By Danielle Pletka
Wednesday, June
19, 2024
The
mushrooming of anti-Semitic violence and activism on campuses across the United
States is not an organic or spontaneous development. Money is flowing from the
Arab world to universities, nongovernmental organizations, and professional
terrorist sympathizers across the country. That money is paying for,
organizing, educating, publicizing, and fanning the flames not simply of
Israel-bashing, but of eliminationist Jew-hatred.
It demands a major response. Congress has begun
investigating. Hearings in which university presidents have been unable to
articulate any kind of standard that would protect Jewish students are driving
headlines and major changes in leadership at elite educational institutions.
Now key committees are digging into offshore efforts to direct and support
campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity. But things are a bit chaotic on
Capitol Hill. Congress is moving in scattershot fashion, with multiple bills sponsored
by a myriad of members. Little that is lasting can be accomplished in this way.
What is needed now is a systematic survey of the problem,
backed by the federal investigative power of agencies like the FBI, followed by
a careful legislative response. That, in turn, will raise a host of complex
issues that must be addressed if we are to change the game and rip out the
anti-Semitism in our institutions at the root.
In our democracy, regulating or even getting to the
bottom of financial flows, particularly to nongovernmental nonprofit
organizations (NGOs) and educational institutions, is not easy. The
constitutional guarantee of free speech rightly colors all inquiries into the
nature of foreign support for any group or school.
Questions are raised that are not easily dismissed. For
example: Is money from France or Australia the same as money from China or
Qatar? Can foreign funding of a university department or chair that has the
effect of influencing the curriculum or the nature of study be regulated? What
about NGO activity on campus: Does allowing NGOs that support terrorist
organizations and their aims on campus constitute material support for
terrorism, which is illegal under federal law? Is there a constitutional means of
regulating or banning foreign-government-sponsored hate speech? Can Title VI of
the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the grounds of race, color,
or national origin, be reasonably applied to donated dollars that seem to tilt
the scales in favor of the causes of foreign actors?
First, we need to address the scope of the problem and
determine its sources—apart from the frailties of human character that have
driven anti-Semitic hatred for as long as there have been Jews. Where has
this new anti-Semitism come from? What are the best tools to
fight it? What are the roots of this 21st-century version of the world’s oldest
hatred?
THE SCOPEOF
THE PROBLEM
The breadth of campus protests, the demands of impromptu
encampment juntas, and the specific demands of the “students” there, have all
staggered America. Those who support their cause are exhilarated by their
success. Those who are appalled by not only the lawlessness but the abhorrent
ugliness of their behavior and words are in shock. Even for those riveted and
horrified by the spectacle, there has been too much happening on a daily basis
to absorb it all. There also appears to be some confusion about what is going
on, including a nostalgic sense among some that protest is an age-old rite of
passage for the young, something kids always do. They are wrong. This is fresh.
In May, Hillel International—the largest Jewish campus
organization in the world—reported a 700 percent increase in anti-Semitic
incidents on college campuses since October 7, more than 1,500 separate
incidents in all. The anti-Semitic wave took multiple forms that are
breathtaking in the way they have broken seemingly unbreakable norms—extolling
Hitler and lamenting the failure of the Holocaust; demands that Jews “go back
to Poland”; omnipresent glorification of Hamas and the attacks of October 7;
calls for Hamas (and Iran) to attack Tel Aviv; denial of the events of October
7; attacks on Jewish institutions like Chabad and Hillel, as well as
synagogues, Jewish fraternities, and even “visibly” Jewish students. (The rise
of the expression “visibly Jewish” is itself a predation that deserves more
attention.)
Consistently across states and universities both public
and private—though mostly at the nation’s most elite institutions—demands have
gone beyond mere harassment and name-calling. Jewish students and professors
have been blocked from campus solely for the “crime” of being Jewish—a
violation of multiple laws justified by Jew-hater par excellence Representative
Ilhan Omar. Protester demands include everything from divestment of university
endowments in Israel to the banning of organizations in and around campus
“associated with Zionism.” Those include Hillel and Chabad, which are
explicitly Jewish service organizations designed to help young Jews practice
their faith away from home and are not primarily Zionist advocacy
organizations. Indeed, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the
University of California demanded a “complete academic boycott” of a list of
Jewish organizations and philanthropies; it was enough, in most cases, for the
organization to simply have a Jewish name to be on the list.
How pervasive was all this? Nationwide, there were almost
3,000 campus arrests.
FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and
Expression, found that 60 percent of American students were on a campus this
past academic year where a protest had been ongoing, though only 10 percent of
students actually participated.
While student participation is shocking, it’s the involvement
of their professors that represents a break from every academic norm. In
addition to joining encampments themselves at dozens of schools, professors
have sought to intervene when police were called in to stem violence, apprehend
trespassers, and disband illegal encampments. A brief survey: Thirty-four
professors at the University of Virginia signed letters condemning
administrators for suspensions and arrests of students, and 77 percent of
Barnard professors voted “no confidence” in their president. Faculty at the
University of Texas at Austin engaged in a work stoppage. The chair of women’s
studies at UCLA led a 200-faculty-strong walkout to support protesters. Staff
at Rutgers University, University of Minnesota, and University of California,
Riverside, came out in support of divestment from Israel. Mona Dugo, the dean
of students at Northwestern University, joined a protest outside the school’s
Hillel on the grounds that she needed to ensure that the demonstrators’ rights
were protected. The Hillel House is not on the campus quad but on Foster Street
in Evanston, shared by private homes and academic buildings.
For many professors, the seedlings of their anti-Semitic
activism had been cultivated since choosing their academic discipline. A 2017
AMCHA Initiative study of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel (PCACBI), a pro-BDS network of college professors,
found that a majority of faculty BDS advocates are affiliated with ethnic,
gender, or Middle East studies departments. The more BDS advocates on campus
there were, the more external BDS agitators were invited to campus. And the
more such speakers were invited to campus, the more anti-Semitic agitation and
incidents took place. PCACBI is funded in part by the Alliance for Justice,
itself funded by the Tides, Nexus, and Open Society Foundations.
Another organization has also arisen since October 7 to
coordinate professors alongside Students for Justice in Palestine. It is called
Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP). With 95 chapters as of late April and
booming, FJP works alongside the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of Israel (USACBI).
In the weeks since spring semester at last came to its
end, various university leaders have quietly capitulated to student demands,
making agreements to divest from Israel, review school relations with “Zionist”
groups, and reinstate students expelled for criminal charges, violation of
university rules, hate crimes, and worse. Faculty have also done their part,
using their clout at both Harvard and Princeton to limit consequences to the
pro-Hamas crowds for breaking campus rules. Harvard faculty voted to reinstate
13 students who had been arrested and suspended so that they could graduate
(though Harvard’s governing body then overruled the faculty).
THE
SOURCESOF THE PROBLEM
Efforts to tease out the accelerant behind the inferno
have pinpointed the Manichean oppressor/oppressed framework that governs
diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology. Married to the all-embracing concept
of radical intersectionality—that “black lives” cannot be divorced from “trans
lives,” or abortion, or “Palestine,” or brown vs. white, or climate—DEI has
been a driving force behind the demonization of Jews as well as Israel. It has
also led to the erasure of the dividing line between a sovereign state (a
proper subject of political criticism) and a religious affiliation (the polar
opposite of a proper subject for criticism). The apotheosis of this
intersectionality was found in Malmo, Sweden, when the keffiyeh-clad
eco-activist Greta Thunberg demonstrated against the participation of an
Israeli singer in the Eurovision contest.
Social media has also been a powerful catalyst. American
platforms like Instagram, X, and Facebook have been used to both organize
campus demonstrations and propagandize anti-Semitism. Each argues that it draws
a line between speech (“Jews should all die!”) and calls to action (“We should
kill all the Jews”). Each has failed on numerous occasions. However, no
platform has pushed anti-Semitic tropes, anti-Israel propaganda, and false
narratives as aggressively as Chinese-owned TikTok.
Long before October 7, researchers had raised red flags
about anti-Semitic content on the TikTok platform. A pre-attack research study
of anti-Semitism on TikTok noted the growing prevalence of anti-Semitic memes
on the platform. A 2020 report from The Centre for Countering Digital Hatred
found that TikTok removed only 18.5 percent of reported anti-Semitic posts, and
the study’s authors found usernames like “@holocaustwasgood” and “@eviljews”
operating with impunity. The enormously influential platform, with 150 million
users in the United States alone, doubled down after the Hamas attack. In a
November 2023 letter to TikTok’s CEO, a large group of House members led by
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers noted that “according to TikTok’s own
‘Creative Center,’ the hashtag #freepalestine received 946 million views in the
last 30 days, while #standwithIsrael received only 55 million. Most concerning,
58 percent of those viewing the #freepalestine hashtag are within the 18 to 24
age group.”
The allegation that the Chinese Communist Party is
encouraging a TikTok algorithm fomenting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic posts is
buttressed by the fact that on China’s own TikTok equivalent, Douyin (TikTok
itself is banned in China), anti-Semitic posts receive millions of views. And
on Chinese applications as mundane as Baidu and Amap, the State of Israel has
been erased, replaced with “Palestine.” Given the undisputed fact that the
Beijing dictatorship exercises granular, post-specific control over all apps
and platforms under its sway—try to find the Tiananmen Square uprising, Uighur
genocide, or independent Taiwan on any one—there is substantial reason to
suspect that the government of China is actively seeking to foment anti-Semitic
campus unrest.
China experts argue persuasively that Beijing’s long and
quite cozy relationship with the government of Israel—a relationship that has
prompted bipartisan condemnations over several decades—suggests that China’s
interest is more in fomenting general discontent and instability in the United
States than in the specifics of Jew-hatred. Like the government of Russia,
China expends substantial energy in fanning flames of social and political
unrest online, often less with a view to a particular outcome, and more to
underwrite a growing sense of chaos among the American people.
Not so other outside agitators.
After George Washington University’s encampment in
Washington, D.C., was finally taken down in early May, there were 33 arrests—29
for unlawful entry and four for assault. Only six of the arrested were GW
students, with six more reportedly from nearby Georgetown University. After
arrests at encampments at the University of Texas at Austin and the City
University of New York, it turned out that only half the protesters were
students. Who were the others?
At Columbia University, reporters spotted Lisa Fithian, a
perennial protester and veteran of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests (and
other Occupy efforts that followed) as well as Black Lives Matter protests.
Other non-students came from a hodgepodge of jihadi, leftist, Maoist, Marxist,
antifa, anarchist, Code Pink, and garden-variety mobs. At demonstrations,
people were seen waving the ISIS black flag and the Hamas green flag, and
distributing Hamas press literature, generic pro-North Korean screeds, and the
ubiquitous anti-Semitic genocide tropes on both paper and posters. A unifying
theme was the call “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,”
although “Yalla, Yalla ya Hamas” (Go Hamas!) and “There is only one
solution/intifada revolution” also made frequent appearances.
It has proved tempting for many members of the American
elite to brush this unpleasantness away; after all, kids will be kids. But
these are not just kids. In a wide-ranging and exhaustively researched piece in
Tablet, Park MacDougald lays out the web of foundations, NGOs, and
“pro-Palestine” organizations behind the campus uprisings. In summary,
MacDougald flags the striking similarity of this round of campus activism to
previous such outbreaks:
The first hint that the protests
are not entirely organic is their striking resemblance to previous rounds of
organized far-left agitation, from the “uprising” of summer 2020 to the rolling
antifa vs. Proud Boys brawls of 2016-17. The creation of “liberated” or
“autonomous” zones on campus, for instance, is a hallmark of anarchist
organizing familiar from Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and New York’s
City Hall Autonomous Zone four summers ago. Familiar, too, is the governance of
these zones, with masked security details prohibiting filming from outsiders
and directing reporters to trained media representatives. During clashes with
police or with counterprotesters, students and their allies have deployed
classic “bloc” tactics. All of these tactics require a degree of instruction
and training…
Who is agitating for, coordinating, training, and in some
cases financing this campus hydra?
THE SEED
MONEYOF THE PROBLEM
Begin with National Students for Justice in Palestine
(NSJP), which is the parent of more than 250 campus branches of Students for
Justice in Palestine; Jewish Voices for Peace (and JVP Action, its
political-action committee); and Within Our Lifetime. They, in turn, are funded
by George Soros Inc. ($650,000 to JVP), the Kaphan Foundation ($441,000 to
JVP), and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (also JVP). SJP, which is a major
organizer, trainer, and agitator behind campus protests, has donors that are
more suspect.
SJP and National Students for Justice in Palestine are
part of American Muslims for Palestine. That group in turn is part of the
Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP) and the AJP Educational Fund, which is
represented on Capitol Hill by the AJP Action Fund. Their founder is Hatem
Bazian, best known as a fundraiser for KindHearts, an Islamist nonprofit that
in 2012 settled with the U.S. Treasury Department over claims it had raised
funds for Hamas (though it admitted no wrongdoing). Here is an excerpt from
their “toolkit” for university students released in the immediate aftermath of
October 7:
Today, we witness a historic win
for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have
broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the
facade of an impenetrable settler colony and reminding each of us that total
return and liberation to Palestine is near. As the Palestinian student
movement, we have an unshakable responsibility to join the call for mass
mobilization.
Legal-aid organizations tied to the Palestine hydra
include Palestine Legal and the Adalah Justice Project. Together, they have
fought the “free speech” battle that has been reborn on U.S. campuses in the
wake of the era of DEI-driven anti-free-speech movements. Both Palestine Legal
and Adalah are funded by TIDES, a nonprofit umbrella group that funnels cash to
far-left and radical anti-Israel groups, and WESPAC, the Westchester Peace
Action Committee, which has a similar profile.
Another funding nexus for SJP and FJP and related
organizations, per NGO Monitor, is the “US Campaign for Palestinian Rights,
which is a financial pillar of the SJP, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization.”
Similarly, “donating to the USACBI takes you to al Awda Palestinian Right to
Return Coalition [in] Coral Springs, FL. Donating to al Awda is done via
SquareUp.com. The al Awda Youth representative is Nerdeen Kiswani from New
York. Kiswani is the co-founder and chair of Within Our Lifetime (WOL)—United for
Palestine. Kiswani was the former chair of SJP-NYC.”
Then there is Samidoun. Students at Columbia University,
possibly the most militant, and certainly the best publicized of pro-Hamas
“student” encampments, and Barnard, its sister school, enjoyed “Resistance 101”
training from an organization called Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner
Solidarity Network. Samidoun coordinator Charlotte Kates, per a YouTube
recording, informed Columbia students that “there is nothing wrong with being a
member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas.”
Samidoun is an interesting organization. An
Israeli-designated terrorist front, Samidoun is believed to be a subsidiary of
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated
terrorist group so venerable that it was behind the hijacking of the Air France
jet to Entebbe in 1976, nearly half a century ago.
Founded by PFLP member Khaled Barakat in 2012, Samidoun
has provided posters with the PFLP logo to students, PFLP flags, and training
from Charlotte Kates—who happens to be Barakat’s wife. At George Washington
University, protestors conducted a “teach-in” around the book Strategy for
the Liberation of Palestine, a PFLP manual. Students at Columbia, Rutgers,
Yale, and Stanford have been documented carrying PFLP posters and the PFLP
flag.
Samidoun raises money through an entity called the
“Alliance for Global Justice,” itself a 501(c)(3) registered with the Internal
Revenue Service. The Alliance for Global Justice has received funding from a
web of George Soros–backed groups and a far-left dark money network, according
to the Anti-Defamation League. Because of the Alliance for Global Justice and
Samidoun’s overt ties to the PFLP, the group has been blacklisted by PayPal and
banned from operating in Germany. Since 2021, Samidoun has been registered as a
nonprofit in Canada.
Samidoun honcho Barakat lives freely in Canada, though he
has been designated by Israel as a terror leader. A 2022 National Post article
identified him explicitly as a senior member of the PFLP, which is banned as a
terrorist organization in Canada. He has been barred from Germany. An affiliate
organization in France, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, was disbanded under
that nation’s hate-crime laws. He is also the coordinator of a “campaign to
free Ahmad Sa’adat,” the head of the PFLP now in Israeli prison. Efforts by
both Jewish organizations in Canada and the Israeli government to have Samidoun
and Barakat designated as part of the PFLP have not borne fruit. Most Samidoun
training for U.S. students takes place online, with the Samidoun leaders in
Canada.
A ubiquitous factor in the spread of anti-Semitic
extremism on campuses is foreign funding. In most cases, analysts do not see
funding from a country of concern—take Qatar—going to the SJP branch at
University X or at Y College. Far from it. Rather, what in-depth research by
the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) has found
is a network of relationships between universities and foreign donors—primarily
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—that create an environment
which fosters anti-Semitic discourse. Are the Emiratis (or anyone else) paying
explicitly for campus BDS campaigns or tent encampments? Not evidently. The
relationships are more subtle.
According to ISGAP, Texas A&M, Georgetown, Cornell,
Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Virginia Commonwealth, and others are the
beneficiaries of generous Qatari spending (though Texas A&M is pulling its
operations out of the Gulf kingdom by 2028). Qatar is by far the largest donor
to Universities, per a report from the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise,
with over $5.7 billion in gifts between 1981 and 2023. More important, those
donations are funneled via a series of institutions, some governmental and some,
like the wholly state-funded Qatar Foundation, labeled “private.” Money also
changes hands via the establishment of campuses in Qatar, most of which are
governed by intrusive contractual arrangements that allow the donor to do such
things as approve course offerings.
The key finding from ISGAP: Between 2015 and 2020—pre–October
7—universities that received donations from Middle Eastern sources had, “on
average, 300% more anti-Semitic incidents than those institutions that did
not.”
THE ANSWER:
LAW
Why does the org chart for radical pro-Hamas supporters,
their organizations, their funders, their faculty enablers, student
facilitators, and foreign funders matter? It is, after all, a blindingly
confusing amalgam of letters representing groups made up of killers,
anti-Semites, do-gooders, foreign dictators, idiots, and hangers-on.
The answer is simple, really: Anti-Semitism cannot be
tolerated. We must not allow it to become part of acceptable discourse in
America. Allowed to embed itself in academia, Jew-hatred creeps into society,
journalism, business, and government. Effectively, there is no difference
between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism; anti-Zionism is just the new code word.
So what to do?
The answer is the law.
In America, discrimination and bigotry—and support for
terrorism in aid of discrimination and bigotry—are in their extremes
circumscribed by law. Such legislation, at all levels, include hate crimes
laws; laws barring discrimination based on gender, race, and religion;
anti-boycott laws; and anti-terrorism legislation that precludes funding,
supporting, or participating in terrorist acts or terrorist groups.
There are laws governing foreign-government sponsorship
of lobbying, disclosure laws requiring universities to report donations from
foreign governments on a regular basis, and tax laws governing how nonprofits
spend and report their income. Theoretically, these laws should be enough to
protect the nation’s Jews and supporters of Israel both on campus and off; in
practice, they are not. What follows from this failure is that enforcement of
existing laws is imperative, and some new laws are required.
The lack of a formal legal definition of anti-Semitism
has hindered the enforcement of existing state and federal laws and
regulations, even on campus. For that reason, the Trump administration issued
an Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism in 2019, which included an
explication of how Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 could be used to
fight anti-Semitism despite the absence of religion as a factor in considering
discrimination as spelled out in the law itself. It also charged federal agencies
tasked with Title VI enforcement to use the International Holocaust Remembrance
Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism in consideration of violations.
Notably, this executive order was one of the few such Trump-era orders left in
place by the Biden administration.
A word about the IHRA definition: In 2016, the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted a definition of
anti-Semitism that has been placed in law by 42 countries. The definition
itself is straightforward:
Anti-Semitism is a certain
perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical
and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or
non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions
and religious facilities.
In addition, the IHRA put forth several examples of
anti-Semitism, including, “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy
to that of the Nazis.” Some of these examples have prompted consternation, faux
and sincere, among free-speech advocates, libertarians, and others.
The House of Representatives recently passed a version of
that EO into law by a huge margin: 320–91, with 70 Democrats and 21 Republicans
dissenting. For the most part, among dissenters, Republicans expressed concern
with infringements on the First Amendment and religious freedom, while
Democrats worried about efforts to criminalize legitimate criticism of the
State of Israel. But in fact the bill does not penalize any speech—only proven
discrimination and harassment. And it would do so literally no differently than
is the case with bigotry directed at blacks, Hispanics, LBGTQ people, or any
other minority, as Democrat Rep. Ritchie Torres, a sponsor, has repeatedly
explained. Thus far, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has refused to take
up the bill.
The foundational importance of a definition is clear:
Absent an understanding of what anti-Semitism is, there will be
confusion about enforcement. Difficulty answering the question of whether “from
the river to the sea” is a call to the genocide of the Jewish people is, at
least in part, a result. Absent formal federal legal adoption of the IRHA
definition, several states are now using it to inform their own enforcement.
Thirty-four states have now enshrined it, either legislatively, by
proclamation, or via executive order.
Other relevant statutes include Title VI itself. Prior to
October 7, the provision was rarely used to address religious discrimination,
Trump’s EO notwithstanding. Since then, however, Title VI investigations have
been opened into dozens of universities, including seven in the Ivy League
(only Dartmouth has avoided scrutiny).
Such efforts get at the what—by which I mean
the treatment of Jews on campus and the reaction of campus administrators. The how
and the why are more problematic and require more imagination.
The main drivers on campuses where anti-Semitism is rife appear
to be two important factors: foreign money (and an important subset of foreign
money: foreign students); and variants of American Muslims for Palestine and
its offshoot student and faculty organizations.
Where is the money coming from?
Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965,
academic institutions that receive federal financial assistance (virtually all,
in some form or another) are required semiannually to disclose
foreign-government gifts and contracts of $250,000 or more. It’s interesting to
note that this provision was added to the act in 1986 in response to the
growing influence of Middle Eastern donors in American universities and the
rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses. Until 2022, Section 117 was enforced
by the Office of the General Counsel of the Education Department; the Biden
administration moved its job to the Office of Federal Student Affairs, a
backwater that has done little to ensure compliance. What would compliance look
like?
In 2019, under then–Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos,
the Education Department dove into its records for reporting on foreign
donations, and what it found was shocking. There was little to no compliance
across the board. Similarly, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations found that foreign-government spending at U.S. academic
institutions was “effectively a black hole,” and that 70 percent of schools
were not complying with the law.
Turns out, an astounding $6.7 billion in foreign funding
had not been disclosed between 2014 and 2019. Per the Network Contagion
Research Institute, which analyzed the updated disclosures, “over $2.7 billion
in gifts came from Qatari sources, $1.2 billion from Chinese entities, and over
$1 billion originated in Saudi Arabia.” Since 2021 and Biden’s inauguration,
however, reports have slowed to a trickle.
In 2022, most outstanding Section 117 investigations were
closed, and enforcement was moved from the Office of the General Counsel to the
Office of Federal Student Aid. Education Department officials whisper that this
was due to complaints from the American Council on Education. Another study by
the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise found that since 2021, the
Department of Education has changed numbers, obscured certain donations, and
now withholds donor information from its public reports. The same study found
that for the $11.7 billion from four Arab countries from 1981 through
2023—fully 23 percent of all foreign donations—no information was provided
about how that money was used.
Clearly, enforcing compliance with Section 117 requires
an overhaul and a rethink. That is also the case with similar state laws in New
York; for example, Section 207-a of State Education Law requires annual filing
on foreign-government, person, or entity gifts of more than $100,000. In
addition, donations from foreign individuals almost totally evade
scrutiny: Foreign gifts not from governments are aggregated by country with no
breakout for the type of gift, amount, or anything else. Indeed, a 2020 overhaul
of the Section 117 portal by the Department of Education meant even less
disclosure to the public.
Various efforts in Congress to remedy this problem
include the already-signed-into-law CHIPS Act (Joe Biden’s signature
legislation to boost computer-chip production in the United States), which
requires universities to report donations over $50,000 from “countries of
concern,” defined as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. New bills not yet
passed would bring the reporting limit under 117 down from $250,000 to $50,000
(that’s a Senate bill, with the House’s counterpart version drawing the limit
down to $100,000 in aggregate, or $250,000 over three years). Other provisions
include reporting any donation from a “country of concern”—China, Russia, Iran,
and North Korea, or “any country that the Secretary [of Education], in
consultation with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the
Director of National Intelligence, determines to be engaged in conduct that is
detrimental to the national security or foreign policy of the United States.”
It would bar contracts with countries of concern absent a waiver; require
reporting on contracts between covered individuals (such as researchers) and
all foreign entities of any kind; and mandate investment disclosures. It would
also add crucial penalties for noncompliance.
Clearly, Congress recognizes there is a problem and is
working to enhance disclosure requirements. What Congress has not done is
address specifically and prescriptively the issue of “countries of concern.”
Consider: If there are enhanced disclosure requirements for “countries of
concern,” but countries that are actively linked to anti-Semitic terrorism on
U.S. campuses are not specifically listed as “of concern,” how will new laws
work?
One option would be to require the Department of State to
annually list “countries of concern” in propagating violent anti-Semitism and
anti-Semitic propaganda. Here, the trouble is that the Department of State is
often derelict in such reporting requirements, refuses to adhere to
congressionally delineated guidelines, and generally skews such reporting
requirements for political reasons. For this reason, Lebanon—a country that
hosts Hezbollah, a terror subsidiary of Iran that has killed hundreds of Americans
and in which Hezbollah forms a part of the government—is not designated as a
“state sponsor of terrorism” by the U.S. government. Ditto Qatar, which hosts
Hamas and al-Qaeda leaders and openly finances Hamas.
One remedy will be for Congress to make clear what
criteria it is looking for in the designation of “countries of concern,”
including the presence of designated terror groups, financing of terror groups,
as well as facilitation of the movement of people and money related to that
terror group.
In addition, Congress must designate the correct venue
within the Department of Education for consideration of Section 117
compliance—its Office of General Counsel—and require compliance. What is
Congress’s ultimate leverage? Federal funding. Institutions of higher education
in the United States will receive north of $200 billion from the federal
government in 2024.
Finally, regarding Section 117, it is critical to
understand that foreign funders have been allowed, more or less, to turn U.S.
institutions of higher education into political fiefdoms, with their leaders
and faculty serving as spokesmen for foreign interests. Under U.S. law
currently, those who enter into contracts or receive funding to advocate for
the interest of a foreign government are required to register with the
Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). This
requirement is embedded in a criminal statute, and a violation risks jail time.
There is no reason compliance by American educational institutions with
disclosure laws should not be subject to similar criminal penalties.
A small, but important subset of the foreign funding
question is the foreign student question. While there have been no definitive
studies on the role that foreigners in the United States on student visas have
played in the campus unrest since October 7, there is no question that foreign
students have taken part. At Harvard, one of the Ivy’s encampment leaders is a
Pakistani Rhodes Scholar. The chief negotiator for “Columbia University
Apartheid Divest” is a Syrian of Palestinian origin, also on a student visa.
And in a more publicized case late in 2023, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) literally stopped short of expelling transgressive
demonstrators because its leadership openly stated they feared these students
would lose their visas and be removed from the country.
As it happens, Section 411 of the Patriot Act bars entry
to noncitizens who use their “position of prominence within any country to
endorse or espouse terrorist activity,” a provision that could be interpreted
to mean that a student who loses his F1 student-visa (dependent on full-time
status at an accredited U.S. institution) would never be able to return.
Congress is already looking at changing student visa rules to strip holders
“for rioting or unlawful protests.”
Then there is the question of nongovernmental
organizations and their role. Right now, organizations like Students for
Justice in Palestine, their parent entities, affiliates, and related groups are
not required to register as 501(c)(3)s—the nonprofit status that, to take one
example, Commentary holds—in order to
receive tax-free support from Americans or any support from foreign donors.
Indeed, groups like the 501(c)(3)-registered Alliance for Justice are permitted
to “fiscally sponsor” others like the SJP and affiliates.
What that means, effectively, is that SJP is not bound by
the reporting requirements of U.S. tax law, including Form 990, which details
expenditures, board members, and employees. Under current law, such 501(c)(3)s
are not required to detail or disclose foreign donations, including
foreign-government donations.
Congress became concerned some years ago when Washington
think tanks, including think tanks whose scholars regularly testified before
Congress, were not detailing their significant financial relationships with
foreign governments. The House instituted rules requiring that witnesses
disclose their institutions’ foreign ties. But the IRS imposes no such
stricture on NGOs. This is another case where a designated list of countries of
concern, including China and Russia, as well as nations with a substantial nexus
with U.S.-designated terror groups, would be salutary.
Another critical step is closer scrutiny of NGOs. If, for
example, an NGO is shut down by the U.S. government because of ties to
terrorist organizations, should the rump employees of that organization—those
who do not go to prison—be allowed to reconstitute a similar NGO under a new
name? Should an NGO that employs all the same staff as an organization
previously shut down by the U.S. government avoid a similar fate? The
Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan
Schanzer (a Commentary
contributing editor) has been relentless in his pursuit of the tendrils of the
now-shuttered Texas-based Holyland Foundation. THF was closed down in 2008
after raising millions for Hamas, with five of its staff sent to prison.
Holyland spawned several successors, most of which were also shut down for
providing material support to Hamas. Thanks, however, to Schanzer’s work, nine
former Holyland employees were located, still in the United States. They came
together to run an organization called American Muslims for Palestine, a parent
of… you guessed it… Students for Justice in Palestine. (The House Committee on
Oversight and Accountability has sent a detailed request to National Students
for Justice in Palestine to begin removing the veil of secrecy around SJP and
affiliates.)
Congress must put in place laws to permanently bar
individuals complicit in the running of a terrorist-financing operation in the
United States from returning to their profession—supporting a terrorist
organization from stateside. How to do that? It’s less simple than it appears,
and like the “country of concern” challenge, it requires that U.S. law treat
terrorism supporters differently. The right place to begin is to treat all
employees of U.S.-designated terrorism supporters in the same way. In the case of
Holyland, five employees did time, but the rest skated free. That should not be
the case. All have, in their way, provided what is called “material support” to
terrorism.
The “material support” question is another key to
undercutting support for foreign terrorists and their anti-Semitic agenda in
the United States. Right now, U.S. law as amended in 1996 defines a violation
of the prohibition on providing “material support” for a terrorist group as
“knowledge that the organization is a designated terrorist organization […]
that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorist activity.”
Material support itself is described as “any property,
tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments
or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice
or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification,
communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives,
personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and
transportation, except medicine or religious materials.”
Surely, returning to support for Hamas or Palestine
Islamic Jihad or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine constitutes
an admission that an individual in question was well aware of the purposes of
his previous employer. In that case, why should the unindicted be permitted to
return to his original profession, replete with the tax advantages that come
with 501(c)(3) status? Similarly, if an organization is designated as terrorist
even by a foreign country—think Samidoun—shouldn’t providing it with the means
to propagandize to U.S. students also constitute material support? That’s what
university-owned Zoom accounts did for Samidoun.
One of the ways that foreign sponsors get around even the
limited disclosure requirements that exist is by funneling money via NGOs, who
then funnel the money to on-campus organizations. The simple answer to this
workaround is to require all nonprofits and their subsidiaries who benefit from
their nonprofit tax status to disclose gifts from all private and public donors
in countries of concern—or all foreign countries, should labeling become an
insuperable barrier. That requirement must also flow down to recipients of
funding from such organizations, so that terrorism supporters and purveyors of
anti-Semitism cannot launder their donations via successive groups to avoid
disclosure.
NGOs will complain that it is too burdensome for small
organizations to comply with reporting requirements of this kind. However, the
onus must be on the donor to comply, with appropriate penalties should donor
and donee fail in their legal obligations.
Some of these rules are in place at the state level,
although, as with federal regulations, compliance and disclosure are spotty.
Schools are deeply resistant to additional disclosure rules, as emails from MIT
officials reveal: An effort by Congress to subject foreign contracts with U.S.
universities to so-called CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.)
review prompted a flurry of objections. Other schools have opposed additional
Section 117 disclosures and changes to rules governing foreign donations.
Finally, there is the question of compliance with BDS, a
key pillar of demands made by SJP across the board. The Boycott, Sanctions and
Divestment movement is an outgrowth of what was once called the Arab League
Boycott of the State of Israel. Headquartered in Damascus, the Arab League
boycott was once a powerful tool Arab enemies of Israel used to leverage
foreign companies away from investment in Israel. However, U.S. law is broader
than the Arab League action: Any compliance by any U.S. person or company with
any unsanctioned foreign boycott is illegal. Here, the key words are “foreign
boycott.” The U.S. government does not assess the BDS movement as “foreign,”
which means it is not covered by existing law.
Congress has introduced anti-BDS compliance legislation a
number of times, including in 2024, but language has yet to make it to the
president’s desk. Not so at the state level, where compliance with BDS is
illegal or subject to sanction and penalty in 37 states.
THE
VICTIMPROBLEM
Jews in the United States have asked themselves why it is
that in an era when minorities—Jews constitute about 2.4 percent of the
population—are preferred, protected, and even fetishized, the Jew remains an
undefended target of hatred. Explications are rife, and documentation of
anti-Semitism is aggressive. Nevertheless, there are daily attacks on Jewish
people, Jewish institutions, and Jewish things.
Some argue that in combatting anti-Semitism, reducing the
Jew to victim is the wrong answer. There is blushing embarrassment at the
notion of a Jewish Lives Matter movement. Others insist that there is a
transience to the current anti-Semitic frenzy, and that once Israel winds down
its war against Hamas, things will go back to normal, whatever that is. But
there is no requirement to determine the epistemological foundations of 21st
century anti-Semitism or the nature of the modern Jew in order to accept the
notion that there must be better laws in place to protect the academy, our
young people, and the Jewish community from foreign or domestic predations,
whether in the service of terrorism or hatred.
Over millennia, anti-Semitism has clothed itself in the
veneer of justice against the nominal guises of the Jew—Christ killer, usurer,
sexual predator, Communist, capitalist, colonialist. In Nazi Germany, the Papal
States, the Roman Empire, you name it, the law was crafted to validate these
tropes. But democracy affords equal protection to Jew and non-Jew alike. It is
high time that Jews availed themselves of the privileges of American democracy
to protect themselves, their beliefs, and their children from the evil of
anti-Semitism. That is their—our—privilege in a nation of laws.
No comments:
Post a Comment