PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Marah Birnbaum, Student at CUNY School of Law
5:00:07
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124 sec
Marah Birnbaum, a Jewish student at CUNY School of Law, testified about her experiences and views on antisemitism and the IHRA definition at CUNY. She argued against the implementation of the IHRA definition, stating it's not a good faith effort to protect Jewish students but rather an attempt to silence pro-Palestinian activism.
- Birnbaum emphasized her Jewish background and familiarity with antisemitism, but stated she has not experienced antisemitism at CUNY.
- She criticized the Lippman probe and efforts to implement the IHRA definition as attacks on pro-Palestinian organizing.
- Birnbaum expressed concerns about conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and shared her personal experiences living in Israel.
Marah Birnbaum
5:00:07
Hi.
5:00:08
Thank you for having me here today.
5:00:10
I speak as a Jewish student at the CUNY School of Law who has maintained Jewish practice throughout my life, and I've spent over a year living and learning in Israel.
5:00:20
I minored in Jewish studies as an undergraduate and was actually once assaulted on the train for merely looking like Anne Frank.
5:00:26
So regardless of definitions, I'm intimately familiar with antisemitism.
5:00:31
I have never once experienced an antisemitic incident at CUNY as a CUNY student, nor have I heard of or witnessed any incidents of Jewish students being targeted and harassed for being Jewish at the law school during my time here.
5:00:45
I'm a 2nd year student.
5:00:46
The Littmann probe and broader effort to implement the IHRA definition at CUNY is a targeted attack on bold student organizing for Palestinian freedom and for CUNY's divestment from companies that profit from death and genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing throughout the West Bank.
5:01:02
It is not a good faith effort to protect Jewish students.
5:01:05
It is about increasing the power of Zionist organizations and lobbying efforts to silence and criminalize the movement for Palestinian freedom and rights.
5:01:13
The IHRA definition categorizes Jewish individuals' feelings of discomfort with the mass shaming of Israel's Jewish individuals' feelings of discomfort with the mass shaming of Israel's abhorrent actions as victimhood of a hate crime.
5:01:18
Much of the content that the IHRA definition targets is a political opinion, not a matter for hate crimes.
5:01:28
This is a matter for serious self reflection and reckoning with the reality of Israel's actions and interests that we need to engage with as a Jewish community in the diaspora.
5:01:38
Shame on council member Verna Kahl for threatening students at Brooklyn College with a firearm.
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Shame on council member Yaeger for calling student activists terrorists.
5:01:46
My time spent living in Israel as a teenager revealed to me how fundamental and poor its apartheid system of governance is and that Jewish supremacy and democracy cannot be reconciled.
5:01:56
Israel's outright denial of Palestinian existence through genocide, ethnic cleansing, and occupation is much to the glee and support of white nationalist, xenophobic, evangelical Zionist Republicans who are, in fact, anti Semitic.
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And this is the most tragic irony that I have ever known.
5:02:10
Anti Zionism is such a
Christopher Marte
5:02:11
big thing.
