The Center for Jewish Legal Studies (CJLS) convened what organizers believe was the first legal symposium dedicated to combating the genocide libel against Israel. The full-day symposium took place Oct. 5 at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, in collaboration with the school’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, which now funds and runs targeted antisemitism-related work through the new Siegel Fund to Combat Antisemitism.
The symposium brought together historians, law professors and practitioners to examine where the accusation that Israel is committing genocide originated, how it spread through academia and international institutions and how it is used to justify exclusion, harassment and discrimination against Jews.
CJLS co-founder Rona Kaufman, the conference chair and an associate professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University, opened the day with Marjorie Berk Moss, director of the Social Work Advocacy Program (SWAP) at the Bluhm Legal Clinic. Norman J.W. Goda, professor of history and Jewish studies at the University of Florida, traced the genocide claim’s history.
Claire O. Finkelstein, professor of law and philosophy and founder of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, addressed human shields and the law of armed conflict. Kaufman then spoke on “The Genocide Libel: Justifying Discrimination and Violence Against Jews,” showing how anti-Zionism has long been bound up with hatred of and discrimination against Jews. Yael Vias Gvirsman, founder and director of the International Criminal and Humanitarian Law Clinic at Reichman University’s Harry Radzyner Law School and founder of October 7 Justice Without Borders, addressed justice for the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
In the afternoon, CJLS co-founder Andrea J. Martin, assistant professor of law at Penn State Dickinson Law, asked, “Can International Law Protect Jews as a People?” She identified a recurring pattern in the Jewish experience with law: a false narrative enters the law and acquires the appearance of legitimacy, a process she analogized to money laundering and called “juridical narrative laundering.” Jeffrey Herf, professor emeritus of history at the University of Maryland, College Park, examined the disappearance of Hamas’s agency in the accusations against Israel. He also criticized American media coverage as one-sided, arguing that major outlets have largely failed to publish historians’ work that would give the public more accurate accounts.
Sabrina Soffer, co-author of Of Good Courage with Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter and a speechwriter to the ambassador at the Embassy of Israel to the United States, as well as a scholar at the Jerusalem Center for Security for Foreign Affairs, spoke on “The Legitimation of a Lie: Postmodernism, Academia, and the Genocide Charge.” Kaufman and Martin closed with a session on building Jewish legal studies as a field.
The symposium included a public evening program featuring U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman of the Southern District of Florida in conversation with dean Zachary D. Clopton of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. The two discussed Altman’s The New York Times bestseller, Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law, which tests the most serious accusations against Israel, including colonialism, apartheid and genocide, against the historical record and the elements the law requires.
Reflecting on the day, Kaufman said the symposium showed why bringing these disciplines together matters. “The scholars who understand how the genocide libel was built have too often worked in separate disciplines and separate rooms,” said Kaufman. “Bringing leading historians, legal scholars and practitioners together connects history to the law. That puts the truth on the record and gives lawyers, scholars and advocates what they need to combat libels against the Jewish people and Israel.”
“This is what building a field looks like,” said Martin. “Scholars do important work on their own, but a field takes shape when they come together, share ideas and build on one another’s work. That exchange is what moves scholarship and education forward and it lays the foundation for Jewish legal studies. We are deeply grateful to the Bluhm Legal Clinic and the Siegel Fund to Combat Antisemitism for making this gathering possible.”
