The lawyer standing up for Jewish civil rights

“History has taught us that when Jews are unified, when Jews mobilise, when they stand up for themselves, that truth is on our side, that law is on our side, that we have powers and civil rights, and we can achieve miracles”.

So said legal powerhouse Brooke Goldstein, who was brought out to South Africa by the South African Zionist Federation, talking about the importance of standing together against antisemitism.

Goldstein is a Miami-based human rights attorney, author, award-winning filmmaker, and regular TV commentator. She is also the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, and the founder of the #EndJewHatred movement.

The granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors, Goldstein grew up in Toronto, and experienced the effects of Jew hatred on a society through the stories of her grandparents. So, when she was studying law and in her subsequent career, she made it a priority to help the Jewish community in any way she could.

“I grew up on the stories and teachings of what happens when you don’t keep Jew hatred at bay,” she said, “And so, I’ve dedicated myself, especially with the #EndJewHatred movement, to mobilise the Jewish community to ensure that there are consequences for Jew hatred, meaningful consequences. Just like there are consequences for anti-gay discrimination, or anti-Muslim discrimination, or discrimination against women.”

Goldstein started her legal career in the entertainment space, and while studying, she took a class which discussed children’s human rights and felt it was missing an important element – the recruitment of child soldiers and indoctrination of Jew hatred in the Palestinian territories. This led her to create the award-winning film Making of a Martyr, which, through speaking to the children involved, uncovers the illegal state-sponsored indoctrination and recruitment of Palestinian children for suicide bombing attacks.

After creating the film, she became aware of how those who spoke out against radical Islam would be sued. She started a legal defence fund with another lawyer, Daniel Pipes from the Middle East Forum, to help people with pro bono legal defence to members of the counterterrorism community or the moderate Muslim community for speaking out against radical Islam. This is how, two years later, The Lawfare Project began, a legal fund and public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the civil and human rights of the Jewish people via strategic legal actions.

“I was sick of being on the defence. I had defended, you know, for about two and a half years, people who were subjected to lawfare attacks. Nobody was organising a legal offence. There were so many people coming to me for help, and I wanted to help them. Students are discriminated against on campus. Professors are being targeted. Members of the workforce are being discriminated against. Israeli companies are being illegally boycotted. Jewish doctors are being kicked out of their practices. Jewish journalists are being blocked and fired from publications. It’s rampant discrimination.”

One of her early clients was Geert Wilders, a member of the House of Representatives in the Netherlands, who was sued by an imam when he made a film about the treatment of women under Islam. Said Goldstein, “He was sued by the radical imam himself, and it was ironic because it’s not like he made any commentary in his film. The imam, by suing, saying the film was Islamophobic, was admitting that what he was saying was outrageous and ridiculous.”

For Goldstein, starting The Lawfare Project was a no-brainer because every other minority community that had a civil-rights movement had engaged in litigation. “You make a change in the court system. That’s how we got rid of affirmative action. That’s how we got rid of segregation in our schools. That’s why women have the right in some states to an abortion – because they filed lawsuits to protect themselves. The Jewish community had never strategically organised or set up a legal offence.”

Since its inception, The Lawfare Project has recruited more than 1 000 lawyers who have dedicated themselves to working pro bono and have filed almost 100 cases in about 17 or 18 different jurisdictions around the world.

The #EndJewHatred movement is a grassroots civil-rights movement that works through peaceful direct action, mobilisation, and education. It was founded by Goldstein in 2020 after giving birth to her third son, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd.

She said a lot of Jewish people stood with the Black Lives Matter movement, but those same people wouldn’t post anything in support of Israel because they were scared of a backlash. It made Goldstein think about creating a movement that was about Jews advocating for Jewish rights.

“I funded a study asking the question: what makes for a successful civil-rights movement? We studied the black civil-rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the MeToo movement, and the so called Palestinian movement, which is just a movement for the genocidal destruction of Israel,” she said, “and asked: what are the tactics and strategies, the messaging, how are they organised, how are they funded? From this study, we birthed the EndJewHatred movement, which has a basic premise that if we use the same strategies and tactics as other civil-rights movements, we’ll also be able to succeed in the West.”

Though the movement may not be able to end Jew hatred, just like the MeToo movement didn’t end sexual harassment and misogyny in the workplace, the work the movement does can help change the culture around antisemitism, she said.

“The MeToo movement didn’t get rid of male misogyny. And the Black Lives Matter movement didn’t get rid of anti-black racism, but what it did is impose social consequences,” she said, “We make change through a combination not just of impact litigation, you have to change the culture, you have to mobilise the Jewish community to stand up for itself. When you impose consequences for the behaviour you don’t want to see, the Jew hatred that comes into fashion over time can be suppressed.”

“There’s nothing to fear but fear itself,” Goldstein said. “If you don’t have a gun to your head, it’s not, ‘Shush, still put your head down, and this too shall pass.’ Shame on us if we continue this ideology of just being quiet and putting our heads down. Jews are unified when Jews step into their power. And we need to learn from other minority rights movements and groups. We have to demand and work on allyship.”

Watch the Brooke Goldstein – JUSTICE: Making Jew Haters Pay webinar here:  https://bit.ly/livejr182