Mobilizing around NJ A-2558

Antisemitism is now by far the most common source of hate crimes in the United States. Hate speech that would be accepted about no other religious, ethnic, demographic, or self-defined social group has become common parlance about Jews.  Jews across America have been subjected to widespread stigmatization, discrimination, and even physical assault.  The growth of antisemitism has reached a crisis proportion wholly incompatible with America’s long-standing guarantees of religious tolerance.

Our home state, New Jersey, reports the highest per capita incidents of antisemitic hate crimes in the nation.  Bill  A-2558 was introduced to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as the official standard in New Jersey. Their effort benchmarks many other states — 37 and counting at present.

The IHRA definition is the gold standard for defining antidemitism and for differentiating anti-Zionism and or criticism of the government of Israel from antisemitism. It operationalizes the 3-D formula for determining when anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel becomes antidemitic hate speech. That threshold is crossed when criticism of Zionism or Israel entails:

1) Demonizing or dehumanizing Israel and/or International Jewry

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2) Delegitimizing the existence of a Jewish state of Israel;

3) Holding dual standards that insist on levels of probity for Israel that are applied to no other nation.

Demonization, delegitimization and dual standards are central to the antisemitic narrative that originated in the West and is now being promulgated around the world. Any resolution that does not incorporate the IHRA desiderata or their equivalent is merely hollow posturing.

The opposition to A-2558 purports to be concerned about the bill’s possible abridgement of First Amendment rights. Extensive negotiations were undertaken to assure that all reasonable First Amendment free speech and expression concerns raised by the critics were addressed, thereby securing those rights.  After nearly 10 hours of  public hearing, the committee voted seven to zero to pass it on to the overall Assembly. The next step is on to the Assembly as a body, then onward and upward for adoption to be presented to the governor.

Despite the compelling  nature of the proposal, it was met with fierce — indeed vituperative — opposition from the floor in the name of Palestinian rights. The extremity of the opposition’s rhetoric, the vehemence of its expression, the venomousness of their chants, and the aggressiveness of their body language reveal them less as supporters of Palestinians than of the barbaric Islamist agenda of Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood:

We decry genuine Islamophobia, but any Jewish person witnessing this display who is not worried for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren was not paying attention. Facts were irrelevant to the opposition. Jihadist propaganda reigned supreme. They frequently and loudly asserted the well debunked Hamas Ministry of Health accusations.  They chanted the genocidal mantras: “Decolonization,” “From the River to the Sea,” “Global Intifada.”  They harbored a dangerous Big Hatred and they promulgated dangerous Big Lies. Their approach is a case study on the need for the IHRA criteria as the standard for New Jersey’s antisemitism legislation.

The dangerous Big Hatred and the dangerous Big Lie enable bashing to replace reporting. Bashing is both easier and superior click bait. Moreover, bashing Jews has a collateral benefit. It resolves the unanswerable paradox of Jewish experience — indeed Jewish existence. Jews are a tiny population. We number merely 16 million people in the entire world and fewer than 7 million in the United States. We have suffered millennia of persecution. By almost any criterion of success — occupational, financial, medical, intellectual, cultural, life-satisfaction, etc. — we are positive outliers.  How can that be? According to our antagonists and adversaries, including the people at the committee hearing, only a dupe bewitched by Jewish dark arts could attribute that success and life satisfaction to our skills, diligence, faith, strong families, and other such attributes.

So, obviously, Jews must possess demonic powers and operate in illegitimate ways. Hardly any aspect of the reporting and official pronouncements on this war fail  to embody exactly those dual standards.

There is something more disturbing than the aggressive antagonism of the opponents toward this bill and its supporters. There is a well-coordinated plan to impose Islamist supremacy on the rest of us; Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s actions are an element of this plan.  The conquest of Israel and the destruction of the Jewish people is only a step in that plan. Wittingly or unwittingly, the opponents were there as part of that now not-so-cold war. Although our organizational leaders and several synagogue and community leaders spoke eloquently and forcefully on behalf of passage, many too few synagogues and independent individuals were represented. Proponents were greatly outnumbered. This bill has become a bit of a shibboleth. We won this round, but seasoned political observers warn against complacency, becauses it could easily disappear in the New Jersey legislative sausage grinder.

Rabbi Joachim Prinz taught that in crises like this one, the true enemy is silence. We cannot be silent! We need to remember Woody Allen’s injunction that 80 percent of success is showing up. We need to begin agitating and speaking out for ourselves. Doing so on behalf of A-2558 is a good place to begin — although by no means the only place.

The authors of this article are longstanding members of the Unity Club of Greater Metrowest Community. The Unity Club was founded in 1930, when Jewish men who moved into the suburbs were denied access to exclusive clubs. It was  designed to blend fellowship and entertainment with public education and advocacy. Through much of the last generation, fellowship and entertainment dominated.

Since October 7, we have formed the Jewish Lives Matter Too project to re-emphasize our public education and advocacy. We have been and are determined to do all we can to facilitate the passage of NJ A-2558. Beyond that we are committed to promoting unity within the Jewish community, as well as educating, organizing, and mobilizing for action. “If we are not for ourselves, who are we? If we are for ourselves alone, what are we? And, IF NOT NOW, WHEN?”

Larry Stempler in an attorney. He and his wife, Gina, live in Livingston; they have three children and two grandchildren. He is cochair of Jewish Lives Matter Too.

Mark Seglin of West Orange is a licensed psychologist and certified psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He is cochair of Jewish Lives Matter Too.