Safety is Not Transactional:

Criminalizing Voices for PALESTINIAN FREEDOM IS NOT FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM

We come together as Jewish students, faculty, alumni, organizers, and organizations to demand an immediate end to the nationwide repression and criminalization of students and faculty for speaking out, teaching, organizing, and advocating against the ongoing genocide in Palestine and for Palestine liberation.

For decades, pro-Israel lobbyists, alongside warmongering politicians, have invoked and exploited historical Jewish persecution to shift the public’s understanding of antisemitism. While these actors claim that censorship of pro-Palestinian voices works to “ensure Jewish safety,” we declare with steadfast conviction that these efforts do not create safety for anyone. Instead, they work to normalize state-sanctioned violence, expand criminalization, intensify militarization, and obfuscate legitimate criticism of Israel. 

We assert that our struggle against antisemitism will not be won through calls to increase the surveillance and militarization of our campuses, as proposed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Hillel International, and United States politicians; including the Biden administration. As Jews who dedicate our lives to building with and caring for our communities, and who fight for a Jewish future grounded in collective liberation, we reject these calls wholeheartedly. We refuse to be complicit in or be used as pawns to further exacerbate the punitive policing on campuses that impacts Palestinian, Black, Muslim, and other students and workers of conscience.

Over the course of two months, hundreds of thousands of students and workers across the world have protested the escalating genocidal campaign by Israel. Since the end of the ceasefire on December 1st, Israeli forces have resumed their relentless bombing of Palestine, killing over 1,000 Palestinians in just 3 days, an estimate which has now grown to over 20,000 Palestinians—almost half of whom are children— killed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, with likely thousands more remaining buried under rubble. At the same time, nearly 300 more Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by armed settlers, and thousands of imprisoned Palestinians within Israel are facing torture and state-sanctioned kidnappings. 

In response, mainstream pro-Israel groups have collaborated with collegiate and elected officials across the country to target and censor people on campuses who advocate for Palestinian liberation. The Biden administration has moved to collaborate with campus law enforcement, using false charges of antisemitism as a means to intimidate and silence opposition to genocide. This is in line with Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis’s efforts to ban chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)—the nationwide network of college-based student groups fighting for Palestinian freedom—from Florida campuses. New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced an investigation into the City University of New York following a series of the largest student-led pro-Palestine rallies held in New York City. In the middle of this, Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman demanded armed guards be present on campuses for Hillel chapters by lobbying the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, all while the Anti-Defamation League calls upon university leaders to investigate SJPs nationwide for “supporting terrorism.” 

These pro-Israel organizations misrepresent themselves as a body of voices engaged in the genuine interests of combatting antisemitism. However, they stand shoulder to shoulder with Christian Zionist organizations and philo/antisemites like John Hagee; regularly honor right-wing figures like Henry Kissinger; and invest in violent systems like “deadly exchange” programs, where the Israeli Offense Forces train US police, as well as initiatives to militarize our campuses and criminalize social justice advocates. Startling similarities have emerged between these tactics—tactics that have been used to oppress Jewish communities in years past.

When universities choose to militarize campuses and target pro-Palestine organizers, they limit their ability to build genuine, sustainable paths toward safety. This drives a wedge between Jewish communities and other historically oppressed groups and homogenizes Jewish identity and what “Jewish safety” looks like—ultimately undermining the collective safety of all peoples. 

Investment in state violence is not indicative of “care” for Jewish lives, or the issues Jewish people face; but instead demonstrates a commitment to preserving decaying colonial systems as people around the world—including Jews—fight to end them.

We strongly affirm the following: 

• Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. 

• Judaism is not Zionism. 

• Increasing police presence on campuses does not increase, but rather threatens the safety of all students, including Jewish students, despite the opinions of both President Biden and Hillel International.

• The 400% increase in antisemitism claimed by the ADL is inaccurate, as it bases most of its claims on “anti-Israel” activity, rather than antisemitism. The ADL has consistently conflated antizionism with antisemitism in its reporting of hate crimes.

• Real instances of antisemitism that arise on campuses, such as the incident at Michigan State University and the neo-Nazi march near the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are overwhelmingly motivated by white nationalist and Christian supremacist ideology. Conflating right-wing opportunists with supporters of the Palestinian liberation movement is a racist anti-Palestinian canard that also draws attention away from the root causes of antisemitism.

• Zionist/pro-Israel groups are the most prominent purveyors of the messaging that conflates Jewishness with Israel and insists that Jewish opinions about Israel are homogenously supportive. These groups directly endanger Jews by using Jewish identity to legitimize Israel’s war crimes in Palestine at the direct cost of Palestinian lives.

• The history of antisemitism is embedded in a larger and interconnected history of white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, which remain the root causes of antisemitism. 

• True community safety is built through cross-communal solidarity and access to basic needs, as opposed to through American-state-based 'safety' rooted in violence. 

• We stand by the #DropTheADL campaign and demand that the ADL is delegitimized as a representative of the Jewish community or as an authoritative source for defining antisemitism — to say nothing of the organization’s historical origins in attempts to disempower the Jewish and broader left.

• We must move beyond Hillel International as it remains committed to pro-Israel/Zionist policy through its Standards of Partnership, thus isolating Jewish students en masse,  and move towards Jewish student organizations that embody the values of equal justice and liberation for all.

• Palestinian liberation does not and cannot come at the cost of Jewish safety, and claiming that it does is a racist narrative aimed at dividing Jewish and Palestinian communities. 

• Our institutions and those who claim to act in our name must cease their reliance on state policing to combat antisemitism and begin exploring new ways to practice communal safety centering the needs and experiences of Black Jews and other Jews of Color.

In the last few months, we have seen countless instances of repression and violence used against Palestinian students and those who stand in solidarity with them. We struggle with the ways that this letter remains incomplete in acknowledging the breadth of this violence amidst these ongoing horrors. However, this proves the importance of our statement: We know that this violence will not end until our communities divest from the false conflations of Palestinian freedom with antisemitism, and safety with state surveillance and policing. And so, we reject the dominant framing of security peddled by pro-Israel institutions that paint organizing in solidarity with Palestine as a greater threat than racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Christian nationalism. 

As we do, we ground ourselves in the radical Jewish traditions and histories these lobbyists have tried to erase—traditions of Jewish communities who came before us and who understood that living under oppression was not a uniquely Jewish experience, but one that wove us into relationship with other oppressed peoples. From our histories, we learn that solidarity among all oppressed peoples is the necessary condition for liberation.

Written by Judaism On Our Own Terms (JOOOT)

Initial Signatories

Organizations

Jewish Voice for Peace

Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinic Cabinet

Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council

Tikkun Olam Chavurah

Making Mensches

Befrayung Itst

Judeu Que Escreve

Jewish Voice for Peace, San Antonio

Jews Against White Supremacy

Shomrim Media Collective

If Not Now, Boston

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Shomeret Shalom Global Network

Jewish Liberation Theology Institute

Jewish Voice for Peace, NYC

Individuals, Alumni, Organizers

Alice Rothchild

Mira Stern

Nora Barrows-Friedman

Marc Ellis

Susan Pashkoff

Rafael Shimunov

Joey Ramona

Eli Valley

Carrie Zaremba

Jaime Davidson

Dylan Saba

Anna Rajagopal

Rabbis

LouisaSolomon

Aryeh Bernstein

Rabbi May Ye

MiriamGeronimus

Linda Holtzman

Lizz Goldstein

Rebecca Alpert

Sam Luckey

Lonnie Kleinman

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb

Lucia Pizarro

Noah Rubin-Blose

Initial Non-Jewish Endorsements

Organizations

National Students for Justice In Palestine

Palestine Legal

Individuals, Alumni, Organizers