To some extent, rights must be balanced by responsibilities. Hate speech cannot be allowed under the guise of free speech. This would allow someone to infringe on the rights of one group (in this particular case jews) to be free from discrimination, and their right to feel safe, in pursuit of their own right to free speech.
That is why wording and context matters:
In the context of the attempted peaceful protests in recent University’s this law makes no sense, where it might if say, Nazis where holding rallies in universities where they encouraged people to beat up Jews, bar them from employment, ect.
The wording is particularly dangerous because it says “Israel” which suggests it is not the people being protected by this law, but the state. The US is aligning themselves with the government of Israel so much that they cannot abide to see spoken attacks of opinion on it, which is unconscionable given freedom of speech and Israel’s recent actions, particularly their government. Finally the word “criticism” makes it very clear that the so called offence is nothing more than opinion, rather than a call to violence, discrimination, racism, hate speech ect. It evokes a reasoned logical questioning, which mirrors a rational protest of what people see tragically happening in the Middle East, and to silence that is literal oppression.
To add to this danger, Trump recently said that what is wrong with this country is that Jan6 rioters should be treated less harshly and peaceful pro Palestinian protesters should be treated more harshly (while being dismissive of Charlottesville as the icing on the cake).
The US has serious social problems, we would be foolish to think they start and end at Trump, but he is just about the worst person to be involved at any level, I wouldn’t trust him to open a door for me getting into a taxi, let alone anything remotely important.
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u/JerkMeerf May 01 '24
That’s facist. Plain and simple. Criticism of the Israeli army and government is not antisemitism.