Risa Nagel

Overview

Risa Nagel has justified anti-Semitism and demonized Israel. Nagel was reportedly a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Berkeley Law School (Berkeley Law) in 2023.

On July 15, 2018, Nagel participated in a walk-out reportedly organized by If Not Now (INN) during a Birthright tour of Israel. INN is an organization that has demonized Israel and seeks to drive a wedge between American Jewry and Israel.

Birthright Israel is a heritage trip to Israel for Jewish young adults from across the world.

As of March 2023, Nagel’s LinkedIn page said she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law since 2021, slated to graduate in May 2024. As of the same date, Nagel’s LinkedIn said she graduated from Hamilton College (Hamilton) with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and environmental studies in 2016.

Nagel was listed as an associate editor for the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law (BJELL) for the 2022-2023 academic year. As of March 2023, Nagel was listed as a submissions editor for the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice.

Also as of March 2023, Nagel’s LinkedIn said she was located in Berkeley, California.

Justifying Anti-Semitism

On March 7, 2023, Nagel expressed [00:10:43] support for an anti-Semitic bylaw [slide 3] while featuring as a guest on a podcast alongside the bylaw’s author Malak Afaneh. Nagel spoke on the Occupied Thoughts podcast, in the episode titled: “Backlash and Perseverance: The Berkeley LSJP Bylaw and Its Aftermath.”

In the same podcast, Nagel accused [00:18:41] Jews of going to Israel “not to migrate, not to commune with Palestinians, but to control and displace Palestinians very intentionally.”

On August 6, 2022, Berkeley LSJP amended its group constitution to include a bylaw banning pro-Israel speakers from participating in club events. The bylaw explicitly excluded [p. 3] any speaker who had “expressed and continued to hold views…in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.

Berkeley LSJP claimed it created the bylaw “in the interest of protecting the safety and welfare of Palestinian students on campus.”

The United States State Department defines as one example of contemporary anti-Semitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” As of November 2022, the U.S. was one of 35 countries to have adopted the same definition.

Berkeley Law student Malak Afaneh was the president of Berkeley LSJP when the group adopted its bylaw. She has spread hatred of Zionists and has expressed support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group, which has a history of suicide bombings, stabbing attacks on civilians and airplane hijackings.

After Berkeley LSJP adopted the bylaw, it attempted to get other Berkeley Law student groups to also adopt it. The bylaw committed a group to not “host, sponsor, or promote” pro-Israel events and to mandate its leaders to participate in Berkeley LSJP’s “Palestine 101” training course “to learn ways to create a safe and inclusive space for Palestinian students and students that are in the support of the liberation of Palestine.”

On August 21, 2022, Berkeley LSJP celebrated a “BDS VICTORY!!” on Instagram, announcing [slides 2 and 3] that eight Berkeley Law student groups had adopted a version of the anti-Semitic bylaw. The post said: “LSJP is calling ALL student organizations at Berkeley Law to take an anti-racist and anti-settler colonial stand and adopt the bylaw into their constitutions ASAP!”

The eight groups included Berkeley Law’s Muslim Student’s Association (BLMSA), Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association (MENALSA) and the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA).

Around the same time, 30 members of the Berkeley Law faculty issued a statement “in Support of Jewish Law Students.” The statement said that groups adopting the bylaw “impermissibly exclude a large majority of the UC Berkeley School of Law faculty from participating in the work of these organizations.” Berkeley Law alumni, Jewish student groups and faculty at other law schools also condemned the bylaw as anti-Semitic.

On August 25, 2022, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky sent an email to student leaders criticizing the bylaw as “troubling.”

On August 26, 2022, Chemerinsky was quoted in an article as saying that the bylaw “would exclude about…90 percent or more of our Jewish students.” He also said: “Indeed, taken literally, this would mean that I could not be invited to speak because I support the existence of Israel…”

On August 27, 2022, the Jewish Students Association at Berkeley Law (JSABL) wrote an open letter on Medium, where they said: “[O]ur organization was one of the few affinity groups not contacted” during the process of the bylaw’s adoption and passage.

On August 29, 2022, Berkeley LSJP wrote a statement on Instagram to the Berkeley Law community criticizing Cherminsky’s email. Berkeley SJP accused Israel of “genocide and apartheid” and of “murdering, disabling, and displacing Palestinian families day and night.” They also said: “Apartheid is a crime against humantiy [sic]...”

On October 6, 2022, Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ criticized the Berkeley LSJP bylaw as “regrettable,” and in “direct opposition to our essential Principles of Community…”

On October 21, 2022, Berkeley LSJP published a “Statement of Solidarity” with the other eight student groups that adopted the bylaw, claiming that they were subject to “baseless allegations of antisemitism.” The first group to sign the statement was the Student Association at Berkeley Law (SABL), the Berkeley Law student government.

The 169 individuals and groups that signed the statement included various SJP chapters, BDS groups and branches of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Israel group.

Also among the signatories was Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network (Samidoun), an NGO that spreads awareness about terrorists in Israeli jail and whose leadership includes three PFLP members [pp. 22–28].

Demonizing Israel

On March 7, 2023, while a guest on the Occupied Thoughts podcast, Nagel claimed [00:10:15] that “Zionism in practice looks like apartheid. It is apartheid.” She then alleged [00:10:46]: “Zionism is a political ideology of settler colonialism.”

On July 15, 2018, Nagel was one of several participants who joined and then walked off of a Birthright tour of Israel. The walkout was reportedly planned by INN.

On that same day, Nagel was featured in a Facebook live-stream posted by INN activist Hallie Berkson-Gold that showed Nagel leaving [00:21:17] the trip.

Nagel said [00:21:37] of being in Israel that “it’s like being in the South and not seeing, not talking about Jim Crow.”

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States. They came into being at the end of the nineteenth century.

In an opinion piece that Nagel wrote in the Huffington Post about her staged walk-off, Nagel accused Israel of “military-backed violence and countless human rights abuses.”

Following their walk-off, the activists set up a GoFundMe campaign to recover the costs of walking off their trip, including deposits and return plane ticket fees.

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

IfNotNow (INN)

IfNotNow (INN) is an anti-Israel organization founded in 2014, in response to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas.

INN claims to be “young Jews angered by the overwhelmingly hawkish response of American Jewish institutions” to OPE. INN presents three demands on its website: “Stop the War on Gaza, End the Occupation, and Freedom and Dignity for All.”

INN defines “the Occupation as the military rule over Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza,” which is land Israel has controlled for nearly 50 years since the 1967 Six-Day War. However, INN leaders have made [00:34:32] the claim [00:13:49] at protests that the occupation is 70 years long, referring to Israel’s founding in 1948.

INN actions have aimed to demonize [00:38:13] Israel, harass [00:05:44] mainstream American Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and decrease support for Israel among American Jews.

INN has used “public action and imaginative ritual” to achieve its goals, including disruptions where activists were arrested.

One of the high-profile arrests occurred at a May 2018 disruption at a U.S. Senator’s office in Washington, D.C. to protest legislation against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

At the same incident, INN used [00:07:17] the Jewish ritual of the Mourner’s Kaddish prayer to mourn [00:09:10] protesters who were killed during the Hamas-organized and funded Great March of Return riots on the Israel-Gaza border.

INN activists have also staged and promoted walk-offs from Birthright Israel trips, a heritage trip to Israel for young Jewish adults from across the world.

INN claims to take no position on the BDS movement and that it is “open to any who seek to shift the American Jewish public away from the status quo that upholds the Occupation.” However, INN organizes with pro-BDS, anti-Israel organizations including American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).