New from FMEP Gaza Region/Global River to the Sea U.S. Scene Perspectives//Long Reads NEW FROM FMEP Beyond unipolarity and the ‘rules-based international order’ toward a…

1. Bills, Resolutions 2. Letters 3. Hearings 4. Selected Members on the Record 5. Selected Media & Press releases/Statements New: FMEP’s Occupied Thoughts podcast 11/21/24:…

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Nour Joudah speaks with journalist Mariam Barghouti about reporting from the ground in the West Bank, views on the…

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with policy experts Zack Paikin and Trita Parsi about the the new report they co-authored,…

“Targeting ‘woke’ education is catnip for the right right now, and the fact that they used antisemitism, or alleged antisemitism, as the tool to do so enabled them to mitigate to a great degree Democratic opposition and actually get Democrats to support them in this agenda,” said Lara Friedman, the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, who tracks efforts to use antisemitism as a pretext to punish critics of Israel.

1. Bills, Resolutions 2. Letters 3. Hearings 4. Selected Members on the Record 5. Selected Media & Press releases/Statements New: 11/13/24: Trump’s unfinished business for…

“The ADL and allied groups’ push to use Title VI to target anti-Zionist speech has ample support in Congress, where members have advanced a range of measures to supercharge the statute’s repressive utility. One such bill, introduced in April in response to pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia, would allow the DOE to install an antisemitism monitor at any college or university receiving federal funding. The monitor would publish public reports detailing the progress universities have made in combating alleged antisemitism, and would provide an annual report to Congress recommending policies and sanctions the DOE and Congress should pursue in response to what they call antisemitism. Another bill, introduced in July, would impose increased fines on, and potentially revoke the tax-exempt status of, universities found to be in violation of Title VI. While neither of these bills has received a vote so far, a third measure has advanced farther: the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which mandates that the DOE, while investigating Title VI complaints, consider the IHRA definition when determining whether a school presents a hostile environment for Jewish students. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives in May; while the Senate has yet to take up the bill, the office of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he planned to bring it up for a vote before the end of the year. ‘These members of Congress are looking at the situation and saying that universities clearly have too much wiggle room on how they deal with protesters and what they do and don’t consider antisemitism,’ said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation of Middle East Peace. ‘The legislation is intended to remove that wiggle room.’”

“Huckabee’s ‘Biblical mandate’ has led him to march in lockstep with the maximalist Israeli Right. As leading Middle East analyst Lara Friedman has documented, he has: claimed there is ‘no such thing as a Palestinian’; called a Palestinian state a ‘fantasy’; called on the US to fund West Bank settlements; and considered buying a home there himself…”

“To unpack the election results and understand the implications of a second Trump term for U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine, +972 Magazine spoke with Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) and a longtime expert on American and Israeli politics (full disclosure: FMEP is a funder of +972 Magazine). For Friedman, last week revealed the consequences of Democrats’ failure to take the concerns of its base seriously — simply assuming that they would turn out to support Harris — and of trying to outflank Republicans on their pro-Israel bona fides as part of their appeal to the so-called centrist voter. This was a lesson, as Friedman points out, that Democrats could have learned from their Israeli counterparts in the Labor Party, which has rendered itself obsolete by failing to offer a real alternative to the Israeli right…”

“…the more insidious element of the bill, the one targeting nonprofits, doubles down on existing legislation. Providing ‘material support’ for US-designated terror groups is already against the law, noted Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. ‘It’s already illegal for [nonprofits] to support terror and the Department of Justice actually has a path to say, ‘This is illegal, and this is a foreign terrorist organisation, and here’s our proof,’’ she told Al Jazeera. ‘And it’s accountable: they can take your nonprofit status away, but there’s actual due process.’ Congressman David Kustoff, a Republican and a co-sponsor of the bill, argued when he first introduced the legislation that the current process is insufficient. ‘Right now, our ability to crack down on tax-exempt organisations that support terrorism is inadequate,’ Kustoff said in April. ‘Doing so, under current law, requires a time-consuming bureaucratic process that has sometimes prevented federal authorities from acting.’ But removing checks and balances from the process could turn the legislation into a weapon to be deployed against any group the administration in office may not like. When the bill was first introduced, it generated pushback from across the political spectrum, Friedman noted. ‘Including from the right that said, ‘Well, if this is in the hands of a government that’s anti the things we care about, this could hurt us,’’ she said. ‘Are we at a point now where Republicans have decided there will never again be a government that could come back to bite them so they’re going to support unlimited anything? I don’t know. Trump could do all of this by executive order anyway.’”