In the United States, it is not illegal to be an antisemite.
Hating Jews and hating Israel is deplorable, but it is not a deportable offense.
Understanding this allows for making sense of what is really happening in the US regarding the deportation of what some call pro-Palestinian activists, the same people whom others prefer to label anti-Israel protesters.
It should also be noted that the laws protecting freedom of speech and the freedom to protest in the United States are far more expansive than they are in most other democracies around the world.
Take Germany, as an example. After World War II, Germany established limits to speech and made it illegal to publicly speak, promote, propagate, promulgate, or write anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred. Freedom of speech is limited. The framers of German law felt it necessary to restrict their freedom of speech given their country’s history and the rise of Hitler. To this day, those laws are aggressively enforced.
The UK and Canada, too, have serious restrictions on their freedom of speech.
Even in Israel, for security and other reasons, there are limits to expression, and there is a very aggressive military sensor.
The fact is that the United States is one of the most liberal protectors of freedom of expression.
Voltaire was a notorious hater of Jews. I do not quote him often, but I make an exception for a quote that was attributed to him but actually fabricated by historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall, whose pen name was S.G. Tallentyre.
Voltaire died in 1778. The earliest evidence of this quote appeared 128 years later, in 1906, in a volume Tallentyre wrote entitled The Friends of Voltaire. She was writing about a book entitled De l’esprit (On the Mind) that was universally panned – even in France’s Parliament and the Sorbonne. In her writing, Hall, aka Tallentyre, wrote of Voltaire’s reaction upon discovering that the book had been burned.
As if Voltaire was speaking, she wrote that the acclaimed philosopher, historian, and satirist exclaimed: “What a fuss about an omelette! How abominably unjust to persecute a man for such an airy trifle as that! I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”
Years later, she admitted to fabricating the quote, yet those words live on and on. Such is the power of freedom of speech.
Still there are limits on supporting terror groups, for student visa, green card holders
In the United States, that freedom extends even to people you vehemently disagree with. And yet, there are still limits.
Those limits extend to student visa holders and green card holders who – to be eligible for those visas and cards – signed that they would not act against US interests or support US enemies.
There are also limits to supporting terror groups – like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Those limitations extend even to US citizens.
In the United States, supporting or receiving support for or from a terrorist group is a federal crime and a serious crime at that.
What does “support” mean? The term often tossed around is “material support,” meaning either giving or receiving something substantive or tangible to or from a terror group, which is defined by being on one of the two lists in the State Department or the White House.
Hamas is on both those lists.
The applicable federal law is 18 US Code 2339B: Providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations. The section that is important for our discussion is section “h”: Provision of Personnel.
“No person may be prosecuted under this section in connection with the term “personnel” unless that person has knowingly provided, attempted to provide, or conspired to provide a foreign terrorist organization with one or more individuals (who may be or include himself) to work under that terrorist organization’s direction or control or to organize, manage, supervise, or otherwise direct the operation of that organization.
“Individuals who act entirely independently of the foreign terrorist organization to advance its goals or objectives shall not be considered to be working under the foreign terrorist organization’s direction and control.”
It is obvious to anyone and everyone who watched the footage or saw the still images of the protests that have plagued the streets and campuses across the United States that they were centrally organized and that they followed the identical play book. Identical signs, identical leaflets, identical chants, and slogans.
The protests were not just anti-Israel protests; they were pro-Hamas protests.
Being anti-Israel is not illegal. Supporting Hamas in an organized fashion that has links to Hamas is a violation of US Code 2339B. That’s the crucial point.
It is not and should not be a question of freedom of speech but one of support for terror groups. Deport those who can be deported; prosecute those who violate this law.
The writer is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Watch Thinking Out Loud, his TV show on the Jewish Broadcasting Syndicate.