A Bill Wrapped in Protection, Built for Silence
The United States Senate is preparing to advance an antisemitism bill that reads less like a protection against hate and more like a blueprint for narrowing political speech. For European readers watching the transatlantic debate over Israel, Gaza, and rising far-right violence, it is crucial to understand the stakes. This bill is not simply another American culture-war artifact. It is a test case that could influence how democracies define dissent, regulate protest, and decide whose outrage is allowed.
On paper, the bill claims to safeguard Jewish communities. In practice, it relies heavily on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, including the most disputed examples that collapse criticism of Israel into hostility toward Jews. The result is a legislative instrument that broadens the borders of forbidden speech so widely that it risks treating political critique as prejudice.
For someone like me, raised between Jewish and Catholic traditions and painfully aware of how states have spoken in our name throughout history, the pattern is unmistakable. This is not protection. It is pre-emption.
What the Bill Actually Does: A Dragnet for Dissent
Civil liberties experts across the United States have been blunt.
The ACLU warns that the bill would chill constitutionally protected political expression.
More than three hundred Jewish scholars worldwide have rejected codifying IHRA’s examples, arguing that it turns a geopolitical debate into a hate-crime framework.
Yet the bill moves forward.
Its omissions speak louder than the text.
There is no provision for the synagogues in America that face credible threats from far-right groups.
No funding for security at Jewish primary schools.
No tools to counter the white supremacist networks that fuel the majority of violent antisemitic attacks across the West.
Instead, the bill reserves its sharpest teeth for:
students mourning relatives in Gaza,
journalists documenting the aftermath,
scholars contextualising Zionism,
and activists calling for ceasefire or accountability.
The language is broad enough for institutions to punish speech that makes them “uncomfortable” or “concerned about federal consequences.” Fear will do the work the law does not have to articulate.
Why Europe Should Care
Europe is already wrestling with its own speech battles. In France, the anti-separatism law gives the state broad authority to shut down associations, mosques, charities, even NGOs if officials believe they undermine “Republican values.” What began as a response to violent extremism has become a tool for dissolving organisations without criminal evidence, often hitting Muslim communities and political critics hardest. It is a reminder that once governments claim the power to police ideology, the line between safety and suppression thins fast.
Germany offers another warning. Police in multiple cities have banned or restricted Palestine demonstrations since October, sometimes citing the risk of antisemitic incidents before any incident occurred. Students, Jewish anti-occupation groups, and human rights activists have been detained or dispersed for carrying signs or chanting slogans deemed politically sensitive. German leaders justify these actions as protection for Jewish communities, but critics argue they collapse Jewish identity into the Israeli state and suppress the voices of those protesting civilian deaths.
And in the United Kingdom, the Prevent programme continues drifting from counter-terrorism into political terrain. Teachers and social workers are encouraged to report individuals – including children – for expressing views considered “extremist,” a category so vague it has captured climate activists, pro-Palestinian students, left-wing organisers, and Muslims expressing anger about foreign policy. The programme has been repeatedly criticised for racial profiling and for criminalising dissent that poses no security threat.
The Danger of Collapsing Jewish Identity into the Israeli State
This is the part I write not as a reporter, but as a daughter of a people who have paid the price every time a government claimed to be our guardian.
When states decide that Jewish identity is inseparable from the Israeli government, they do not fight antisemitism. They deepen it. They erase the diversity of the Jewish world. They silence Jewish anti-occupation voices. They hand ammunition to extremists who already claim Jews control everything. They turn grief for Gaza into a prosecutable offence, and then insist it is for our protection.
Real antisemitism exists. I have felt it. I have seen the messages. I know the fear.
But expanding the term to include criticism of a government does not protect us. It endangers us by making our identity appear like a political project instead of a people with thousands of years of history.
Who This Bill Actually Helps
It does not help Jewish communities facing real threats.
It does not help Palestinians whose families are being buried under rubble.
It does not help journalists reporting on civilian casualties.
It does not help campus organisers calling for ceasefire.
It helps political actors who want to neutralise public outrage over Gaza.
It helps institutions who want to suppress protest without admitting to censorship.
It helps hardline officials who see Jewish grief as a resource to be weaponised.
And it helps no one else.
