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IfNotNow Tag

This past weekend, Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem marked the conclusion of Ramadan with vast gatherings at the Temple Mount (the world's holiest site for Jews and third-holiest site for Muslims), where incendiary video footage showed the crowds enthusiastically chanting hateful slogans preaching violence against Jews. Naturally, the so-called "Jewish" anti-Zionist organization IfNotNow publicly endorsed the incitement—and claimed to do so on behalf of American Jews.

We have written a lot about how anti-Israel activists routinely hijack causes, events, and crises unrelated to Israel, using "intersectional" theory to turn those issues against the Jewish state. That phenomenon is playing out again with the coronavirus pandemic, providing the 'usual suspects' with yet another issue to exploit.

In early September 2019, Legal Insurrection published our half of a joint-investigation of anti-Israel groups with The Washington Free Beacon. Our research—reported in Investigation: Anti- ICE “Never Again Action” Not The Spontaneous Grassroots Group It Claims To Be—showed that the organization Never Again Action, a group claiming that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates Nazi-esque "concentration camps" and must thus be "shut down", is not the immigration-focused coalition it purports to be.

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.

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.

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.

Founded three years ago, Canary Mission is an anonymous organization that documents and exposes antisemitism and anti-Israel animus on America’s colleges and universities. By compiling online dossiers and a searchable database of the activities and the publicly-available statements and social media postings of anti-Israel activists, Canary Mission exposes the vitriolic rantings of people affiliated with the anti-Israel BDS movement, particularly on campuses.

Last week the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s official summer camping arm, the National Ramah Commission (NRC), pledged not to partner with an activist group of Ramah camp alumni affiliated with the far-left “IfNotNow” (INN) group. In a letter distributed on June 11th to its institutional partners, whose programs this summer include more than 11,000 children and staff members in the U.S., Canada and Israel, the leaders of Camp Ramah explicitly noted that they will “not engage in any way” with INN as an organization.

Today (May 14) the U.S. embassy will officially move from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital city. The move, widely regarded as historic and “momentous” for Israel and the Jewish people, will coincide with the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence 70 years ago on the Gregorian calendar. It also comes one day after Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim), which marks the reunification of the city during the 1967 Six Day War, and the return of Jewish heritage and holy sites to Jewish sovereignty.

In the saturated arena of anti-Israel political activism in the U.S., the once little-known Washington D.C.-based organization IfNotNow (INN) is catapulting its way to the forefront of the pack. In one of its boldest moves, IfNotNow is planning to train camp counselors to "teach" campers at Jewish summer camps about the Israeli "occupation." Given IfNotNow's politics, described below, the teaching without a doubt will be anti-Israel. Parents who are sending their children to Jewish summer camps, motivated in part by establishing their children's connection to Israel, will be undermined without knowing it and probably without the camp administration's knowledge.

Last week the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee concluded its hearings regarding the confirmation of Kenneth L. Marcus, President Trump’s pick for the position of Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights. We noted in a post back in October, when the White House first announced the nomination, that Marcus is extraordinarily qualified for the job and is an excellent pick for heading the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Trump appoints attorney who combats antisemitism to key civil rights post.

We wrote recently about the Black Lives matter platform statement (under the name MB4L: Movement for Black Lives) and, in particular the “Invest-Divest section,” which attacks Israel and accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ and being an ‘apartheid state’. As reported, the statement was condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Boston, and the Anti-Defamation League. Subsequent condemnations were issued by the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism, as well as the more left-wing J-Street (the liberal “pro-Israel, pro-Peace” lobby group), and T’ruah: the rabbinic call for human rights.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is a non-Jewish organization that gives cover to the anti-Israel boycott movement (BDS) and its political war on Israel by washing away the stains of anti-Semitism that are central to the BDS movement’s founding, actions and identity. As we noted in a prior post, JVP operates in multiple arenas to exploit Jewish culture and traditions, putting them into service for a vehemently anti-Israel propaganda campaign:
In its written materials and presentations, JVP reinforces that its anti-Israel positions are consistent with Jewish values. Toward this end, it usurps the Jewish life cycle and religious holidays by incorporating anti-Israel themes into traditional celebratory and commemorative events”.
This JVP identity theft of Jewish heritage and narrative is particularly visible at Passover, which begins April 22 this year.

After the United Church of Christ passed an Israel divestment resolution on June 30, 2015, there was concern that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement might score three victories at church annual meetings this week. But that did not happen. The Mennonite Church USA tabled the divestment resolution, and the Episcopal Church House of Bishops voted it down overwhelmingly on a voice vote (I listened, and there were almost zero people shouting "yes" and a loud chorus of "No"). AP reported on the Mennonite vote:
A leading Mennonite group has delayed a decision on divesting from companies with business tied to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Mennonite Church USA was set to vote this week on whether they should sell off stock in companies "known to be profiting from the occupation" and from "destruction of life and property" in the territories. A church spokeswoman said delegates at a national meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, voted 418-336 to table the resolution until their next assembly two years from now. Twenty-eight delegates abstained.