Michigan lawmakers seeking stronger antisemitism ban: We've been threatened too

• Jewish legislators propose writing antisemitism ban into Michigan civil rights law
• The definition of antisemitism would include Holocaust denial and strident criticism of Israel, which has prompted pushback against the bill
• Their proposal comes after attacks on Jews in Washington, DC and Colorado

LANSING — Following a series of attacks across the country, Jewish members of the Michigan Legislature on Tuesday announced a new proposal that would make antisemitism a specific form of illegal ethnic discrimination in the state.

They know the stakes well, said Rep. Samantha Steckloff, D-Farmington Hills: All three have received calls from the FBI regarding "credible threats to our lives.” 

“Right now at home, I have a police detail on my home,” Steckloff said in a news conference at the state House Office Building in Lansing. “This is where we’re at.”

The legislation would write new protections into Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in workplaces, housing and places of public accommodation. The state Department of Civil Rights investigates alleged violations, but individuals can also file lawsuits under the legal protections.

The Michigan press conference was held in the wake of two high-profile attacks on American Jews: the killing of two Israeli embassy workers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC and an attack on protesters in Boulder, Colorado last weekend that left 12 people injured.

The alleged perpetrators in both incidents tied their motivations to Israel's ongoing war in Gaza against Hamas. More than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, after an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas fighters reportedly killed 1,139 Israelis. 

“We cannot continue to hate American Jews because of what's going on overseas,” Steckloff said, noting she and her Jewish colleagues in the Legislature have “spoken against the atrocities that we've seen against the Palestinian people,” as well as condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Related:

• Trump admin to University of Michigan: Stop antisemitism, or face 'enforcement'
• U-M regent’s home vandalized, 'Free Palestine' spray-painted on wife's car
• How despair over Gaza war helped Donald Trump win Dearborn. It’s complicated

The new legislation lays out 12 forms of antisemitism, as the sponsors define it, which includes denying the Holocaust or accusing Jews of exaggerating it, or alleging American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States.

“The crisis of antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence we face did not arrive overnight,” said state Rep. Noah Arbit, D-West Bloomfield. “It arrived through the passivity and silence of far too many individuals and institutions who would never tolerate this kind of racism and violence targeting their own community.”

The proposal faces an uncertain future in the Michigan Legislature, however, where debate over the Gaza war has split some traditional alliances. 

The sponsors are all Democrats, and Republicans who control the state House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The plan is likely to face some resistance among fellow Democrats who disagree with some of the antisemitic definitions pertaining to Israel. And the head of a national Arab American group argued the proposal would go too far in restricting free speech. 

Arbit said he would also ask Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to create a commission on “targeted violence.” 

In May, a New York man pleaded guilty to making threats against Attorney General Dana Nessel because she is Jewish and gay. 

“Amongst every Jewish elected official in the country that I speak to, every single one has received a credible threat from the FBI or reported to the FBI,” Jordan Acker, a University of Michigan Regent who has had his home vandalized amid Gaza war protests, wrote on social media Tuesday.

State Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, argued the conflict in the Middle East has “absolutely bred antisemitism here at home” and that protests against the war have allowed the rhetoric against Jews to go too far. 

Moss said American Jews had been “gaslit” by critics of Israel because they had been made to explain or justify the actions of the Israeli government, regardless of their views. 

“I cannot join a movement with people who say, globalize the intifada, end Zionists, or Jews go back to Poland,” Moss said.

The legislation wades into the fraught relationship between antisemitism and criticism of Israel.

For example, “demanding a behavior of the state of Israel that is not expected or demanded of other democratic nations” would be considered antisemitic discrimination under the language of the legislation, but “criticism of the state of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country” would not be antisemitic. 

The topic has long provoked tension and debate among both American Jews and the broader public. Vocal opponents of the war have sought to make a bright-line distinction between criticism of the nation, or opposition to Zionism as an ideology, and hatred toward Jews.

Determining exactly when opposition to Zionism crosses the line into antisemitism is often tenuous, experts have stressed. Arbit doesn’t buy it.

“When people say that they are anti-Zionist … they are saying that Jews do not have a right to rule themselves,” Arbit said. “I believe that 99% of so-called anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”

Critics of the legislation are quick to dispute that. 

Abed Ayoub, the national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called the Michigan proposal a “scary piece of legislation” and argued it would curtail free speech. 

“These types of bills will make it almost impossible to criticize elected officials and leadership in Israel, a foreign country,” Ayuoub said. 

“We're essentially trading away our First Amendment rights in order to protect foreign interests and foreign leaders in a foreign nation, and that’s not something Americans would stand for.”