ANN ARBOR, MI – Tensions over weekly anti-Israel demonstrations outside an Ann Arbor synagogue reached a boiling point Monday night, as a City Council member publicly accused the protest group’s leader of being an anti-Semitic racist.

Council Member Zachary Ackerman, D-3rd Ward, offered a sharp rebuke after Henry Herskovitz spoke at the council’s Jan. 6 meeting and defended his group’s demonstrations outside the Beth Israel Congregation on Washtenaw Avenue.

“Anti-Semitism exists in our community. It looks like Mr. Herskovitz,” Ackerman said. “And any time that he comes up to speak while I’m still in office, I’ll make sure that everyone in the room knows exactly who he is and what he stands for.”

Ackerman’s remarks drew applause from several residents, as well as criticism from some anti-Israel demonstrators.

Protests outside Beth Israel have taken place weekly during the synagogue’s Saturday services for more than 16 years, and they’re now the subject of a federal lawsuit.

Marvin Gerber, a longtime Beth Israel congregant, argues the demonstrations amount to hateful, anti-Semitic speech that is causing extreme emotional distress and infringing on the rights of congregants to exercise their freedom of religion.

His lawsuit names as defendants both the protesters and city officials for allowing the demonstrations to continue without restrictions.

City officials have said over the years they wished the protests would stop, but noted it’s a matter of free speech.

Protest signs carry messages such as “Resist Jewish Power,” “Jewish Power Corrupts,” “No More Holocaust Movies,” “Boycott Israel,” “Stop U.S. Aid to Israel” and “End the Palestinian holocaust.”

Herskovitz, who says he is biologically Jewish but had a falling out with the Jewish faith years ago, denies being anti-Semitic.

He maintains he’s standing up for Palestinians who are enduring oppression and violence under the Israeli government.

He explained during his remarks to council why he thinks Beth Israel is an appropriate venue for “protests against the Jewish state,” saying the synagogue is using its faith to promote a “nationalist political agenda” and supports Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

“And we oppose that claim to a right to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its non-Jewish inhabitants,” he said, noting the synagogue has an Israeli flag in its sanctuary and prays for Israel.

“The Jewish chauvinism formed there is reflected in Jewish holidays, where Jews are portrayed as victims of an alleged hostile world,” he said. “An unhealthy, toxic paradigm of us-versus-them is thus formed. It is a paradigm which is the opposite of the universalism expressed in Christianity. The Jewish community self-isolates from the others.”

Ackerman said he grew up in the congregation, attended Hebrew school there and had his bar mitzvah there.

He said anti-Semitism in modern America doesn’t usually reveal itself in the form of blatantly demeaning slurs or caricatures.

"Anti-Semitism in modern America looks exactly like Mr. Herskovitz,” he said, arguing it’s important to directly call out what anti-Semitism looks like today.

“It means using the word Jewish or Jew no less than 15 times in your comments to City Council while drawing comparisons of the Jewish faith to the Christian faith and superiority of the Christian faith.”

Anti-Semitism also means calling into question the number of people who died in the Holocaust, Ackerman said.

Deir Yassin Remembered, one of Herskovitz’s groups that argues the historical suffering of Palestinians has been minimized while the historical suffering of Jews has been unduly amplified, was labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 as a Holocaust-denying hate group. Herskovitz described his group as “Holocaust revisionists.”

During a protest outside Beth Israel during Hanukkah last month, Herskovitz explained how he thinks signs like “Resist Jewish Power” and “Jewish Power Corrupts” aren’t anti-Semitic.

“It only talks about Jewish power,” he said. “It doesn’t talk about Jews as a people, as a group, as an ethnicity.”

Sitting on a chair nearby was a book titled “Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment.”

“If you read that book, you’d find that Jews have considerable power in our Congress,” Herskovitz said. “There are some Jewish members of Congress that could be dual citizens of Israel and we as citizens aren’t allowed to know that information.”

Herskovitz argues “the Israel lobby” has a corrupting influence on U.S. foreign policy and he’s complaining about “Jewish power” because “there’s no other ethnic group that dominates our foreign policy.”

While his protest group is identified in the federal lawsuit as Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, a name it went by for many years, Herskovitz said they stopped using that name in October 2016.

Organizing around the word Jewish “assumed a haughty mantle that I felt was undeserving,” Herskovitz said, explaining in an email that “we started off with six biological Jews. Two quit and three died, leaving only me, who desires escape from the Tribe.”

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