Lawfare Project sorely needed as anti-Semitism continues to surge

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Who are you going to call?

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It’s not a Ghostbusters reference — although, the mission is similar: To defeat evil.

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If you’re Jewish — or if you’re a supporter of Israel and the Jewish community — and you’re being harassed or attacked or vilified or threatened? Then you should call the Lawfare Project.

The Lawfare Project is based in New York City, but is led by a brilliant Canadian woman from Toronto. It’s a team of more than 600 lawyers based in different countries and created in 2010 to protect the civil and human rights of Jews everywhere. It’s a pro bono effort — meaning, literally, “for the public good” and at no cost, too. Lawyers donate their time to fight for Jews facing anti-Semitism and hate.

And they’re very busy these days.

Western democracies are presently in the midst of the worst surge in anti-Semitism since the Holocaust. Oct. 7 was the worst of it, of course, with 1,200 men, women, children and babies tortured and slaughtered in Israel by Hamas — and 200 taken hostage in Gaza, where more than 100 remain.

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But since that terrible day, Jews around the globe have been targeted for the supposed sins of the Israeli government. And, for some, “it’s become perfectly acceptable to project their hatred of a foreign government on Jews,” said Brooke Goldstein, the founder and executive director of the Lawfare Project.

Born and raised in Toronto, Goldstein went to McGill University in Montreal, then the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City. She’s an extraordinary person and is the granddaughter of a commander of a unit of Polish partisans who fought the Nazis in the Second World War. And she started the Lawfare Project after working as a film producer and an advocate for children’s rights.

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The Lawfare Project essentially got its start with her 2011 book, Lawfare: The War Against Free Speech: A First Amendment Guide for Reporting in an Age of Islamist Lawfare. In it, Goldstein offers advice to journalists about how to protect themselves from Islamic extremists who increasingly use the law as a weapon to silence, or punish, those who dare to write about militant Islamists, terrorism and their funding sources. (Full disclosure: This writer has been targeted by multiple legal actions by opponents of the Jewish state.)

“We fight those who use the legal system as a weapon of war,” said Goldstein from New York, where she is based. “You see this happening with Israel, right now — the bias, the horrific charges of genocide and apartheid and so on. It’s the attempt to add a legal patina to a blood libel against Jews and abuse the international legal system to hinder the ability of Israel and other democracies to fight and defeat terrorism.”

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That fight expresses itself in myriad ways, Goldstein said. At any given time, the Lawfare Project promotes civil rights by providing legal help to those who have been discriminated against. It advocates for human rights by combatting extremism. Most off all, it fights “lawfare” — the abuse of legal institutions to destabilize democracy everywhere. Not just Israel.

One of Goldstein’s partners is the affable senior counsel Gerard Filitti, who was also on the line from New York. Told about this newspaper’s efforts to document how anti-Israel protesters and organizers are getting paid to show up — and how the money for that is often coming from outlaw states like Qatar and Iran — Filitti isn’t surprised.

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“We currently have a lawsuit against Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh), which over the years have received more than $800 million (US) from Qatar — and it is also a university where we have seen a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism on campus during that time period,” he said. “We want to see if there is a connection between the anti-Semitism and the funding.”

In that case, the Lawfare Project is representing a Jewish student. And, they stress, they want to hear from Jewish students in Canada — and Jewish non-students — who are being demonized for supporting the just and proper war on Hamas. Or for just being Jewish.

“We are trying to see what this money is doing … because we are seeing so much money coming in, from Qatar especially.”

They are doing God’s work at the Lawfare Project — for Jews and Jewish allies alike.

Got a human rights issue? Give them a call. They might be able to help.

— Kinsella is a lawyer who is establishing a war room to combat the rise in anti-Semitism in Canada.

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