​The reaction was both peremptory and predictable:  Critics of Israeli and U.S. policies firmly snapped back against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s declaration that the U.S. no longer views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal.
 
“The European Union’s position on Israeli settlement policy in the occupied Palestinian territory is clear and remains unchanged,” European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.  “All settlement activity is illegal under international law and it erodes the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace, as reaffirmed by U.N. Security Council resolution 2334.”
 
“Another blatantly ideological attempt by the Trump administration to distract from its failures in the region,” tweeted Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a leading Presidential candidate.  “Not only do these settlements violate international law — they make peace harder to achieve.”
 
“Egypt is committed to the resolutions of international legitimacy on the status of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, being illegal and inconsistent with the international law,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry declared.
 
One hundred and seven House Democrats wrote a letter to Pompeo to express their “strong disagreement with the State Department’s decision to reverse decades of bipartisan U.S. policy on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank by repudiating the 1978 State Department legal opinion that civilian settlements in the occupied territories are ‘inconsistent with international law.’”
 
In many cases, critics of the shift in U.S. policy cited their support for a two-state solution as an alternative to the State Department’s new position.  “As President, I will reverse this policy and pursue a two-state solution,” Warren said, while the German Foreign Office intoned, “The construction of settlements is in the federal government’s opinion illegal, undermines the peace process, and complicates talks on a two-state solution.”
 
What is the basis for presuming that Israeli settlements in some parts of the West Bank are antithetical to the peace process?  It would seem that the stigmatization of the word “settlement” has much to do with this position, as “settlements” have come to be associated with dark notions of colonial occupation, perhaps even racism.
 
But Israeli communities in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem are not illegal, as Secretary Pompeo has affirmed.  According to Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, the U.N. cannot transfer any part of the former Mandate for Palestine, which was dedicated at the 1920 San Remo Peace Conference for the creation of a future Jewish state.  Furthermore, Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the Oslo agreement’s Declaration of Principles established that a land for peace deal must be based on direct negotiation between the parties – one that would determine territorial boundaries that might not strictly adhere to the 1967 lines.
 
The Ottoman Empire, which governed Palestine, dissolved after World War I.  Since a Palestinian state has never existed and the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem ended with the Six Day War, the status of those territories is clearly disputed until negotiations have resolved outstanding questions about sovereignty.
 
But critics of the Pompeo announcement seemingly would prefer to prejudge the outcome of those negotiations.  By declaring Israeli settlements illegal, these voices are stigmatizing any Israeli presence in disputed territories as somehow acquired through evil or at least improper means, as opposed to through a defensive war.  This sinister characterization of Israel’s predicament, which would forever deem Israeli settlements illegitimate, underlies the suspect claim that the State Department’s new position is at odds with the two-state solution.
 
This argument does not hold up, though.  Serious negotiations must take place in the realm of fact, not ideological fantasy.  Israel has a credible legal and historical claim for inhabiting at least part of the territories.
 
Furthermore, the primary obstacle to Middle East peace is widespread rejection of Israel’s right to exist.  When Israel’s critics accept the obvious reality that some settlements will remain in place in the wake of a final peace agreement and that those communities are not the main roadblock to peace, a two-state solution will become more likely, not less.
 
The rhetorical war on Israeli settlements has fueled anti-Semitic incidents and anti-Israel boycotts for years.  Tragically, it has also become a major impediment to peace.

It’s a tragically familiar scenario:  A gunman kills multiple innocent civilians in a shooting spree, reigniting a national debate about gun violence legislation.  The policy debate invariably ends in stasis, as political forces on both sides of the aisle fail to reach a compromise.
 
The twin tragedies of Dayton and El Paso, however, have given rise to the possibility of a breakthrough.  A bipartisan proposal that would encourage states to adopt “red flag” laws to take guns away from people believed to be dangers to themselves is gaining momentum in the Senate.  Offered by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the plan has received support from President Trump, who said in a White House speech that those judged to pose a grave risk to society should be denied access to firearms.  Red flag laws authorize courts to issue protection orders that allow police to confiscate firearms from such people, as well as prohibiting them from buying new guns.
 
Gains on State Level
 
In the wake of last year’s mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, the number of states with red flag laws has jumped from just five to 17.  One of those states is California, whose law was enacted following a massacre at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014.  California permits family members to petition courts directly for confiscation orders.  A law recently passed in New York would allow teachers to petition the courts, as well.
 
Congress
 
The Graham-Blumenthal proposal would incentivize state red flag laws by offering states grants for passing them.  Significantly, though, the bill would not limit gun access at the federal level, which could be the key to its bipartisan appeal.  Republican senators normally predisposed against gun legislation are more likely to view favorably a measure that yields gun policy making to individual states.
 
Senate Democrats are largely united behind red flag laws, but a growing number of Republicans are joining them.  Senate Majority Whip John Thune (S.D.) has spoken optimistically about reaching bipartisan consensus on the issue, but eyes remained focused on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kent.), who has not publicly taken a position on red flag laws.
 
The NRA
 
The National Rifle Association has voiced support for the goal of keeping guns away from dangerous people but has largely opposed state red flags until recently.  Citing threats to due process, the organization has objected to the confiscation of guns from people who have not committed crimes and may lose their guns without having a chance to be heard.  But the Parkland shooting has led to a change in the NRA’s tone, as they have begun to signal more openness toward such laws.
 
Implementation
 
The success of red flag laws depends not just on their passage, but on their implementation and on key details, such as who is allowed to file petitions.  Also, the matter of how law enforcement officials educate the public about pursuing such emergency legal options can tremendously impact their effectiveness.
 
But even as other gun measures, like expanded background checks, closing gun show loopholes, and an assault weapons ban once again come into focus, the red flag proposal stands the greatest chance of gaining political currency.  With bipartisan support growing in Congress and President Trump appearing to back the idea, the moment for forward progress toward reasonable gun legislation may soon be arriving.

​Eric Fusfield, Esq. has been B’nai B’rith International’s director of legislative affairs since 2003 and deputy director of the B’nai B’rith International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy since 2007. He holds a B.A. from Columbia University in history; an M.St. in modern Jewish studies from Oxford University; and a J.D./M.A. from American University in law and international affairs. Click here to read more from Eric Fusfield.

As candidates campaign for Congressional seats across the United States this summer, anti-Israel and in some cases overtly anti-Semitic views have manifested themselves among outliers in both parties.
 

• Ilhan Omar (D), a Minnesota state legislator who hails originally from Somalia, is campaigning for the seat being vacated by Rep. Keith Ellison (D), who is running for state attorney general. Some of her past tweets on Israel have drawn criticism as her profile has risen. In 2012, for example, she tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evils of Israel.”

 

• In Illinois, American Nazi Party member Arthur Jones won a Republican primary in a Chicago-area district currently represented in Congress by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D). Jones is a Holocaust denier and a sympathizer of the Ku Klux Klan. "This idea that 'six million Jews,' were killed by the National Socialist government of Germany, in World War II, is the biggest, blackest, lie in history,” Jones wrote on his campaign website.

 

• Rashida Tlaib (D), a Palestinian American running unopposed in Michigan and thus slated to become the first female Muslim to serve in Congress, recently criticized Israel during Hamas rocket attacks. “My roots as a Palestinian American are strong and important. I believe every human being deserves to live with dignity,” she tweeted. She keynoted an anti-Israel conference in Chicago in April and supported convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh in her bid to evade deportation from the U.S.

 

• John Fitzgerald (R) is running against Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D) in California. Fitzgerald recently appeared on a neo-Nazi radio show, saying, “Everything we’ve been told about the Holocaust is a lie. My entire campaign is about exposing this lie.” He also peddles in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, asserting that nine percent of U.S. government officials are dual citizens of Israel.

 

• Perhaps the most famous candidate to throw pointed jabs at Israel this year is New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated Rep. Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary. She derided Israel’s defensive operations on the Gaza border as a “massacre…To me it would be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores,” adding “What people are starting to see at least in the occupation of Palestine is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition.” Ocasio-Cortez has emerged as the face of Democratic Socialism, an ideology she has endorsed.

 

• Paul Nehlen (R), who describes himself as “pro-White,” is running to fill the Wisconsin seat of retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan (R). Like Fitzgerald, he has also touted the anti-Semitic dual loyalty theory. “There is one nation where this condition presents particularly egregious pain: Israel,” said Nehlen, who has said that all of his critics are Jewish.

 
These candidacies showcase familiar tropes on the left and right, respectively. Though right-wing groups are generally anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim as well, their opposition to integration and their ongoing embrace of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are intensely threatening to Jews. On the left, the demonization of Israel and the double standards applied to it have increased the stigmatization and marginalization of the Jewish state.  This trend has fueled momentum for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and for harassment of Jewish students on university campuses.
 
Not all of these candidates, or others who share their views, will prevail in November. But the lesson for now is that anti-Israel and anti-Semitic exponents continue to find a voice in the public discourse and landing spaces in our political system. How mainstream officials and institutions in both parties react to these outliers and their ideas will shape the future of U.S. policy with respect to pluralism and Middle East policy.

​A controversial Polish law signed into effect by President Adrzej Duda has stoked tensions on both sides of the Polish-Jewish relationship.
 
At stake is the examination of the country’s World War II-era past, a period during which both Poles and Jews suffered tremendous losses.  As the first country invaded by Hitler’s Germany, Poland can lay claim to being the Nazis’ first victims. It was also home to more than three million Jews, the vast majority of whom perished during the Holocaust. Nearly two million non-Jewish Poles were also murdered.
 
The new law, which amends the existing Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, would severely punish false accusations against the “Polish nation” or “Polish state” of responsibility for the Holocaust. So, for example, anyone who describes Auschwitz as a “Polish death camp” rather than a “Nazi death camp” on Polish soil, could face up to three years in prison.
 
One problem, of course, is how does one define the Polish nation? There can be no dispute that the Nazis initiated and implemented a campaign of genocide against the Jews.  But it is also clear that, while the Nazis murdered both Jews and Poles, some Poles participated in crimes against Jews.  In fact, Polish-born historian Jan Grabowski estimates that more than 200,000 Jews were murdered by Poles during the war – Poles who did not by themselves constitute the Polish collective, but who certainly were members of the Polish nation.
 
The law purports to exempt historians and artists from punishment, but what about journalists, educators and others?  Furthermore, how can one know how aggressively prosecutors will use the law to threaten or intimidate voices they might aim to silence? Princeton Professor Jan Gross’ 2001 history of the Polish massacre of Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 met with great resistance from a Polish public reluctant to accept the participation of some Poles in the murder of Jews.
 
The backdrop to this debate is the recent evidence that the anti-Semitism that has haunted Polish society since before the Holocaust persists until this day.  In November, about 60,000 attended a rally in Warsaw that was replete with anti-Semitic chants, such as “Jews out of Poland” and banners such as “White Europe of brotherly nations.” The xenophobia and anti-Semitism on display that day are not new phenomena in Poland, a country that witnessed beatings of Jews in the streets before World War II and anti-Jewish pogroms after the war’s end.
 
The ruling Law and Justice party has provided at least tacit support for the neo-fascists of today, who carry the torch of these ancient hatreds. The passage of this law is such a form of encouragement – a sop to the party’s nationalist base. Whether it was the government’s intent, the law fosters the impression of a desire to cast Poles as blameless victims, which is a popular narrative in Poland.
 
What is missing both from the law itself and from the government’s unapologetic defense of the new measure is what is most needed – an honest and open discussion of Poland’s wartime history. A comprehensive, nuanced discourse on the most complex aspects of Poland’s past by the current president or prime minister could go a long way toward easing strains and straightening the historical record.
 
It is true that Poles were victims of the Nazis. And it is true that some Poles saved Jews or otherwise resisted the Nazis. But it is also true that some Poles shared responsibility for certain Nazi crimes, or committed crimes against Jews in their own right. Let the education and inquiry about the full history of this period proceed. This ill-conceived and inflammatory law is not a path forward to reconciliation.

​Eric Fusfield, Esq. has been B’nai B’rith International’s director of legislative affairs since 2003 and deputy director of the B’nai B’rith International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy since 2007. He holds a B.A. from Columbia University in history; an M.St. in modern Jewish studies from Oxford University; and a J.D./M.A. from American University in law and international affairs. Click here to read more from Eric Fusfield.

sIt was a historic announcement:  President Trump declared on December 5 that the U.S. now recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, thus acknowledging a longstanding reality and seemingly ending 69 years of mixed signals from the U.S. government about Jerusalem’s status.  The U.S. will eventually bolster this decision by moving  its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump indicated.
 
Trump’s announcement is consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which required the U.S. to move its embassy to Jerusalem but allows the president a waiver every six months in the interest of national security.  For the past 22 years, presidents of both parties have relied on the waiver to delay the move.
 
But has the confusion over U.S. policy come to an end, or has it simply entered a new phase?  Recent indications of a disconnect between the White House and the State Department over Jerusalem have raised questions about the meaning of the presidential declaration, even as supporters of the policy shift continue to embrace the symbolic change they have long sought.
 
Two days after the president’s announcement, Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield told reporters that “on consular practice there is no change at this time” in the wake of the White House declaration.  This raises important questions about implementation of U.S. policy.  For example:

1.  Americans born in Jerusalem have never been allowed to designate Israel as their country of birth in their U.S. passports; rather, their place of birth is merely identified as “Jerusalem.”  Will this change in light of President Trump’s decision to “finally acknowledge the obvious:  that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital”? 

2.  The U.S. consulate in Jerusalem has always reported directly to the State Department instead of the U.S. embassy to Israel, as though Jerusalem were a separate country.  Will the consulate now report to the embassy, which is set to move to Jerusalem? 

3.  White House and State Department official documents have until now identified Jerusalem simply by the name of the city, rather than by “Jerusalem, Israel.”  Will U.S. government communiqués finally acknowledge what President Trump’s announcement did, namely, that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, rather than an independent city? 

Then there is the matter of when the embassy move, the most tangible symbol of the U.S. policy shift, will actually take place.  Many procedural steps remain, such as finding a site in Jerusalem, securing funding, completing construction, and satisfying complex security requirements.  This could take years.  In the meantime, it is possible Trump will continue exercising the presidential waiver, as he has done twice this year.  Until the move is finalized or at least well underway – until the U.S. policy shift becomes grounded in steel and concrete – America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will seem more ephemeral than permanent.
 
Nevertheless, the United States has crossed a threshold of sorts.  The administration has conceded that Israel, like any other country in the world, is entitled to select its capital and have that choice be honored by the international community.  On Israel’s path toward the long-overdue normalization of its place in the world, this step cannot be discounted.

​​​Eric Fusfield, Esq. has been B’nai B’rith International’s director of legislative affairs since 2003 and deputy director of the B’nai B’rith International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy since 2007. He holds a B.A. from Columbia University in history; an M.St. in modern Jewish studies from Oxford University; and a J.D./M.A. from American University in law and international affairs. Click here to read more from Eric Fusfield.

It’s a familiar arc: A Jewish community is attacked or threatened by anti-Semites, after which recriminations and regrets are publicly aired and the Jewish world wonders what could have been done differently to ensure Jewish safety.
 
And then there is Gothenberg.
 
This Saturday—not coincidentally Yom Kippur—the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) will march through the coastal town of Gothenberg, Sweden, spreading its anti-Semitic hatred on the holiest day of the Jewish year. During the Holocaust, it was customary for the Nazis to carry out atrocities on days important to the Jewish calendar. The added benefit to the NRM of holding its hate march on Yom Kippur is that it is the day when even Jews who rarely worship are likely to attend synagogue.
 
Gothenberg authorities have already changed the NRM’s planned route to avoid proximity to the town’s synagogue, prompting 60 Nazi supporters to demonstrate in the city center on Sept. 17. The protesters railed against immigration and knocked down a woman who confronted them about their message. A spokesman for the NRM subsequently said that the group might choose to ignore orders to change the route of the march.
 
The NRM’s history of violence and intimidation suggests that whether Saturday’s march passes immediately by the synagogue or not, the threat posed to the Jewish community is real. The group openly espouses anti-Semitism and racism and has spoken admiringly about Adolph Hitler. Group members have advocated for mass deportation of refugees and immigrants. This summer a Gothenberg court sentenced three men with ties to the movement for carrying out bomb attacks on refugee shelters.
 
The presence of a majority of the city’s Jews in the center of town this Saturday increases the likelihood that they will become targets of the NRM’s hostility. It is also probable that some Jews, fearing for their safety, will opt not to attend Yom Kippur services this year.
 
American Jews are still reeling from the experience of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month that led to one death and 19 injuries. Some of the marchers stood in front of the local synagogue with guns, forcing worshipers to leave through the back door.  Hate mongers carrying flags and posters bearing swastikas shouted “Heil Hitler” and “blood and soil,” a Nazi slogan.  Will Gothenberg become another Charlottesville? Only Swedish authorities can ensure this does not happen.
 
In a letter to Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, B’nai B’rith has urged the Swedish government to stop the Nazi march from occurring on Yom Kippur.  This is not a matter of suppressing free speech.  The city of Gothenberg has maintained it’s powerlessness to stop the event from taking place. But what about the government’s obligation to maintain public order and protect its citizens from threats and intimidation by hate groups?  At the very least, the march could take place on a different day, when violent attacks are less likely to result.
 
It’s often said that hindsight is 20-20.  But there is something to be said for keen foresight, as well. Sweden’s neo-Nazis are preparing to descend on Gothenberg this Saturday, as the town’s Jewish community braces itself for what is supposed to be a day of introspection and atonement but figures instead to be one of fear and dread, perhaps violence as well.
 
To Swedish authorities, the message should be clear: Don’t let it happen.  Protect your citizens.  Ensure public safety.  Don’t make the day after Yom Kippur one on which the world asks, “How could this have been avoided?”

It hardly mattered that few of the players representing Israel in the World Baseball Classic last month knew the Hebrew terms for balls and strikes. Nor did it cause concern that only two of them possessed Israeli citizenship.
 
What mattered was that the team, compromised mostly of American players of Jewish descent (persons who are eligible for Israeli citizenship could play for the team), willed and plucked its way to the second round of the international championship. In doing so, they captivated the baseball world and provided both Israeli and American fans with that most irresistible of all sports narratives:  an underdog story.
 
Who were these guys? An compendium of has-beens and never-weres (only two of the team's players appeared on a Major League roster last year), Team Israel was ranked 41st in the world and tagged by ESPN as the "Jamaican bobsled team of the WBC." The ace of their pitching staff, 38-year-old Jason Marquis, hadn’t played organized baseball since June 2015. Catcher Ryan Lavarnway spent last season in the minor leagues with two different clubs, but as a Yale alumnus, he helped cement Team Israel’s place as the most educated squad in the WBC.
 
And yet they won—all three of their qualifying games, all three of their first round games, and a second round game against Cuba in the Tokyo Dome, witnessed by a visiting B'nai B'rith delegation waving Israeli flags and Purim groggers.
 
The players wore t-shirts that read "Jew Crew." During the pre-game playing of "HaTikvah," the Israeli national anthem, they would remove their game caps and don matching blue kippahs.
 
But what particularly captured the team ethos of cheekiness and unflappability was its designation of the kitschy life-sized doll "Mensch on a Bench" (the players called him Moshe) as the team's mascot. One player referred to Moshe as "a metaphysical presence" within the team.
 
They defeated more highly regarded squads from three different continents before succumbing to the Netherlands and Japan. What is also significant, though, is the fact that they competed on equal terms against teams who saw the matchup with Israel not as an opportunity to stoke Israel's political isolation—as is so often the case in international gatherings—but simply to play ball.
 
Israel's supporters view the Jewish state as blessedly unique, a source of intense pride. But what they want for Israel on the international stage is for it to be treated like any other country, subject to the same rules and standards. The WBC offered the Jewish community, and the world, a glimpse into a present and future in which Israel takes its rightful place among the nations and generates little controversy or backlash for doing so. No boycotts, no demonstrations, no extra security precautions. May the best team win.
 
Team Israel was a 200-1 underdog in 2017, but how can you not like their chances in the next WBC tournament, in 2021. 200-1? Feh. According to Mensch on a Bench creator Neal Hoffman, "We've faced worse."

Alt-right leader Richard Spencer, who garnered national attention with his controversial appearance at Texas A&M University last December, plans to sow his white nationalism on college campuses across the country in 2017.

Known for using phrases like “Hail victory” (the literal translation of the Nazi phrase “Sieg Heil”) and mimicking the Nazi salute, Spencer traffics in far-right ideas that center around the preservation of the white race and Western civilization. He peddles his message through a think tank known as the National Policy Institute, an online publication called Radix and, now, a planned college speaking tour.

Spencer, who initially built momentum through his websites and online comments, is increasingly shifting his attention to live audiences. Prior to his Texas A&M appearance, Spencer and other white nationalists set up a “safe space” on the University of California-Berkeley campus to discuss “how race affects people of European heritage.”

Spencer sees college audiences as fertile ground for his message of discontent. “I think you need to get them while they are young,” Spencer told a reporter in December. “People in college are at this point in their lives where they are actually open to alternative perspectives.”

This year’s White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day has given Spencer even more fodder for horrendous statements.

President Trump’s Holocaust message neglected to mention Jews, antisemitism or the Nazi campaign of genocide that claimed six million Jewish victims. Most Jewish organizations were highly critical of this omission.

Yet Spencer found no fault with these omissions; rather, on the website altright.com, he criticized the “activist Jewish community” for commandeering the Holocaust narrative.

“It is all about their meta-narrative of suffering, and it shall undergird their peculiar position in American society, and theirs alone,” Spencer wrote. “When viewed from the perspective of Jewish activists, Trump’s statement becomes outrageous, as it dethrones Jews from a special position in the universe.”

In his statement, Spencer employs a favorite trope of Holocaust-distorters and antisemites: the claim that the enormity of the Holocaust is exaggerated by Jews, who manipulate World War II-era history for their own political purposes. The antisemitic stereotypes that frame Spencer’s brand of Holocaust denial are the same themes that were invoked by the Nazis.

Holocaust denial not only clouds our understanding of history, but it also minimizes the grave threat posed to the contemporary Jewish community by rising antisemitism. Moreover, it harms Israel’s security by diminishing what was once a bedrock understanding of the crucial need for the existence of a Jewish state: the Jewish people have already been targeted for total annihilation, and without a firm safe haven in the ancestral Jewish homeland, Jews will always remain vulnerable.
​
Spencer has already announced his intention to spread his bigotry and false version of history to American college students. For the young men and women born at the end of the 20th century, the Holocaust is merely a distant historical episode; for them, its lessons are faded, if not altogether bygone. Unfortunately, their minds are ripe for exploitation by a hate monger and Holocaust denier like Richard Spencer.

​B'nai B'rith International Deputy Director of the International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy Eric Fusfield discusses a recent trip to Israel with Members of European Parliament, and the impact of the European Union's decision to label goods made in the West Bank.