Don't be fooled, this is a new moral panic
Trusting the government to protect against Jew hatred is like putting one's head in the lion's mouth
On Dec. 9 New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order instructing her state's public universities that it was a violation of state and federal law to call for the genocide of the Jewish people. Many of my fellow Jewish friends are likely grateful for this gesture, but they shouldn't be. I am not saying that it is a good thing that there are people walking our streets giddy over the prospect of an entire group of people perishing. However Hochul's decision will not save one single person's life, let alone prevent a genocide, and even if the intentions are good the results will be terrible. If you think that Jew hatred is rampant today, do you think that using authoritarian edicts like executive orders from Albany, or from that matter Washington, DC, will make it less common or more?
This is not the first nor will it be the last time I defend the rights of everyone, including hate mongers and conspiracy theorists. I decided to start a project not long ago called the Jewish Alliance for the First Amendment (JAFFA) and for a long time was confounded by how it has remained just that: An aspirational project and not a movement of free speech defending Jews filling the void left by the ACLU and other formerly liberty-minded groups. But while I am by no means the only Jewish individual taking this position, sadly I find that there are all too many of us that are willing to take the comfortable route and accept the protection of a would-be benefactor like Hochul. Speaking rationally, it is unlikely that any of the measures she has taken will play any role in making New York State a safer place for anyone. Three weeks ago, prior to the aforementioned executive order, Hochul announced the direction of resources to combating hate including educational initiatives within the public school system. But just last week in Albany a man from Schenectady fired a semiautomatic shotgun two times at a Jewish Reform temple causing a full lock-down of the building and the adjoining preschool. An Iraqi immigrant, the man said his actions were motivated by events in the Middle East and marijuana use.
All of this comes as an epic battle convulses American society, in particular academia, over what constitutes "antisemitism" (or Jew hatred as I prefer to call it) and should anti-Zionism be lumped in with it. College presidents who until then administered colleges that embrace gender identity issues without committing to consistent definitions but hold students and faculty responsible for their speech on such topics testified before Congress that they could not clearly say whether calls for genocide against Jews would be against their own codes of conduct. Because Rep. Elise Stefanik of Upstate New York confronted them most sharply, the New York Times portrayed this as merely the latest in Republican attacks on higher education as intolerant. As a result of her bumbling testimony with two counterparts from Harvard and MIT, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned after Penn's Warton Business School board members demanded she leave.
So at the risk of isolating myself again on a lonely island, I am going to outline a free speech friendly analysis of what happened and prescription of what is needed: Magill should not have resigned based on refusing to censor controversial and offensive speech like "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" on campus, but rather the fact that Penn and other schools are professing adherence to 1st Amendment values only now that Israel and Jews are being targeted by such slogans. When it came to Prof. Amy Wax, who has expressed racially insensitive views within her teaching capacity, they have been only too willing to crack down and impose sanctions. These slogans, if used in the absence of violent or menacing activity, is protected just like any other speech. They cannot be prohibited while allowing other comparable causes to be expressed without consequences. In November Hajur el-Haggan, a Muslim teacher, was disciplined by her Maryland school district employer for including the slogan in her email signature. If the rules against placing political or other controversial slogans in that field had been upheld, the district would be fully justified, however she was rightly able to point out that other teachers had used it to amplify their support for Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights. That is the greater issue in the free speech realm, that employers and institutions in their weakness and cowardice allowed professional standards to slip and allow certain values to be expressed in the workplace to the exclusion of others. Policies must applied consistently, so either no one is allowed to put sociopolitical messaging in their email signature or people can put whatever they want no matter how controversial, including slogans like "Deus vult", "meat is murder", or my personal favourite "Paul is dead".
This urge that is so strong now to blacklist and cancel people solely based on taking a stance in the conflict is not going to create a society devoid of Jew hatred or any other type of prejudice. Many cases exist where In October British writer Michael Eisen was fired from a scientific journal for merely sharing a satirical article attacking Israel. Is it reasonable to believe that punishing people for such low level expressions of opinion will have any bearing on the safety of the people it was supposed to protect? The real threats often come from people that are difficult to detect, like the Chinese national recently arrested for vandalizing a Michigan Hannuka display, yet those are the people that do actual harm and their crimes must be the ones focused on, not non-crimes like objectionable social media posts.
If you're still reading and disagree with me feel free to put whatever comment you want below. But if you do agree, I need your help. I want JAFFA to actually be what its initials stand for, the Jewish ALLIANCE for the First Amendment. Let's create a movement of liberty minded Israelites who push back against both Jew hatred and censorship. We can't rely on institutional organizations to succeed on either front.