Assessing the Damage
A cautionary tale of unregulated foreign influence
We are in the midst of another McCarthy era. Universities and public schools are under attack by organized witch hunts. Slanderous accusations of antisemitism are ending careers. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act is being weaponized by Zionist "lawfare" organizations. Protests against Israel's carpet-bombing of Gaza (not to mention the West Bank and over half a dozen Middle East countries) are twisted as endorsements of terror. Conversely, condemnations of Israeli terror are twisted as antisemitism.
It is rare that we encounter a single story involving Israel and its strong-arm tactics with so many moving parts. It is even rarer that we encounter one in our own backyard. The following story illustrates just how the state of Israel and unregistered agents and lobbyists, coordinating with American Zionist organizations and MAGA Republicans, can marshal the resources of federal investigators, police agencies and prosecutors, to threaten an Ivy League university and take down its president, throw a school district into chaos, and manipulate politicians — all to suppress protests of Israel's war crimes and to ruin its critics.
The Inciting Incident
In the early days of Israel's carpet-bombing of Gaza, pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up a "die-in" at the Harvard Business School's campus in Allson. Yoav Segev, a Jewish Harvard Business School student, was attempting to surveil the "die-in." As Segev stepped awkwardly over the bodies of prostrate protesters attempting to film their faces, he raised suspicions he was trying to dox them. Corinne Shanahan, a Harvard Law School student, felt Segev was filming “in bad faith, either to intimidate or dox” the protesters.
Shouting "exit!" and "shame!" student safety monitors told Segev to stop and, after he refused to leave, half a dozen students blocked his camera with scarves and banners. This included Divinity School student Elom Tetty-Tamaklo, a safety monitor, and also Harvard Law Review editor Ibrahim Bharmal. In what now appears to have been clearly a set-up, Segev claimed he had been "assaulted" and two of the camera-blockers were soon arrested by an undercover Harvard campus police officer working on a federal task force. As an editorial in the Harvard Law Record points out, both Tetty-Tamaklo and Bharmal were trying to protect protesters from Segev. Somehow the safety of this segment of Harvard students has been forgotten.
It was Segev's father Ilan who emailed the Harvard University police (HUPD) with the complaint. The elder Segev knew just whom to contact using intelligence from an unnamed source, and he provided HUPD with the identities of two students, informing HUPD that the son wanted to press charges. Out of more than half a dozen students the two Segevs could have accused of "assault," the two chosen were both men of color. A letter of support from Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine asks "why Tettey-Tamaklo, who is Ghanaian, was singled out from the other protesters as a threat?" While racism was certainly one possibility, another become apparent when we learn that Tettey-Tamaklo was a co-founder of the campus group Harvard Graduate Students 4 Palestine. He was targeted because he was the leader of the pro-Palestinian group.
While Segev is only 26, he owns a tony condominium in Boston's South End purchased for just over $1 million and now valued at $1.24 mil. His parents, as we will see, are extremely well-connected. Tetty-Tamaklo, on the other hand, was a proctor from a poor country who lived in student housing, receiving meals as part of his aid package. Ibrahim Bharmal had been a member of the Harvard Law Review — that is, until Harvard's Chabad rabbi Hirshy Zarchi, Harvard megadonors Bill Ackman, Jonathan Neman, and David Duel, 94 Jewish alumni, and the Brandeis Center, a Zionist "lawfare" group, all showed up with pitchforks demanding the two students' heads on spikes.
The lynch mob
Both Tetty-Tamaklo and Bharmal face charges of Assault and Battery and Violations of Civil Rights. Although the cases against them are weak and have not yet been dismissed by Suffolk County DA Kevin Hayden, neither Tetty-Tamaklo nor Bharmal have court dates, much less convictions. Rejecting any presumption of innocence, Harvard punished the two without hearings anyway. Zionist attack groups further "punished" the two with character assassination. Someone set up a libelous webpage using Tettey-Tamaklo's identity, and both are being doxxed by Canary Mission, a particularly repulsive Zionist attack group funded by deep pocketed donors, including the late Sheldon Adelson and Adam Milstein. Harvard quickly bowed to the well-orchestrated attack campaign, evicting Tetty-Tamaklo from his university housing. And after megadonor Bill Ackman demanded to know, “How does this man remain Editor of the Harvard Law Review?” Ibrahim Bharmal's bio was yanked from the Harvard Law website. But still the Defenders of Israel weren't done with their enemies.
The mob takes down a president
With the university scrambling to appease its attackers, donors like Bill Ackerman, long critical of both the Harvard Trustees and its President, as well as Zionist and MAGA organizations, demanded President Claudine Gay's head — and those of the Trustees. On December 5th, 2023 Virginia Foxx (R-NC) launched her McCarthyite Congressional hearings at which a grandstanding Elise Stefanik (R-NY) outdid herself defending Israel while haranguing Gay and assaulting free speech and freedom of association. It was a shameful display of deference to a repressive, foreign regime.
Unfortunately, Gay's spineless defense of student Constitutional rights and academic freedom at Harvard was nearly as shameful. Even Gay's apologies and assurances were not enough to assuage the MAGA and Zionist zealots. After a month of "deeply personal and sustained attacks [that have] played out in […] the form of repugnant and in some cases racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls" the beleaguered university president had had enough. On January 2nd Gay stepped down.
An extremely weak case
Those who have seen footage of the Segev incident are hard-pressed to recognize anything resembling an assault. Adrian Walker writes in the Globe, "As someone who has covered crime in Suffolk County for decades, I’ll just say this: I can’t remember a weaker assault case. Not only does this case not clear the bar for prosecution, it doesn’t even approach it. Assault by scarf? Please stop it." Thomas Nolan, a former Boston Police lieutenant, commented: "I didn’t see anything in the video that I would characterize as an assault and battery ... or anything remotely approaching a civil rights violation."
Barbara J. Dougan, legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Massachusetts, found the politically-motivated prosecution of the two troubling: "As a lawyer who has represented the victims of hate crimes for 25 years, I view the way this incident is being handled as highly unusual. In my experience, police departments are unwilling, despite the victim’s wishes, to bring charges for incidents that don’t clearly rise to the level of a crime. […] I trust that Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden will take a good, hard look at the facts of this case when deciding whether to prosecute."
More on the Segevs
But the story gets more interesting. Not merely another Jewish student at a school that is 25% Jewish, Segev junior is a student member of Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education (JAFE), part of a pro-Israel "lawfare" group, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB). LDB has filed dozens of legal complaints of alleged "antisemitism" against universities and school districts all over the U.S. based on purported violations of Title VI protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sniffing for antisemitism is exactly what LDB does. It is reasonable to assume Segev was operating as an operative of LDB the day of his confrontation with protesters.
LDB was created by Kenneth L. Marcus, Donald Trump's former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights. Not related to a similarly-named university, LDB has been at its game a long time and was party to the lawsuit which ultimately dismantled affirmative action admissions. Besides opposing affirmative action and launching a tsunami of Title VI lawsuits, LDF and JAFE also work to pressure universities to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
LDB's interests overlap considerably with those of MAGA Republicans who, like Zionists, are fierce foes of DEI and affirmative action and reject any suggestion that the U.S. is or ever was a settler-colonial state. The nation's 30 million Christian Zionists also see Israel as a model for a Christian Nationalist renewal in the U.S. Zionist and MAGA interests also converge in opposing anti-colonialist Middle Eastern studies programs and the faculty who teach courses on, critique, or even discuss settler colonialism with their students. Christian Zionists promote the IHRA definition, which will eventually result in arrests and punishment if fully weaponized. Maybe they're just thinking ahead to the day when criticizing Christian Nationalism will result in similar repression.
Within MAGA World the accusations of "antisemitism" have been increasingly adopted and weaponized by grandstanders like Elise Stefanik, who libeled Segev's "assailants," and Mitt Romney, Harvard class of 1974, who signed a letter painting a melodramatic picture of "Jewish students [who] have locked themselves in dorm rooms across your campuses afraid for their own safety." The fact that a Jewish student like Segev could feel safe enough — if not entitled — to wade through a field of protesters knowing he wouldn't actually be harmed undercuts such rightwing talking points.
All of the chaos created by reckless and slanderous accusations is ultimately to the advantage of the Israeli government, which makes young Segev's family background all the more interesting.
Segev's father Ilan is a former Israeli diplomat who transitioned to American investment manager at Morgan-Stanley, where he manages portfolios sizable enough to attract the occasional lawsuit. Segev senior is founding Co-Chair of and donor to the Israeli-American Council of Boston, a member of the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN), whose leadership overlaps somewhat with the ICA's. Segev donates to a variety of Boston-area institutions, including: the Jewish Community Day School, where he is a Director; the [former] Kehilla Schecter Academy, where he was also a Director; the Landmark School, a secular school for autistic children; and Newton-Wellesley Hospital, where he is on the Board of Overseers. Segev held diplomatic posts in Qatar and served as Israel's Vice Consul in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2001 Segev visited Wake Forest University to deliver the Foreign Ministry's message that Palestinians are entirely responsible for their own occupation, their loss of territory, and the many racist laws they are subject to.
Segev's mother Shiri (Shira) is also a former diplomat with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and is now a financial compliance officer at Omniguide. She serves on the Boston Jewish Community Day School's Board; like her husband is also a member of the Israeli-American Council; a trustee of the Gann Academy, a Jewish day school; Educating for Excellence, a pro-Israel education group; the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, where she is a director. Owing to their wealth and connections, the Segevs have a lot of friends in very high places.
IAC and ICAN
The Israeli-American Council (IAC) to which both parents belong is yet another node in a vast network of pro-Israel and Israel-linked organizations known as the Israel Lobby. As opposed to American Jewish groups which might embrace Zionism, the IAC is openly operated, and in apparent violation of FARA laws, by Israelis on US soil.
The IAC was created in 2007 by Israel's Consul General, Ehud Danoch, and it immediately began recruiting dual (Israeli-American) nationals, primarily with backgrounds in American business. In 2013 the IAC obtained additional financial support from casino mogul and Trump donor Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, as well as Hollywood producer/investor and Biden donor Haim Saban. In 2014 a third billionaire and dedicated Zionist, Adam Milstein, was appointed its chairman.
To say the IAC's politics are far-right is an understatement. On September 19, 2024 the IAC convened its three-day National Summit at the Washington DC Hilton, and it had all of the features of a MAGA Republican CPAC Hungary conference — militarists, authoritarians, enemies of civil liberties, propagandists, Christian Zionists, and even a wannabe dictator — two if we count Donald Trump's surprise appearance at the event. For a closer look at the conference, click here.
There are now between 200,000 and as many as one million people with Israeli citizenship living in the U.S. In the Boston are there are some 30,000. As an organization for Israeli expats, IAC shares much of its membership, some of its leadership, and — owing to its ongoing connections to the Foreign Ministry and IDF — it shares Israeli government objectives with other Israeli-American groups such as the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN) and its sister group, the Israel-American Civic Education Institute (both headed by lobbyist Dillon Hosier). All three target American educational institutions and cultivate friends within MAGA World. For example, ICAN Massachusetts recently endorsed Steven Howitt, arguably the most right-wing representative on Beacon Hill.
ICAN and ICA have gone all out in attacking the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which supports a ceasefire and voted to develop materials that can be used for teaching the Israel-Palestine conflict. Joined at the hip in unsavory ways, MAGA World and the pro-Israel media both went into simultaneous attack mode.
Fox News commentator Kassy Akiva (Dillon) of the Daily Wire published an attack on Ricardo Rosa, who had been tasked with developing the MTA curriculum, and this was followed up by a press release from Steven Howitt, issued in the name of the Massachusetts House and Senate Republican Caucus. The Times of Israel and Canary Mission then attacked the MTA. Parents Defending Education and JNS, the Jewish News Syndicate, piled on, accusing the MTA of rank antisemitism, putting targets on both Rosa and Newton City Councilor BIll Humphrey, whose only crime was failing to fall in line by condemning the MTA. The Jewish News Service, the MAGA Patriot Post, and other far-right sites followed suit. It was quite the team effort by Israelis, the Israel lobby, and the American far right. Rosa showed me the death threats recorded on his phone.
One important objective of the Israeli-American Council — and the Israeli Foreign Ministry that created it — is shaping perceptions of Israel and Zionism within American educational institutions. In June 2016 the IAC hosted a meeting at its Newton headquarters, chaired by Ilan Segev, to which Mayor Setti Warren was invited. The Forward describes Newton, a city 30% Jewish, as "one of the most Jewish cities in the United States." Ignoring how ludicrous such allegations are, Segev charged Newton's schools with "sweeping antisemitism under the rug," while Charles Jacobs, a notorious Islamophobe who led opposition to the construction of the Islamic Center of New England (since built), claimed the Newton schools were using maps of Palestine created by the PLO. For both Israel and its MAGA friends, talking points don't have to be true. it's all about manufacturing outrage.
Thomas Karns
Returning to the thread of the "assault" at Harvard we now meet Thomas F. Karns Jr., the campus cop who arrested Tetty-Tamaklo and Bharmal. Karns is a former Boca Raton police officer and Gulf War veteran. In 2019 he was briefly suspended for calling a Black colleague a "f----t n----r." His LinkedIn page lists extensive training in computer forensics and provides references from at least one federal prosecutor. Karns set up Veritas ex Machina Consulting LLC in Marblehead MA in 2015. His organizational filing states the purpose was "digital forensic consulting and computer incident handling." Karns's LLC was dissolved by court order in 2019.
In 2008, in a strange echo of the 2023 incident, Karns arrested two Massachusetts residents during campus protests against Israel's Cast Lead operation in Gaza. Karns was then wearing a track suit, not a police uniform, filming protesters. He later admitted he was "conducting plain clothes surveillance on a demonstration." Karns illegally arrested the two for simply documenting his surveillance of pro-Palestinian protesters, not for committing an actual crime. In 2020 Karns was again seen monitoring Black Lives Matter protesters after George Floyd's murder; his suspension for racist behavior the previous year seemed relevant to the Harvard Crimson.
A 2012 paper by the Massachusetts ACLU documented the practice of policing dissent in New England. The Boston Police Department routinely collaborates in federal task forces, violating the Constitutional rights and civil liberties of those it spies upon, just like the [private] Harvard University police. Although Harvard denied that Karns was operating as part of a federal task force, Massachusetts ACLU Legal Director John Reinstein pushed back: "They claim they don’t have a political surveillance ‘unit,’ but they do have a guy who goes out and takes pictures of people in peaceful demonstrations…" According to an article by Mike Damiano in the Globe, Karns testified in sworn testimony in another case that he was there as part of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Brigitte Karns
Brigitte Karns (Thomas Karns's wife) is a Marblehead teacher and a fitness instructor at the JCC North Shore. She owns a registered "educational enrichment" company. It turns out that Karns is also deeply involved in pro-Israel advocacy — just like the Segevs, with both the Israeli-American Council and the Israeli-American Civic Action Network. When criticism of Israel's carpet-bombing of Gaza surfaced at Karn's school, she was so outraged that her first impulse was to shut down opposing views: "As you know, my parents are Holocaust survivors and most of my family lives in Israel and what you’re saying is incorrect. You need to stop."
Karn's wrath seemed focused on three fellow teachers, members of her school's DEI committee. Karns's simmering gripes surfaced at a June 10, 2024 webinar organized by a "who's who" of far right Zionist organizations: ICAN, Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism (a front for ICAN), CAMERA Educational Institute, Christians and Jews United for Israel (CUFI), StandWithUs K-12 Educator Network, the "anti-woke" Combat Antisemitism Movement – and of course the Consulate General of Israel to New England.
On June 20, 2024, at a meeting again sponsored by the Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN) Brigitte Karns went after her fellow Marblehead teachers, specifically targeting Candice Sliney: "Marblehead has been knowingly supporting a hostile work environment of some of the Jewish teachers and students. The Marblehead Education Association is using intimidation tactics to silence Jews and then the administration is perpetuating antisemitic and anti-Israel ideology by remaining silent.”
Sliney — who is a member of the Marblehead Task Force Against Discrimination, which partners with the ADL to train students and teachers to fight antisemitism and discrimination — was astounded by Karn's allegations: “Every single accusation was a lie. She has attacked my character, endangered my family and put my career at risk, with zero evidence." Sliney urged the School Committee to hire an independent investigator. Voices from the community fortunately came to Sliney's defense.
But Karns wasn't finished with her colleagues. She went on testify to the psychic trauma of having to listen to fellow teachers condemn Israel's war on Gaza: "This anti-Zionist interaction has left me feeling unwelcome and isolated at work. The encounter pierced deeply, shaking my trust in the place I work and with whom I work with. The silence from the administration and the union amplified my feelings of isolation. It’s like a double blow, being marginalized by a colleague and then having administration ignore my feelings and concerns."
It’s really a shame that our fantasies of forcing everyone we interact with to adopt our own views and refrain from uttering contradictory ones can’t be realized, but at some point we need to pop out of it and accept reality.
Following Karns's allegations, the Marblehead Current reported that the Marblehead Schools had been forced to conduct an "antisemitism" probe — at taxpayer expense. Schools superintendent John Robidoux signed an agreement specifying that "the district shall pay Kurker Paget at a rate of $360 per hour for the services of any partner of the firm and $160 per hour for the services of the firm’s paralegals, billed in six-minute increments. MPS will incur fees for the time Kurker Paget staff spend traveling in connection with the investigation."
The Current also reported that the Marblehead schools did receive a number of letters accusing the schools of doing little to protect Jewish students. But most were identical, generated by a computerized form, and began with, "I am emailing you to show my support for the Jewish teachers that have experienced antisemitic/anti-Israel incidents in the Marblehead schools…”
Assessing the damage
To date, a handful of zealots, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israel lobby, and its MAGA fellow-travelers, all working together, have managed to take down a university president, ruined the lives of two human rights advocates and at least one teacher, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in hearings and needless studies, subverted free speech in universities and public schools, marshaled the powers of Congress, the FBI, the police, and the courts against Americans and those protected under our laws — and they’ve done it all without a single shred of oversight or regulation.
New York Mayor Eric Adams is politically finished as a consequence of acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Turkey. Robert Menendez's career is over after acting as Egypt's. Paul Manafort went to prison after acting as an agent for Ukraine. All of these men violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act in one way or another. And all of them were Americans. Yet somehow none of this applies to the Segevs and the "Israeli-American" and pro-Israel organizations running amok over the American political landscape.
In 2018 M.J. Rosenberg — who worked for AIPAC himself at one point — argued that AIPAC and lobby groups like it ought to be required to register under FARA laws. Rosenberg described the mind-bending loophole that allows such groups to function as agents for Israel (and apparently only Israel). If a similar loophole had been in place in the Fifties allowing Americans to act as agents for the Soviet Union, perhaps Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (no relation) could have avoided the electric chair.
The conclusion Rosenberg drew in 2018 is as relevant as ever today:
"No, AIPAC is not a 'pro-Israel' lobby. It’s the Netanyahu lobby and our laws should treat it as such […] As for the thousands of Americans gathered in Washington this weekend, they need to know one thing: They are not supporting the dream of a secure, democratic Israel at peace with its neighbors and the world. They are, unwittingly, supporting a right-wing political agenda that is placing Israel in ever-deeper peril and, frankly, jeopardizing its very existence."
So disturbing.
Great work, thank you.