Editor's Note: This week, WOSU’s George Shillcock explores how one Jewish organization in Columbus reported protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Part 3 explores the debate over antisemitism and whether criticism of Israel should qualify. Part 1 was released Tuesday and part 2 aired on Wednesday.
Jewish Columbus has reported antisemitism and protests critical of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023., alleging the protests were antisemitic.
The group's actions fall in line with a trend in American politics where some want criticism of the country of Israel to be on par with hate speech against Jewish people. Many Jewish people disagree on this topic to different degrees.
Farrel Brody, an 88-year-old Columbus Jew and a former schoolteacher in Israel, helped found Jewish Voice for Peace. This was one of the anti-war groups Jewish Columbus reported to police as protests over Israel’s war against Hamas raged across the United States.
A WOSU records request found Jewish Columbus sent dozens of emails to law enforcement in the last two years, calling protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza antisemitic.
The group built up an intelligence infrastructure and increased security cameras and armed guards at Jewish community spaces and synagogues. The Jewish community saw a rise in antisemitism reports after the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in 2018 and the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
And it wasn't just Jewish Columbus that reported protests and antisemitism to police. The group's umbrella organization, the Jewish Federation of North America and its partners across the country, did the same in other cities including Cincinnati and Cleveland.
Many, including Brody, are critical of Jewish Columbus' actions.
Brody said this was a clear effort by Jewish Columbus to try and blur the line between criticizing a foreign government and hate speech against Jewish people.
“Everything that Israel does that we consider to be inhumane and anti-Jewish, brings out the weaponization of antisemitism by those groups," Brody said.
Despite their actions, Julie Tilson Stanley, president and CEO of Jewish Columbus, said free speech does protect criticism of Israel with caveats.
"But we also must hold people accountable when that speech crosses the line into harassment, incitement for violence or denying Israel's right to exist," Stanley said.
Antisemitism is defined by the Associated Press as prejudice or discrimination against Jews.
Ori Yehudai, Ohio State University’s chair of Israel studies and an Israeli citizen, said the term is more complex than that, with a history that dates back thousands of years.
"It's an ancient...an old phenomenon. It started in ancient times based on the accusation that the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus Christ, and then which continued to develop in the Middle Ages," Yehudai said.
Hate against Jews has manifested as discrimination, tropes, verbal attacks, violence and the Holocaust.
Yehudai said criticism of Israel is not equivalent to antisemitism, unlike what Jewish Columbus contends.
Yehudai also said criticizing Israeli policies on the basis of evidence supporting Palestinian demands for political rights and human rights should not be confused with antisemitism.
However, he said many of the protests crossed a line into hate speech when crowds chanted about removing Zionists from campus. The groups often chanted "Hey Hey. Ho Ho. Zionists have got to go."
Yehudai said surveys usually find a vast majority of Jews hold Zionist views. He said they hear criticisms of Israel and connect it to their Jewish identity.
“Connection to Israel, it's connection to their homeland, so saying to people that they cannot be part of that community because they feel a connection to the homeland, because they support the idea of a Jewish state, I think it's a form of discrimination and hate speech,” Yehudai said.
Despite it being a different country, many Jews hold a deep connection to Israel because of the significance of the land to Judaism. The war has deeply impacted both Jewish and Palestinian- Americans.
Tifereth Israel, a local synagogue, has a table near its front door set with white plates and clear glasses, silverware and empty chairs. Rabbi Alex Braver said many synagogues set up similar displays to symbolize and recognize the Israeli hostages still being held hostage by Hamas.
Yehudai said criticism of Israel is antisemitic when it uses stereotypes against Jews, like using tropes or symbols of language that is from antisemitic discourse.
"It's antisemitic to describe Israel as the ultimate evil or to exaggerate Israel's global influence... to grossly exaggerate Israel's global influence," Yehudai said. "To argue that Israel controls the world, or that the Zionists control the American administration."
Yehudai said it is also antisemitic to deny the Jewish people's historical and cultural connection to Israel and the region.
"When you deny the connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, you erase a crucial element of the collective identity of the Jews," Yehudai said.
Some groups want antisemitism definitions to include calling Israel a racist state. The U.S. Department of State and the city of Cincinnati have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's "Working Definition of Antisemitism."
This definition explicitly says criticizing Israel as racist should be considered antisemitic.
The allegation that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians was central to the pro-Palestinian protests.
Genocide is defined by the United Nations as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It was created after the Holocaust when Nazis tried to wipe out the Jewish people.
The nationalist movement known as Zionism is also at the center of this debate. The Associated Press defines Zionism as the effort by Jews to regain and retain their homeland. It is based on the promise of God in the book of Genesis that some claim says Israel would forever belong to Abraham and his descendants.
Yehudai calls it a nationalist and political movement and said it is not antisemitic to be anti-Zionist. He said the movement didn't start until the 19th century in Europe and not all Zionists believed in the creation of a Jewish state at first.
"This became a more dominant idea later in the 20th century, but generally believing that Jews have the right of self-determination, that Jews should have the right to immigrate to Israel, to the land of Israel or Palestine and set up there so they could develop their own culture and be also free of antisemitic persecution," Yehudai said.
Brody, with Jewish Voice for Peace, explained how his Judaism is different from Zionism.
“Zionism is a political ideology. And it says area between the river and the ocean (in Israel) must be controlled a hundred percent by Jews," Brody said. "And if necessary, all other people, particularly of course Palestinians, whether they're Muslims or Christians, have to be out of there.”
Brody said Zionist Israelis actively discriminate against Palestinians, which has only increased since Oct. 7, 2023. Israelis have also settled parts of Palestinian land since Israel was established, sparking tensions between the two groups.
These settlements and attacks on each other from both sides have sparked numerous wars between Israel and Palestinians since World War II.
Yehudai said these words — Zionism and antisemitism — and their interpretations and their fraught history over thousands of years are playing a key role in American politics today.
When President Donald Trump took office, he started revoking student visas and green cards of pro-Palestinian activists. Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil had his green card revoked while Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk had her student visa revoked.
Ahwar Sultan, a graduate student at Ohio State University, was another one of these students. Sultan sued the Trump administration over this decision.
Yehudai said antisemitism or arguments about antisemitism are sometimes used to reject criticism of Israel. He said people should be able to hold both ideas in their head at the same time.
"On the one hand, there is antisemitism as a real phenomenon, and it is part of the protest against Israel," Yehudai said. "On the other hand, there is an attempt to use antisemitism as a tool to reject or to delegitimize criticism of Israel.”
Brody said he and other protestors around the U.S. are being held to a double standard as they try to hold Israel accountable.
“I can criticize my own government here in the United States. And I certainly do, especially these days," Brody said. "I can criticize Russia, but I'm not anti-Russia. But one country, one government that I cannot criticize without being called antisemitic is Israel.”
When asked about whether Jewish Columbus sees that there’s an effort to blur the line between antisemitism and criticizing Israel, Stanley didn’t comment.
Mike Higgins, Jewish Columbus' head of security, deflected the questions, saying he thinks people are using the war against Hamas as an excuse to be antisemitic.
Hamas accepted another temporary ceasefire agreement this week, agreeing to release some of the remaining Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7. Israel on the other hand is escalating the war against Hamas, approving a plan to takeover Gaza City and activating 60,000 reserve troops.
More and more groups are starting to call Israel's war a genocide as it rages on and Palestinians starve. Most recently, several Israel human rights groups accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government of genocide.
