The new definition of antisemitism is transforming America – and serving a Christian nationalist plan

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Written by Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona

Published: 23 March 2025 23 March 2025

Redefining antisemitism in the law was never about Jewish safety. It is about consolidating authoritarian power under the veneer of minority protection....

The establishment clause of the US constitution, for instance, prohibits the state from intervening in religious disputes. By adopting the IHRA definition into law, the US government has in effect taken sides in an intra-Jewish debate, recruiting Zionist Jews to side in a war against its ideological opponents. The redefinition of antisemitism is therefore not only an attack on political dissent – it is an intrusion into Jewish religious life. By codifying support for Israel as a requirement for being Jewish, these laws function as a state intervention in an ongoing Jewish theological and ethical debate.

By pushing against the legal redefinition of antisemitism, Jews can refuse to surrender their identity to the state. By continuing to anchor it firmly in their communities, they can resist the instrumentalization of Judaism against others.

Reclaiming religious freedom from the state, as part of this act of resistance, would not just protect Jewish dissenters – it would offer a broader framework for resisting state attempts to control religious identity. No government – not the Israeli government, and surely not the American government – should have the power to define what it means to be a Jew.

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Israeli settler violence is rapidly emptying Jordan Valley of Palestinians

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Written by Dikla Taylor-Sheinman and Georgia Gee | +972 Magazine Dikla Taylor-Sheinman and Georgia Gee | +972 Magazine

Published: 21 March 2025 21 March 2025

Khirbet Samra is one of the last Palestinian shepherding communities in the West Bank’s eastern flank. State-backed settler militias are driving them out.

From large-scale livestock theft, to home raids and beatings, the violence and displacement spiked in the Jordan Valley after the Israeli military launched “Operation Iron Wall” in January — an offensive that has displaced more than 40,000 Palestinians, primarily in northern West Bank refugee camps — the day after U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

“It’s very systematic and well planned,” explained Dror Etkes, founder of the Israeli organization Kerem Navot, which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank. Trump’s return and the new military assault in the West Bank, Etkes continued, provided “a clear sign for the settlers to escalate their violence to expel more Palestinians.”

Now, Israel’s takeover of the Jordan Valley is almost complete. Khirbet Samra is located east of the Allon Road, a north-south highway Israel built in the 1970s to connect settlements and lay the groundwork to annex the territory east of the road, which runs along the border with Jordan. But while Israel has been working for decades to ethnically cleanse the Jordan Valley, over the past two years, it has accelerated its efforts at an alarming pace: 100,000 dunams of land east of the Allon Road have been nearly emptied of Palestinians, according to a forthcoming joint report by Yesh Din, an Israeli anti-occupation nonprofit organization, and Physicians for Human Rights Israel.

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Urgent Action: Demand the Immediate Release of Palestinian Student Activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention

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Written by Deportation Defense Deportation Defense

Published: 10 March 2025 10 March 2025

Sign Here! https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention

Note: If you are not a citizen, please do not provide your real name in the "First Name" and "Last Name" fields for your security.

Israel developing ChatGPT-like tool that weaponizes surveillance of Palestinians

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Written by Yuval Abraham | 972mag.com Yuval Abraham | 972mag.com

Published: 09 March 2025 09 March 2025

The Israeli army is building an AI language model using millions of intercepted conversations between Palestinians, which could accelerate the process of incrimination and arrest, a joint investigation reveals.

“AI amplifies power,” an intelligence source who has closely followed the Israeli army’s development of language models in recent years explained. “It allows operations [utilizing] the data of far more people, enabling population control. This is not just about preventing shooting attacks. I can track human rights activists. I can monitor Palestinian construction in Area C [of the West Bank]. I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing. When you hold so much data, you can direct it toward any purpose you choose.”

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One source described a language model currently in use that scans data and identifies Palestinians using words that indicate “troublemaking.” The source added that the army has used language models to predict who might throw stones at soldiers during operations to “demonstrate presence” — when soldiers raid a town or village in the West Bank and go door to door, storming into every house on a particular street to conduct arrests and intimidate residents. 

Intelligence sources stated that the use of these language models alongside large-scale surveillance in the occupied territories has deepened Israel’s control over the Palestinian population and significantly increased the frequency of arrests. Commanders can access raw intelligence translated into Hebrew — without needing to rely on Unit 8200’s language centers to provide the material, or knowing Arabic themselves — and select “suspects” for arrest from an ever-growing list in every Palestinian locality. “Sometimes it’s just a division commander who wants 100 arrests per month in his area,” one source said.

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