genocide. No matter how hard tankie politics dictates imperialsits ('them') and rest of the world ('us') are polar opposites, there are people that share some of your values and don't share others. This includes people who see both hamas and isreali gvt as evil. If your ideology has answers ready for everything and doesn't need you to impartially think to come to conclusions that's a bullshit ideology.
Edit: Reminds me of religious nuts thinking atheists are evil because if they don't follow every rule in the book they must be breaking all of the rules and you certainly can't have your own moral compass.
Are you seriously arguing that killing less civilians than the isreali military somehow makes hamas good? If they hadn't attacked much of the violence since then wouldn't have happened and those 30 thousand Palestinians would at least be alive, even if not free. How hard is it to understand that multiple things can be correct?
I can understand why Hamas would choose to do what they did when they did it. Cornered animal lashes out. But it's incomprehensible to me how anyone looking from the outside thinks attacking Isreal with anything less than a takeover force was a good idea, especially considering that in hindsight it was a terrible one.
"Anything I don't like is a tankie", Lemmy politics equivalent to the right wing's use of woke.
Followed by the 30,000x version of "they wouldn't have died if they just did what the police told them!"
You're saying the people advocating to remove comments that condemn Hamas or Gaddafi, accuse people of obeying the 'empire' and bring up genocide to claim moral high ground aren't tankies?
Just because one side of a conflict is evil doesn't automatically make the other side good. Evil can fight evil, and when it does we should condemn both sides. Hamas have literally said that their goal is to genocide the Israelis, if you think that's ok then that's terribly hypocritical of you. The only reason Israel is succeeding in that goal and Hamas are not is because USA is tipping the scales with their arms shipments etc
...that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
Don't blindly believe what western outlets say.
The Hamas Can't you see both sides are using identical arguments? Israel has also repeatedly said that their intention is to destroy Hamas, not the Palestinian people, but their actions show that that is utter bullshit of course (they even used suitcases full of cash to keep Hamas in power).
Likewise Hamas claim to only be against the Zionists in order to gain public support but their charter literally says "from the Jordan river to the sea, Palestine will be free of Jews", and there are numerous reports of them raping and murdering innocent Israelis.
Long story short, the current government of Israel and Hamas are both terrible, and supporting either of them is supporting a group whose goal is genocide. The US government is obviously extra complicit in genocide due to continuing to sell Israel weapons, but if you didn't already know that US foreign policy is pure evil then you haven't been paying attention
I condemn Hamas
Thanks for being the occupation's little lapdog
I condemn the IDF
Both-siding with an occupation and their victims just means passively supporting their genocide. My statement remains unchanged.
Fuck the IDF. Fuck Hamas. Save the Palestinian people. It's not that hard.
I can still see it on Lemmy world
You can see everything here:
https://lemmy.world/modlog
Just another reason I love lemmy so much.
That's how I found out
Edit: but it's not helpful that the one responsible is simply listed as 'mod'
There are already bad actors infesting lemmy mod teams.
We gotta fight back and be persistent, or else this place will become another censorship hellhole like reddit.
At some point US troops will invade to bring democracy to such an autoritarian country
This gives the USA too much credit. It doesn't invade other countries to save them from tyranny. It invades them because it wants to control them for strategic or economic purposes.
No no that's only if there's oil there.
Oh shit.
That's called a Nazi apologist law. That's making a subset of Nazis accepted and censoring those against them at the same time.
I thought I won't see such decay in my lifetime, but then life is never boring.
These people must know all this does is destroy the legitimacy of your authority. Israel is committing genocide. Its happening. Changing legal definitions will not change how many bodies are piled in Gaza. The mounds of dead children cannot be legislated into something moral.
I think I know what they think - that their authority doesn't stand on legitimacy, it stands on power. The difference between now and 20 years ago is that modern Web and mass media are better controlled by them, and modern surveillance is another world.
They don't care about "moral", they think we'll just eat it and shut up.
They are fine with a few protests which won't change the outcome.
Notice how protests in the last decade or so have become less violent, while the crimes against humanity of those governments have become more blatant.
That's not a coincidence, it's a strategy of controlling population bringing fruit. People more likely to lead movements are detected and neutralized without ever knowing it, maybe through connectivity, maybe through disinformation, maybe through directing their attention at wrong things, maybe through various kinds of pressure, and I'm sure in a miraculous case where these don't work nobody will notice a sudden death here and there.
Internationalization of KGB has happened. In Soviet times that was simply a very inefficient system, so it sucked balls compared to the western ones. But now the west both gradually reduced freedoms considered normal, making such control less expensive, and also modern technologies raised its efficiency quite a lot.
As a Jew I have never felt less respected by Congress than them appropriating the concept of antisemitism to further their own oppressive political ends. Fuck it's so gross.
This would make more sense if Israel weren't actively being nazis right now! Like, if they weren't being nazis, it'd be really annoying to get called a nazi when you aren't being a nazi, but these guys... i mean, they're kinda just being nazis, there's not really two ways about it. Admittedly the palestinians are hitting back harder than the jews were able to at the time, but trying to wipe people out is kinda enough to get called a nazi, and rightly so, even if they are defending themselves however poorly
No they are not. A few Israelis killed here and there is not "harder". Just modern weapons are different.
Nazis: "we will fight to the death for your right to speak it!"
Divest israel: "Believe it or not, jail, right away."
Nazi rhetoric already fits the definition of antisemitism though.
Calling for a divestment of Israel isn't being made illegal or even defined as antisemitism by this bill, so both examples don't really make sense.
To find out who controls you, see who you're not allowed to criticise
Modern Israel is not Judaism! It's not the same theocracy described in the old testament. It's not even religiously pure, there's a sizeable Christian and Muslim population. It's perfectly valid to respect Jews and and their beliefs, and to criticize Netanyahu's government for attempting to crush Palestine and kill its civilians indiscriminately in raids. Jewish folks in the US and abroad are joining in the protests to stop the war - this isn't about being antisemitic, this is telling a very atrocious government to stop behaving as a similarly atrocious government did 80 years ago
Even the Jewish community in Germany is against Netanjahus way of treating Palestine.
Note that this isn't going anywhere; the senate won't take it up.
Hope you're right!
-- US Congress, probably.
I claim the Hilltop Youth in Israel are not a million miles from the Hitler Youth. Am I now an antisemite?
lol fuck off morons.
I'm a little confused why this is in the news. First off, it's just a House Resolution. It's has no legally binding repercussions. It's basically the House of Representatives as a group making a statement: "We don't like anti-Semitism". The definition of anti-Semitism they decided to point to is the thing that's really in contention. But again, this affects nobody but the US House of Representatives.
Secondly, the vote on this took place in December. So it seems kind of late to be raging over it.
Full text of the resolution: https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hres894/BILLS-118hres894ih.pdf
Summary of action: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolution/894/all-info
If you're in the US and it really bugs you, I'd suggest looking up how your district representative voted and let them know how you feel about it.
I have contacted all my reps several times about Palestine and cease fire and the only response has been that they fully support Israel against the terrorists. They don't care about our opinion.
Get it in writing and share it
Democracy amirite
No, this definitely seems different and new from all the recent articles about it I've seen. This vote passed Wednesday, not in December. It's a response to the protests at universities. And it's a bill, so it can be passed into law. I think you're confusing two different things.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-passes-bill-to-expand-definition-of-antisemitism-amid-growing-campus-protests-over-gaza-war/ar-AA1nZV5S
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/70-house-democrats-and-21-republicans-voted-against-a-bill-to-crack-down-on-antisemitism-on-college-campuses/ar-AA1o02Rn
This expands the definition of antisemitism to bring critical of Israel at all or comparing Zionism to Nazism, and would codify it into law if it, passes the Senate and is signed by the President. So there is still time to stop this, and it's a big deal, so people should be angry about it.
Honestly, this was a helpful comment. And now I am super extra charged to vote Jimmy Gomez out.