Senate stalls anti-Semitism bill

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 6th of May.

Thank you for listening to The World and Everything in It. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up…Congress clashes over how to define anti-Semitism.

SANDERS: I have an amendment Mr Chairman.

CASSIDY: Senator Sanders we got to get out of here. Senator Sanders your amendment

MARKEY: Mr Chairman you were commenting upon my amendment …

A Senate business meeting turned into a shouting match last week over a bill called the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

Members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee spent two hours debating how to curb antisemitic harassment … and how to balance that with free speech.

MARKEY: Mr Chairman, anti-semitism is wrong. Authoritarianism is not the answer. That's what we're debating right now.

REICHARD: Here now is Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta.

SOUND: [GWU CAMPUS PROTEST]

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Last year college campuses across the country were overrun by pro-Palestinian protests…including George Washington University here in DC. At some Ivy Leagues, activists blocked Jewish students from walking through campus and tagged university property with slogans some consider antisemitic.

Lawmakers in Washington want to prevent that from happening again.

CASSIDY: Let me be clear, There is no nuance in bigotry.

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy is chairman of the committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

CASSIDY: Chasing Jewish students into a room, pounding on the door and threatening them with violence is wrong. That is not free speech.

The Act aims to give civil rights offices in the Education and Justice departments more leeway for prosecuting antisemitism. In the process, it would codify a particular definition, identifying it as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” The definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, often called IHRA. Back in 2016, the United States and 30 other nations adopted the non-legally binding definition.

Ellie Cohanim served as a deputy envoy to combat antisemitism during the first Trump administration. Now, she is a member of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which is hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

ELLIE COHANIM: The IHRA definition, clearly it has the definition, but underneath it, has examples of when, for example, speech moves from speech to anti-Semitism. When does that cross the line?

The 11 examples listed include not only physical violence but also rhetoric.

ELLIE COHANIM: What the IHRA definition does, clarify is that if, if however, you deny the Jewish people the right to a Jewish Jewish sovereign state, right. That's antisemitism. If you start to compare the IDF with the SS, if you start to compare the state of Israel with the Nazis, that's antisemitism.

Those examples were a sticking point for the Senate markup of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Every Democrat on the committee, along with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, warned that passage would violate First Amendment rights to free speech.

PAUL: The problem is if you look at the IHRA examples of speech they're going to be limiting on college campuses, everything on that list is politically protected by the First Amendment.

Paul went on to argue that even though he agrees that Jewish students were mistreated during pro-Palestinian protests last year, the Constitution is there to protect even despicable speech.

But the bill’s sponsor, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, says it only applies to action that follows antisemitic speech.

SCOTT: It's if you do something that is a conduct that follows that speech it gives you the link back to whether or not it's anti-semitic or not.

Still, Senator Paul broke ranks and helped the Democrats to pass four additional amendments watering down when the law can be enforced on campus.

PAUL: The Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled that you can say terrible things. That's unique about our country.

This is not the first time the act has run into opposition. Although it passed the House last year, several conservative Christians voted against it. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia worried that the act was so broad it could find the New Testament antisemitic. WORLD Opinions Editor Albert Mohler agrees:

MOHLER: It is because of the very subjective nature of the definition that I still have grave concerns about the law.

In a WORLD Opinions article published last year, Mohler used the example of a Christian teaching that Jewish people were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. He says that nuance is required here, which the Antisemitism Awareness Act might not provide.

MOHLER: There are those who say that to blame the Jewish people or the Jews as a category for the crucifixion of Jesus is an act of anti-Semitism. Now, that language, I think, has been misused in an anti-Semitic way. But on the other hand, it is also the language of the Gospel of John. And so we have to contend for biblical language not being inherently anti-Semitic.

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri told me that the bill ensures that religious expression is not part of the effort to define antisemitism. And the committee adopted an amendment from Senator Cassidy clarifying that. But Mohler says he still has concerns.

MOHLER: I do appreciate Senator Cassidy's proposed amendment, and I know it's presented in good faith, but if you have to put in your legislation that this doesn't violate the Constitution, that's already a problem.

An asterisk at the end of the IHRA definition reads “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.” But lawmakers pointed out that the federal government has detained students who wrote critically of Israel but did not participate in protests. Here’s Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.

KAINE: …Of the 11 examples, four are about anti-semitism about Jews, seven are really about Israel … We should allow people to state tough, tough points of view even if we don't agree with them.

Opposition from Kaine and his colleagues stalled a vote on the bill. Senator Paul left the meeting early…and frustrated. He told me he would have supported the bill if it did not include those 11 examples.

PAUL: If it was just a clean bill that says we're going to uh, you know, police antisemitism, I think that will probably get by. But once we start adding all the other things in there, it, I think, loads up the definition and creates problems.

In the end, the committee ran out of its allotted time to pass the bill and send it to the Senate floor. Chairman Cassidy told me he’ll have to consult with leadership to figure out what to do next.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta in Washington, D.C.

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