Nora Lester Murad, Author at Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

The convos jumbled in my heart and head

May 19, 2025 by Nora Lester Murad

There were too many feelings and ideas, too big to name or hold. They were jumbled in my heart and head and still are. I had to shake them off me, expel them, or at least release some of the pressure, so I could reclaim my body. I needed to look at my guilt, despair and fury outside my body, so I could understand how they collide inside me as I witness the slaughter of Palestinians. Month after month, ten feelings pop up in a conversation, and before I process or respond, ten different feelings take over preventing all connection. I can’t catch up with myself. Or breathe.

Watching a genocide in real time through WhatsApp messages from friends is heavy and isolating. I feel crazy most of the time. Am experiencing generational Holocaust trauma for real now, understanding how so many people let it happen to us, to others, because I see so many people let it happen again. I confessed my anxiety to a friend in exercise class and she said, “You can only do what you can do.” She let herself off the hook for doing more before she had done anything. Nobody gets it. I moved away.

So, to be able to climb out of my overwhelm and refocus on the political challenge, I sat down to write. I wrote a letter to a girl in Gaza, the daughter of a friend. I wrote a letter to a Jewish influencer I know who 18-months in still posts photos enjoying meals at cafes with smiling friends. And I wrote a letter to Anne Frank who, unlike me, had the maturity and wisdom to see the beauty amidst the ugly.

I printed each letter out on different colored paper and cut each letter into bites. I interspersed them on my dining table, letting them crash and converge, and while the whole thing makes no sense–not the conversations nor the genocide–I feel calmer having expelled these toxins from my body, slightly stronger to face more. There is so much more to face.

ADL’s Stats Twist Israel’s Critics Into Antisemites

February 19, 2025 by Nora Lester Murad

This article was originally published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Media outlets continue to print headlines about antisemitism based on Anti-Defamation League statistics known to be faulty and politicized. In doing so, they grant undeserved credibility to the ADL as a source.

Producing statistics helps the ADL to claim objectivity when they assert that antisemitism is increasing dramatically, prevalent in all fields of society, and emanating from the left as well as the right. Those “facts” are then used to justify policy recommendations that fail to respond to actual antisemitism, but succeed in undermining the free speech rights of Palestinians and their supporters, including those of us who are Jews.

Smearing Israel critics as antisemites

James Bamford (The Nation, 1/31/24) : “The New York Times, PBS and other mainstream outlets that reach millions are constantly and uncritically promoting the ADL and amplifying the group’s questionable charges.”

While it frames itself as a civil rights organization, the ADL has a long history of actively spying on critics of Israel and collaborating with the Israeli government (Nation, 1/31/24). (FAIR itself was targeted as a “Pinko” group in ADL’s sprawling spying operation in the ’90s.)

Though it professes to document and challenge antisemitism, it openly admits to counting pro-Palestinian activism as antisemitic: In 2023, the ADL changed its methodology for reporting antisemitic incidents to include rallies that feature “anti-Zionist chants and slogans,” even counting anti-war protests led by Jews—including Jewish organizations the ADL designated as “hate groups.”

The ADL’s political motivations are clear in its advocacy for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which alleges that criticizing Israel based on its policies (e.g., “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” or “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis“) is antisemitic. The ADL and their allies also deem speech supporting Palestinian human rights to be coded antisemitism.

Criticism of the ADL is increasing. In 2020, activists launched #DropTheADL to raise awareness among progressives that the ADL is not a civil rights or anti-bias group, but rather an Israel advocacy organization that attacks Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights in order to protect Israel from criticism. Last year, a campaign to Drop the ADL From Schools launched with an exposé in Rethinking Schools magazine, and an open letter to educators, titled “Educators Beware: The Anti-Defamation League Is Not the Social Justice Partner It Claims to Be,” that garnered more than 90 organizational signatories. These efforts build off research that exposes the ADL’s work to normalize Zionism and censor inclusion of Palestinian topics in the media, policy circles, schools and in society at large.

In 2023, some of its own high-profile staff resigned, citing the group’s “dishonest” campaign against Israel’s critics. In June 2024, Wikipedia editors found the ADL regularly labels legitimate political criticism of Israel as antisemitic, leading the popular online encyclopedia to designate the group an unreliable source on Israel/Palestine.

Critiquing the ADL’s statistics does not serve to argue that antisemitism is acceptable or less deserving of attention than other forms of discrimination. Rather, it demonstrates that we can’t rely on the ADL for information about the extent or nature of antisemitism—and neither should media.

A dubious source

This New York Times report (10/6/24) obscured the fact that many of the “antisemitic incidents” counted by the ADL were chants critical of Israel.

And yet corporate media use the ADL uncritically as a source for reports on antisemitism. For instance, the New York Times (10/6/24) not only headlined the ADL’s assertion that “Antisemitic Incidents Reach New High in the US,” it chose to contextualize the ADL’s findings “in the wake of the Hamas attack,” and called the ADL a “civil rights organization.”

Important media outlets like The Hill (4/16/24), with outsized influence on national policy discussions, ran similar headlines, failing to note the ADL’s highly controversial methodology.

At least the Wall Street Journal (1/14/25) acknowledged that the ADL has been challenged for counting criticism of Israel as antisemitism. But it immediately dismissed the applicability of those challenges to the ADL’s Global 100 survey, which found that 46% of adults worldwide hold antisemitic views. (The ADL’s Global 100 survey was criticized for its flawed methodology as far back as 2014, when researchers found it “odd and potentially misleading.”)

The media’s willingness to accept ADL claims without scrutiny is evident in CNN’s choice (12/16/24) not to investigate the ADL’s accusations of antisemitism against speakers at a recent conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, but rather to simply repeat and amplify the ADL’s dishonest and slanderous narrative.

Methodological faults

A Jewish Currents report (6/17/24) concluded that “the ADL’s data is much more poised to capture random swastika graffiti and stray anti-Zionist comments than dangerous Christian nationalist movements.”

Even setting aside the ADL’s prioritization of Israel’s interests over Jewish well-being, the ADL’s statistics should be thrown out due to methodological faults and lack of transparency.

Even FBI statistics, frequently cited by the ADL, don’t tell a clear story. Their claim that 60% of religious hate crimes (not mere bias incidents) target Jews is misleading, given the systemic undercounting of bias against other religious groups. Because of the history of anti-Muslim policing, Muslims are less likely to report than people of other religions.

In fact, a national survey of Muslims found that over two-thirds of respondents had personally encountered Islamophobia, while only 12.5% had reported an incident. Almost two-thirds of respondents who encountered an Islamophobic incident did not know where or how to report it. When Muslims experience hate, it is less likely to be pursued as a hate crime.

On the other hand, the ADL has an unparalleled infrastructure for collecting incident reports. It actively solicits these reports from its own network, and through close relations with police and a growing network of partners like Hillel International and Jewish Federations.

Perpetrators’ motivations are also relevant and should not be inferred. In 2017, Jews were frightened by over 2,000 threats aimed at Jewish institutions in the United States. It turned out that nearly all came from one Jewish Israeli with mental health problems. Without this level of investigation, policymakers could enact misguided policy based on the ADL’s sensationalism, like CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s claim that “antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses.”

Bad-faith accusations

David Klion (Zeteo, 2/4/25): “How did the ADL, which for generations has presented itself as America’s leading antisemitism watchdog, find itself prostrated before the most powerful enabler of white supremacy in recent American history?”

Although critics have long argued that the ADL’s politicized definition of antisemitism and flawed statistics cannot be the basis of effective policy, policymakers continue to rely on media’s deceptive journalism.

Massachusetts State Sen. John Velis cited ADL statistics to claim the state has “earned the ignominious reputation as a hub of antisemitic activity,” and therefore needs a special antisemitism commission. In Michigan, ADL reports of escalating antisemitism led to a resolution that will affect policy in schools across the state. In Connecticut, the ADL referenced its statistics in a government announcement about changes to the state’s hate crimes laws. The ADL’s statistics undergirded the logic of President Joe Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

But how can politically distorted research be the foundation for effective policy?

Antisemitism is surely increasing. Hate crimes have increased in general—most targeting Black people—especially since the first Trump presidency, and hate incidents generally rise during violent outbreaks like the war on Gaza, and during election periods. But since most antisemitism originates in the white nationalist right wing, why focus primarily on people—including Jews—who are legitimately protesting their own government’s support for Israeli actions against Palestinians? Or on Palestinians themselves, who have every right to promote the humanity and rights of their people?

The ADL’s bad-faith accusations weaponize antisemitism to protect Israel at the expense of democratic and anti-racist principles. Anyone who doubted the ADL’s politics should be convinced by its abhorrent defense of Elon Musk’s Nazi salute (FAIR.org, 1/23/25) and its support for Donald Trump.

To pursue effective public policy, policymakers and the public should refuse to cite the ADL’s flawed statistics, and instead develop thoughtful and nuanced ways to understand and address antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and discrimination. Media can play a key role by exposing the politicization of antisemitism by the ADL, including its prioritization of protection for Israel from criticism over the free speech that is fundamental to democratic discourse.

Is Fire Enough to Get Americans to Empathize with Palestinians?

January 20, 2025 by Nora Lester Murad

I am heartbroken by the devastation from fires in Hollywood where I was born, Pasadena where I grew up, and Altadena where I attended high school. As I sit fearing the status of people I love, TV coverage gives me the emotional validation I seek. Newscasters seem to understand that a house is more than a structure. It is a home where people loved, cooked, grew, fought, studied, and sang in the shower. Some newscasters tear up as they scan the burning embers, perhaps imagining how they would feel if they fell victim to such a tragedy.

I have never heard that kind of empathy for my other loved ones, families who live in Gaza. Every day for over 15 months, and still, they live with the constant roar of drones and planes that can kill or maim without warning. Like the California fire victims, they will forever live with the sense of vulnerability that comes from learning that the world is not safe. Like the California fire victims, they will never be able to replace the family photos, legal papers, art, books, and valuables they worked for generations to accumulate.

Still, the situations are different.

My friends in Gaza can’t go find water, food, medical care or shelter with neighbors. They don’t have insurance policies or a government to provide help. They don’t even have their reality affirmed on mainstream TV because Israel has banned all foreign journalists and killed over 250. Only those Americans who intentionally look for the truth see the pictures: a father who frantically digs around a child’s finger sticking up from packed rubble after a bombing, little boys harvesting blades of grass so their families can eat, and the myriad of skin diseases that proliferate when people sleep on wet ground night after night, never getting dry or warm.

And the situation in Gaza is not a natural disaster but rather the result of an intentional policy by Israel to destroy Palestinian society using weapons paid for with over $20 billion in U.S. tax dollars since October 7, 2023 alone. I thought about this when an LA fire victim said on TV that their street looked like it was hit by a bomb. Israel has dropped an estimated 85,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, according to the United Nations.

People use words like “unfathomable” and “historic” to describe the scale of the destruction in Los Angeles County. With a population of 9.7 million residents, 12,000 unfortunate families have lost homes. But if the rate of loss was the same as in Gaza (1 housing unit lost per 15 residents according to the United Nations), Los Angeles County would have lost an unimaginable 640,000+ housing units .

This doesn’t even account for the 83,000 additional housing units in Gaza that are severely damaged but not totally destroyed. And it doesn’t account for damage to non-residential structures like hospitals, universities and schools, and so much other destruction. Significantly, 150,000 people have been displaced in Los Angeles county. But if 90% of the population of LA County were displaced as they are in Gaza, that would affect a staggering 8,730,000 people.

The shocking human suffering in both places where I have loved ones raises questions for me: might the compassion for suffering evoked by the LA fires somehow translate to compassion for Palestinians in Gaza? If so, might more Americans realize that while they can’t stop the fires in California, they actually can save lives in Gaza – by speaking out against U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel’s slaughter? Or is the dehumanization of Palestinians so profound that no loss of life, no destruction of property, and no amount of suffering can inspire more Americans to act?

CNN essentially publishes ADL PR, fails to investigate recent educational conference accusations

December 30, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

CNN (December 16, 2024) chose not to investigate the ADL’s accusations of antisemitism against speakers at a recent conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, but rather to simply repeat and amplify the ADL’s dishonest and slanderous narrative.

Serving over 2,000 private schools in the United States and internationally, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) claims to help their members to

deliver exceptional learning experiences through research and trend analysis, leadership and governance guidance, and professional development opportunities for school and board leaders.

The People of Color Conference (PoCC), an annual event that has taken place for decades, is the flagship of NAIS’ “commitment to equity and justice in teaching, learning, and sustainability for independent schools.” According to their website, the theme of the 2024 conference was “a call to action for the unique time we’re experiencing.”

The 2024 PoCC in Denver, attended by over 8000 educators and students, featured a talk by a physician, Dr. Suzanne Barakat. The former executive director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative at UC San Francisco, Barakat is renowned for her expertise in mental health of Arabic-speaking communities worldwide and as an advocate against Islamophobia, she recorded a TED talk after her brother Deah, his wife Yusor and her sister Razan were murdered in an anti-Muslim hate crime in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2015.

CNN’s headline, “US Private Schools Group Apologizes After Criticism of Antisemitic Remarks During Conference,” makes the NAIS apology the story rather than the ADL’s false accusation of antisemitism against Barakat and Ruha Benjamin, a widely acclaimed professor of African-American history at Princeton University who also spoke at the NAIS event.

In its coverage, CNN reported the ADL’s claims that the remarks were antisemitic, even as the network noted that it had “not seen a transcript or recording of the remarks.” Genuine reporting on NAIS, the PoCC, and the ADL’s and other pro-Israel groups’ insistence on blasting any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, would have included — at a minimum — the content of the speakers’ remarks and reactions from conference attendees (including those for whom the mere acknowledgement of Palestinians’ existence marked a watershed compared to previous PoCCs). And more serious reporting would have noted the extent to which NAIS already promotes the work of the ADL and similar pro-Israel organizations, as well as taken note of the cases of teachers at NAIS member schools who have been fired or forced to resign because they spoke up for Palestinian rights.

Instead, CNN failed to note the remarks about genocide and Israeli racism did not mention Jews at all, nor did they note that the remarks reflected well-researched conclusions of experts at the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem and hundreds of legal and human rights experts across the world.

Labeling criticism of Israel as antisemitic is a tactic of Zionist advocates to normalize Zionism, including in educational spaces, a practice that incorrectly claims this political criticism is in fact religious hate speech. This distorted definition of antisemitism is being promoted in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, the codification of which is considered a “best practice” for K-12 education by the ADL and their allies.

CNN relied extensively on the complaint letter to NAIS sent by the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America and PRIZMAH: Center for Jewish Day Schools, without noting the political motivations of the accusers. It does not even appear that CNN verified the complaints of the Jewish students whose stories form the basis of the complaint.

CNN quotes the complaint saying that “Jewish students and faculty were forced to hear” their colleagues applauding what they characterized as antisemitic rhetoric, presenting audience support for the speakers as further proof of antisemitism rather than as broad commitment to truth, equity and justice that fully includes Palestinians.

Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and one of the speakers the ADL and their allies slandered as antisemitic, responded to NAIS’ capitulation. She pointed out (New York Times, DATE):

The weaponization of the charge of antisemitism is a disservice to everyone. Such accusations are watering down its meaning and wielding it against anyone who dares name the reality that Palestinians are living.

Giving extensive space to allegations of harm to Jewish students, CNN reports on the apology by the National Association of Independent Schools, and doesn’t even consider the impact of NAIS’s apology on Palestinian students or on the speakers who were slandered. An action alert by Zinn Education Project aimed at NAIS notes that Dr. Barakat has received numerous death threats since NAIS issued its apology to the ADL et al.:

NAIS President Debra Wilson jeopardized the safety of the speakers and undermined the conference’s commitment to equity and justice by irresponsibly framing their remarks as “divisive” and mischaracterizing their credibly-cited critiques as antisemitic. These failures have emboldened those who weaponize intimidation and hate to silence differing views, and reduced the public reporting on the PoCC to a reflection of the very injustices it was created to confront.

The CNN article lists several other cases of accusations of antisemitism against educators – like the ADL, mixing what most would consider “real” antisemitism with weaponized false accusations). At no point does the article note that false accusations of antisemitism, whether through slander or lawfare, are a key tactic of the ADL and their allies, and these frequently target educators of color.

CNN should have written a story about the ADL bullying NAIS, causing it to immediately (within two days) issue an apology, that not only validates the mischaracterization of the speakers’ remarks as antisemitic, but also promises to censor future speakers, a stunning confession from an educational organization. (The apology links to resources of the ADL and other complainants, further entrenching their influence on schools.)

Characteristically, the ADL found the apology lacking and sought to extract additional concessions from NAIS. They asked NAIS to become a spokesperson for the ADL’s politicized agenda, and, using a common right-wing tactic, the ADL is mobilizing tuition-paying private school parents to pressure the NAIS to concede.

Without this context, CNN’s “coverage” of the NAIS event can hardly be considered journalism. Instead it is an advertisement for the ADL that endorses rather than challenges the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, a growing tendency that threatens the teaching, learning and critical thinking that are essential to democracy and one that perpetuates racism against Palestinians.

Educators Beware: The Anti-Defamation League Is Not the Social Justice Partner It Claims to Be

September 29, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

By Nora Lester Murad; Illustrator: Maryam Aswad

This article was published in Rethinking Schools (September 27, 2024)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calls itself “the leading anti-hate organization in the world.” But it is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be.

The ADL is a divisive political advocacy organization. It is a leader among Zionist organizations — like the Jewish Community Relations Council, the American Jewish Committee, the Institute for Curriculum Services, and the Jewish Federations of North America — that reinforce unconditional support for Israel and erasure of Palestinians in schools across the United States. The ADL harms everyone who opposes racism and supports equality — including Jews.

The ADL’s programs are widespread in U.S. schools, with wholesome names like “No Place for Hate” and “A World of Difference.” According to their website, in 2023 alone they reached 7 million students and provided professional development to 24,000 educators. That’s partly because the ADL makes it so easy for districts and schools to partner with them: They provide free, ready-made materials, from lesson plans on antisemitism and the Holocaust, to professional development on anti-bias for educators, administrators, and even school police. For example, the ADL partners with Boston Public Schools as part of its anti-bias 24/7 Respect initiative, and the Boston Public Schools website prominently features the ADL. When the National Association for Independent Schools recently offered webinars on antisemitism and Islamophobia, they tapped the ADL to provide the antisemitism content. When school districts and educational organizations circulated recommended resources after Oct. 7, 2023, they frequently linked ADL materials — like in the often-shared “Resources for Educators, Families to Discuss the Events in Israel and Gaza with Students,” compiled by the San Diego County Office of Education.

The ADL gives schools an easy route to show that they oppose antisemitism and bias. The ADL provides data, takes incident reports, gives input on educational policy, and offers “Jewish perspectives” without the need for schools to engage with the diverse perspectives of Jewish community members.

But the ADL’s unfounded attacks on groups working for Palestinian rights and the ways it undermines BIPOC communities, have made it unwelcome among social justice groups. A diverse group of more than 300 organizations — from the Movement for Black Lives to the National Lawyers Guild to the Red Nation — have signed on to the #DropTheADL campaign, which reminds progressive organizations that “the ADL is not an ally.” Since #DropTheADL launched in 2020, there has been a plethora of deep analysis by Jewish and non-Jewish sources into the history of misrepresentation and harm caused by the ADL. This includes schools.

Inciting Fear Based on Unreliable and Manipulated Data

From news outlets to school officials, many people rely on the ADL for information about antisemitism. For decades, the ADL’s statistics have been repeated by mainstream media without scrutiny. The ADL presents a terrifying picture of a crisis that escalates year over year. Speaking about the ADL’s 2023 audit of antisemitic incidents, its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, warned: “Antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses.”

In the past few years, though, multiple analyses, often in Jewish news sources frustrated by the ADL’s sensationalizing claims, have pointed out the ADL’s reliance on vague reports, lack of verification, and the lumping together of weighty and trivial incidents. Jewish Currents points out this “makes it more difficult to measure antisemitism in American life.” The ADL also includes what they call “anti-Israel rallies” in their database of antisemitic incidents. In fact, the Jewish newspaper, The Forward, newspaper reported that of the 3,000 “antisemitic incidents” recorded by the ADL in the first three months after Oct. 7, 1,317 were rallies where activists expressed hostility toward Zionism, not Jews. These practices led to Wikipedia’s recent designation of the ADL as a generally unreliable source. Wikipedia editors took this stance, they wrote, “due to significant evidence that the ADL acts as a pro-Israeli advocacy group and has repeatedly published false and misleading statements as fact, unretracted, regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. The general unreliability of the ADL extends to the intersection of the topics of antisemitism and the Israel/Palestine conflict.”

ADL statistics are based on conflating criticism of Israel or the political ideology of Zionism with hatred of Jews. One way that the ADL promotes this conflation is by advocating use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition has been critiqued by experts and advocates as circular, racist, and punitive toward critics of state violence. It includes 11 examples, seven of which shut down criticism of Israel and Zionism. One example says that it is antisemitic to: “[deny] the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This enables the ADL to label as “antisemitic” any discussion of the more than 700,000 Palestinians expelled during Israel’s founding as well as discussion of findings by Israeli and international human rights organizations that Israel is an apartheid state. The IHRA definition is the basis for a spate of laws against the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement. These laws aim to control speech of public employees and contractors, including educators like Bahia Amawi, the Austin, Texas, public schools speech therapist who lost her job for refusing to sign an anti-boycott pledge and was featured in Just Vision’s award-winning documentary Boycott. It is also the basis of proposed bills that would deport immigrants without trial if arrested at Palestine-supporting events and strip funding from public schools if they fail to impose repressive measures on teachers or students who criticize Israel or uplift Palestinians.

The reality of antisemitism is more nuanced. On the one hand, antisemitism, along with other forms of racism, has clearly increased with the Trump-era emboldening of right-wing actors. Antisemitism in the United States has gained new visibility in chilling scenes like the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people and wounded six, and the 2017 Charlottesville rally of white men marching through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us!” Yet U.S. Jews no longer experience the material discrimination (in housing, jobs, etc.) they did in previous historical periods, and they enjoy a relatively high standard of living on average, having become integrated into economic and political structures.

The conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is racist because it implicates Palestinians as hateful for talking about their own life experiences.

Israel’s claims to act on behalf of world Jewry, even as it slaughters Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, complicate matters. Peter Beinart, a prominent commentator on Jewish politics, notes that “three academic studies — one in the U.S., one in Belgium, one in Australia — over the last 20 years all show a strong correlation between substantial Israeli military operations that kill a lot of Palestinians and a rise in reported antisemitic incidents.” So, there may be a connection between the genocide in Gaza and anger toward Jews. But how do we parse out what is and isn’t actual antisemitism when both the Israeli government and the IHRA definition consider it hateful to protest human rights violations against Palestinians?

The ADL’s framing makes it difficult to see the role antisemitism and its weaponization play in upholding white supremacy. Instead, they falsely smear social justice movements, including those standing up against genocide, Islamophobia, and police violence — and they erase the Jewish communities who support and participate in those social justice movements. And when the ADL misreports acts against Zionism as discrimination against Jews, it blurs the distinction between political disagreement and hatred against a group.

Furthermore, the ADL’s conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is racist because it implicates Palestinians, and supporters of Palestinian human rights, as antisemites who commit “hate acts” merely for talking about their own life experiences as refugees, living under Israeli occupation, or fighting colonialism.

Unfortunately, despite the occasional exposé of the ADL’s distorted statistics, no organization provides alternative data — partly because measuring antisemitism, like measuring racism, is a more complex project than lists of “incidents” can reflect and partly because groups concerned with racism often don’t address antisemitism separately from other forms of discrimination.

Claiming to Support Students and Educators but Actually Bullying Them

The ADL leverages its reputation and relationships with policymakers and funders to rail against groups with whom it disagrees politically. Greenblatt characterized Black Lives Matter as “wrong on the facts and offensive in tone” when the Movement for Black Lives 2016 policy platform recognized links between U.S. policing and Israeli militarism. In 2022, the ADL declared Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to be antisemitic. In November 2023, the Intercept reported that the ADL labeled Jewish organizations calling for a ceasefire “hate groups,” later reporting that the ADL urged schools to investigate students based on the “unsubstantiated accusation that Students for Justice in Palestine had sent money to Hamas, urging schools to investigate students without providing evidence.”

In schools, the ADL works with partners to bully educators and students directly by disparaging their reputations, calling for disciplinary action against them, and submitting formal complaints that subject schools, educators, and students to invasive and exhausting investigations. To protect Israel, the ADL deceptively mixes legitimate calls against antisemitism with politicized calls to censor Palestinians and their supporters.

For example, for years the ADL has played a leadership role in the right-wing opposition to liberated ethnic studies. In February 2024, in cooperation with the Louis D. Brandeis Center, the ADL filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the Berkeley Unified School District alleging that administrators failed to take action to stop the “nonstop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers.” Civil rights organizations like Palestine Legal say the ADL and its partners are increasingly weaponizing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, national origin, and shared ancestry. By claiming that schools that allow criticism of Israel create a “hostile environment,” they essentially argue that students who support Zionism — a political ideology — are a protected class under the law.

The ADL’s punitive response to what they deem as antisemitic interferes with efforts to implement restorative justice.

In response to this pressure, some school districts are clamping down on educators’ freedom to teach and students’ right to learn. After two high school students in Philadelphia made a podcast comparing the art of Palestinians with the art of enslaved people, it was selected by their teacher and vetted by their principal to be played at the school’s week of Black History Month assemblies. But another teacher at the first assembly claimed the podcast was antisemitic and forwarded it to a local Zionist organization. The organization led a campaign that successfully pressured the school district to remove the podcast from the remaining assemblies. Although the podcast did not mention Jews or Zionism, the ADL nonetheless joined a call to pressure the school district to investigate the students’ teacher, Keziah Ridgeway, an award-winning anti-racist educator.

The ADL’s punitive response to what they deem as antisemitic interferes with efforts to implement restorative justice in schools. Months after joining the call to fire Ridgeway, the ADL brought a Title VI complaint against the School District of Philadelphia. In the complaint, the ADL advocates for the “suspension and expulsion” of students and the “suspension and termination” of teachers, who under the IHRA definition — which the ADL encourages the district to adopt — have engaged in “discriminatory conduct” for being publicly critical of Zionism. With this approach, schools cannot cultivate space to untangle antisemitism from anti-Zionism and grapple with real antisemitic (and other racist) incidents in meaningful, restorative ways.

The ADL uses right-wing tactics in its policy advocacy at the local, district, and state levels and in attacks on public schools. It uses anti-critical race theory rhetoric to derail antiracist curriculum, promoting a watered-down anti-bias pedagogy that hides rather than explores power, systemic analysis, and historic context. It denounces DEI programs in education and the private sector, including in a February 2024 appearance by Greenblatt on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he asserted the need to “overhaul DEI,” because these programs, according to Greenblatt, “perpetuate the exclusion of Jews.” Meanwhile, anti-racist educators argue that while all forms of bigotry and discrimination have their own histories and manifestations, they must all be understood in the context of white supremacy and fought together in a framework of collective liberation. The ADL’s cynical efforts to privilege the comfort of some Jews over the human rights of Palestinians, and above the right of all students to learn in a safe and uncensored environment, should disqualify them from participating in any aspect of U.S. education.

I wrote three OpEds for The Forward. They published zero.

August 20, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

On May 30, 2024, The Forward contacted me in response to a tweet of mine criticizing an article they published. They asked me to write an OpEd, and after checking with some friends in the Palestinian solidarity movement, I decided to accept the offer as long as they didn’t censor my ideas. Over the next several months, I wrote three OpEds, none of which were published. The first got stale when The Forward didn’t respond in a timely way. The second was completely rewritten and my politics misrepresented, so I refused to agree to their edits. I sent a third one with a new hook, but after agreeing to publish (and pay for it), The Forward stopped replying to my emails. They also didn’t respond to my invoice for payment. For what its worth, I’m sharing one of the OpEds here.

What are we keeping Jewish students safe from?

As the new school year approaches, I am being bombarded with emails and texts about the imperative to keep Jewish students safe in the new politicized atmosphere. But safe from what? One text message noted that the BDS movement has been training campus activists and that anti-genocide encampments will be back.

There are actual right-wing racists, including white supremacists and Christian nationalists, who are being emboldened by MAGA rhetoric, but the self-appointed antisemitism watchdogs don’t mention those real threats at all. They focus on students who believe in the humanity of Palestinans and support their right to be equal and free.

I wonder how Jewish outlooks might change if they understood their fate not as aligned only with one another against the world, but as inextricably linked with the people of color, including Palestinians, who constitute the global majority. What if Jews believed that that Jewish wellbeing depended on Palestinians also being safe?

I sought insight from one of my cousins, a liberal Zionist with whom I’ve had many respectful exchanges: “Why can’t everyone in Israel live together in equality? Isn’t that what we strive for here in the United States?”

When I pose this question to most liberal Zionists, I hear some version of “We would love to, if only they didn’t hate us.” I tell them how my own, albeit unusual, lived experience proves that Palestinians don’t hate Jews – they only hate being oppressed. But most liberal Zionists simply don’t believe me.

A Jew who married into a Palestinian Muslim family, who is loved as a daughter- and sister-in law, who is accepted as a neighbor and friend, and has had significant roles in Palestinian civil society does not fit into the story of Palestinian antisemitism and Jewish vulnerability they tell themselves. In fact, when Palestinians learn that I’m Jewish, they frequently recall stories from their elders about the good ole days when Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians lived peacefully as members of one united community, and they long for a country where once again everyone can live together in peace.

I learned these important truths serendipitously. When I was a 19-year-old college sophomore still lacking a plan for my life, the Sabra and Shatilla massacres shocked me into understanding that as a Jew I was implicated in a conflict “over there.” I assumed that understanding Palestinians would be difficult, so I sought them out with a genuine curiosity and concern I inherited from my Jewish ancestors. I studied in Cairo, then in Jerusalem. Taxi drivers taught me Arabic, and women I met in vegetable markets taught me to cook. I made friends on travels in Sudan, Jordan, and Syria.

Unexpectedly, I fell in love, got married, and after years in the U.S., we moved to the West Bank to raise three daughters under Israeli military occupation.

It hasn’t always been easy being part of the Palestinian community. It hurts to see how statelessness disperses families around the world. It hurts to break bread with families who live under constant threat of home demolition. It hurts to hear friends recount settler attacks on their children and not know how to help.

But being part of the Palestinian community has also been uplifting and fulfilling in countless ways. Palestinians have shown me how the world appears different depending on your relationship to power. They have inspired me to pay attention to life’s smallest gifts. They taught me that safety is found not individually, but within the collective.

Now, 11 months into a historically brutal slaughter in Gaza by Israel, I am struck by how divergent my perspective of the power to be found in connecting with Palestinians is from the deeply held beliefs of many Jews around me, including those who self-identify as liberal.

Lawn signs reading “I Stand with Israel” confound my Jewish and humanistic sensitibilites. Do we stand with Jews even when they are wrong? Labeling ceasefire demands as antisemitic infuriates me. If it is wrong to be killed, isn’t it also wrong to kill others?

At least right-wing Jewish Zionists are consistent. They weaponize antisemitism against everyone whose politics they don’t like, shamelessly using their Jewish identity as a shield against criticism of their unadulterated violent politics. These are the same people who oppose affirmative action, blame crime on immigrants, and deny health care to trans people. Like their white Christian nationalist pro-Israel political allies, they have no incentive to change the system to include others when the current system is working for them.

I called my cousin to say that I don’t understand why liberal Zionists think they are better than right-wing Zionists. I see liberals fighting passionately against discrimination in the United States, but when it comes to Israel, they uphold a political ideology that values Jews over non-Jews. He didn’t respond with some implicitly racist message that Jews can never be safe without being dominant.

He surprised me by saying, “Of course, every person and group should enjoy the same rights to land, safety, and dignity.”

“Then you’re like me!” I said, with great relief. “You’re not a Zionist!”

“Yes I am a Zionist. I care about Jews and want Jews to thrive.”

“I care about Jews and want Jews to thrive, too!” I countered. “But that’s not what Zionism is.”

People like to say that Zionism can mean different things to different people, but the Zionism explicitly espoused by many of Israel’s founders, and the Zionism that Palestinians experience in their everyday lives, is an ideology and practice of Israel as a nation-state for the benefit of Jews and only Jews. Under that ideology, non-Jews will always have an inferior status, because they do not share the right to collective self-determination It is the imperative to keep Jews dominant that drives Israel’s rejection of refugees’ legally-enshrined right to return, the military occupation of over 5 million Palestinians in a brutally repressive regime that controls all aspects of life, and also the reality that 20% of Israel’s population, the indigenous Palestinians who are legally citizens of Israel, are deemed by law to have lesser rights–not only than their fellow Jewish citizens, but also fewer rights than non-citizens anywhere in the world who are Jewish.

My cousin said I gave him a lot to think about.

I keep thinking, too. What if Jews did not work only to protect Jewish students, but instead dedicated themselves to protecting all students, including those who are Palestinian? What if Jews saw their prospects for thriving as tied to a world where bombs and starvation and dehydration and disease were not tolerated – no matter who the victim is, and regardless of the identity of the perpetrator?

I believe with all my heart that a just peace with Palestinians could not only save tens of thousands of Palestinian lives, but it would also save Jewish lives, and could spare Jews from the anxiety of living with a perpetual sense of existential threat. It could save Jews by re-focusing us on the ways that antisemitism works in concert with anti-Blackness, patriarchy, militarism, and other forms of bigotry, to uphold white supremacy. It would save Jews by reminding us that Palestinians are human beings.

But to achieve a just peace with Palestinians, it is not enough to trust in their humanity. We also need to do the sometimes painful work of living up to our own.

How to justify the genocide of Palestinians in 14 easy steps: A graphical guide

April 25, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

This comics-based opinion was co-authored with artist Maryam Aswad and published by The New Arab.

Step 1: Erase history. Bury any fair and accurate analysis of how today’s violence came to be.

Step 2: Remove all context. Always depict Palestinians as the aggressors. Blame Palestinians for their own oppression.

Step 3: Monopolise the media. Discredit Palestinians and normalise their exclusion – including by threatening, firing, or even killing them.

Step 4: Dehumanise Palestinians. Use words that play into pre-existing anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim stereotypes.

Step 5: Misinform the public with boldface lies.

Step 6: Weaponise antisemitism. Accuse any Palestinian who tries to tell their story of hating Jews.

Step 7: Co-opt liberal and antiracist language so you appear to be the good guys.

Step 8: Criminalise liberation activities. Punish all Palestinian efforts to claim their rights, including by non-violent means.

Step 9: Repeat sensational Israeli claims without investigating in order to elevate emotion over rationality.

Step 10: Market trauma. Remind Jews of horrible things that have happened in the past so they’ll be scared of peace with Palestinians.

Step 11: Make token gestures to trick people into thinking there is progress towards respect and equality while you protect the status quo.

Step 12: Throughout it all, pretend you are being balanced and fair.

Step 13: Manipulate people into choosing sides as if well-being is mutually exclusive. Hide the fact that a just, political solution will uplift everyone’s rights, security, and dignity, and it offers the only sustainable future.

Step Fourteen: Rinse and repeat

Nora Lester Murad is a writer, educator, and activist. Her young adult novel, Ida in the Middle, won the 2023 Arab American Book Award, the 2024 Middle East Book Award, a Skipping Stones Honor Award, and was a finalist for the 2024 Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award. She is a Policy Member of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network and supports many social justice issues. From a Jewish family, Nora raised three daughters in the West Bank with her Palestinian husband. She now lives in Massachusetts and can be reached through her blog at www.NoraLesterMurad.com

Follow Nora on X: @NoraInPalestine and Instagram: @nora_lester_murad

Maryam Aswad is an Iraqi-Canadian student, teacher, artist, and mathematician at the University of New Hampshire. She grew up first in a war-torn Iraq, then as part of a diverse refugee community in the UAE, and finally immigrated to Canada in high school. Maryam hopes to use her journeyed perspective to view and illustrate the world with both logic and compassion.

Follow Maryam on Instagram: @meryemaswad

Unleashing Abolitionist Logic on International Aid

April 25, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

Abstract: “The abolitionist thinking, proliferated particularly by U.S. Black feminist radicals in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, exposed police reformism as liberal subterfuge facilitating the expansion of the carceral state. This article utilizes the relationship between police reform and abolition as a prism through which to look at international development aid. If international aid is thought of as a reform eﬀort serving the interests of colonialism, what is the abolitionist approach to international development? This commentary suggests that abolitionist logic grounded in the US-based movement for Black lives can expose international aid reform as a neoliberal tool and simultaneously unmask the potential for a radical vision of development based in a commitment to liberation rather than white/western/northern supremacy. Keywords: abolition, police reform, international development, international aid, colonialism, decolonization, mutual aid, redistribution, reparations.”

This is one of my stranger articles. Writing it made my head hurt! It was informed by my years as an aid accountability activist in Palestine and my experience organizing with the DefundThePolice movement. Read my article in the journal, Decolonial Subversions, main issue, 2023.

Reflections on Gaza: The Day After

March 22, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

This article was originally published on on January 3, 2024 in American for Middle East Understanding’s The Link (scroll down or download issue).

“There won’t be a ‘day after’ this genocide,” a friend in Nablus tells me on Signal. “The bombing may stop, but the project to erase Palestinians will persist in one form or another until Israel either wins or loses.”

True. We are in an existential fight against White Empire, and it won’t end just because Israel needs a bathroom break.

As an anti-Zionist Jew, it is crystal clear to me that if the Jewish supremacist colonial regime of Israel wins, both Palestinians and Judaism will be annihilated. Since I married a Palestinian and have Palestinian daughters, my mama bear energy is fully invested in the scenario where we all live together in equality with dignity, rights, and security for all.

But first, we must stop this goddamned genocide.

Like everyone, I’m running 24/7 with the heavy, sharp pieces of my broken soul dragging behind. Contemplating the “day after” feels like a Herculean task of acumen at a time when I can barely fathom reality.

Today, a friend in Rafah texted me on WhatsApp that he was depressed. What could I say? I replied,

Coming from someone who takes a hot shower every day, it sounds ridiculous. If I see him again when this is over, how will I look him in the eyes? I am overcome with shame about my powerlessness while he literally protects his small children with his body.

Yesterday another friend called me on Messenger from Khan Younis, chaos in the background. His daughter said, “Auntie, please tell Baba not to make us walk to Rafah.” My friend explained they are being forced to move from their shelter. He can’t afford a donkey cart, so the family of eight would have to go on foot, carrying whatever belongings they have left.

I didn’t know what to say.

Before this genocide, I stood on one side of a huge chasm. On my side were people who cared about houselessness, mass incarceration, discrimination, censorship. But many of those people have since planted “I Stand with Israel” signs on their lawns. I am dumbfounded! How can intelligent, decent people argue against a ceasefire? If it was wrong for 1,200 people to be killed, then isn’t it also wrong to kill 25,000?

How will I continue to work for social justice when I have lost faith in people?

Yet there are people who care:

When I read this tweet to my grownup daughter, her response surprised me. “What the fuck is the point of apologizing?” she erupted. “Palestinians never asked for pity.”

But I am sorry, I tell her. I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.

She says that like the woman of color in Samer’s tweet, my pain is from empathy not sympathy. “It’s happening to you too, mama,” she consoles, and I am momentarily relieved. But seconds later, an old colleague sends me photos of the shelter in Nuseirat camp. Feces is everywhere, and there is no water to clean up. How can I face her on the “day after” when all I have are empty platitudes like “May God protect you and keep you?”

My daughter reminds me that faith is inextricably ingrained into the Arabic language. The culture of collective care is upheld in every phrase. The idioms and invocations are not platitudes, she explains patiently. They manifest our hopes for others. The obligatory response, which is nearly always “praise to God,” shows how gratitude breeds strength. “Even during a genocide, every hard day lived is a privilege,” she tells me.

“Never hesitate to look them in the eye and reassure them, even though their wellbeing and liberation are not in your hands,” she says.

I nod, and I’m sure she feels my commitment across the long-distance phone line.

Because no matter what I do or don’t do, on the “day after,” whenever it comes, Palestinian steadfastness will be stronger than ever. And if my faith falters, my friends in Gaza will reassure me.

Anas Abu Jamous is 10-years old and Paralyzed

February 4, 2024 by Nora Lester Murad

It’s hard to visit the Gaza Strip and not fall in love with the people. Sadly, very few people get the opportunity to visit. Israel has controlled the checkpoints with a heavy hand since they imposed a siege and blockade in 2007. They only approve a small number of permits to enter and exit, and only for very specific and self-interested reasons.

I was extremely fortunate to get consultancy jobs that took me to Gaza several times. I used those opportunities to develop a now-defunct project called Aid Watch Palestine–perhaps the most exciting grassroots advocacy I’ve ever gotten to work on. Community members learned how the international aid system constrained their lives (in addition to the Israeli occupation), and they took action to claim their rights from international donors.

In 2015, on one of these trips, I met the Abu Jamous family in Khuzaa near Khan Younis. Marwan and Hanady’s family was one among thousands whose homes were destroyed in the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza and who were poorly served by the international humanitarian response. I wrote an article about their experience to bring attention to the problem. They were also represented in my photo essay of 2016.

I stayed in touch with the family over the years, celebrating the birth of each new child, fretting about their many health crises, following their creative efforts to take care of one another despite having insufficient resources. In 2017, I wrote another article describing the family’s unacceptable living situation resulting from the ongoing blockade and the lack of proper help. Also in 2017, Hanady’s brother helped my group create a powerful, short video infographic showing that the only way to genuinely help Palestinians in Gaza is not to provide humanitarian aid, but to end the Israeli blockade.

I stayed in touch with Fathi too, congratulating him when he married and had a son, and stressing when he decided to smuggle himself out of Gaza with the intention of reaching Lesbos for asylum. It was harrowing and dangerous but ultimately successful, and that’s how Fathi found himself outside of Gaza on October 7th. Marwan was also outside of Gaza on October 7th, getting much-needed medical care in the West Bank. When the bombs started falling, the women of the family bore the brunt, trying to protect themselves and their children, even though there was and still is no place that is safe from Israel’s indiscriminate violence. (Marwan was abducted by the Israelis from the hospital in Nablus and thrown back in Gaza in the midst of the bombing. He’s now with the family but sick, having not completed his medical procedure.)

I had hoped my friends in the Abu Jamous family would at least be spared from the worst of the violence, but they weren’t. With much difficulty, the family of 36 people (Marwan’s family and Fathi’s family, including all their brothers and sisters and their spouses and children and parents) were finally able to escape Khan Younis to go to Rafah. Although it was supposedly (but not really) safer, Israeli soldiers confiscated all their belongings at the checkpoint entering Rafah, and they started shooting randomly.

Fathi’s 10-year-old nephew Anas was shot in the back by Israeli soldiers.

Anas went back to Khan Younis with his father to the European hospital while the rest of the family moved forward, setting up three tents between Khan Younis and Rafah – one for the many men of the extended family, one for the women, and one for the children. Anas got x-rays that confirmed the bullet was lodged in his spine. My friend in Boston, a prestigious spine surgeon, reviewed the images and said that Anas needed surgery immediately. He needed to be moved out of Gaza, but not on a commercial flight. His spinal fluid needed to be monitored. He needed to be catheterized. He had to be moved carefully to preserve the possibility that paralysis might be avoided, and he needed the bullet removed to avoid lead poisoning.

Naive me got to work trying to get Anas moved to another country for treatment. A pediatrician friend liaised with the doctors at the European Hospital who explained that Anas had been put on a list. The Israelis would need to approve his transfer. Visas would need to be secured. A foreign hospital would need to admit him. Funds would need to be raised. And more relevant – there were thousands on the list before Anas.

Fathi told me that the hospital was releasing Anas back to his family, back to the tent where he would sleep on the wet ground. There was no point in keeping him in the hospital since they didn’t have the material or tools to treat him. They don’t even have paid medication to treat the poor kid; he cries constantly from the unbearable pain.

As of this morning, though, Anas is still in the hospital in Khan Younis. When they ultimately ask him to leave, he will return to a family that has no shelter, insufficient food and water, no access to medications, no money for diapers, and no prospects – because Israel continues to deny these basic rights, even while they continue bombing, despite the warnings of the International Court of Justice.

No child should be shot. Anas was shot in the back! He was shot by Israel while following Israeli orders to move to Rafah!! Anas was learning to play soccer. Anas loved playing soccer.

If you would like to help Anas and his family, please contact me at nora@noralestemurad.com. I have a secure way of getting money to them that is still working. It won’t help Anas walk, and it won’t make the family safe from the ongoing genocide, but it may in some small way lift the family’s spirits to know that we care and we wish them the best.

Even if you can’t help Anas, PLEASE help stop the violence in Israel/Palestine by calling on the your governmental representatives to demand their constructive intervention. If you live in the United States, tell your senators and congressional representative to call for: an immediate, sustainable ceasefire; release of all captives in Israel and Gaza; Israeli facilitation of humanitarian aid, including medical; resumption and expansion of US aid to UNRWA; an end to US weapons transfers to Israel until they comply with all international law; facilitation of accountability for Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity; accountability for US complicity in Israelis violations of Palestinian rights; an end to the siege on Gaza; an end to the occupation and colonization of Palestine; and a just political solution that respects the rights, dignity, security of everyone. (Here is a tool and here is another tool that will help you make those calls and send emails. Please call EVERY SINGLE DAY!)

UPDATE! Anas and his mother and siblings (not his father) have been evacuated to Cairo where he is being evaluated by a doctor! This is absolutely miraculous! Of course the road ahead will be painful and costly, and his family continues to need as much support as they can get.

ANOTHER UPDATE! Marwan’s father and nephew were hit by a bomb strike. Marwan’s father lost both his legs and died two days later. The nephew lost an eye, but I don’t know if he lived. I can’t reach the family.