Assaf Gilad | GLOBES | June 5, 2025
Public displays of anti-Semitism since October 7, expressed in violence and protests, have become commonplace. • But beneath the surface, Jews in the US are reporting an unprecedented wave of discrimination, exclusion and layoffs – in academia, healthcare and high-tech. • Now they are fighting back and taking the fight to the courts.
The picture on the wall
Debra Gassman has been employed for 28 years as a lawyer in the public defender’s office of Cook County in Illinois, the country’s largest in terms of population, where the city of Chicago is also located. She is an outstanding employee who has won praise for her work from management and for defending members of many minority communities living in the city, including Muslims and Palestinians, who she says were very happy. But a photo of her as an IDF volunteer, taken in 2002 and posted in her office since then, has caused an uproar.
Gasman, who volunteered to pack packages of Abach masks at the Tel Hashomer base in the days before the second Iraq War, was photographed in civilian clothes with a large Israeli flag behind her, and a rifle she borrowed from a soldier. One of the public defender’s office employees complained to management, who asked her to remove the photo. “I was so surprised and shocked that someone complained about this right after October 7, which shows that there is so much old or unconscious anti-Semitism. This photo was hung 22 years ago and no one ever complained about it, in fact they just complimented it and were interested in the story behind it.”
They had been moved once, and another time a board member compared the “provocation” of hanging it to that which might result from hanging a swastika. The deputy director of her defense reprimanded her for her loud speech, and a vicious campaign against her began on social media, initiated by lawyers in the district, who called her a “war criminal” and a “murderer.”
David Fish, a lawyer specializing in labor law, is representing Gassman in a lawsuit that is still being heard in court, and recently even led to the rejection of another attempt to remove it from the agenda. “US government employees are allowed to express themselves in their workplace without being restricted,” Fish explains the rationale. The lawsuit, which is in the discovery phase, may, according to Fish, even reach a jury trial next year. “I have represented thousands of workers and I do not recall a case of an anti-Semitism-based labor law lawsuit before October 7. Now it is a routine matter. I personally have received dozens of complaints.”
Gasman believes that the legal arena is the most important in the fight against anti-Semitism in the US, which takes on various expressions and forms of offenses. “This is sometimes the most effective and only way to put an end to it,” she says. “The court processes include a factual investigation and a document discovery process in which all internal communications, text messages and emails can be obtained—which shed light on these cases and show what people really think and where their hearts are.”
From discrimination to retaliation dismissal
Deedee Bitran, a young lawyer from Miami with Israeli roots, worked at one of the largest Florida firms, Schatz & Bowen, and was considered a promising candidate for the position of junior partner at the firm. But the shock of the Hamas terrorist attack and the surge in anti-Semitism led her to choose to move to work at the organization StandWithUs, where she serves as a senior attorney and pro bono director.
The organization received 270 requests for legal assistance per year,” she told Globes in a Zoom conversation. “Since then, we have been receiving an average of 150 requests per month. Demand has jumped sharply. Our legal team has also more than tripled – from two to six full-time lawyers and three more part-time. Demand has jumped not only in the areas of anti-Semitism in the workplace, but also in criminal matters from kindergarten to 12th grade and issues on campuses and in communities. Anti-Semitism permeates every corner of the country, every industry, and it is a problem that is becoming more serious every day. I think October 7 encouraged people to be blatantly anti-Semitic and to take out their frustration on Jewish or Israeli colleagues under the guise of social justice.”
A study by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found evidence of covert discrimination against Jewish and Israeli candidates in the US job market. As part of the study, approximately 3,000 identical resumes were sent out for jobs in dozens of cities, with the names of the candidates changed according to ethnic background. The findings showed that Jewish Americans had to send approximately 24% more applications to receive the same amount of initial positive responses from employers, compared to other candidates. Israeli Americans had to send approximately 39% more.
An article written by Bitran in the Jewish magazine JNS, exposing a series of anti-Semitic incidents, caused a stir among American Jews, proving to everyone that the small community was on the defensive. It mentioned an employer who called his Jewish employee “Anne Frank” and mocked her with calls like “When are you writing your diary?”, and another manager who refused to hire a Jewish woman for a job due to “the fact that we all have to agree that killing babies is wrong.”
But Bitran argues that not every case of anti-Semitism can be dealt with legally. “If an employer or colleague is racist, that does not constitute legal grounds, but only when it becomes practical behavior – discrimination against employees because they are Jewish or Israeli, or harassment for these reasons. If an employee can prove in court that he is being treated differently because of his background, he can sue.”
In the workplace, she says, four offenses are the most common against Jews. The first is discrimination in which the employer adopts a double standard for its employees: “This is a policy against political statements in the office, which is applied only to employees who express pro-Israeli positions, or who wear the necklace or pin of the kidnapped, but turns a blind eye to employees who wear keffiyehs or other Palestinian symbols.”
Another offense is creating a hostile work environment that is not addressed, such as employers expressing a lack of concern for an environment that includes anti-Semitic leaflets, swastikas, Holocaust jokes and racist slurs. Bitran says that “even the phrase ‘American Jewish princess’ and references to Jewish money have been accepted in the past by federal courts.”
The third type is revenge firing: “Employees are fired for unfounded reasons, when the real reason is revenge for their opposition to anti-Semitism in the workplace.”
The fourth type is a lack of consideration for workplace accommodations on religious grounds: “If an employee indicates that he cannot work on Shabbat or holidays, the employer should try to make it work or prove that it will financially cripple him.”
Bitran notes that “the lawsuits send a strong message in the right direction, that the bad actors should ultimately be punished, that there should be consequences, and the only way to ensure that there are consequences is through the law.” However, she also admits that most lawsuits end in a settlement outside the walls of the court: “Financial compensation is received and the plaintiffs sometimes also demand a public apology, training against anti-Semitism in the workplace, and even psychological therapy.”
Shaming anti-Semites online
A study published last December by the organization StandWithUs found that nearly 40% of Jewish healthcare professionals in the US reported direct exposure to anti-Semitism in their work or study environment. More than a quarter of respondents (26.4%) reported feeling unsafe or threatened following anti-Semitic incidents. Despite the existence of anti-discrimination training programs in healthcare institutions, only 1.9% of participants indicated that this training included content related to anti-Semitism, compared to much higher.
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