The pro-Israel lobby has been working (and spending) for decades in our communities and in the MA State House to build support for the state of Israel; but since October 7, 2023 they have definitely kicked it into high gear.  In the last session, the establishment of a MA Special Commission on Combatting Antisemistism (SCCA) was attached to the state budget and voted into being without any hearing or opportunity for public comment. The mandate of this commission is to review our hate crime laws and school curricula and make recommendations to the MA legislature by November 2025.

The commission's monthly hearings could make your hair stand on end. Important to know is that multiple Zionist organizations are represented on the commission, and the 2 MA legislators that chair the special commission – Sen John Velis and Rep Simon Cataldo – have revealed themselves to be rabid zionists, literally saying, “anti-zionism is antisemitism”  There have been only a couple of opportunities for public comment. Mostly it has been invited testimony and mostly it has been biased. When the head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association testified, he was so vilified it led many to dub it unabashed McCarthyism. 

Members of the commission are not just accomplishing their ideological goals in our state house and schools, they are also accomplishing their financial goals in the form of kickbacks in the budget. The FY2026 budget conference committee has released its budget recommendations, and they include a “non-profit security grant” for $5,200,000 with priority funding for organizations who claim to have “experienced threats and/or incidents of terrorism or hate crimes known or believed to be related to their nonprofit organization’s purpose, mission, or services,” and $1,025,000 to a DESE grant program to respond to school-based hate incidents that has previously paid for the Anti-Defamation League in schools. Most shockingly, $10,000,000 in Fair Share funds intended for public transportation and public education has been appropriated for the construction of a Holocaust museum in Boston whose development is being led by SCCA member Jody Kipnis. This appropriation was doubled by the conference committee in a highly unusual move, given that both the House and Senate had already  agreed on $5,000,000 and the purpose of the conference committee is to resolve differences.

A coalition named Together for an Inclusive Massachusetts – of which GRP is a member – has been working since the commission's inception, first to stop it and now to respond to it. TIM's mission is to promote the vital necessity of collective liberation. It is clear SCCA is defining the discomfort of some Jews as 'antisemitism' and exceptionalizing this community and the state of Israel for special treatment and protection. As a anti-Zionist Jew who is vehemently against the genocide of Palestinians, I feel more endangered by the establishment and the behavior of SCCA. And I am far from alone within the Jewish community.

Please contact your MA Legislators and ask them to stand strong against any policy that equates Judaism with Zionism, or in any way criminalizes calling for the liberation of Palestinians and Palestine.