1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Reject or change HR7188. It's a Trojan horse for attacking our First Amendment rights. To be clear, Congress must reject bigotry. And on the surface, this resolution seems to. As a Jewish American, I cannot deny the danger that anti-Jewish bias poses. But HR7188 won’t actually address this; it was written in bad faith. The Res. proposed by Rep. Malliotakis aims to punish higher education institutions which speak the truth about Palestine. Anyone who uses their freedom of speech to condemn Israel’s war crimes “is antisemitic”. This Res. targets supporters of justice in Palestine, perpetuating bigotry rather than countering it. As a politically informed & involved Jewish person, allow me to explain what’s wrong about calling recognition of Israel’s genocide “antisemitic”. Israel itself is the most antisemitic nation-state that exists. First, we must examine the meaning of the term “antisemitic”. “Semites” is a term historically used for people associated with the Middle East. A broad definition, but one which undoubtedly includes Palestinians. The myth that all Jewish people today have ancestors who resided in Palestine 4,000 years ago comes from the Torah and is not historically evidenced. The Jewish people’s connection to West Asia is a religious one. This is just as much true for followers of Christianity and Islam. By definition, Israel attacking actual Middle Eastern people is anti-Semitic, and antizionism is not. Secondly, Israel is the most anti-Jewish country there is. The most glaring example of this is the fact that zionist propaganda intentionally conflates zionism with Judaism. The zionist settler-colony claims to represent all Jews, but this is false. Jewish values are fundamentally incompatible with genocide. They betray our own faith in colonizing Palestine. And Israel regularly murders its own civilians. The Torah explicitly forbids the destruction of olive trees in the Holy Land, yet so-called Israelis do this with glee.There’s proof that Israel knew about Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 acts of resistance more than a year in advance, but did nothing to stop it. This is because they wanted it to happen, so that they could use the events as justification to colonize the rest of Palestine. All oppression is intertwined. Jewish and Palestinian liberation cannot happen separately. And although most Palestinians are Muslim, some are Jewish, too. If you truly care about Jewish people, you will do the following: 1. Reject or rewrite this Res. to use the term “anti-Judaism”, and specify that antizionism does not fall into this category. Pass a similar Res. for anti-Palestinian racism. 2. Condemn Israel for its occupation & genocide and revoke all support. 3. Boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. 4. Stop using the term “Jews” to refer to us if you are not Jewish. Otherwise, you willingly act based on a false reality. Not to mention the complete lack of morality. Reject or modify HR7188.