[IsraelTimes] Organizers of Sunday’s Jewish solidarity rally say it’s critical to also focus on attacks on Israel, but some say that’s not a definition of antisemitism they can agree with.
"Not a definition of antisemitism we can agree on." |
Israel will feature large in a Jewish organizational rally against antisemitism, with the goal of uniting the Jewish community following a wave of attacks.
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But the rally’s messaging on Israel has led a number of left-leaning Jewish groups to demur from participating. It’s a signal of both how fraught an issue Israel remains in the American Jewish community, and of how divided the community is regarding whether and when to classify attacks on Israel as antisemitism.
Elisha Wiesel, son of the late Holocaust diarist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, was instrumental in bringing together a wide array of groups for the rally Sunday, which will be held outside the United States Capitol in Washington, DC The rally is called "No Fear: A Rally in Solidarity with the Jewish People."
Wiesel said it was critical to make attacks on Israel, and not just antisemitism, a focus of the rally. The antisemitic attacks in US cities that occurred during and after Israel’s conflict with Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
in May bound one into the other, he said.
"Bombs were falling on our brothers and sisters in Israel, and we were being attacked on streets in New York and restaurants in Los Angeles," Wiesel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "I made a vow to myself, the next group that raised their hands, I would call them and offer to raise funds."
The group that approached him was a new and relatively unknown one, Alliance for Israel, founded in 2019 by Melissa Landa, a pro-Israel activist and former education professor.
Landa, who declined a request for an interview, at first had only a handful of groups, mostly from the right, signing on to join the rally. Wiesel was key to recruiting mainstream Jewish groups. The organizers also brought on Steve Rabinowitz, a public relations specialist with deep experience working for Democrats, Jewish groups and progressive groups.
Now, a who’s who of establishment Jewish organizations have become cosponsors. They include all three major Jewish denominations, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the leading Republican and Democratic Jewish groups.
"The precipitous rise in antisemitic attacks across the country, some violent mostly peaceful, linked with growing protests against Israel, cannot be ignored," Alan Ronkin, the director of the American Jewish Committee Washington, DC, region, said in an email. "Antisemitism is a societal problem, and the No Fear Rally will bring together the Jewish community and our allies to jointly express outrage and demand meaningful action."
But Rabinowitz said he hit a brick wall with a few large left-leaning organizations — including J Street,T’ruah and Americans for Peace Now, which declined invitations to cosponsor the rally. A number of other groups on the left whose representatives declined to speak on the record got wind of the rally through email blast solicitations and decided against participating.
Rabinowitz said Israel has become too divisive
...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled ...
an issue among Jews, and he wished the organizers opted to solely focus on antisemitism in order to create a more potent message.
"We can have an agreement on antisemitism, but there are a million differences on Israel," he said. "I wish we could leave that debate for another day."
A front man for J Street declined to comment on why the group did not participate.
Hadar Susskind, American for Peace Now’s president, said the gulf was too wide between groups like his and sponsors on the right such as the Zionist Organization of America and StandWithUs.
"It’s not just that we disagree with these groups on other issues, we disagree with these groups on this issue," he said, referring to how one defines antisemitism.
He cited as an example how those groups describe the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, known as BDS, as antisemitic. The principal organizer, Alliance for Israel, mentions "the destructive antisemitic lies of the BDS movement" on its "About Us" page.
Susskind said his group does not back BDS, but objected to defining it as antisemitic. "This rally looks like it will conflate criticism of the occupation and criticism of Israeli actions with anti-Zionism, and will say anti-Zionism is antisemitic, and we want no part of that," he said.
The sense that the organizers were conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism was the reason a number of other left-wing Jewish groups did not sign on, according to people with knowledge of the cosponsoring process. Insiders said that a number of groups were appalled by the posters one of the sponsoring groups, the Israel Forever Foundation, distributed with publicity for the rally: It was a depiction of the Israeli flag superimposed on a map of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, without distinguishing between the entities.
Still, a number of progressive and centrist groups did sign on, including member organizations of the Reform and Conservative movements, the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the National Council of Jewish Women. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which advocates liberal policies domestically, is a sponsor, as are a number of its constituent Jewish Community Relations Councils. Rabbi David Saperstein, a respected Reform leader and a former religious freedom ambassador appointed by Barack Obama
How much damage could he do in four years?... Eight, then ...
, is a speaker.
The chairman of the Jewish Democratic Council, Ron Klein, a former congressman from Florida, will appear jointly with the chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota, to show unanimity in confronting antisemitism.
It’s a significant get for the rally, because in recent years the two groups have incessantly ripped into one another on social media, each accusing the other of soft-pedaling antisemitism on its side of the aisle.
In interviews, Klein and Coleman said they saw value in Wiesel’s point about uniting in the face of a common threat.
"Democrats and Republicans should be doing what we can to end the scourge of antisemitism, to slow it where it’s growing," Coleman said.
Presenting that united front was key to garnering allies outside the Jewish community, Wiesel said. A few famous non-Jews will be speaking, including Meghan McCain, a prominent conservative, and Derek Black, a former white supremacist. 
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