What Happened Today: July 13, 2023
Meta has your tax returns; Right-wing rises in Germany; Actors set to strike
The Big Story
For at least the past several years major tax processing firms have provided confidential information about users including their income, refunds, and other sensitive financial data to Facebook parent Meta and Google, with the two tech companies in turn using the information to sell advertisements and train their algorithms. That’s according to a new report by congressional Democrats released on Wednesday, which also noted that Meta obtained data on how users clicked and navigated through online software offered by do-it-yourself firms like H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer that provided opportunities for the tech giants to learn additional private financial information.
“This is as great as any privacy breach that I’ve seen other than exploiting kids. This is a five-alarm fire, if what we know about this so far is true,” David Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University and a former consumer protection chief at the Federal Trade Commission, told CNN.
The new congressional report, co-authored by Sens. Warren, Wyden, Blumenthal, Duckworth, Sanders, and Whitehouse, and Rep. Katie Porter, was spurred by reporting last November in The Markup which broke the news that Meta’s user-tracking software called Meta Pixel was gathering data from the sites.
Meta and Google say that the onus should be on the tax processing firms to prevent sharing the sensitive information. The tax companies, meanwhile, claim they weren’t aware of the extent to which using the ad-info software was violating their customers' privacy. In either case, the penalties could be enormous, both financially and legally, for all the companies involved.
Read More: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpayer-data-google-meta/
In the Back Pages: The Biden Administration Redefines Antisemitism
The Rest
→ Chart of the Day:
A new poll found that the right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD) is now the second-most-popular party in Germany, a 13% bump among likely German voters compared to polling earlier this year.
The AfD’s primary issue, and the one that has catapulted it to prominence, is opposition to the waves of immigrants that have poured into Germany fleeing the Syrian civil war.
Some smaller groups within the party have been deemed so extreme by the German government that courts have given security services permission to spy on their communications.
Lawmakers in the party have opposed sending aid to Ukraine and have been skeptical of the European Union over the years as well. 14% of far-left Green Party supporters now say that they’d be willing to consider cooperating with the AfD, “on a case by case basis.”
→ The city of Evanston, Illinois, home to Northwestern University, decided in 2019 to devote $10 million over 10 years toward reparations for local Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, before the passage of a fair-housing ordinance. Initially, the plan was to issue $25,000 vouchers to eligible residents to be used for mortgage debt, making a down payment, or necessary home repairs. However, the city council subsequently amended the plan to also include cash payments for residents who are renters. “We have not received real reparations, the 40 acres and a mule,” cash recipient and Vietnam veteran Kenneth Wideman told The Wall Street Journal, “I wish people behind me would get that and more than what I got.”
→ On Wednesday, a class action lawsuit alleged that Twitter still owes its recently laid-off workers $500 million in compensation. Despite its promises of at least double this amount, Twitter has only paid its ex-workers one month severance, according to the petition. Twitter denies the allegations and responded to a Reuters request for comment with a “poop” emoji image.
→ Quote of the Day:
[He’s] resting
That’s Russian lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov speaking about the alleged detention of Russian General Sergei Surovikin who has not been seen since the wild events of June 24, when the paramilitary Wagner Group marched on Moscow. According to other sources speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Surovikin knew about, but was not involved in, the plan to overthrow other senior military leadership. Apparently, in the aftermath, another 13 senior officers were questioned and 15 were suspended from duty or fired, in an attempt by the Kremlin to weed out any questionable loyalties within the military. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that it had begun disarming Wagner, but it was also recently reported that Putin met with leadership of the group after their failed mutiny, so it is unclear what the future holds for this unofficial wing of the Russian Army.
→ We’re really going to have to get some hobbies in 2024 when there’s sure to be a dearth of new material flowing from the Hollywood spigot. After more than two months of Hollywood’s writers taking to the picket line, the actors are now set to join them. SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in a statement that the union had, “SAG-AFTRA negotiated in good faith and was eager to reach a deal that sufficiently addressed performer needs, but the AMPTP’s responses to the union’s most important proposals have been insulting and disrespectful of our massive contributions to this industry.” The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers countered by saying they’d offered “historic” concessions to the actors union during contract negotiations, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to get the job done. One of the largest concerns under negotiation is the use of artificial intelligence in Hollywood, with performers fearful that they will be gradually erased by their own avatars.
→ On Wednesday, 19-year-old Omar Alkattoul pleaded guilty on the charge of “transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce” due to his online behavior that suggested he was planning to attack Jews last November in his home state of New Jersey. Apparently Alkattoul told law enforcement officers that he became radicalized by ISIS propaganda and through communicating with people online supposedly from al-Qaida, who encouraged him to commit a terrorist attack. We have to point out that two other recent stories we’ve covered about high-school-aged Muslim American boys who were arrested on similar charges turned out to have been communicating with FBI assets posing as ISIS. Some have suggested that those arrested were encouraged into similar schemes by the FBI themselves.
→ A recent Reuters investigation reveals that the CCP is cracking down on foreign emissaries’ activities in China. Specifically, diplomats say, there has been outside pressure from Chinese police on citizens who wanted to collaborate with Western embassies on LGBT or women’s events. It all comes as part of a larger government effort in recent months to crack down on potential espionage. Guy Saint-Jacques, a Canada-based business adviser on China who was Ottawa’s ambassador to Beijing between 2012 and 2016, told Reuters: “These new Chinese actions considerably limit soft diplomacy conducted by embassies and send a chill among potential Chinese attendees who are already harassed if they want to express any criticism of the regime.” In reply, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said: “Any country has the right to adopt domestic legislation to safeguard national security, which is in line with the common practice of all countries.”
→ On Wednesday, 86 members of the 120-member Knesset voted to confirm right-wing MK Yitzhak Kroizer to the Judicial Selection Committee that appoints Israel’s judges. Members of the opposition are calling for an immediate convening of the committee to start filling open positions now that the two seats for members of Knesset have been finalized, but the ruling coalition seems to want to delay until they are able to get more seats filled with those sympathetic to their goals.
The main sticking point are the two seats allocated to Israel’s Bar Association, which the Netanyahu-led coalition wants to remove, as they are not currently likely to support politically favorable candidates. Also on Wednesday, new text was added to a bill that would bar courts from interfering in political decisions based on “reasonableness.” The new text makes explicit that the courts cannot overrule the government on political appointments nor force the convening of a committee.
All of this has protesters back in the streets, and announcing a massive “Day of Resistance” next Monday. Protest organizers say, “Netanyahu and the government of destruction are leading Israel to the abyss.” While the protests, often stopping traffic on major roads, have largely consisted of anti-overhaul protesters, supporters of the coalition’s plans are now getting into the road-blocking game as well.
TODAY IN TABLET:
In Memory of Milan Kundera by Maxim D. Shrayer
On the passing of the great Czech writer and dissident
Lesson Plans by Unorthodox
Ep. 371: Benyamin Cohen on ‘The Einstein Effect,’ plus a look behind the scenes of the new Israeli TV show ‘The Lesson’
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
The Biden Administration Redefines Antisemitism
And excludes today’s most pernicious form of Jew-hatred
The following is based on testimony delivered before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on June 22, 2023.
Opposing antisemitism is easy, because everyone is on your side. Already 100 years ago, Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, in its notorious series “The International Jew,” complained that the term “antisemitism” is “used indiscriminately and vituperatively” against those who just want to “discuss … Jewish world-power.” Sophisticated antisemites do not come out and admit it. So to fight antisemitism, one must first define it.
This is even more challenging today, when the general anathema to antisemitism in polite society makes “anti-Zionism” a convenient and common substitute. Yet recent actions by the Biden administration show that the problem of antisemitism manifesting as “anti-Zionism” requires further clarification. By morally legitimizing the position of those who call Israel a “fascist” nation or an “apartheid state,” the Biden administration has upended, quietly and with little notice, the governing consensus on what constitutes antisemitism.
The only broadly accepted definition of antisemitism today is the working definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization of over 30 member countries. After several years of consultations with academic experts from around the world, including debate about the role of “anti-Zionism,” IHRA unanimously adopted its definition in 2016. Crucially, it states that “anti-Zionist” or “anti-Israel” sentiments can be “manifestations” of antisemitism. IHRA’s definition provides several illustrations: claiming Israel’s existence is illegitimate; the regrettably widespread practice of “applying double standards” to the Jewish state; or “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
To be clear, the IHRA does not equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It explicitly states that criticism of Israeli government policies is legitimate, as with any country. However, condemning Israel based on standards or supposed norms that are in practice applied only to the Jewish state may cross over into antisemitism. Even for such double standards, the IHRA definition only creates a presumption that must be corroborated by other contextual factors.
Opponents of the IHRA definition claim it is designed to silence ordinary criticisms of Israel. A number of such organizations wrote in a recent letterto the United Nations that “the IHRA definition has often been used to … chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe.” Yet IHRA stresses that its working definition is not legally binding, and its definition’s only role is to help create a consensus on what constitutes antisemitism—not how to regulate it. Under the First Amendment, the government must not, under almost all circumstances, restrict antisemitic speech (or other forms of hate speech), and can only deal with actual discriminatory conduct, such as boycotts. Similarly, principles of representative democracy demand that members of Congress should be permitted to say even antisemitic things, including about Israel (though this does not mean such statements should be rewarded with choice committee assignments).
The IHRA definition struck a chord, and has been formally adopted by at least 39 countries, including the U.S., and endorsed by the European Union and European Commission, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, most U.S. states, and a vast number of ideologically diverse jurisdictions, universities, and political entities around the world.
Not surprisingly, the IHRA definition is opposed by those who wish to engage in precisely the kind of anti-Israel double standards that the definition seeks to identify. In an effort to confound or counteract the legitimacy and clarity of the IHRA working definition, a few other groups have offered alternative definitions that greatly minimize the role of Israel-focused antisemitism.
One such effort is the Nexus Document, a project hosted by Bard University. The Nexus definition differs from IHRA primarily in its treatment of Israel-focused conduct. Nexus does not regard as presumptively antisemitic either the questioning of the basic legitimacy of Israel’s existence or the application of double standards to Israel. According to Nexus, such views may have legitimate grounds.
The differences between the IHRA and Nexus definitions of antisemitism don’t stop there. Unlike IHRA’s adoption by a wide range of countries (including many states that are often sharply critical of Israel), not one country or governmental entity has adopted the Nexus Document. The IHRA definition was developed by an international group of scholars not known for their views on Israel or their politics one way or another. The Nexus advisory board, by contrast, is overwhelmingly left-wing and includes people like the head of J Street. Members of Nexus’ advisory board have described Israel as “fascist,” denounced it as an “apartheid state,” and justified those who say it should have never existed.
While IHRA has become the global benchmark, the narrow Nexus definition has languished in total obscurity—that is, until the White House suddenly announced its “welcome and appreciation” of the Nexus Document in May, while still “embracing” IHRA. Nexus leaped from the discussions of like-minded academics straight into a White House policy document. While the IHRA definition remains the only one officially used by the government, the White House’s National Strategy harms efforts to respond to antisemitism by referring to two different, and fundamentally contradictory, definitions.
The central claim of Nexus and other critics of the IHRA definition is that even vicious attacks on Israel should not be considered antisemitic because they are not about Jews per se, but about the Jewish state’s governmental policies. It would be lazy to dismiss this possibility out of hand. Let us examine these attacks first in the perspective of history and then in light of some of the “reasons” suggested by Nexus.
The obsessive focus on the supposed wrongs of Israel has resurfaced across an amazing array of cultures and epochs. From the Romans to the Crusades, the Reformation to the Inquisition, National to International Socialism. The justifications change but the target remains the same.
It is an illusion that antisemitism amounts to such only when it presents as pure unreasoned Jew-hatred or as stereotypes and “tropes.” Antisemitism has never been merely a hate-filled emotional state, it has always been what some academics have called a “pseudo-explanatory political theory.” The most effective antisemites have always sought to justify their bigotry by claiming they simply object to the bad things Jews do to the world: The Jews were hated for producing Jesus and for not accepting him; they were hated as representatives of global capitalism and of international communism. Even Hitler—hardly subtle about his hatred of the Jews—cited policy reasons: They have “the two million dead of the [First] World War on their conscience,” and “they undermine the economies of countries leading to poverty.”
The accusations leveled against Israel often resemble antisemitic claims made throughout history. Instead of the Jews being accused of killing gentile children, Israel is accused of deliberately killing Palestinian children; instead of Jews being accused of causing plague among gentiles, Israel is accused of causing disease among Palestinians. And the accusation of “apartheid” is a modern blood libel—an absurd “Big Lie” that cannot be rectified by mere refutation. Just as the classic blood libel resonated with the theological preoccupations of earlier ages, today’s claims resonate with the ethnic justice concerns of our times. That today several members ofCongress can level such libels against the Jewish state without facing sanctions from their party demonstrates how dangerous “polite” antisemitism is.
A definition of antisemitism is inadequate if it cannot capture a phenomenon of such breadth, persistence, and significance in the treatment of Jews. Nexus argues, however, that discriminating against Israel should not be seen as presumptively bad because there exist good “reasons … for treating Israel differently.” Nexus cites two purported reasons—that people “care” more about Israel, and Israel’s receipt of U.S. military aid.
“Caring” of course is not a reason but a feeling, making this explanation circular. It is undeniable that much of the world “cares” a great deal about Israel, but such hostile caring is itself the phenomenon that requires explanation. Nexus suggests that perhaps someone’s “personal or national experience may have been adversely affected by the creation of the State of Israel.” This is a woefully inadequate account. If contemporary anti-Israel sentiment were limited to, say, Palestinians, we would not be having this hearing. This cannot explain the “caring” of large, impersonal institutions like the United Nations, and supposedly neutral groups like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, which lack “personal or national experiences.”
The second justification Nexus cites is that Israel receives a significant amount of “American aid.” To be sure, criticizing U.S. aid to Israel is itself legitimate—but it hardly accounts for the double standards against Israel. For one, heightened hostility to Israel’s existence is not solely or even primarily an American phenomenon. IHRA grew out of European anti-racism monitoring efforts. European countries do not provide significant foreign aid to Israel, but the same kind of double standards are present there (see Table 1). Nexus wants us to believe that those Americans who oppose Israel, just as their European counterparts do, happen to do so for a distinctive American reason—an amazing coincidence.
Attempts to insulate delegitimization of Israel from accusations of antisemitism have no adequate response to the perfect segue from prior modes of Jew hate to the similarly singular hostiilty the Jewish state has received from the international community, from its creation until today. In anti-discrimination law, it is well established that using a proxy for a target group can still be discriminatory. And everyone agrees that countries can be proxies for their majority population—indeed, this was precisely the argument asserted against President Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries.
The obsessive hostility to the Jewish state cannot be empirically explained by reference to its policies. For example, Table 2 compares leading recipients of U.S. foreign aid with various indications of domestic and international opprobrium—there is no relationship. Foreign aid cannot explain the broad phenomenon of extreme hostility to Israel.
It must be some other factor. Calling it antisemitism says nothing about the subjective psychological state of the antisemite—they likely experience themselves as heroes, not haters. But labeling particular forms of demonization as antisemitism is crucial to properly understand it as part of an ancient, global, relentless phenomenon.
It is disgraceful that the classic definition of anti Semitism has been redefined in such a revisionist manner where the focus is on the victkm as to the perpretrator of anti Semitism
semitism has to do, mostly, with language.