November 7, 2025 | 16 Cheshvan 5786
Candlelighting 4:52 p.m. | Havdalah 5:51 p.m. | Vol. 68, No. 45 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
New group works to expose anti-Zionism as Jew hatred
NOTEWORTHY LOCAL Restoring sight
The work of Dr. José-Alain Sahel LOCAL
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Federation's new community study
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‘Antisemitic speech is constitutionally protected,’ says Georgetown professor at Pitt’s Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice event By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer
Planning for the future of Jewish Pittsburgh Page 3
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Signage at anti-Israel encampment in Pittsburgh in May 2024 By David Rullo | Senior Staff Writer
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Collaborating for good
JCC-YMCA partnership Page 4
LOCAL The stories of Oct. 27
New podcast launches Page 5
e need to name anti-Zionism as a form of libel,” Adam Louis-Klein said. “We’re talking about colonizer libel, apartheid libel, genocide libel.” Louis-Klein is a cofounder of the new group Movement Against Antizionism. Its mission, according to its website, is to confront “a rapidly escalating antizionist hate movement that is actively endangering” Jewish communities worldwide through “education, advocacy and coalitionbuilding.” An anthropology doctoral candidate, Louis-Klein was working in the Amazon on Oct. 7, 2023. The self-described “Jew who was fairly disconnected from my Jewish identity,” had no access to the internet or phone service at the time. “When I got back on Oct. 9, I saw the images from the Nova Music Festival. The reactions from my friends and colleagues in my social networks very quickly ostracized me. I was marked as a Zionist and the whole academic career I was building as an up-and-coming young person collapsed
Photo by Jim Busis
at that moment,” he said. Louis-Klein said he had a decision to make: He could either be quiet or begin speaking out. He chose not to be silent. “I started writing and applying my philosophy of anthropology to thinking about anti-Zionism and the explosion of Jewish hate since Oct. 7,” he said. Louis-Klein put his thoughts into words, including in a blog he published on The Times of Israel’s website. At the same time, he found others — in Pittsburgh and Canada — who were speaking out as well. “They were describing anti-Zionism as a functional, institutionalized system with a matrix of libels and defamation that stigmatizes people as ‘Zionists,’” he said. The group, he said, decided to seize the moment and create the Movement Against Antizionism. Part of MAAZ’s mission, he explained, is to shift the paradigm, which often maintains that anti-Zionism doesn’t count as Jew hatred until it crosses the line into classic antisemitism. Please see Zionism, page 10
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ntisemitic speech is constitutionally protected speech, David Cole told an audience of roughly 75 at the University of Pittsburgh’s Teplitz Memorial Courtroom. The Nov. 3 “Free Speech and Universities” program was organized by Pitt’s School of Law Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice and featured Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and former national director of the American Civil Liberties Union; Jules Lobel, the school’s Bessie McKee Walthour endowed chair and professor of law; Mohammed Bamyeh, a professor of sociology at Pitt; and Mia Suwaid, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at Pitt. It was moderated by the Center’s co-Director Sheila Vélez Martínez, and Jay Aronson, Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Human Rights Science director. “The First Amendment does not prohibit antisemitic speech. In fact, it protects free speech,” Cole said. “Why? Because the Supreme Court said it is a greater danger to give the government the power to suppress speech because it concludes it is antisemitic or racist or sexist than the harms that come from antisemitic, racist and sexist sorts of speech.” As a result, he said, public universities are bound by the First Amendment and must tolerate offensive speech. Please see Pitt, page 10