NEW YORK — Sixty people attended a Militant Labor Forum here March 10 to address “The fight against Jew-hatred today. Defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews.”
Speakers included Columbia University Professor Shai Davidai; Seth Galinsky, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and a writer for the Militant; Joanne Kuniansky, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey; and Ariana Pinsker-Lehrer, a graduate student at the Columbia School of Social Work.
Earlier that day more than 2,000 people rallied and marched in Central Park here demanding Hamas release all the remaining hostages taken during its Oct. 7 murderous pogrom against Jews in Israel. The action was sponsored by more than 50 Jewish organizations to mark 150 days since the hostages were kidnapped.
“For the past five months I have been speaking against antisemitism on college campuses,” Davidai said, stating that anti-Jewish statements and acts are tolerated by the Columbia administration. “We need to get people who aren’t involved right now to join this fight.”
In retaliation for his activity, Davidai is being targeted by Columbia’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action. “It’s an internal investigation, so the university acts as judge, jury and executioner,” he said. But harassment by Hamas supporters and the school haven’t shut him up. “I’m willing to pay the price for speaking out. The price for not speaking out is higher.”
Davidai said he saw a similarity between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Donald Trump in the U.S., both of whom he disdains.
Kuniansky described how she and campaign supporters joined in a two-month fight in the Wayne, New Jersey, City Council against a resolution — which ultimately passed — demanding the Joseph Biden administration “facilitate a cease-fire and urgently end the conflict.” Ending the war in Gaza without defeating Hamas will only embolden the reactionary Islamist forces and lead to more pogroms, she explained.
Kuniansky said she explains to her co-workers and others why the fight against Jew-hatred is a life-and-death question for the unions and working people everywhere. “When capitalism is in crisis, the rulers scapegoat Jews to blind workers and divert our attention from our real enemy — capitalism,” she said. “When rising working-class struggles threaten their rule, the rulers turn to fascist thugs who will fight under the banner of Jew-hatred to beat down the working class and crush the unions.
“After the Oct. 7 pogrom, I spoke to nurses on their picket line down in New Brunswick,” Kuniansky said. She joined their picketing several times. Many were interested in why the fight against Jew-hatred was an important question for all workers, she said. “These are the alliances we need to build.”
Pro-Hamas supporters at Columbia, Pinsker-Lehrer said, “are a very vocal minority.” She had disagreed with the school administration’s refusal to give permission to Hamas apologists at the School of Social Work to hold a meeting in December to support the “Palestinian counteroffensive.”
When the group then held their meeting in the school lobby, Pinsker-Lehrer went and took the floor to challenge the group’s support for the Oct. 7 massacre. Referring to the Jews, Muslims, Christians and others who live in Israel and Palestine, she told them, “There are 14 million people ‘between the river and the sea,’ and none of them are going anywhere.”
“There are so many ways to support Palestinians without dehumanizing Jews,” she said.
“Three years ago no one would have expected to see the first large-scale ground war in Europe in 75 years, which started with the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Galinsky said. “Or that the largest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust would happen in Israel. But there’s no going back to the world before these events.”
Defenders of Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews need to answer the lies and distortions of Hamas supporters, whose call for a cease-fire is intended to gain time for the Tehran-backed outfit to rebuild and launch new pogroms, he said. “Ariana’s goal wasn’t to win the Hamas supporters over, but to win the majority who are still undecided.”
Galinsky explained it was the failure of the mass Socialist and Stalinized Communist parties in Germany to build a united front to take on the Nazi thugs that led to Hitler taking power.
“For us, defense of an unfettered right to free speech is crucial. Calls to shut your opponents down, no matter how distasteful their remarks are, will only be taken by the authorities and be used against opponents of Jew-hatred, the unions and other working-class organizations,” he said.
Galinsky pointed to a comment Davidai made, saying he saw a similarity between Netanyahu in Israel and Donald Trump in the U.S., both of whom he dislikes. The SWP says it was a victory for working people when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Colorado decision barring Trump from the ballot. “We have to defend constitutional rights,” Galinsky said.
“As long as capitalism exists, Jew-hatred will exist,” Galinsky added. “That’s why we have to build revolutionary working-class parties that bring together workers, whatever their religion or nationality, in the United States, in Israel, in Palestine, and elsewhere. Taking power out of the hands of the dog-eat-dog capitalist system will open the door to ending Jew-hatred and all other forms of oppression, forever.”
At the end of the program Galinsky urged participants to join in defending Davidai in the face of Columbia’s witch hunt.
Many participants stayed long after the program and lively discussion period to keep talking about the questions they raised. Students, staff members and professors from Columbia University, Hunter College and University of Southern Connecticut discussed concrete challenges they faced from Hamas supporters in bringing this debate to campus. They also discussed ways to broaden the discussion to include workers and unionists in the area.
Gaza cease-fire debated at Allegheny County Council
PITTSBURGH — At a March 5 Allegheny County Council meeting fighters against Jew-hatred helped defeat a resolution calling on Washington to step up pressure on Israel to carry out a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
The debate was “not about helping victims of war, but about whether Israel has a right to exist,” Julie Paris, Mid-Atlantic regional director of StandWithUs, said. Over five hours, 140 area residents spoke for the resolution and 72 against, before it was voted down.
Supporters of the resolution accused Israel of being an “apartheid” state, slandering it for perpetrating “genocide.” They were answered by opponents of Jew-hatred.
Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom, “there has been an ongoing and deliberate campaign of misinformation, attempting to portray the attackers as victims and the victims as perpetrators,” Moshe Nadoff told the meeting. Council member Bethany Hallam, who introduced the resolution, had posted — and later withdrew — comments celebrating Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.
“Hamas does not believe in a permanent cease-fire,” said Charles Saul. “They believe in pauses where they can regroup, rearm and refire, each time with more lethal weapons.”
“Many of my relatives are still in Israel,” Margaret Fischer said. “Every family member knows someone who was raped, burned alive, tortured or taken captive by Hamas. By asking for a cease-fire, you are asking for Hamas to succeed.”
“Some of those calling for a cease-fire in Gaza deny the facts of what happened on Oct. 7,” said Candace Wagner, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress. “The silence is deafening about the rape and mutilation of women and girls. Hamas attackers’ own body cams livestreamed this violence.
“Hamas’ backers, the Iranian regime, are leading an ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel,” she said. “They all share the Iranian rulers’ hatred of Jews.”
— Kathie Fitzgerald
Communist League denounces anti-Jewish threats in Montreal
MONTREAL — Over 100 Hamas supporters waving Palestinian flags mobilized here to shut down a panel of three reservists from the Israel Defense Forces. The meeting had been scheduled to take place at Concordia University, but was moved to a nearby building housing the Montreal Holocaust Museum and offices of the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal, because university officials cancelled the campus event on the excuse that “security” could not be guaranteed.
Pro-Hamas campus forces gathered at the new site March 4, threatening all those who wanted to participate.
“This was an outrageous act of Jew-hatred,” Katy LeRougetel, the Communist League candidate in the upcoming Montreal federal by-election in LaSalle-Emard-Verdun, said in a statement.
The IDF reservists are on a Canada-wide tour speaking on “The Israeli Perspective Coming to Life,” as part of “the fight against the delegitimization of Israel.” The event was organized by student groups Startup Nation, Hillel and Diploact, a Jewish outreach organization.
The Jew-hating attack was called by the Concordia chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, which said the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel was “an unfaltering desire for liberation.” Last November supporters of this group attacked Jewish students on campus who had set up an information table about the hostages Hamas is holding.
SPHR Concordia boasted they had won an important “victory” in forcing university authorities to “shut down the genocidal Zionist event.”
In the aftermath of the attack, several Montreal Jewish organizations won a 10-day court injunction barring a series of pro-Hamas organizations from demonstrating within 165 feet of the Holocaust Museum and other Jewish community buildings.
“Relying on the capitalist cops and courts weakens the fight against Jew-hatred,” LeRougetel told the Militant March 8. “Court injunctions like these are used by employers to undermine workers’ right to picket effectively during strikes, like the one waged by 350 Transco school bus drivers.
“We need to rely on the mobilized strength of our own organizations to defend our right to free speech and assembly,” she said. “Winning the unions to the fight against Jew-hatred is a life-and-death question for the working class.
— John Steele