“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.’”

“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.”

“Casting a broad net, the legal code penalizes concerted activity to deprive individuals of their rights. It remains to be seen how the administration may wield this statute against Palestine solidarity protesters, a tactic encouraged by a Heritage Foundation legal scholar last year. ‘This incredibly broad, easily abused statute,’ tweeted Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, ‘is what they intend to weaponize against anyone who dares voice public support for Palestinian lives/rights.’”

“Forty-four states have taken up the IHRA definition of antisemitism, either passing it into law or adopting it by proclamation, resolution or executive order, according to the Foundation for Middle East Peace.”

“‘The goal here has long been to refocus the fight against antisemitism — and there is real antisemitism out there, which needs to be fought — to redefine it and make the central focus of this battle the shutting down of criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism,’ said Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Friedman has spent years documenting legislative and lobbying efforts in the U.S. to restrict speech on Israel and pass the IHRA definition into federal law. Many states have already passed resolutions or adopted laws to embrace this framing, according to the Foundation’s data. ‘This has been fought since long before October 7, and it hasn’t passed in Congress because it is so obviously controversial,’ Friedman said. ‘You have major organizations that are not Israel-focused that have come out and said this would massively violate free speech.’ The antisemitism bill has been stalled in the Senate for months, so its definition of antisemitism is not yet the legal standard. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently proposed adding the legislation to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). ‘Schumer wants to put it on the NDAA, basically saying, ‘I want this to pass, but I don’t want to force Democrats to vote on it because some will vote against it, and then they’ll call Democrats bad on antisemitism,” Friedman told RS. ‘And [Republican Speaker of the House Mike] Johnson is saying, ‘No, we have to have an up-or-down vote and force the Democrats all to vote on it.’”

“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.

“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.’”