May 3, 2024 ❧ Congress seeks to punish Israel critics, a Louisiana city secedes, and Macron suggests sending troops to Ukraine
Plus: Worldwide May Day marches, the weird history of the Reform Party, a disturbing interview with Trump, campus protest successes, and an orangutan discovers pharmacology
“You oughtn’t not read the news.”
– S. Chapin Domino, publisher of Current Affairs Magazine
STORY THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
House bill attempts to punish Israel critics on campus
As thousands of students around the U.S. have risen up to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, a terrifying new bipartisan bill is making its way through Congress to punish anti-Zionist speech. H.R. 6090, the “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” which passed the House this week by an overwhelming 320-91 vote, adds a new and much more expansive definition of antisemitism to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the Department of Education will be required to enforce.
Alongside classic forms of Jew-hatred like Holocaust denial, blood libel, and calls for violence against Jewish people, the new definition— adopted from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance—labels many criticisms of Israel as forms of discrimination. The new definition lists the following as forms of antisemitism:
❧ Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
❧ Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
❧ Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
In addition to being highly vague and subjective, this definition effectively renders it verboten to make claims about Israeli policy that are completely reasonable and widely acknowledged to be true.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, and the United Nations have classified Israel’s policies toward Palestinians as a form of “apartheid” — a racist system— because they are deprived of self-determination, due process, voting rights, and freedom of movement on the basis of their ethnicity. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has likened Palestinians to “wild beasts.” His cabinet is full of unrepentant racists: Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has called interracial marriage a “plague.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said Palestinians are a “fictitious people” with “no history.” Defense Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been convicted for inciting racist violence and was once a member of a political party that wanted to expel and enslave Arabs from Israel.
As for Nazi comparisons: While waging a war that has killed mostly innocent men, women, and children, countless Israeli leaders have called for the total destruction of the Palestinian people in a fashion that is similar in sentiment to how the Nazis described the Jewish people. (If you have any doubt, check out this quiz, which challenges you to determine which statements were made from Nazi leaders and which come from Israeli ones). The International Court of Justice has ruled it “plausible” that the Israeli government is engaging in genocide, something the Nazis also did.
And while some may consider the placement of greater scrutiny on Israel to be a “double standard,” it may also be a justified one. Many countries violate human rights, but none is more intimately linked to the United States than Israel, which is our number one recipient of military aid, and one to which our leaders routinely express unwavering support. While it’s all well and good to criticize Iran or China’s repressive governments, Americans are not implicated in their actions in the way we are with Israel’s. Nearly three-quarters of the bombs falling on the children of Gaza are made in America and our government has taken measures to shield Israel from accountability on the international stage, which has given its leaders a sense of impunity to conduct the war with little regard for human life.
If the Antisemitism Awareness Act does indeed become law, acknowledging the facts presented in the preceding three paragraphs would be considered discriminatory. The government would expect a school to punish a student who wrote or said them in a public place.
The law itself does not introduce criminal punishments for those who violate it, but rather incentivizes schools to punish such speech because violating the Civil Rights Act puts schools at risk of losing federal funding. The American Civil Liberties Union (which, notably, does not take a position on the Israel-Palestine conflict itself) has stridently opposed this bill, explaining the potential ramifications for free speech in a letter to Congress:
First, H.R. 6090 could result in colleges and universities suppressing a wide variety of speech critical of Israel or in support of Palestinian rights in an effort to avoid investigations by the Department and the potential loss of funding, even where such speech is protected and does not qualify as harassment. Even without H.R. 6090, advocacy groups have already filed or threatened to file numerous Title VI complaints and lawsuits, alleging that colleges have violated Title VI merely by condoning Palestinian rights groups, events, and advocacy[…]
Second, even where administrators do not take formal action, students and their organizations, faculty, and university staff may be deterred from speaking and organizing on these issues. Activists would be understandably hesitant to engage in political expression criticizing Israel or advocating for Palestinian rights if they have reason to believe the federal government will actively investigate such expression in connection with harassment complaints and investigations.
Finally, the bill would likely inspire an increasing number of complaints focused on constitutionally protected criticism of Israel. These complaints will not only cause schools to limit speech out of fear, but will also force both the Department and covered universities to devote time and resources to addressing complaints about constitutionally protected speech, instead of meritorious harassment complaints. Encouraging the Department of Education to consider the IHRA working definition of antisemitism would lead to more censorship on campus, and change the nature of universities, which exist to promote the free flow of information and marketplace of ideas.
While the bill’s sponsors describe it as critical to “cracking down” on anti-Jewish discrimination, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act already requires colleges and universities to prevent the harassment of people based on religious and ethnic characteristics. The only change this new law makes is broadening the definition of antisemitism to encompass legitimate, constitutionally protected political speech that Congress doesn’t like.
FIGHTING BACK
Around the world, workers and activists march for May Day
In practically every country except the United States and Canada, May 1 is Labor Day—otherwise known as International Workers’ Day, or simply May Day. The holiday has its origins in 1886, with the famous Haymarket Riot where striking workers in Chicago battled the police during their campaign for an eight-hour workday. Since then, it’s become an occasion for working people all over the world to get together, march in the streets, and demand change.
As the Associated Press reports, this year’s May Day saw dozens of huge labor rallies in cities across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In Greece, unions representing hundreds of transport workers launched a 24-hour strike in Athens, shutting down ports and bus terminals to demand better pay. In Argentina, thousands of workers with the influential Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) trade union marched through Buenos Aires to protest the austerity measures currently being imposed by President Javier Milei. And in Indonesia, thousands more came together to demand an end to outsourcing and new protections for migrant workers. These are just a few examples: for the BBC, Aleks Philips has compiled a photo gallery with a lot more, and Al Jazeera has another focusing on rallies in Asia. In a lot of cases, demonstrators for Palestine joined in the May Day marches, merging the two causes as one.
Just like in Chicago all those years ago, the workers were met by their perennial enemy: the cops. In Istanbul, the Turkish police arrested around 210 protestors and fired on many others with rubber bullets and tear gas. In Paris—where the police say 18,000 people marched, but the unions claim it was more like 50,000—armored riot cops laid into people with batons. The police violence forms a striking parallel to the brutal treatment student protestors in the U.S. have been getting when they stand up against the slaughter of Palestinians. The similarities aren’t lost on Nikos Mavrokefalos, one of the Athens workers who helped to shut the city down:
“We want to express our solidarity with students in the United States, who are facing great repression of their rights and their just demands,” said [Mavrokefalos]. “We want to send a message that workers say no to exploitation, no to poverty, no to high prices,” he added.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Time Magazine published a very disturbing series of interviews with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump this week, in which he discussed a number of insane, authoritarian policies he would undertake during a second term. Here are a few choice quotes:
After dodging a question about whether he’d support a 15-month abortion ban, Trump was asked about whether states “should monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion after the ban.”
TRUMP: I think they might do that. Again, you'll have to speak to the individual states. Look, Roe v. Wade was all about bringing it back to the states. And that was a legal, as well as possibly in the hearts of some, in the minds of some, a moral decision. But it was largely a legal decision. Every legal scholar, Democrat, Republican, and other wanted that issue back at the states [side note: this is obviously not true]. You know, Roe v. Wade was always considered very bad law…
Trump said he’d be willing to use the military to deport illegal immigrants. The interviewer said: “The Posse Comitatus Act says that you can't deploy the U.S. military against civilians. Would you override that?”
TRUMP: Well, these aren’t civilians [Side note 1: undocumented immigrants are, in fact, civilians. Side note 2: Holy shit.] These are people that aren't legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before. They're coming in by the millions. I believe we have 15 million now. And I think you'll have 20 million by the time this ends. And that's bigger than almost every state […]
I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I'd have to go a step further. We have to do whatever we have to do to stop the problem we have. Again, we have a major force that’s forming in our country, when you see that over the last three weeks, 29,000 people came in from China, and they're all fighting age, and they're mostly males [Side note: Having “military-aged males” immigrate to your country is not the same thing as being invaded by an actual military.] Yeah, you have to do what you have to do to stop crime and to stop what's taking place at the border.
When asked about the possibility of creating “incentives” for state and local police departments to help round up undocumented immigrants:
I want to give police immunity from prosecution because the liberal groups or the progressive groups, depending on what they want to be called, somewhat liberal, somewhat progressive, but they are—they’re very strong on the fact that they want to leave everybody in, I guess, I don't know. You know, sanctuary cities are failing all over the place. [Side note: It’s a bit unclear whether Trump means that he wants to give police “immunity from prosecution” for immigration raids or for everything. Either way, the idea that law enforcement should be allowed to do whatever they want without consequences is a horrifying prospect.]
⚜ VIDEO: Many people are disillusioned with America’s two party duopoly. But getting support for viable alternatives has long felt impossible. A new three-part documentary by Jon Bois of Secret Base (which usually makes sports content) examines the last third-party candidate to make a serious run at the presidency, Ross Perot, and the extremely weird and idiosyncratic “Reform Party” that briefly emerged in his stead during the late 1990s and early 2000s:
TOTAL EXONERATION: MITT ROMNEY DID NOT EAT HIS DOG
AROUND THE STATES
❧ A rich, white neighborhood of Baton Rouge, Louisiana is seceding to become its own city. This effort has been going on for a while, but it finally came to a head last week, when the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that “St. George” could be incorporated as a separate city. The area in question contains around 86,000 people, and their demographics are notably different from those in the rest of Baton Rouge. Where the city as a whole was 52.5 percent “Black or African American” at the last census, and East Baton Rouge Parish was 47.2 percent Black, the Atlantic reports that St. George is “more than 70 percent white and less than 15 percent Black.” St. George is also a wealthy enclave, accounting for “more than two-thirds of the parish’s tax base” by its own account. (It even has its own golf tournament, for an idea of the type of people involved.)
Publicly, the organizers of the St. George campaign insist there’s nothing racist going on, and that they just want “better government” and “local control.” (Gee, where have we heard that kind of rhetoric before?) But it’s obvious that the geographic split is happening along racial lines—and the St. George organizers want a separate school district too. That was actually their first demand, and the effort to create a whole separate city only came about when they were denied. It’s difficult to see this as anything but de facto re-segregation, and a nasty re-emergence of the intense resistance to school and community integration that plagued Louisiana during the 1950s and ‘60s.
It’s not the first time something like this has been tried in an American city, either. In 2018, the portion of Eagles’ Landing, Georgia that happened to contain the country club (and more of the white citizens on average) tried to split off from the city proper, seemingly to distance themselves from businesses like Walmart and instead get a Cheesecake Factory. Or there’s Sandy Springs, Georgia, which split off to create what its founders called “a city separate from Atlanta and your Negroes” in 1965. The new efforts are only marginally more subtle than that one. As Michael Beychok, a political consultant who ran a campaign against St. George called One Baton Rouge, puts it:
“That is not how communities rise up and improve the quality of life for people,” Beychok said. “You don’t do it by separating yourselves from your neighbors.”
❧ Many colleges around the country have called in the police to violently disperse pro-Palestine protesters. But a few colleges have chosen a radical alternative: Getting protests to disband by listening to what their students have to say.
In response to demands that the school divest money from military contractors involved in Israel’s war in Gaza, Brown University has agreed that its school corporation will hold a vote on the matter in October after listening to a case to be brought this month by five students. Northwestern agreed to disclose its investments to students. Rutgers did not agree to student demands to divest from companies profiting from the war in Israel or to give students displaced from Gaza full scholarships, but it did issue a statement “acknowledging the ongoing genocide against Palestinians,” agree to partner with a university in the West Bank, and grant amnesty to all students and faculty who participated in protests. In exchange, protesters at these schools have agreed to take down their encampments.
It remains to be seen whether anything productive will actually come of these concessions. Brown’s vote won’t happen until the fall so the school could very well be biding its time, hoping that student anger over the situation in Gaza will fizzle and they can continue the status quo. (Given how the last seven months have gone, that does not seem like a good bet.) Northwestern’s transparency measures, meanwhile, mean nothing if they are not willing to actually reconsider their investments. And Rutgers’ concessions were largely symbolic. But while these are small victories that will depend on enduring good faith from the school administrations, they are victories nonetheless. They demonstrate that, through their collective sacrifice, student activists do have real power to force change.
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ An Egyptian company is profiteering off people trying to flee Gaza. As if being on the receiving end of bombing and ethnic cleansing wasn’t bad enough, many Palestinians have to deal with extortion too. For months, a company called Hala Consulting and Tourism Services has been helping people in Gaza get through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt—the only crossing Israel doesn’t control. But their services only come for a steep fee. In a new report, Middle East Eye analyzed Hala’s publicly available business records and found that they’ve been charging Palestinians “at least $5,000 per adult and $2,500 for children under 16” since the outbreak of the Israeli bombing campaign, despite only charging a flat rate of $350 for each person before. Thanks to the sudden price hike, many Palestinians have resorted to posting GoFundMe campaigns to help them survive and reach Egypt, like these ones:
At these outrageous rates, Hala has reportedly made “at least $58m from around 10,136 adults and 2,910 children” in April alone, up from $38.5 million in March. Since February, when the company obtained a monopoly over travel services through Rafah, they’ve made “a minimum of $118m, or 5.6 billion Egyptian pounds.” That’s despicable on its face, but it gets worse when you consider that Gaza is one of the poorest communities on Earth, with around 45 percent of its population unemployed even before October 7th.
Officially, the Egyptian government doesn’t approve of this arrangement, with Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry saying that “there should be no advantage taken out of this situation for monetary gain” back in February. But unofficially, it’s another story. Hala’s owner is Ibrahim al-Organi, an important tribal leader with ties to the Egyptian state, who one analyst calls “a front for the state and military-owned businesses and their policies in Egypt.” Under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Egypt’s government has been notoriously corrupt, and it appears turning a blind eye to Organi’s unethical business model is just another part of that. Although it’s obviously Israel that’s responsible for the death and destruction in Palestine today, the Egyptian political and business elite has a lot to answer for too.
❧ France’s president Emmanuel Macron has doubled down on some unnerving comments he made earlier this year, saying he would consider sending troops to Ukraine if Russia were to launch a new offensive and Ukraine were to ask for them. “I'm not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out,” Macron said in an interview with The Economist. He continued:
I have a clear strategic objective: Russia cannot win in Ukraine. If Russia wins in Ukraine, there will be no security in Europe. Who can pretend that Russia will stop there? What security will there be for the other neighbouring countries, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and the others?
While Russia has made some significant gains in recent months, most notably recapturing the city of Avdiivka in February, but this was the biggest advance they’d made in nearly a year. Some analysts suggest Russia could soon launch a new offensive as Ukrainian defenses deteriorate amid a slowdown of US aid. But given how much money, manpower, Putin has had to use just for some minor territorial gains in the East of Ukraine, the possibility that he’d expand his war posture to half a dozen other countries as Macron suggests feels rather far-fetched.
Other NATO countries, including Germany, were quick to rebuke the idea of sending troops. But given that NATO obligates member nations to “collective defense” if one is attacked, the engagement of troops from France any other NATO ally could set off a dangerous chain of events that could pull the entire alliance into conflict with Russia. And given that both sides of that alliance have nuclear weapons, the dangers of this would be enormous.
⚜ LONG READ: In the World Politics Review, Alex Clarkson argues that the power of Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban may be “more brittle than it seems”:
For almost 15 years, the sight of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban strutting into leaders’ summits in Brussels has been a constant of European Union politics. Leveraging his authoritarian grip on power in Hungary, Orban has pressured the EU into providing subsidies to patronage networks controlled by his Fidesz Party, while leading a populist onslaught against liberalism and the left. But even as Orban attracts fawning admiration from other anti-liberal populists in Europe and the United States, cracks are beginning to show in his own power base in Hungary.
The recent surge of infighting within Fidesz’s political machine has taken many observers in and outside Hungary by surprise. After the party’s initial massive election victory in 2010, the collapse of rival parties that had mismanaged the economy and become engulfed in scandal when in government provided Orban’s inner circle with the opportunity to seize control of state media, the central bank and appointments to all levels of the judiciary. Having secured complete control of the state, Orban and his Fidesz cronies used repressive tactics by the security services as well as aggressive disinformation to divide the opposition and intimidate business leaders and civil society networks…
…Even as Orban successfully cultivated enthusiasm for his project among the populist right in the U.S. and EU, tensions were building up within his own power structure that could prove a much greater threat to the survival of the Fidesz political machine than a cowed Hungarian opposition. After such a long record of dominance, many senior figures loyal to Orban had become complacent over the impact a wave of political scandals might have on the Hungarian public at a time when inflation and other economic pressures were generating frustration even among Fidesz’s core supporters.
With the shock resignation in early February of President Katalin Novak and former Justice Minister Judit Varga over efforts within the government to cover up a child abuse scandal, tensions within Orban’s power structure have now burst into the open. In response, Peter Magyar—a senior figure within the Orban regime as well as Varga’s ex-husband—resigned from his positions at state-owned enterprises and founded a new political movement with the aim of dismantling a corrupt status quo. By early April, Magyar’s new opposition Tizsa Party was leading mass protests in Budapest and rapidly preparing a nationwide network designed to peel off elected officials and voters among Orban’s political base in smalltown Hungary…
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APE NEWS OF THE WEEK
A scientific paper about orangutans in Indonesia, released this week, included a fascinating observation. The report, from Boston University describes Rakus, a male orangutan in his mid-30s from the Suaq Balimbing research area. In 2022, the researchers observed Rakus with a wound on his face. They were shocked to witness him beginning to chew on the roots and leaves of akar kuning plants—which have medicinal properties—before “using his fingers to apply the plant juice from his mouth directly onto his facial wound.” They noticed that after a few days, the wound had fully healed.
According to Scientific American, “The remarkable observation may be the first time a wild animal has been observed self-medicating with a plant with known therapeutic properties.” Though researchers are unsure whether Rakus chose the plant because he was aware that it is good for treating wounds, they noted that the orangutans there don’t eat it very frequently. Anthropologist Andrea DiGiorgio says “I think this really speaks to the intelligence that all animals have to utilize what works for them.”
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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