Op-Ed video: The US Antisemitism Awareness Act is an assault on free speech
The US House of Representatives' decision to approve the Antisemitism Awareness Act, a bill that equates criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism, is a chilling assault on free speech, says Omar Suleiman, a world renowned Muslim scholar and human rights activist.
The House voted to pass the bill last week as protests sprung up at college campuses across the US against Israel's devastating war on Gaza.
The bill, which will now go the Senate for consideration, codifies a definition drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) which has long been criticised for conflating criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism.
The IHRA definition provides a list of expressions that it considers antisemitic, including "claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour".
It also warns against "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" - a tactic used by some Palestinian solidarity groups to highlight Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians.
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Suleiman told MEE that the legislation threatened to censor political speech and that it should be interpreted as an assault on First Amendment rights.
"Calling Israel a racist state or declaring it an apartheid state would mean that every respectable human rights organisation in the world, including Israeli human rights organisations, are antisemitic," Suleiman said.
"That would mean that Nelson Mandela was antisemitic, that would mean that Desmond Tutu, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton Jr, James Baldwin and the list goes on and on, were all antisemites.
"That would mean that the millions of Americans of conscience that are standing up across college campuses and across the entire nation to declare that they refuse to do business as usual while this country continues to invest in this genocide and protect it, that would mean that they are all antisemitic."
The views expressed in this video belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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