Media

  • How Support for Palestine Became a Hate Crime (Jewish Currents)

    “…decisions are influenced by a well-funded ecosystem of Israel advocacy groups that amplify alleged antisemitic incidents in the media and appeal to institutions to punish the accused. ‘The immediate, default media framing is to give credence to the allegation that speech critical of Israel or critical of Zionism is antisemitism,’ said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. ‘This has everybody on the defensive. Nobody wants to be accused of supporting or enabling antisemitism.’ DA offices have received significant pressure from local pro-Israel groups to apply hate crime charges to protest-related incidents—and police and prosecutors have expended significant resources on such cases, even when they involve relatively minor allegations.”

  • How a controversial definition of antisemitism is making its way into state laws — from banning masks to training cops (The Forward)

    “Many of the new state laws build on previous resolutions endorsing the IHRA definition, integrating it into codes of conduct at universities and public K-12 schools. That could give administrators more leeway to classify ambiguous incidents as antisemitic — and discipline students accordingly. ‘Once you’ve adopted the IHRA definition, there really isn’t any question. You’re going to shut down all sorts of free speech,’ said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. ‘You say ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine is free’ — done, you’re guilty of antisemitism. You say that Israel is a racist state — done, antisemitism.’”

  • The ‘Nonprofit Killer Bill’ Could Rise Again (Chronicle of Philanthropy)

    (interview with FMEP’s Lara Friedman)

    excerpt: “…This piece of legislation is sort of ripping the mask off. There’s no pretense. Initially, it was clearly focused on Palestinians. The intent behind this law is to make it easier to simply strip away the 501(c)(3) status of organizations for disfavored political views and speech.”

  • Measure targeting pro-Palestine NGOs disappears from US tax bill

    Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said it would be “interesting” to see how Republican leaders would deal with staunchly pro-Israel measures like the “nonprofit killer” going forward. “They on the one hand likely see this as a fun opportunity to embarrass Democrats – whose opposition will be framed as anti-Israel or enabling terror and antisemitism – and on the other hand they have to worry about principled opposition from within their own ranks,” Friedman told Al Jazeera in a statement.

  • Trump uses ‘Palestinian’ as a pejorative slur to attack Senator Chuck Schumer (The Mirror)

    “That framing isn’t just offensive but also historically pervasive. For decades, mainstream U.S. politicians have treated Palestinian rights and aspirations as a third rail, rarely acknowledged without caveats or apologies. Trump’s remark strips away the pretense. In his worldview, to be “a Palestinian” is not to be a person with history, homeland, and legitimate grievances—but to be the other side of an imagined binary in which Israel, and unquestioning support for it, is always the moral high ground. ‘This isn’t just a rhetorical misstep,’ said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. ‘It perpetuates a toxic narrative that equates Palestinian identity with enmity and delegitimizes the very notion of justice or self-determination for Palestinians.’”

  • Canary Mission’s Newest Funders (Jewish Currents)

    “‘Canary Mission was one of the first groups to use doxxing to go after the Palestine movement. Other groups are seeing how destroying people’s lives through this doxing works, and they’re emulating it,’ said Falaneh. Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said ‘it’s not a surprise that, as it became normalized to treat criticism of Israel as antisemitic or support of terrorism, there is now an escalation of those methods.'”

  • What anti-Palestinian legislation to look out for in the new Congress (Mondoweiss)

    “Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) President Lara Friedman. Friedman’s weekly Legislative Round-Up is required reading for anyone who wants to stay informed on the latest bills in Congress and the discussion in Washington, DC. In the conversation Friedman discusses Trump’s pro-Israel Executive Orders and what anti-Palestinian bills people should watch during this congressional session.”

  • Trump Is Bullying Jordan and Egypt to Help in Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza. It Isn’t Working. (The Intercept)

    “Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said it was a deal neither country can afford to make. For Egypt, argued Friedman, moving Palestinians into effectively ‘concentration camps’ along the Sinai, would open them up to military conflict from Israel. ‘There is inevitably going to be residual recidivist military action by Palestinians against Israel, which is going to lead to war between Israel and Egypt,’ she said. There’s also the broad domestic support for the Palestinian cause in Jordan — already home to the world’s largest population of Palestinian refugees — as well as Egypt. ‘For Jordan, the idea of de-populating Gaza and potentially asking Jordan to take more Palestinians is an existential threat for the Jordanian regime,’ said Friedman. ‘From an Egyptian perspective, politically, national security-wise, I don’t know how anyone imagines that Egypt can give in on this and not see itself massively destabilized.’”

  • How Title VI investigations are silencing grade-school students against Israel’s genocide in Gaza (Prism)

    “For years, defenders of Israel have accused its critics of being antisemites, a notion that the DOE has also entertained. Since at least 2018, the department has considered adopting a definition of antisemitism that includes criticism of Zionism or Jewish ethnonationalism. Although the DOE has never formally adopted it, such a definition has been used to challenge student and staff organizing in support of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, which advocates economic opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Individual schools have also incorporated the definition into their internal policies, including Harvard University, which did so in January to settle a Title VI complaint filed by the Brandeis Center. Such complaints of alleged antisemitism are filed with the DOE against schools or school districts, which often opt for settlements rather than litigating cases, thereby incurring more significant costs—including further accusations of antisemitism.

    “’The core of that is the argument that any meaningful protest or criticism of Israel or Zionism is antisemitism,’ Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, which tracks such Title VI complaints, told Prism. ‘The overwhelming majority of these cases that they’re making are about things that a teacher said about Israel, or allowed to be said in class about Palestine, or was written on a wall—that sort of thing.’

    “As an example, Friedman cited the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ a popular rallying cry for Palestinian liberation, which Title VI complainants have claimed is antisemitic.”