A New 5 Point Plan for Fighting Antisemitism on the Ground and in the Courts Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah:  Good afternoon in the United States and good evening here in Israel. Today we’re extremely honored to host Professor Jeffrey Lax. He’s the chairman of the department of business at a City university of New York, and a professor of law. Jeffrey has debated Peter Barnard and has appeared on Fox TV with Maria Bartiromo on Piers Morgan on Fox Business, on Newsmax, on News [inaudible], on Court tv, on law and crime network, on Scripts tv and more. He’s written for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, JNS, the Algemeiner Journal and Publications. He is also the founder of Safe Campus, a 501c 3 that advocates for Zionist Jews on campus. First of all, Jeffrey you have done so much, and for those of us that don’t know, can you tell a little bit about your lawsuit against the city university of New York?

Jeffrey Lax: Well, this has been going on for years. The City University of New York, as many know, is an absolute disgrace. It’s full of antisemitic rot from top to bottom. They are the largest urban public university in the entire country. We have 240,000 students. I went there myself when it was a haven for Jewish people and since then they have become quite the opposite from the very top. We have a report that came out Safe Campus did in 2023 that declared them the most anti-Semitic University in the United States, which I very much believe that they are. As of 2023 they had zero senior administrators that were Jewish, zero in a city that is almost 20% Jewish. It was formed as a university in 1961. It’s incredible to think that you can go from having 12, 13, 14 Jewish senior administrators that are Jewish to zero. It’s not possible to do unless it’s methodical and purposeful, and we know that it was. That’s also true of the individual campuses. The 25 individual campuses also have virtually zero Jewish senior administrators.

It is also true of the students they stopped recruiting at Jewish schools, which they had done for decades as of 2023. The top chief diversity officer at the university is Saly Abd Alla who is a former Director of Care Minnesota. Now most people have heard of care. What a lot of people may not know is Care Minnesota is one of the worst chapters of care, if not the worst. In fact, Care Central has distanced itself from Care Minnesota, and she led the BDS movement at that campus. She is the head of protecting Jewish people at cuny overseeing antisemitism investigations. She was even assigned to my complaint based on antisemitism until I complained about it and said can you be objective about this? You are a BDS activist and a vowed anti-Zionist. My complaint is based on Zionism and they finally removed her. But my complaint has never been even addressed or investigated. It’s anti-Semitic rot at cuny, but mirrors really what’s going on around the country. I will say that I’ve been warning about this for a decade.

I understood because I was seeing it. I was positioned as a department chair, as an insider and an officer at my college to see what was going on in the hiring, to see what the thought process was at cuny. And I had great contacts throughout the university and I knew that this was a methodical thing that was being done purposefully. To see the sausage being made as a particular kind of evil to be able to witness and watch. So I knew this combination of Islamist Marxism has been going on for a very long time at the university level. I knew it was coming to the streets of the United States and we know obviously across the world as well, and I wish I was wrong but unfortunately we see what’s happening now everywhere. That was happening on the campuses, yes, it eventually ends up on the streets.

Sarah: Nobody personifies this better than Mayor Mamdani. Could you explain a little bit of [inaudible] Mayor Mamamdani?

Jeffrey: Well, mayor Mamdani is an anti-Semite. I am not going to mince words or talk around it. First of all, let’s talk about his wife. People say his wife is out of bounds. Why? If I married someone and suddenly when we get married, I found out that she hates black people, guess what? I’m not going to stay married to that person. If I found out she hate Muslims, I would not stay married to that person. If I found out obviously, that she was an antisemite, I wouldn’t stay married to her. If somebody that I was very close to goes on social media and celebrates the most horrific event that has happened to you since the Holocaust, and I don’t need to repeat it. I hope children are watching, but we know the horrors. I don’t want to mention them again here because they’re so horrifically horrible what happened on October 7th. But for his wife to go on there and celebrate them by liking posts that celebrate them, you cannot disconnect from your wife unless you divorce your wife then. Or at least condemn her, which he has not done. We all know the truth. We all know he supports everything she believes in. They’re married, they’re still married. They seem very happy. They seem perfectly suited for one another, quite frankly.

But Mamdani himself when the Park East Synagogue event happened, he showed his cards quite clearly right away. You had Jews who were being prevented from going into their synagogue and what did Mamdani he say he blamed the victims. He blamed the Jewish congregants. Why? Because, my God they had an event where they talked about Israel. Well, how despicable they are to blame for the harassment they’re facing. So I’m glad to see that the New York City Council, who is unbelievably left wing, but even they understand the dangers of these views that Mamdani has been expressed and they have now passed a law which protects places of worship from what happened at Park East Synagogue. But Mamdani has vetoed part of that bill, which applies to schools, for example. So Mamdani apparently believes it’s okay to block kids from going to schools, I guess, if they support Israel, I guess. So that is despicable and hopefully the city council will have enough to override that. But I don’t know if they have enough votes to override the veto we’ll see.

Sarah: In the past you wrote an article saying that the word antisemitism is close to a disaster, but it’s become part of our national parlance. How do we replace this word?

Jeffrey: It’s funny you brought that up, but for anybody watching this was not planned we didn’t rehearse any of this. But that’s a perfect segue into, I think, the heart of what we’re going to talk about today. For me, this journey in terms of our side. How should we be handling all of this? I’m really switching major gears in my life. My whole life I have stopped. I just like did one of those hard hockey stops on the ice. I don’t want to be going on Fox News every other day and Newsmax and all these things that I’ve been doing in Piers Morgan and Aaron Mate all these. Because my original goal was to let the world know what was going on. My hope was that it would stop. That I’ll help be a part of getting this to end. That has obviously not happened. It’s still going on inflamed and getting worse around the world. So at this point I’ve come to realize that like a lot of people I think, that we need to protect ourselves. We all have our own jobs. We are all in this together, Zionist Jews, Jewish people around the world are in this together.

It’s funny. For me, this started mentally years ago. You brought up one of my favorite op-eds actually, that I wrote for the Jewish press a long time ago. I never liked the word antisemitism. Because nobody knows what it means. If you ask 10 different Jews, what does antisemitism mean? You’ll inevitably get 10 different answers for sure. If you get two of the same, I’d be shocked. I don’t know what it means. Actually it’s been used against us many times and my crazy union in my university the socialist Marxist, Islamist lunatics, say you can’t even use. They actually say this in their meetings. We have secretly documented and recorded meetings of theirs. Maybe they’ll see this video, but they should know already. We’ve been tipped off by many people because there are some good people in every bad place believe it or not and they come to us. But they have argued that Jews shouldn’t even be able to use antisemitism because Arabs are semites too.

They don’t even want us to use the one word we have to talk about how we are treated and disparately acted upon by different leadership, government and colleges and whatever it may be. They don’t even want to let us have that word. But it’s a bad word. First of all, you can’t use the word in court. You can’t go to court and say I’m suing based on antisemitism. The word has no legal meaning whatsoever. And so that’s part of what I want to talk about today. What is antisemitism? It’s a long conversation. Like what really is it? Who are Jews? Even the top legal professor in this country have stated over and over again one of the biggest problems that we have in courts is that Jews don’t fit very nicely and cleanly into a protected class. Like if you’re a black person and you’re discriminated against based on your color, it’s very easy to go into court and argue what your protected class is. Everyone understands what being black means. Very few people, including Jews, understand what it means to be a Jew.

Very few people. If you ask someone, what does being Jewish mean, again, you’ll get 10 different answers. I bet you, you get a hundred different answers from a hundred different people. Three years ago, it took me three years to do something that really seems very simple when you see it and I can’t wait to present it to your viewers. But it’s actually very complicated figuring out exactly who we are. I think I’ve discovered something. I don’t think I invented it. I think I discovered something, which is that Jews are a very specific group of categories that are protected by the law, and I can’t wait to go through it with your viewers today.

Sarah: This is wonderful. I know you’ve identified five groups of Jews and how we can successfully fight Jew hatred in the courts. Can you explain to our group who we all are?

Jeffrey: Would you like me to share my screen.

Sarah: Sure.

Jeffrey: I’m going to do a little sort of narrative here. This is your show, so you tell me.

Sarah: Go ahead. screen share I think it would be really informative, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: I have a little slideshow, so if you allow me to go through it I will do that. Is that viewable? How to win the war against anti-Zionist and antisemitic discrimination. So here’s the problem. The problem is previously lawyers and antisemitism victims really have had trouble describing and putting Jewish people into clearly defined categories. Most recently I heard Professor Rona Kaufman, who is brilliant and who I’m hoping to contact. We sort of been trying to get in touch with each other. She was on elect another brilliant scholar in this area who’s done amazing work. She was on Naxlex a wonderful podcast. I highly recommend the podcast to anybody who has not watched that you should. At the very beginning of the podcast, she was about to talk about something that I’m also going to talk about, which is the Stand with us versus MIT case. Which unfortunately has put Jewish people in a tough situation right now. We’re going to talk about that and how to get out of it. But one of the things that Professor Kaufman said was, Jews are not clearly defined. It’s hard to put Jews into a clearly defined, protected class under the law.

I have good news for Professor Kaufman. I think I figured it out. And here’s the basic synopsis and then we’ll go into it. Both within our society and so not just the legal system, but it’s also true in our society and everyday life. Jews fall into five categories. It took me three years to figure this out, which is crazy. You’re going to see how simple it is and how beautiful it is. But it took me three years to really figure this out because I worked from both sides. Sometimes I work backwards, sometimes I look forwards. Like sometimes I look at what the law is and I try to get the to the answer based on that. And sometimes I look at what the problem is and I try to get to the legal answer. In this case, this is very complicated because I wanted both to happen simultaneously. I wanted the real life situation who are Jews really in real life every day, as people. I wanted people to see what I’m about to present and say, yeah, I am one of those groups of people. But I also wanted the law to apply. I looked at it from a two-way approach and unbelievably miraculously, the two different sides connected, 100% aligned.

There are five different categories and we can win the war. We can. We can win the war on anti-Zionism and also antisemitism by number one, understanding and applying those categories, which we’ll talk about in a minute, avoid falling into political traps. We’ll talk about that too. And asserting how the law protects the category or the categories that protect each victim of antisemitism. We have to use those categories. So the five categories that I’m about to go through we have to use them, we have to talk about those categories, how we fit into one of those categories, and how and why the law protects us in America. We’re talking about American discrimination law here in courts across the United States. So I’m about to go through those five categories. We’ll get a little drum roll here in the next slide. Now I call the five categories PRIZE. So easy to remember I think, and it’s funny, it was originally a different set of letters that made no sense. My nephew who was a Cooper Union Library student, and they settled recently which I was so excited about, he said to me, you know what, your letters are terrible.

Your speeches are awesome, but your letters are terrible. So I changed it. So luckily the categories did not change. It didn’t change any substance, but it’s a little bit more marable. This is a tribute to my nephew, Gabriel, for saying, you gotta come up with a better acronym for what you’re talking about. So the acronym is PRIZE, and here we go. Here are the five categories. The first category is practice Judaism. So again, what are we talking about here? We’re talking about the strategy for going into courts and saying what category am I? How am I classified by the law? And also who am I really as a Jewish person in the country? So one group of Jewish people are people who practice the religion. You don’t have to be orthodox. You don’t have to be conservative. Under American law, you only have to have a religious belief that is genuine. As long as you have a genuine religious belief that is protected under the law. So there’s many examples, and this is one that I think everybody is familiar with.

You can’t be discriminated based on practicing your religion. So obviously if you want the day off for Yom Kippur, that’s a reasonable accommodation in almost all situations. Obviously there are exceptions for emergency workers and stuff like that, but for the most part observers of the Sabbath or anything like that, you are entitled to a reasonable accommodation for those beliefs and those protections.
So that’s the p of practice Judaism. The second category of Jewish people is religious Zionism. So we’re going to talk about this in a couple minutes with the stamp with us versus MIT case in more detail. This is where we get a little complicated. But it’s very important. There are religious Zionists. I consider myself, and I know many of my friends consider themselves religiously Zionists. What does that mean? It’s really quite simple. Basically, you believe that what was stated in Genesis, in the Old Testament, in the Humash and the Torah, that Abraham had a conversation with God where the land of Israel was promised to his descendants. It’s really quite simple.

But if you go through the entire Torah, the entire Tanakh as applies to all of the books of the Torah not just the five books of Moses, the word Tzion, Zion is mentioned, I believe 152 times. It normally refers to Yoshlar, Jerusalem. It’s been there for thousands of years. This idea that Zionism started with Theodor Herzl is just not true. Zionism has existed for thousands of years before Herzl and has existed for 120 years since Herzl. The only time it was ever political was a short period of time when Theodor Herzl made it political. But it’s not political. People who refer to Herzl don’t understand what Zionism ever was or what it is today. I don’t know a single Jew today, not one. I’ve yet to meet one Zionist dude today who says I’m a Theodor Herzl Zionist. I believe in political Zionism and settling the land of Israel. No. The land of Israel is settled. We have a government in Israel. It is a sovereign nation. There is no Theodor Herzl Zionism today.

But just to get a little bit more detailed about religious Zionism, it just means that you have a religious belief that we are connected to the land of Israel and that God promised it to us. That’s it. If you look a little deeper, 204 out of the 613 commandments in the Bible require Israel. That’s amazing when you think about it. I didn’t do that research myself. I had a friend of mine who was a much more Scholared brilliant Torah scholar than I am, and he looked that up and did the research. This is an easy one. Israeli nationality. Obviously if you are an Israeli and you come to America and you become an American citizen, maybe you have dual citizenship, you are protected based on your nationality. That’s easy. Doesn’t need to be explained. Everyone I think would understand that. So that’s the I, PRIZ. Here’s the z. Zionist ethnicity. So what is ethnicity, first of all, under federal law really important to understand that under Title vi, which is any government funded organization, federal government funded organization, you have to abide by the rules of Title VI which prohibits discrimination.

Interestingly, Title VI is a little weird. It is different than, for example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects based on religion. Technically, Title VI doesn’t, although based on the Trump Executive Order from several years ago, it has been said that you can use it to protect Jews, but no one knows what Jews is until hopefully today’s webinar will help explain that. But what is Zionist ethnicity? So Zionist ethnicity is a class under federal law. It comes under national origin. So even though ethnicity is technically not named in the statute case law makes it abundantly clear that national origin protects ethnicity and sometimes race. Sometimes race, which is also a protected class under the Civil Rights Act also protects ethnicity. But it’s a little bit less often. If you’re a lawyer and you are filing a complaint
the pleadings very often just to protect yourself should probably contain both national origin. If you’re arguing ethnicity should contain both a national origin and race. Ethnicity is very simple. It connects culture, ancestry and other things too. Languages.

A shared culture, a shared ancestry, a shared language are all things that are ethnic. So Zionist ethnicity is a real thing. And for anyone who wonders, well, I’m not a religious Jew. I don’t eat kosher, I eat lobster. I don’t keep Shabbat, it doesn’t matter. You can be an ethnically Zionist Jew, and that is protected under federal city state law in every state.
Again, it’s heritage culture ancestry, you could have relatives there, you could speak Hebrew to your relatives there and have a real connection to the land of Israel. So that’s the Z. And then finally, E is being ethnically Jewish. This is really a really important one. So ethnically Jewish is, again, like ethnic Zionism. It applies to having cultural or ancestral connections to Judaism. So let’s focus on the ancestral connection for a second. If you have a father who’s Jewish or a grandmother who’s Jewish, you are ethnically Jewish. If you identify that way and you have an ancestor’s Jewish, you can certainly identify as being Jewish. There’s no question about it. You are entitled to protections under the law.

Here’s the thing with being ethnically Jewish. By the way, you don’t have to be in only one category. I look at this list and I find myself in several categories. I personally am a practicing Jew, I’m a religious Zionist, I’m not an Israeli, but I do also have a Zionist ethnicity. I’ve had family there. I speak the language, I share the culture and I’m also an ethnic Jew. But what are ethnic Jews? Because all my parents and my grandparents are Jewish. The problem with ethnic, this group, is that it’s very large. You could have anti-Zionists in this group. You could have a Jewish person who hates Zionism, who’s anti-Zionism, and who speaks against anti-Zionism. The beautiful thing about these five categories is it protects one category against the other. These are all defenses. None of these are to be used as a cudgel. These are not aggressive things. These are defenses. These are things saying we are protected based on this protection in the law. These are all ethnic or ethnic or I’m sorry. Religious or ethnic basically. Religious ethnic in the case of Israeli nationality protection. So we’ve seen it a million times.

Someone does something antisemitic or anti-Zionist and says, well, how can I be an antisemite? I’m Jewish. They are right. They may very well be ethnically Jewish. They may have a Jewish parent. They may celebrate holidays. It doesn’t matter. You can’t discriminate against a different category. I’m trying to get my mouse to work here. If you are in this category, you can’t discriminate against somebody in this category. So just because you are an ethnic Jew now you are perfectly
entitled to be protected against, let’s say a white nationalist like Hitler, who wants to come out and destroy you or a white nationalist today who wants to like Tucker Carlson, who wants to come out and destroy you. You can hate that person. You have a right to be defended against someone like that if they discriminate against you. But you also have an obligation. That is that you can’t discriminate against religious Jews or religious Zionists, israeli nationals and people who are ethnically Zionists. So that’s why I think it’s so important to have the five categories. Because these five categories, I can’t really stress this enough, these are who the Jews are today in society.

If someone out there is watching today and thinks of a sixth category, Hey, listen. I am open to this. I am not claiming I have the answer here. This is something I think I’ve discovered. I saw a great question a few months ago online somewhere was mathematics invented or discovered. I thought about it for a second. I’m like, that’s an interesting question. I came to the conclusion, my opinion is it was clearly discovered because two apples plus two apples is four apples. It’s a universal truth. You just need someone to explain it. So that’s how I feel about this. I think these five categories are universal truths. I think you have practicing Jews, I think you have legitimate religious Zionists, obviously you have Israelis, you have ethnic Zionists. Again, all these protected by ethnicity or religion or nationality, and you have people who are ethnically Jewish. So I think if you look at this list you fit into at least one of these categories if you’re Jewish.

Sarah: I fit into all of them. But what if you have someone like Peter Beinart or Jeremy Ben-Ami who want to discriminate against Zionist Jews and they would have a case against Zionist Jew. How do you respond to something like that?

Jeffrey: Well, again, these are protected classes. These aren’t to be used as swords. Again, this works from both sides. This, I think, describes who Jews are, the five different categories of Jews and I think this is a universal truth, I believe that. Again, I’m open to anybody watching this who wants to come in and say, you know what? I thought of a sixth one, or, I don’t like that one. That’s fine. I’m happy to speak to the person like that. But this is not to be used as a sword, this is to be used to protect yourself. I am in this category, it is clearly protected under American law, and you can’t come after me or discriminate against me based on my classification in one of these categories.

Sarah: Can you explain why this definition [inaudible] might possibly be superior to the IRA definition?

Jeffrey: Do you want me to close the screen for a moment?

Sarah: Sure.

Jeffrey: I don’t know if people like having it up or, but I’ll stop the share. If we have time, we may not have time. But I would love to go into the stand with us versus MIT case. I had a slide for that too.

Sarah: I think that’s great.

Jeffrey: Because I think that case is very important. But you asked an excellent question. Can you ask it again. Though I actually forgot the question. I lost you.

Sarah: [inaudible]

Jeffrey: No, I lost you. I’m sorry. I don’t have sound. Now I hear you.

Sarah: Can you explain why this definition might or might not be [inaudible] used international Holocaust members [crosstalk].

Jeffrey: The IRA. I don’t want to say superior. First of all, I support the IRA definition of antisemitism. The people who drafted IRA, I know some of them, they’re brilliant attorneys doing immensely impressive work. Some of them are very good friends of mine. I love them. IRA has its place in society. Certainly if we’re talking about geopolitical situations, global situations, international law, things of that nature, IRA is super important. It’s important to understand the double standard. Let me just give one example. The double standard that the UN, for example, among a million other entities has against Israel is despicable. They have what? Thousands of resolutions condemning Israel and how many against Iran? Five or something maybe less. It’s laughably ridiculous. It is obviously based on that it’s a Jewish state that is the only reason why this is happening, so it’s obviously antisemitic in nature. The thing with IRA is I find it very hard to use in court when you’re talking about a discrimination case. A judge wants to understand, you know how American discrimination law protects the plaintiff suing in a case.

You’re claiming, let’s say that you are a student you went into a classroom, your professor said, “Well, you are a Zionist pig I want you outta my classroom.” Now this student wants to sue. I think one of the dangers we have is I think people need to be careful about getting into a geopolitical discussion rather than focusing on how you were discriminated against. I think this is super important. If you watch all of the interviews I’ve ever done on any show I am very careful not to say the state of Israel. I think when I talk about discrimination against Jews here specifically in the United States, now obviously I went on Piers Morgan’s show and I discussed how Israel is not committing genocide. So as a moral issue and as an issue of international law you can get into that if you’re an expert in those areas and you feel comfortable doing that. But as a victim, as an average American who’s a victim of antisemitism, you have to be very careful from falling into that trap. Do not fall into the trap of saying the state of Israel when you don’t really mean the state of Israel.

What do I mean by that? Think about for a moment what your Zionism is. If you’ve never done it before, I would urge everyone to go back and think, what is my Zionism? What is it? What is it based on? I’m pretty sure that everybody watching this who’s a Zionist would not say for a moment that my Zionism is based on Benjamin Netanyahu being the Prime Minister or Ehud Barak being the Prime Minister or an Naftali Bennett being the Prime Minister. It really has nothing to do for us as a people with politics. I’m going to say something a little crazy here, so bear with me. It doesn’t even have to do with the Israeli government. And take this step further, it doesn’t even have to do with the Israeli government being in control of Israel. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that the Israeli government should not be in control of Israel. They are a sovereign state. There’s no Theodor Herzl let’s settle Israel. Israel is settled. It has a government and it’s a sovereign nation.

That should stand, and they are a moral sovereign nation. But that should not be part of the discussion if you are bringing a discrimination case in America because you are being discriminated against. You are falling into their trap. Don’t say the state of Israel, say you support the land of Israel. Because I think if you think about it, most people will say, what makes you a Zionist? That’s not the government of Israel. The Torah doesn’t talk about a government of Israel anywhere. You are supporting the land of Israel. So say the land of Israel or the people of Israel. Your Zionism is based on the people of Israel, the people who are connected to Israel and the land of Israel. So like I am super careful about that if I’m talking about discrimination in America. And when you have these horrific encampment, Gaza encampments all across the country at campuses, everywhere, and they’re torturing Jews on campus and keeping them out of classes, sometimes assaulting them and harassing them, and this is happening obviously nationally.

Do not engage in whether Israel is right or wrong. It might be very tempting because these people are screaming things that you know is not true. When people scream Israel is a genocidal state, when people scream that Israel is committing all sorts of settler colonial, apartheid. So we all know these things are true. The people on our side understand it’s true. I think I have proven this is true in multiple debates that I have had, but don’t be tempted by that unless you are meant to have some type of discussion about geopolitics. If you’re talking about discrimination, it is not relevant and all too often people get too into whether the state of Israel is right or wrong. Don’t do that. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. What they’re doing is treating you differently because of their worldviews and because of their prejudice against your protected class. So focus on that. Focus on your protected class, the prize. Focus on who you are, why they’re coming after you, why they pick on you, why are they bothering you? You’re not talking about politics, you’re not talking about Netanyahu, you’re not talking about genocide. There are times to have that discussion, morally, international law, et cetera. But for most of the time when we’re talking about discrimination in America, should not be talking about. I want to say also here, because I’d be terribly remiss if I didn’t say this. I love Stand with Us. I adore, Stand with Us. I think they’re one of the most phenomenal groups in the United States. I want to be super, super clear about that. I love Roz. I love what they’re doing. They’re phenomenal. But now there’s a case out there. Stand with Us versus MIT that did not go well for the Jewish people. One of the major reasons, first of all, we got bad judges and if I can, I’ll bring up my slide again. Can I do that?

Sarah: Sure.

Jeffrey: Because I think this goes further into this. Let me see. Can you see that?

Sarah: We can see it.

Jeffrey: Let me go to the next slide. This is applying the framework that we just went through. Stand with Us versus MIT. So first of all. This was a case that was brought in federal court under Title VI. Again, MIT they get federal funds from the government. Unfortunately this case we had bad judges for number one. So the district court was a Clinton appointed judge who really was a terrible, terrible judge. And then the first Circuit, an interestingly diverse panel, you had a Biden, Obama and a Bush appointee. That those were the judges. The judges universally did not understand the arguments that were being made. But I also have to say, and again, it’s painful for me because I love Stand with Us. But their lawyers I thought made very weak arguments. I also thought the case itself was not the strongest case we’ve had. But unfortunately what happened now is we have an appellate court decision, a circuit court decision, the first circuit in the United States that now has spoken, saying numerous things that are bad for Zionists.

First of all, let’s talk about what the plaintiffs argued. These were MIT students who were being harassed on campus, despicably. I do think they had a good case. Again, not the strongest case I’ve seen, but a good case. A case that could have been one potentially. But the plaintiffs define Zionism as, and I have it over here in bold, the belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland of Israel. So let’s think about that for a second. That is the most commonly shared definition that I’ve heard from legacy groups in the United States. I think that is the wrong way to explain Zionism if you’re going into court. That is not what Zionism is at all. Think about it for a second. What does that mean? That Jews have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland individual. Why can’t you apply that to Native Americans in America? Why can’t they come back now and then reclaim the land in America? Why can’t they do that? By the way, I’m not saying it’s not true. This statement is true. What I’m saying is it’s a terrible legal argument and is not helpful. The reason why I say that is because this only applies to, I believe, religious Jews.

People who believe that God promised the land to Israel. But guess what? Most Jews under the five categories we listed are not religious.
And they deserve protections too. They should be able to fight this in court against the people that harassed them at MIT. So this definition is very limiting and is not accurate. It doesn’t fit reality in my opinion, in terms of what Zionism really is. Where do we have that right to an ancestral homeland in Israel? Where is that God-given right given. Again, geopolitics are different. Arguing that Israel is a sovereign state and they have the right to protect themselves is a totally different thing than what we’re talking about in discrimination cases in the United States. So this argument, I think, is one that we need to get away from and talk more about the prize definitions that I listed before. I think also there was a mistake in focusing on the Middle East conflict. Again, this is what I talked about a couple of minutes ago. The lawyers for MIT, and again, I want to be friends with them. I want to meet with them, I want to talk with them. I love them. I adore them. I can’t say this with enough love.

I hate having to point out the mistakes, but if I don’t, how are we ever going to start winning these cases in appellate courts, which is super important. They talked way too much about the war on Gaza in this lawsuit. To me it was completely irrelevant. They shouldn’t have said one word about it. You can tell from the judge’s decision in the case they dismissed the case, the judges and then the first circuit, the appellate court affirmed that determination. You could tell that they weren’t buying into that argument. Because it’s a political argument. So, of course they’re not going to buy into that. So that’s why I think it’s not a good argument. The plaintiffs also contended that speech opposing Jewish self-determination is a racist endeavor or applying double standards. We talked about double standards a couple minutes ago, qualifies as antisemitic. So here you have a million problems. First of all, I don’t know what antisemitic means. When you tell a judge it’s antisemitic to hold Israel to a double standard now I happen to understand what you’re saying.

But most people in the world don’t, and judges don’t and you should not be saying stuff like this. Because again, a double standard against Israel has nothing to do with the way MIT students were treated in this case. Now, does it have something to do factually as part of the case? When we say in the law, was it a cause and fact? Yes, but it wasn’t approximate cause. It wasn’t the close connection. The close connection was they were people in the prize categories who were being harassed not because of the dispute in Israel, because they were Jews. Because they were one of the five classes that we talked about. So again, I think we desperately need to get away from talking in lawsuits about a double standard against Israel. Judges don’t care and judges are not going to say you win this case a victim, plaintiff, a Jewish person because there’s a double standard against Israel. It’s a very weak approach. Again, I think it’s a mistake I think we have to fix it and I hope that we can. Let’s talk a little bit about what the court ruled.

The court rejected the plaintiff’s central theory that anti-Zionist speech is inherently antisemitic, and for all the reasons we talked about. I totally understand why. The judges were also terrible. Don’t get me wrong. We had terrible judges. They said that there’s an absence of consensus on the issue in law and scholarship. Now there is some truth to that. No one has before today offered prize as a possibility and I desperately want prize to be picked up as the gold standard. The gold standard approach to fighting antisemitism in the United States. I think this is the way to do it. And again, I’m open to modifications. Maybe there’s another category I missed, I don’t think so. I don’t think so, but it’s possible. Importantly, the court stated that there was a three panel court they stated in the first circuit, and they stated “the absence of consensus reflects ongoing debate as to the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.” Debate that our constitutional scheme revolves through this discourse, not judicial fiat. We stand with us as lawyers put the judges in a very tough position.

The judges don’t understand antisemitism to begin with. They don’t understand Zionism to begin with. This is probably the most important thing I’m going to say today. Our job is to explain Zionism to courts in a way that they understand the truth about what it is. Let me say that again. Our job is to make it clear and easily understandable for judges in courts to understand what Zionism is. This is not what Zionism really is, the right to self-determination in their homeland. That is not what Zionism is. There is no more Theodor Herzl Zionism, it’s 120 years old, it existed for a minuscule period in history, that doesn’t exist anymore, Zionism today is a cultural, is ancestral and all those things we talked about in prize. We need to explain that to judges and not rely on this very nice sounding. By the way, I love the way this sounds. Jews have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. I love that. I believe that as a religious Jew, I do. But it’s not the right explanation really for broader Zionism. It’s not. It might apply to me because I believe that. Because God has promised that. Most Jews are not like me.

Most Jews don’t believe that religiously. But there are other protections like the ethnic Zionism. So that’s why the court found against them. Then I talk about some of the strategic takeaways, which I think I’ve already basically covered. I think we had a combination a perfect storm here in that case. Bad judges and not the best arguments that could be made. So let me come back to this, and again, I want to say this is not Stand with Us’ fault. I’m sort of criticizing the approach of their lawyers. That’s because nobody knows. It’s not like Stand With Us is the only one that never understood what Zionism really is and how the law applies to them. Nobody knows. That’s why for three years I have been trying to figure out exactly what it is for real, aside from the law and then see if the law matches up to that magically. Did I expect that to happen? I did not. I would not be on here with you today if law in the United States and the fact of what Zionists are did not align perfectly. But they do. They do.

The problem is we’re defining it the wrong way and that’s why we lost in the First Circuit. So last thing I’ll say about this, and you can ask whatever you want, and I’m sorry if I went on too long. The first circuit, having this opinion is very hurtful to us. Now it’s early. There are going to be more cases, there are cases in the pipeline. I’ve spoke to Jewish legal leaders or not Jewish sorry, supporting the Jewish cause, who are bringing cases who they believe can win. I hope they begin to incorporate the framework that I’ve outlined today because we need to create now a disagreement among the circuit courts. Because this needs to get to the US Supreme Court. That’s the only way this is going to get settled. If we lose again, there’s no disagreement between the federal appellate courts and that’s a problem. If all the federal courts agree with the First Circuit with this terrible decision, we are in big trouble. We can’t allow that, and the way to stop it is by going after the prize framework that I’ve outlined.

Sarah: That’s brilliant. I know that the scholar and author Douglas Murray has said that antisemitism is more reflection of the moral failings and of the psychological projections [inaudible] and societal decline of the antisemite, that it is a reflection on the Jewish people. Would you agree with that?

Jeffrey: When Megan Kelly comes out and says, the reason there’s antisemitism is because of Jewish behavior.sSe said things like that. She has said that the Jewish lobby, who is a Jewish lobby, everybody is a Jewish lobby. Any Jew who advocates for themselves is lobbying on behalf of Jews. So when you say that, you are saying one of the most disgusting tropes in world history. No. The victim blaming attitude now of people like Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and certainly Hassan Piker and all these horrific people is despicable and disgusting, and obviously Jewish behavior is not the cause of antisemitism. It’s disgusting. I don’t need to tell people watching this. They know how disgusting it is. But again, we do have a responsibility. We have responsibility to understand who we are and why we are that. Go through prize, read it, give it a chance, even if you’re looking at it and I’m a little skeptical. No. Read it and figure out. Do I fit into one of these categories? Do I fit into two or three of these categories? Does it describe me? I think it will if you’re Jewish.

Sarah: We can take this definition into a court. Say you’re a student who’s been discriminated against by pastor so-and-so, Columbia University, or by your peers, and we can take this and use it as a meaningful definition of who we are.

Jeffrey: Absolutely, 100%. No doubt in my mind. You will win if you can prove the facts that back it up. There’s not a doubt in my mind. When I saw the complaint that Stand with us filed, I knew that it was a losing case. I knew they would lose. Even if they had good judges I’m not sure they would’ve had a chance because they didn’t flush it out in the best way possible. Again, I’m not blaming them. This is not stand with us as fault Stand with us. By the way, I use Stand With Us as a resource on almost every piece of writing that I do. They have one of the best pages talking about, for example, BDS and what it really is and describing so many different concepts. They are brilliant. I really want people to see stand with us as one of the main go-tos. But there was one mistake here in this lawsuit, which wasn’t even their fault. It was the lawyer’s fault. Again, it’s hard for me to say they should have known better. I didn’t know how to describe this three, four years ago. I knew I didn’t like the word antisemitism. You’re right. You brought up such a great and brilliant question, Sarah.

Like you blew me away with that question because you asked such a perfect question leading into this. I never liked the word antisemitism. I thought it was a silly word. But I didn’t understand three, four years ago who Jews were legally and in reality, I didn’t know how to clearly place them into protected class. That was the issue Rona Kaufman was grappling with Naxlex podcast, but I would tell people like Rona Kaufman right now, professor Kaufman right now here is the answer Professor Kaufman, this is the answer. Let me lay it out for you. We can talk about this by the way, for hours. I’m trying to get this down to a short webinar and interview with you. But there’s a lot more here that we haven’t even touched upon.

Sarah: Our dear friend Claire Lopez asked, what if practicing the religion means engaging in jihad versus all non-believers at imposing Islamic law by force?

Jeffrey: I don’t know if she heard the part where I was saying these categories are meant to be used to define a victim class. These are defenses. These are not swords. These are defensive classes. That is all they’re meant to do. If I understood that correctly, I think what she’s asking is, if you are a jihadist and that’s your religion, can you go into court and say, that is my religion I’m a jihadist. The answer to that is obviously no. But it’s not related to these categories that are to be used as a defense. Could you sue a person like that who’s trying to kill Jews because of Jihadism? Of course. Would you win? Yes. If you argue it semi competently, yes. You would win.

Sarah: [inaudible]

Jeffrey: Sorry. I’m not hearing most of those words going in and out.

Sarah: [inaudible] my Polish and Russian family who were murdered for being Jewish to which of your five categories they belonged to?

Jeffrey: Unfortunately, the first half of what you said got cut out Polish and?

Sarah: Well, actually you defined it in prize. Because they’re ethnically Jewish, he’d like to ask members of his Polish and Russian family to which of the five categories they be belonged to because they were murdered just for the fact of being Jewish. But we know what that means. Prize also incorporates the ethnic identity of who they are.

Jeffrey: It’s also perception. Like even if you’re not Jewish but you are perceived as Jewish, that is also something that the law protects. So that’s important too. I didn’t hear the whole question. But obviously if you’re a Polish Jew you’re a Jew. At the very least you’re in the e category, the ethnic Jewish category. At the very least and you could be in more categories.

Sarah: Well, first of all, this will be available tomorrow with PowerPoint and also with some other clips that Jeffrey has appeared on where he massacred Peter Beinart, which I’m very proud of.

Jeffrey: I wouldn’t use that word, but I think it went well. He probably thinks it went well for him.

Sarah: At this point one of our listeners said in the Jew hate issue, should we be discussing survival and self-defense instead of semantics? But when you go into a court of law you have to have a definition. So I agree with you. Can you hear me?

Jeffrey: Yes.

Sarah: If someone’s discriminating against you for being a Jew, say you’re a Columbia University and people have said at Columbia you can’t actually be Jewish because you have blue eyes and not brown. I’m a true semite, things like that. So I think this definition encapsulates that.

Jeffrey: Again, if Jewish people are feeling threatened right now, I can hardly blame you with what’s going on. We saw what happened at the Jewish Museum, the shooting there. They were perceived to be Jewish. But it wasn’t necessarily true. I’m not talking about physical defense, but I’m not against that. I’m not against Jewish people getting a gun for self-protection. I think in a lot of cases that’s a good idea. I certainly think synagogues and they are doing this. My brother-in-law is very involved with this, John, shout out to you. He is a leader in this fight to protect synagogues. That’s very important. But we’re talking about discrimination specifically where we’re not talking about arms here.

Sarah: As we discussed before we went live today in Golders Green two Jews were slashed by Muslim, Arab Islamist, who hate Jews. Is there a category for these people who are just happen to be walking on the street and someone picks up a knife because they look or appear Jewish?

Jeffrey: Again, that was in a different country. So I’m not familiar with British law but I’m certain that it would protect them at the very least based on their perceived Jewish ethnicity. Certainly in America what happens all the time is Jews are attacked for wearing a kippah. It happened in my school. There was a student at my campus who took a baseball bat and went around looking for outwardly obvious Jews to beat up and found one. Found a Jew to beat up who ended up being hospitalized. The person yelled, pre Palestine, kill all Jews when he beat the Jewish victim up. Was wearing a yamaka. So obviously someone wearing yamaka is Jewish in a couple of these categories. It seems like a practicing Jew. It seems like an ethnic Jew, certainly. And so they obviously are protected and that’s disgusting. That person was convicted of a hate crime.

Sarah: Someone asked what your definition of Zionism is. If it’s not the inherent of Jewish self-defense of the land of Israel?

Jeffrey: Well, so interesting what you just said. Did you hear what you just said? The land of Israel.

Sarah: The land of Israel.

Jeffrey: Now think about that. You did not say the state of Israel. Now I’m curious, did the person asking the question ask about defense of the state of Israel or the defense of the land of Israel?

Sarah: Just your definition of Zionism.

Jeffrey: Just once my definition of Zion. But you’re doing the right thing. You’re saying the land of Israel. My definition is the two letters in prize that protect Zionism. Religious Zionism. You could be a religious Zionist. By the way you can eat pork, you can eat lobster, you cannot keep Shabbat, you could not go to synagogue any holidays of the year if you have one religious Jewish belief. But it’s genuine. That’s the key under American law. It has to be genuine. If you believe that the Bible exists, that it’s a real thing, and you happen to believe also that there really was a conversation that the connection between Jews and Israel is Abraham’s conversation with God thousands of years ago where the land of Israel was described in detail. By the way, it’s a lot bigger than what Israel is today. The land described in the Torah is humongous. I actually, I gave a speech recently on Passover where I handed out a map of what the biblical definition of Israel. People were shocked when they looked at it. It’s huge. Israel is a tiny fraction of what Israel has described in the Bible.

Sarah: From India to Ethiopia.

Jeffrey: What’s that?

Sarah: From India to Ethiopia.

Jeffrey: It’s big.

Sarah: That’s it’s big. My good friend Robert Nash asked, is Robert Kraft aware of your work and your prize concept? And shouldn’t he be?

Jeffrey: I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve never heard from him. I think the blue square is not effective. I’m not going to lie. I think the ADL adopting it is not surprising. I think the ADL is not effective. Again, let me just say, I think it’s disgusting when you have Elon Musk and other people calling them a hate group. The ADL is not a hate group. I am one of the biggest critics of the ADL that exists. Please go on my X feed cuny_prof and you’ll see what I say. I’ve been very aggressively critical of the ADL. I don’t think they understand who we are, what we are, or what our fight is really about. I don’t even think they understand who our enemies are. I really don’t. But the people calling them a hate group that is despicably horrific. That is how 1930s Germany stuff starts. That is disgusting. They’re not a hate group. They do care about antisemitism. Honestly, they’re clueless about it. I think Jonathan Greenblatt has been one of the most failed leaders in the history of Jews. I truly believe that, and I think it’s factual. I almost don’t think. I know people are going to say it’s an opinion. People will defend him.

But look what has happened under his tutelage. Look what has happened. Things have gotten worse than I’ve seen ever in my lifetime. Things have happened that I never thought would happen, and if the ADL was stronger and was not political, I’m not political about this. I fight it on both sides. I’m going up against the Tuckers and the Megans just as much as I am against the Ilhan Omars and the Hasan Pikers. You can’t make this political. If you are only fighting one side of this you’re not fighting any of it. You’re not really fighting antisemitism, you’re not really fighting anti-Zionism. So we got to do that.

Sarah: I really want to contextualize what you’re saying. This is about American law.

Jeffrey: Yes.

Sarah: Going into an American court of law, one of our viewers said, isn’t it painfully obvious that there are no logical intellectual judicial answers which will stop this global tsunami of Jew hatred, which started on October? Well, it didn’t start, but it certainly culminated on October 7th with the Alaska flood. So how do we apply? Can we apply this internationally?

Jeffrey: The question was specifically it was an international question?

Sarah: Yes. Can we apply this?

Jeffrey: What I would say to that question is, and that’s really not the topic of what we’re doing today, but I’m happy to answer the question. First of all, I want to say that on my campus, my campus would have been the single worst place to be on Earth had I not gotten gone on the offensive. Excuse me. Myself and great allies of mine, friend named Rena and other people also, we saw what was about to happen on our campus and we saw things that were already happening in our campus and we went on the offensive right away. And so we put them on their heels. We brought lawsuits, we brought complaints, we were effective, we won at the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We won. So that stopped them. So Kingsborough, where I work right now, is a lot safer place than it would’ve been had we not gone on the offensive. I think fighting this aggressively when it’s happening, that’s the only language these people understand. You have to know that. They don’t understand any other language than being told by a court they’re wrong and they lost. That’s it.

On the international scale, I would say similar things. I think we need to fight this. The question’s a little hard to understand because I’m not sure if he’s talking about international law, the UN, but one thing I will say is this. I’ll give you a good example. I am not an expert on international law. I’m not. I’m a litigator. I was trained as a litigator. I was a good lawyer and now I’m a law professor. But I litigated for five, six years. When Piers Morgan asked me to come on, see, I was very upset. Because Piers Morgan had been going to top Jewish thought leaders scholars in the world and trying to have them on. Eventually they saw him as antisemitic and they refused to go on. Some of the top leaders, I’m not going to name names because I love them, but they refused to go on. I was private messaging them saying, you don’t want this to get down to me. You are the expert in this area. You should be talking about this. My grandmother said to me in 1996 when she did Spielberg documentary and it’s something I find very hard to watch. I’m not able to actually watch the full documentary.

It’s too painful to watch. But my mother a couple years ago, forced me to watch the end. She said, if you don’t watch any of it, watch the last 10 minutes or so. When I did and my grandmother said to me. The last question the Spielberg people asked my grandmother, what my mother’s mother was, what would you tell your grandchildren? So here she’s talking directly to me in 1996. She’s long passed, unfortunately. And she said, I want my grandchildren to talk about antisemitism wherever and whenever they can because it’s everywhere. She said this during the height of the golden age for Jews in the United States. This is where she said that. She understood that Holocaust survivors understand this better than anybody. I took that to heart very seriously. And what it told me was, yeah, you gotta be aggressive about this and talk about it and stop it before it even starts. Tucker Carlson’s a perfect example. To me, I see him as a very early version. I’m not calling him a genocidal maniac like Hitler was, but I do see him having humongous similarities to what Hitler did in the early 1930s. Hitler could have been stopped, and that’s why we need to stop people like Tucker Carlson right now before it gets too late. So I think we need to be aggressive in general. If that means fighting an international court, then that’s what we do. Israel is currently being investigated by the ICJ. This is the debate I had in Piers Morgan. So I’m not going to go through it all here. But yes, we need to fight this aggressively internationally as well for sure.

Sarah: [inaudible]

Jeffrey: I’m sorry you’re cutting out again, Sarah.

Sarah: [inaudible]

Jeffrey: The internet’s a little [inaudible].

Sarah: [inaudible] I don’t know why this is not coming through.

Jeffrey: I hear you now.

Sarah: Begins and it ends with a sense of collective responsibility for one another and Jewish self pride. We’re responsible for one another. Hebrew, Kol Yisrael areivim zeh la-zeh every Jew is responsible for the other Jew. This is a great framework for teaching our children about Judaism and I also feel we should support you and your organization Safe Cuny. How do we support Safe Cuny?

Jeffrey: Well, thank you so much. I totally agree with you. We’re all in this together and I feel like for the first time ever in my life, I feel like Jews really get it for the most part in terms of the danger we are in. I think they feel it. I think there was a sense of safety and insularity before that I think people now have just abandoned. They don’t feel safe. They don’t feel like it’s going in a good direction anywhere, including in the United States. Everyone I feel like is doing their part. So thank you so much for tossing that easy softball off for me because it allows me to share the last slide that I have. I’ll just show where they can’t get involved. I want to ask people, first of all, support EMET. You guys doing unbelievable things. I’m such a big fan of you guys. But let me go here to the last slide where I’ll talk about Safe Campus. That was not supposed to happen. Hold on.

Sarah: Yes.

Jeffrey: Now I have to go through, unfortunately all slides.

Sarah: That’s okay. As we’re going through [crosstalk]

Jeffrey: Here it is.

Sarah: I would like to say that in a world where there’s so much misinformation EMET helps to provide the answers to our policy makers and we’re on the front lines on Capitol Hill every week and our efforts have been successful in making insightful and impactful changes to help secure a future for the United States and Israel. We absolutely need your donations very badly as Safe Campus does. Please make your pitch for Safe Campus.

Jeffrey: It’s on the screen now, and I second everything you said about EMET. I hope people will support you, continue to support everything that you’re doing. It’s all on here on this slide. First of all, we provide no cost. You will never pay a dime to a lawyer. If you are a victim of antisemitism we have a smart system online. If you go to our website and all the information is on here on the bottom right hand side, if you are a victim of antisemitism doesn’t even have to be on campus. You can access our network of 200 lawyers, and there’s a few dropdown boxes and a few text boxes where you say what happened to you. We will connect you to a lawyer, usually with an in within an instant. Hopefully we’ve already connected, I believe, over 80 victims of antisemitism to lawyers and you will never pay a penny, never. That is our commitment with this network. We have amplified outreach software. I’ll call them a hacker. We have one of these brilliant hackers who has developed an incredible email boosting software.

If you are an organization or even just somebody who has a lot of friends or a small group, if you want to amplify that, use our network. Go to our website, you can also go to safejewish.com and you can use our email blasting network. It will get it out to a lot more people than you are sending it to. That’s one of the greatest things I’m so proud of. Also free, we provide this totally free. We’re in the media all the time. Hopefully some of you have seen me talking about some of the initiatives. We’re involved in government advocacy, legal actions we’re involved in many legal actions and of course on the ground campus support. We are on the ground. We have some of the top, top, most experienced, knowledgeable experts, and we have sources everywhere. We get a lot of information and we share that with the media and we have gotten stuff done behind the scenes that nobody knows about and we’ll never know about, but we’ve gotten tremendous things done behind the scenes.

If you want to make a donation listen, we would love and appreciate that so much. My safe it’s in red so that you notice it right away before anything else. Mysafecampus.org/donate, you can go there or we have a beautiful website too, so I hope you’ll check that out. If you have a problem and you want to talk to us about it, you can definitely do that info@mysafecampus.com and if you need legal help or by the way, if you’re a lawyer who wants to join our network, we would love to have you. So you can go to the same webpage and you can see where a lawyer can sign up to provide their services, and you can do it on contingency. As long as the clients are not paying, we accept contingency lawyers.

Sarah: I think this is wonderful. I think your definition of the five categories of Jews is a wonderful definition and I’m sure it’ll hold up in courts of law. Given that we have the right kinds of judges. But I am almost positive that it would hold up upwards of law. As we say here in Israel, [foreign language]. More power to you, Jeffrey. Please go on and be forceful and persuasive in what you do. Thank you so much.

Jeffrey: Sarah, I would say the same exact to you and to EMET. Thank you for everything you guys do and thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Sarah: Really a pleasure. Thank you. Bye bye now.
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