Gov. Beshear’s antisemitism task force needs to define exactly what antisemitism is | Opinion

I recently attended a Kentucky Theater showing of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.” In the film, Basel Adra documents the Israeli army destruction of his home town, Masafer Yatta, in West Bank, Palestine. The film shows the army as it bulldozes houses, fills wells with concrete, cuts water lines, kills poultry, and shoots unarmed residents of Masafer Yatta. Some of the residents flee with their families to adjacent caves and start to live in them.

An Israeli, Yuval Abraham, helped Adra with the directing and screen-writing. It’s gone from the Kentucky but readers should see it and learn a little about Israel’s decades long assault of Palestine and their abuse of West Bank Palestinians which includes, but is not exclusive of, armed Israeli settlers stealing the homes of the people living in them.

The film has been labeled, by some, as antisemitic which reminded me of the existence of the Kentucky Antisemitism Task Force commissioned by Andy Beshear and whose members include Jonathan Miller, Jerry Abramson, Bill Altman, Dr. Muhammad Babar, Sen. Karen Berg, Gary Broadbent, Aaron Ann Cole-Funfsinn, Jonathan Goldberg, Ralph Green, Mayor Craig Greenberg, Mindy Haas, Nancy Hoffman, Rabbi Beth Jacowitz, David Kaplan, Rev.Corrie Shull, Beth Solomon, Sara Wagner, Lior Yaron. Rep. Daniel Grossberg was an original member but is no longer listed.

The Task Force was created on December 21, 2023, a little over two months after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel in the Gaza Envelope of southern Israel. The executive order creating the task force lists eight duties but includes no definition of antisemitism. There may be a definition via a link to one of the web page documents but it appears nowhere explicitly on the governor.ky.gov/priorities/antisemitism-task-force web page or on the Executive Order creating the task force. The Executive Order shows a signing line for Secretary of State Michael Adams but he did not sign it.

The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil for his Columbia University protest and President Trump calling his activity pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American is a good time for the KY Antisemitism Task Force to define antisemitism.

For instance, would task force antisemitism include criticism of Israel or Zionism or the activities of Jewish Voices For Peace and Rabbis for Human Rights? Would their definition include repeating the fact that in 1948 Israel expelled, to the Gaza Strip, 750,000 Palestinians after the first Arab-Israeli War or that since 1967 Israel has either solely or in combination occupied, blockaded, or invaded the West Bank and Gaza?

Would their definition of antisemitism include the amplification of the views of Max Blumenthal, Aaron Matte, Norman Finkelstein, and Noam Chomsky? Is it antisemitic to repeat publicly known facts like pro Israel political PACs spending $5,428,588 in the 2024 election cycle or AIPAC spending $45.2 million on 2024 Congressional races. Is it antisemitic to observe that Israel has one of the world’s most lethal militaries or that Palestine has no army, air force, navy, or marines? Would it be antisemitic to repeat Jewish-American orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Perlmutter’s observation that Israeli snipers deliberately target Palestinian children, often in the head and chest? Is my description of ‘No Other Land’ antisemitic?

The minimum requirement for a state sponsored entity tasked with combating antisemitism, is to provide a definition that guides their work. Maybe the Governor’s office or Chair Jonathan Miller can get on this so that Kentuckians who see Israel’s destruction of Gaza as a genocide knows how the state of Kentucky views our views.

Todd Kelly is a nurseryman and gardener from Lexington.