This Week’s Topline

Antisemitism in the Classroom

While concerns about antisemitism on campus have grabbed headlines, Jewish students are also facing a dramatic increase of antisemitism and marginalization in K-12 schools since October 7.

We are using advocacy and education to help Jewish students and allies feel safe at school and in the classroom, and we’ve launched a new online section for you that brings together lots of tactics and resources in one place.

This new ADL tool has helpful information for Parents and Caregivers, Educators and Administrators, ranging from how to have a conscientious conversation about the Israel-Palestine conflict to strategies for supporting Jewish students in the classroom to responding to bias incidents in your school.

What’s News

ADL is Heard on the Hill: As antisemitism rises at an alarming rate, ADL needs lawmakers on our side to support policies that will make our communities safer. This Tuesday, ADL hosted a virtual ADL Lobby Day so U.S. Senators could hear from their own constituents on ADL priorities, including the Countering Antisemitism Act, Antisemitism Awareness Act, Nonprofit Security Grant Program and the Protecting Students on Campus Act. We hosted 53 meetings, connecting hundreds of volunteers from the ADL communities in 31 states with their Senators.
→ If you’d like to add your voice to this week’s Lobby Day, please take a moment to click here to urge Congress to support Jewish students — and all students — by passing the Protecting Students on Campus Act.

Happy Anniversary: As we mark the one-year anniversary of the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, ADL welcomes the Biden Administration’s announcement of a second year of the landmark strategy, which now includes several additional commitments. ADL played a key role in shaping the National Strategy, providing more than 30 policy recommendations to the White House, and we were proud to join a recent White House roundtable to discuss the progress made thus far, including partnerships ADL has created with several federal agencies. We heard directly from President Biden and Second Gentleman Emhoff about their commitment to the Jewish community, our ally Israel, and fully enacting the National Strategy during a Jewish American Heritage Month event. To help further solidify the key policies of the National Strategy, ADL led a Jewish communal unity letter to House Speaker Johnson and Democratic Leader Jeffries in support of the Countering Antisemitism Act, which was signed by 61 organizations from a wide political and ideological spectrum.

“AI Propaganda for Fun”: The ADL Center on Extremism explains how extremists are using Generative Artificial Intelligence to camouflage hate via disturbing memes and images that are showing up on social media. Innovations have enabled the use of AI image generators for nefarious purposes, including the ability to embed antisemitic and otherwise extremist shapes, symbols and phrases, including calls for violence, into innocuous images.
→ Read the new ADL report for alarming examples of how members of the antisemitic hate network Goyim Defense League and others are coopting these new tech tools to spread hate.

Making Progress This Week

All across Europe, students and other young people in Jewish communities are learning constructive and effective ways to respond to antisemitism with ADL. We’ve trained over 2,100 Jewish youth and young adults in Europe through Words to Action trainings given by trainers in 23 countries in 22 languages since 2022. This program, which provides interactive tools for responding to antisemitism, is crucial given the rise in antisemitism post-Oct. 7 and the anti-Israel encampments on campuses in many countries. WATCH this new ADL video to learn more about the success of Words to Action in Europe. If you’d like to bring Words to Action to your community, read more about the program in Europe here, and in the United States here.

Social Spotlights

@JGreenblattADL

We have warned time and again that calls for intifada and similar expressions legitimizing terrorism are dangerous, even explosive. Frankly, it’s hard to describe a gathering as peaceful when it celebrates violence and espouses confrontation. So this ugly action at @UChiPolitics and the inflammatory rhetoric of the activists is not surprising given the rabid antisemitism and rationalization of physical force at anti-Israel encampments in @UChicago, @NorthwesternU & @DepaulU. But this isn’t just a problem for @UChicago. The normalization of violence is a crisis for all institutions, for all cities, and for the entire country. Letting this happen isn’t just a bad precedent. It’s a guarantee for even worse escalation. More from ADL.

@ADL

Through compelling student voices, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Report has documented the scope and breadth of antisemitism that has permeated academic, social and campus life @Harvard well before 10/7. The Report should serve as Exhibit A for the Task Force on Antisemitism, and its recommendations — particularly those urging uniform enforcement of its codes of conduct — merit immediate attention. Read the audit.

@ADL

The ICC’s prosecutor’s announcement is a shameful, brazenly political assault against the Jewish state. We urge the ICC judges to reject the prosecutor’s morally corrupt anti-Israel recommendation. Israel’s actions against Hamas are a just war of self-defense and Israel has proven willing and able to investigate and prosecute even the slightest deviations from its stringent rules of ethics, which often go further than its obligations under international law. The ICC’s accusations, including that Israel is exterminating and deliberately starving Palestinians, are unfounded and feed into a broader anti-Israel narrative plaguing international institutions. Furthermore, the ICC’s prosecutor’s decision to link this baseless action against Israeli leaders to the justified arrest of Hamas’s genocidal leaders — who orchestrated the brutal and sadistic Oct. 7th attack — serves to undermine the ICC’s credibility and significance. News Link.

@ ADL’s Incident Tracker

The @ADL_tracker feed of news and developments in antisemitism activities.

An Israeli tourist was brutally beaten in a train station in Bruges — and it wasn’t an isolated incident. We’ve seen violent attacks against Jews and Israelis around the world in recent weeks. Belgium authorities must find and prosecute the perpetrators. News Link.

— May 21, 2024 Read the full post

Toronto synagogue windows smashed for second time in a month. News Link.

— May 20, 2024 Read the full post

On Thursday, anti-Israel activists at @UCBerkeley vandalized a building they took over. But they didn’t leave messages of peace or coexistence. Instead, they wrote: “A good soldier is a dead one” and “Zionism is Nazism” with imagery equating the Star of David with a swastika.

— May 19, 2024 Read the full post