Symposium on Protest and Legal Mobilization: Undermining the Right to Protest by Weaponizing Antisemitism

[Jeff Handmaker is an Associate Professor of legal sociology at Erasmus University.

Anya Topolski is an Associate Professor of ethics and political philosophy at Radboud University Nijmegen.

Yolande Jansen is a philosopher at University of Amsterdam and Socrates Professor of humanism at Free University Amsterdam.

Michiel Bot is an Associate Professor of law and humanities at Tilburg University.]

The global wave of protest has not been without reason. Israel has been charged with genocide in the International Court of Justice, charges that hundreds of scholars of genocide, holocaust and international law studies had raised alarm bells about already on 17 October. 

On 21 June 2025, former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was released from an ICE-detention facility in Louisiana, USA and reunited with his family, including a newborn child. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey who have been steadfastly supporting him, Khalil had been prisoner of conscience since being arrested at his home in New York city on 18 March 2025, charged with immigration violations. Khalil had been a key figure in demonstrations at Columbia University through 2023 and 2024, which involved a cross-cultural community of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and secular student activists.

Rather than focussing on the most prevalent cause of antisemitism, which overwhelmingly comes from right-wing organizations (according to the European Agency for Fundamental Rights), the increasing weaponizing of antisemitism has primarily targeted individuals and organizations that have condemned Israel’s atrocities. One of the oldest freedom of expression watchdogs in the United States, PEN America, has remarked that Trump’s executive order on campus antisemitism is ‘reminiscent of McCarthyism’, referring to a 1950s-era Congressional Committee, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Marked by extreme bias and procedural irregularities, the Committee he led sought to identify suspected communist sympathisers in the USA, which resulted in devastating consequences for those who found themselves in the crosshairs of this Committee.

Government-led crackdowns that have not only falsely accused, but actually weaponized antisemitism against pro-Palestine activists on some of the USA’s most prestigious university campuses are by no means limited to the USA. In Germany, since October 2023, police have been brutally suppressing even the most peaceful protests, particularly in public spaces such as train stations. Militarised police responses have been triggered by the use of specific language, such as the slogan: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. Moreover, talks by noted experts, such as Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta and UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese have been cancelled.

In both the United States and Germany, coordinators and taskforces on antisemitism have been established. In line with prevailing trends, these government units have primarily targeted students and faculty critical of Israel. This collapsing of antisemitism with antizionism is both counterproductive in efforts to address antisemitism, and distracts attention away from the atrocities of the Israeli government and military.

A Dutch Antisemitism Task Force

Following in the footsteps of the United States and Germany, and in the wake of riots that involved Macabi-Tel Aviv football supporters and locals in Amsterdam, the Netherlands initiated a process to establish an Antisemitism Task Force. The Taskforce was established on 1 February 2025 after a motion in parliament, with the broad, stated intention to ‘promote the safety of Jews’, and with two main goals: ‘Banning antisemitic speakers at colleges and universities’ and addressing the ‘safety implications of sit-ins at public transport stations’. Colleges, universities and train stations have been the places where protests against Israel’s grave violations of Palestinians’ human rights have been the loudest since October 2023. At Dutch universities, critical exchanges have taken place on how antisemitism is defined and addressed, including in relation to anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. We are concerned that the Dutch task force, like the American and German ones, labels such protests and opinions as antisemitic, even though they represent legitimate resistance to grave and ongoing human rights violations against the Palestinians.

Draconian Measures

In the name of antisemitism, draconian measures have been taken in Germany, the USA and the Netherlands against people who attended sit-ins and demonstrations against genocide and occupation, and for Palestinian liberation.  In the USA, foreign students and university employees who have organized or even attended protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza have been imprisoned and/or deported from the country. The case of Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University, received a lot of international attention, but there are many other students who have been affected by these measures. In Germany, also, students have been detained and threatened with deportation for expressing solidarity with Palestinians; many more demonstrators have faced police brutality.

Project Esther

 ‘Project Esther’ from the Heritage Foundation has been the basis for Trump’s antisemitism task force, and appears also to be a source of inspiration for others. ‘Esther’ refers to the story of the biblical Esther who saved the Jewish people from exile. Trump himself has been compared to Esther by Christian evangelicals and in Republican circles. The story about Esther has also been used for years by far-right settlers and their Christian Zionist supporters to justify violence against Palestinians, something that Jewish Voice for Peace, for example, has criticized. Project Esther added pressure on Columbia University and other universities to harshly suppress pro-Palestinian protest, under the threat of ending millions of dollars in government funding. What is erroneously called antisemitism is routinely intertwined with the suppression of protest against the genocide in Gaza and against the other extreme violence in the occupied Palestinian territories and against Palestinians in Israel.

Limited Information Available

There is still limited public information available about the Dutch task force, although there are some indications. In a position paper from 11 March 2025, the government-appointed, National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism (NCAB) Eddo Verdoner, a member of the task force, has claimed that slogans and symbols legitimising antisemitic violence are being used at train stations and universities, though he did not provide any examples or references. The NCAB also devotes no words to how we should see the connection between antisemitism and racism, particularly Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. Verdoner did not mention whether antisemitic incidents reported to the police took place precisely at railway stations or universities, and what definition was used in recording these as incidents as ‘antisemitic’.

Verdoner’s office has applied the working definition of antisemitism framed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). This working definition has been hotly contested, including by many Jewish scholars and organisations, because it is ambiguous, leaves unnamed its connection to other forms of racism, and above all because it constitutes a ‘discursive iron dome’ against criticism of Israel, in the words of Emily Dische-Becker, George Prochnik and Eyal Weizman. While there have been many critiques of the IHRA working definition on antisemitism, this particular critique by award-winning Jewish scholars holds particular resonance, both in its firm rejection of collapsing antisemitism with criticisms of Israel, and in using the vivid metaphor of the Iron Dome, which is an Israeli network of missile interceptors that shields Israelis from most aerial attacks.

Critical?

Many Jews, like two of the authors of this article, have turned away from such pro-Israel pseudo-antisemitism measures, which have been abusively invoked in the name of so-called Jewish values. Other groups have developed programmes to counter actual antisemitism, such as antisemitismcurriculum.org or diasporaalliance.co. Critical Jewish and Israeli organisations in the Netherlands like Erev Rav, Gate 48 and A Different Jewish Voice have had no input, let alone representation in the new task force, nor have they been consulted by the NCAB. The same goes for Jewish staff and students at universities who have criticised Israel, and many experts on antisemitism, racism, international law and the Middle East who were also not consulted.

Ironically, a good number of our international colleagues accused of antisemitism are themselves Jewish. For instance, well-known scholars such as Rebecca Ruth Gould, Nancy Fraser, Judith Butler, M Gessen, Gil Hochberg and Brian Klug have been attacked and/or censored, especially at German universities. These scholars have studied fascism, authoritarianism and genocidal processes for many years. The experiences of Palestinian and other scholars of colour, such as Achille Mbembe, are even worse.

Another one of the other members of the task force, Mirjam van Praag, co-signed a letter in major Dutch newspaper Het Parool last year claiming that ending cooperation with Israeli universities ‘intentionally or unintentionally, may lead to an association with antisemitism’. Apart from its ambiguity, this claim contradicts what many Jewish scholars and other experts, for example the signatories of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism advocate, namely to distinguish between ending formal cooperation with Israeli institutions of higher education complicit in atrocity crimes on the one hand, and antisemitism on the other. This is also a view that has since been confirmed by several third-party cooperation ethics committees, including Tilburg University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Amsterdam and Radboud University Nijmegen.

In the midst of this systematic weaponizing of antisemitism, there have been widespread and brutal suppressions of violence against Palestinian solidarity protestors in The Netherlands and elsewhere in European, fuelled by anti-Palestinian racism and ‘weaponising antisemitism for goals other than fighting antisemitism’, according to researcher Liz Fekete. The police response to campus-based protests in Amsterdam, which we witnessed firsthand, was particularly violent.

Academic Freedom

Fortunately, the importance of academic freedom is emphasized by many, as Senator Roovers motion for academic freedom has confirmed. However, we remain concerned that, as in other countries such as the USA and Germany, an antisemitism task force modelled along similar lines will fail to achieve its objectives. Moreover, we are concerned that by essentialising antisemitism as a form of hatred that deserves exceptional protection, and by focussing exclusively on Palestinian solidarity protests, this task force will further polarize the situation on university campuses, harm essential democratic freedoms, further securitise our university campuses where brutal clampdowns on student protests are becoming the norm. It may paradoxically also produce antisemitism.

Khalil’s especially awful experience confirms the dangers of further polarization through weaponizing Jewish safety and antisemitism, accompanied by a dehumanizing narrative of anti-Palestinian racism. Following his provisional release (still awaiting trial) and reunited with his wife and newborn child, Khalil was asked: ‘how does it feel to be free?’. Khalil responded:

I am trying to just comprehend that… the fact they put me in that place did not mean I was not free. I continued to advocate for Palestinians, for the immigrants who are left behind in that facility … this is what the government is doing, to dehumanize anyone who doesn’t agree with their position.