Unpacking Zionism

This interview with Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel program at Arab Center Washington DC, is about lawfare. Lawfare refers to the use of law as a political weapon that is more concerned with inflicting damage on an opponent than prevailing with a particular legal argument or proving facts based on evidence. We discuss Zionist lawfare, who formulates its goals and targets, and who funds and carries out these efforts.

Resources:

Yousef Munayyer, “Spaces Beyond Borders: Israel’s Transnational Repression Network,” in Suppressing Dissent: Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression and Palestine–Israel (2024).

Emmaia Gelman, Astroturf Antisemitism Watchdogs, Jadaliyya (2024)

Charity & Security Network, The Alarming Rise of Lawfare to Suppress Civil Society: The Case of Palestine and Israel (2021)

In this episode we are looking at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) with journalist Alex Kane, senior reporter at Jewish Currents. This is the first of several episodes we'll have on the ADL, in an effort to grapple with its scale and long history. Lots of links in the show notes.

History:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y-w8y83byMLcxFd1gvI1xqpcDUaCo1WW/view?usp=sharing

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-anti-democratic-origins-of-the-jewish-establishment

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/emmaia-gelman-anti-defamation-league/

https://criticalzionismstudies.org/2024/10/26/from-the-new-antisemitism-to-the-ihra-definition/

Reporting & Analysis:

https://jewishcurrents.org/adl-shutters-flagship-anti-bias-program

https://jewishcurrents.org/scoop-internal-adl-memo-recommended-ending-police-delegations-to-israel-amid-backlash

https://jewishcurrents.org/examining-the-adls-antisemitism-audit

https://jewishcurrents.org/how-the-adls-israel-advocacy-undermines-its-civil-rights-work

https://criticalzionismstudies.org/2024/05/28/the-anti-defamation-league-counterinsurgency-and-the-palestinian-liberation-movement/

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/educators-beware-the-anti-defamation-league-is-not-the-social-justice-partner-it-claims-to-be/

https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45918

Resistance to the ADL:

www.droptheadl.org

Related episodes:

Unpacking Zionism: Mothers Against College Antisemitism

Battling the IHRA Definition: The new 'terror' bill

Also mentioned:

Canary Mission

Amcha Initiative

American Jewish Committee

In this episode, we discuss the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) with the veteran of this podcast Amira Jarmakani, ICSZ collective member and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies at San Diego State University. NCRI, presenting itself as a research institute interested in studying false and hateful narratives online, often flies under the radar as a Zionist organization. Amira Jarmakani debunks NCRI’s claim to be a small, neutral, not-for-profit institution and clarifies that it is actually an online surveillance organization, closely tied with major US policy-making institutions, and a purveyor of the War on Terror. We look at the work of NCRI and its reports demonizing leftist organizing, conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, attacking BDS, and labeling Palestine solidarity organizing as “terrorism.”

Also mentioned in this episode: Anti-Defamation League (ADL), AMCHA Initiative, Hetz, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), Charles Koch Foundation (CKF)

Resources:

Cox, Joseph. “Inside ICE’s Database for Finding ‘Derogatory’ Online Speech.” 404 Media. October 24, 2023.

Poulson, Jack. “The Australian ad-tech firm secretly fueling 'psychological warfare' against U.S. university students.” All Source Intelligence substack. June 10, 2024.

NCRI received $335,000 from Israel on Campus Coalition in 2021 “for a grant to build social media analysis.

ICE contracted Giant Oak from 2014-2022 to flag people for deportation, according to AFSC.

On FARA: Fang, Lee and Jack Poulson. “Leaked Israeli Docs Reveal Effort to Evade Foreign Agent Lobbying Law.” August 17, 2024.

ISGAP received 80% of its annual revenue from the Israeli government (Aiden Pink/ The Forward)

Joel Finkelstein's presentation to DHS,

The FBI identified SNA as a valuable tool for law enforcement as early as 2013.

Stop LAPD Spying, "The Algorithmic Ecology"

Stop LAPD Spying, "Before the Bullet Hits the Body"

Hate with Dylan Rodriguez

Terror with Arun Kundnani

This episode with Akhil Gopal and Matyos Kidane of Stop LAPD Spying Coalition looks at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is the parent organization of the Museum of Tolerance and a go-to Holocaust education provider. We look at how its work relates to what L.A. organizers call the "stalker state", and how anti-poor and racist politics – especially policing – are interwoven with Zionist politics and the War on Terror.

Also mentioned: The Anti-Defamation League.

In this episode, Sean Malloy and Meira Gold discuss the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), which has been working behind the scenes on campuses, advising many of the administrators who have been imposing the repressive measures that we've seen throughout the Israeli genocide. AEN claims to have trained 3000 university administrators since 2020 and set up presence on 320 campuses. Along with the ADL, the AEL has now turned its attention to scholarly associations -- sites of growing solidarity with Palestine, and accordingly sites of concern for Zionist institutions.

Also mentioned: Anti-Defamation League, Israel on Campus Coalition, Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement, ISGAP, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Israel Action Network, Brandeis Center, Hillel, Betar, MEMRI, Canary Mission, Amcha Initiative, Milstein Fund, Schusterman Fund, Marcus Fund, Heritage Foundation, American Jewish Committee

Resources:

On Project Esther -

https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/jvp-rejecting-project-esther/

Previous episode discussion AEN - https://criticalzionismstudies.org/2024/04/01/amira-sean-dei/

In this episode of “From Above,” we discuss the Helen Diller Family Foundation – an organization that claims to support “global Jewish needs.” And while it indeed funds Jewish Studies Programs as well as hospitals, art museums, and playgrounds, what the Helen Diller Family Foundation is actually invested in is Zionist global needs. We will talk about the Helen Diller Family Foundation’s massive financial contributions to Zionist, reactionary, and far-right white supremacist organizations directly responsible for the genocide in Palestine. Our guest today is an organizer with JAWS, Jews Against White Supremacy, at UC Santa Cruz, Max Sárosi.

Max Sárosi is a founding member of Jews Against White Supremacy UCSC and an undergraduate student of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies and Agroecology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Max is passionate about cultivating diasporic and decolonial Jewish community and comradery in solidarity with the Palestinian movement for liberation. Max's research interests include the entanglements of race, whiteness, and zionism as well as the histories, radical possibilities, and limitations of Jewish agroecologies.

Also mentioned in the episode: Jinsa, Regavim,  Jewish Community Federation, Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish Family and Children's Services, ADL, AIPAC, the Canary Mission, Friends of the IDF, The Israel Fund, CAMERA, The David Horowitz Freedom Foundation, AFDI, TPUSA, Beitar.

Resources:

JAWS UCSC @ UC Peoples' Tribunal: Testimony on Helen Diller Foundation

The Worst Evictors of San Francisco and Oakland

Notorious landlords support attack campaigns against rent control ballot measures : Indybay

UC Berkeley's Helen Diller Anchor House dorm sparks controversy

New UCSF hospital gets boost from the Diller Family Foundation

Helen and Sanford Diller Family Endowment for Jewish Studies

Midwife who worked in Gaza punished in California for watermelon pin

WARNING: the word "rapist" appears in this episode several times in the context of Zionist smears. At the 15'48" mark, there is a mention of a Jewish man being shot by a CAMERA-affiliated agitator.

In this episode on CAMERA and the Camera Education Institute, we’re hearing from education organizers Sana Fadel, a member of Sawa: Newton-Area Alliance for Peace and Justice, and Nora Lester Murad, of Drop The ADL from Schools. We talk through how Zionist institutions are using education as a platform for much broader political leverage, the split between the ways those institutions aim for respectability in the policy arena while using smear and violence in the streets, and the interconnections among Zionist organizations and figures. Be sure to read Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar on the history of these institutions, linked in the show notes.

Also mentioned in this episode: Academic Engagement Network, Jewish Leadership Project, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, Campus Watch, The Daily Wire, The David Project, Faculty Against Antisemitism Network, Hillel, Islamist Watch, Israel on Campus Coalition, Middle East Forum, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Links:

droptheadl.org // droptheadlfromschools.org

“Resistance to Repression and Back Again: The Movement for Palestinian Liberation in US Academia” (Lara Deeb & Jessica Winegar) https://www-tandfonline-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/doi/full/10.1080/19436149.2024.2375669

A CAMERA With the Wrong Focus, https://www.pbs.org/publiceditor/blogs/ombudsman/a-camera-with-the-wrong-focus/

Leaked NYT Gaza memo tells journalists to avoid words ‘genocide,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and ‘occupied territory’ https://theintercept.com/2024/04/15/nyt-israel-gaza-genocide-palestine-coverage/

What Goes Unsaid, https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/what-goes-unsaid/

Neocon Man, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/neocon-man/

This is the second episode in our series From Above, in which we look at Zionist institutions that wield their power to advance fascist repression of anyone who speaks against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians. My guest today is herself an example of how this repression works. I am joined by writer and scholar Maura Finkelstein to talk about Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. In 2024, Maura was fired from her tenured professorship at Muhlenberg College for a social media post critical of Zionism and Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. We discuss what it means for Israel to be “at the heart of Hillel’s work” as their own website proudly admits, the role that Hillel plays in the repression of students, faculty, and staff, and what campaigns and organizations resist Hillel and its hegemony over Jewish campus life in the United States.

Maura Finkelstein is a writer and anthropologist. She is the author of The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai, published by Duke University Press in 2019. In addition to academic writing, her essays have been by Post45, Electric Literature, Allegra Lab, Red Pepper Magazine, The Markaz Review, the Scottish Left Review, Mondoweiss, Middle East Eye, and Al Jazeera.

Resources:

https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45918/Astroturf-Zionism;

https://palestinelegal.org/hillels-actions;

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/23/how-the-israel-lobby-captured-hillel-international-college-campus/;

https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the-campus-does-not-exist;

https://drophillel.wordpress.com/history/

This is the first episode in a mini-series called "From Above," which looks at the Zionist organizations that have been laying the groundwork for Trump-era fascism and are now helping it advance. This mini-series isn’t so much a “how did we get here” as an effort to demystify the ongoing structures of Zionism that underwrite this present moment. In this episode, we’re joined by Zach Samalin from New York University to discuss the group called Mothers Against College Antisemitism (MACA), which was among the first Zionist groups to publicly embrace Trump’s deportation machine.

RESOURCES

https://www.nyu-aaup.org/aaup-nyu-report-nyus-president-mills-interfered-with-student-disciplinary-process-at-request-of-islamophobic-anti-palestinian-group/

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/31/nyu-gaza-protesters-deport-maca-antisemitism/

https://politicalresearch.org/2024/10/30/understanding-rise-multiracial-right-and-why-it-matters

"From Above" is a new mini-series in our Unpacking Zionism podcast. It launches next week, but our teaser this week is a mini-show in itself. This series looks at the Zionist institutions that have been smearing, doxxing, and fueling ICE abductions and deportations in their efforts to shut down criticism of the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

To kick off the series, we talk with researcher Hil Aked about the important idea of Zionism as "a social movement from above." Listen here and read Hil's book Friends of Israel for a more detailed explanation.