In February I wrote about a joint statement put out on January 22 2025 by the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), Human Rights Watch, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Australian National Imams Council, Human Rights Law Centre and Amnesty International ‘on recent hate crimes in Australia’.
I am in Brooklyn, New York. The names of organizations and the exact contours of events are distinct, but the issues are very similar to those you describe.
“Enhanced punishments,” designed to protect us, keep no one safe. They serve only to re-instantiate a punitive carceral ethos, materially increase the number of police harassing minoritized folks and pulling them into the criminal legal system, and overemphasize the mistaken view that anti-_____ hate is exclusively a matter of individual animus, rather than a form of structural violence. This is particularly the case on college campuses where successful inroads have been made into characterizing all criticism of Zionism and Zionists as anti-Jewish hate speech. This distorted conflation opens up the possibility those being accused of antiZionism will be charged with antisemitic Hate Crimes and, ultimately, terrorism.
I am in Brooklyn, New York. The names of organizations and the exact contours of events are distinct, but the issues are very similar to those you describe.
“Enhanced punishments,” designed to protect us, keep no one safe. They serve only to re-instantiate a punitive carceral ethos, materially increase the number of police harassing minoritized folks and pulling them into the criminal legal system, and overemphasize the mistaken view that anti-_____ hate is exclusively a matter of individual animus, rather than a form of structural violence. This is particularly the case on college campuses where successful inroads have been made into characterizing all criticism of Zionism and Zionists as anti-Jewish hate speech. This distorted conflation opens up the possibility those being accused of antiZionism will be charged with antisemitic Hate Crimes and, ultimately, terrorism.