The U.S. Congress is responding to university protests of the war in Gaza by introducing a bill that would monitor for antisemitism. They are playing off an over-simplicity equating calls for peace with antisemitism and pro-Hamas.
As Senator Bernie Sanders points out, “it is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months, [the Israeli government] has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 78,000, 70% of whom are women and children.”
But Congress is moving forward to stop the protestors anyway under the guise of combatting antisemitism. The COLUMBIA Act, or College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability Act, would revoke federal funding from any university that allows any sentiment that could be construed as antisemitism and would require schools to hire “antisemitism monitors.”
Not everyone is buying it.
Representative Thomas Massie called this “a bipartisan effort in Congress to equate criticism of the secular state of Israel to violence toward Jewish people in America. The latter is illegal and the former is protected speech, but if a false equivalency is established, it will be forbidden to criticize Israel.”
Yes, that is where this is going, but young people will not be deterred. Protests that began in New York spread across the country to California this weekend, even though hundreds of students were arrested.
