Illustrative: Pro-Palestinian activists protest against the unloading of an Israeli ship at the Port of Oakland, June 4, 2021. Photo: Facebook/Arab Resource & Organizing Center.
The Latino Jewish Caucus of the US Congress has strongly condemned an online initiative in Boston known as the “Mapping Project,” which highlights the locations of Jewish communal institutions in Massachusetts it claims offer “institutional support for the colonization of Palestine.”
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the caucus — a bipartisan group of 30 legislators of Latino and Jewish origins — said it was “deeply concerned over the targeting of the Jewish Community in Massachusetts by The Mapping Project and find it troubling that this implicit antisemitic attack directed towards our Jewish brothers and sisters has been allowed to happen.”
The legislators emphasized that the project had been launched amid a rise in antisemitic outrages both locally and nationally.
“We have witnessed far too many hate-based attacks on places of worship, businesses, schools, and public facilities, to wait silently for the next incident to take place. Antisemitic attacks have risen by 42 percent in Massachusetts while nationwide there has been a 34 percent uptick,” the caucus stated. It noted as well that the project had “explicitly stated that the intention of its collective mapping is to reveal local Jewish entities and networks to specifically dismantle and disrupt them.”
“As members of the Latino Jewish Caucus, we stand united with the Jewish community in our response to condemn this hate and xenophobic actions that provoke antisemitism, hate motivation, or incitement of violence,” the statement declared.
In a separate development, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called on the Icelandic company providing online hosting services to the Mapping Project to take the site down.
A tweet from the ADL on Monday disclosed that the company, the Reykjavik-based 1984ehf, had responded to the civil rights organizations’ appeal to remove the Mapping Project site by pointing to its hosting policy — which includes a commitment to “facilitate the freedom of speech,” but also a pledge to “not host those who advocate violence, terror, suppression or hatred” and to “throw out neo-Nazis and racists.”
The ADL restated its call for the site to be taken offline, describing the Mapping Project as “an antisemitic site that poses a direct threat to the MA Jewish community. It provides names and addresses of individuals, groups, organizations and institutions to ‘dismantle’ and ‘disrupt’ — a chilling call-to-action threatening physical security.”
