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Author: Samantha Mandeles

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Samantha Mandeles

Over the past several months, Never Again Action (NAA), a purportedly spontaneous grassroots Jewish group, has burst into the public eye by staging and videotaping protests at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other government facilities across the country. But, as a joint investigation by the Legal Insurrection Foundation and the Washington Free Beacon has revealed, NAA is not what it purports to be. NAA is a repackaging of the same activists who organize with far-left, anti-Israel groups such as IfNotNow (INN), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and CodePink. There is every reason to believe that these obsessive anti-Israel activists have a hidden agenda: to insert themselves at the forefront of the immigration issue to hijack the movement and turn it against Israel, as has been done repeatedly since the Ferguson riots in 2014. NAA is not just astroturf, it's a deception.

Legal Insurrection has long tracked and opposed the spread of anti-Israel curricula at the university level, and has documented efforts to push that political activism into high school and elementary schools. Our research and litigation exposing anti-Israel activism in a third-grade class in Ithaca received national attention, VIDEO: Activists manipulate third-graders into hating Israel. One of the most audacious anti-Israel propaganda efforts is taking place right now in California, through the proposed California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). As described below, Legal Insurrection joins over 80 groups in opposing ESMC and urging California educational authorities to revise the curriculum to remove clear politicization designed to imbue young students with hatred of Israel.

Almost nothing is taboo for #Pallywood, the anti-Israel propaganda industry that creates false or misleading images, videos and narratives in order to portray Israelis as evil. Non-Palestinian western activists and international media are an important part of this propaganda campaign. From faking injuries to using children as props, for decades, anti-Israel agitators have staged elaborate and horrifying scenes of Israeli brutality and Palestinian victimhood. Those scenes are then recorded and promoted around the world in an effort to frame Israel for human rights abuses— often exploiting especially vulnerable Palestinian children.

Over the past several weeks, the Legal Insurrection Foundation has investigated the coalition of anti-Israel groups that organized protests and disruptions at the annual Christians United for Israel (CUFI) summit July 7-9, 2019 Calling their campaign "Rise against Racism", Counter CUFI followed the traditional modus operandi of intersectional anti-Israel groups, seeking to build an anti-Israel coalition along racial and religious identity lines, portraying Israel as a white supremacist colonialist oppressive enterprise, and lauding themselves as the underdog heroes speaking truth to power.

Legal Insurrection previously exclusively reported on plans by several anti-Israel groups to disrupt the annual summit of Christians United For Israel (CUFI) held in Washington, D.C. The main organizing group was Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), assisted by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. The groups called the collective protest "Counter CUFI."

Last week, we covered the June 22 planning meeting and joint effort of four anti-Israel groups — Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) — to protest the massive annual summit of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in D.C. on July 7-9. You can read about the background on these groups and their plans in Investigation: Anti-Israel groups plan disruption of Christians United for Israel Annual Summit.

On July 7-9, 2019, the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States, Christians United For Israel (CUFI), will hold its annual Summit in Washington, D.C.  Thousands of CUFI attendees will gather inside the Walter E. Washington Convention Center to hear from speakers such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In this post we will describe the preparations by leading anti-Israel groups to protest outside the venue, and cause a disruption inside the venue, as laid out at a planning meeting recently held in Maryland.

It’s Pride Month, when people commemorate the Stonewall Uprising—a major turning point in the movement for gay rights. But for the Washington, D.C. Dyke March (a leftist, lesbian-centered and activism-focused alternative to traditional gay pride parades), that can mean only one thing: activists using "intersectionality" to excuse their own bigotry.