Abandoning this definition of antisemitism will put Jewish students at mercy of campus hate mob
A RECENT article in the begins by asking: “Are we doing enough — or even the right things — to combat antisemitism?” Good question. But do we know what antisemitism is?
There is a broad consensus in the Jewish community that we do know, and that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition gets as close to capturing the complexities of antisemitism today as we can reasonably hope to achieve on one side of A4.
In universities across the country, the presidents and officers of JSocs are united in the belief that IHRA empowers them to call out antisemitism cloaked in political discourse, as opposed to angry but legitimate political speech.
David Feldman, the author of the Guardian article, Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, and one of the authors of a freshly minted rival definition known as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), disagrees.
In our view, JDA is not fit for purpose. It fights shy of engaging with antisemitic anti-Zionism, which is the form of antisemitism that poses the greatest threat to Jewish students’ safety and wellbeing — mirroring the situation in the community as a whole.
If a university governing body adopted JDA in place of IHRA, it would be failing in its duty to protect Jewish students from antisemitic bullying and harassment.
Take the comparisons between Zionism and Nazism and between Israelis and Nazis. There is broad agreement that these comparisons are often outrageously
antisemitic. This is the position of IHRA, and the EHRC report on antisemitism in the Labour Party agrees.
What about JDA? It says: “It is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid.” Notice the evasion. JDA avoids mentioning the comparison with Nazism explicitly, but the phrase “other historical cases” evidently does include Nazism, and JDA’s implicit legitimation of the comparison has been welcomed by its supporters.
Another striking example of JDA’s engagement with anti-Zionism is its stance on the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations to statehood versus the legitimacy of the State of Israel. In one paragraph, we read that “denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and
individually, as Jews” is “on the face of it” antisemitic. In the next, that “supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights” is not, “on the face of it”, antisemitic.
Undoubtedly, both sentences are true. But the absence of the word “national” in the paragraph about Jews in the State of Israel reveals the JDA’s political agenda, because it implies that denying Jewish Israelis their national rights (“collective” existence is a lesser thing, and consistent with many substatal forms), while acknowledging the Palestinians’ own “full … national … rights”, is not antisemitic — even though it would deny Jews what it would grant to Palestinians.
Why does Prof Feldman believe that IHRA needs to be replaced? The reason, he says, is that “too often” IHRA is used to “tarnish opinions” that are “unwelcome” to many Jews but “not antisemitic”. This vague allegation would be difficult to prove, so it is not surprising that he does not attempt to prove it. Instead he inserts a single link to an article in the JC, which mentions the charge that Amnesty’s “apartheid Israel” claim is antisemitic. But in fact, IHRA does not mention the “apartheid” slur. It says that “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour”
can be antisemitic, depending on “the overall context”. A glance at the Hamas charter is sufficient to confirm this.
Does this apply to the Amnesty report? Opinions differ. But when the latest edition of the annual Democracy Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit places Israel just behind France and Britain, and ahead of Spain, Italy and the United States, it is surely legitimate to raise the question.
In sum, JDA cannot be “a tool to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism” that can work effectively on university campuses today. It abandons the aim of protecting Jewish students from political antisemitism, and instead legitimises anti-Israel and anti-Zionist speech, regardless of whether it is antisemitic in purpose or in effect.
Its real purpose is not to raise awareness about antisemitism, but to undermine IHRA. If it succeeds, it will demoralise Jewish students, make it harder to educate anti-Zionist students about the difference between politics and hate speech, and strengthen the hand of activists who regard Jewish students as collateral damage in their political campaign.
So, what is to be done? If JSocs cannot count on the support of Jewish professors, those professors can at least be asked to explain themselves. Let us start here, with two sets of questions addressed to Professor Feldman.
First, some of the most hateful antisemitic slurs are comparisons between Zionism and Nazism, between the IDF and the SS, between Israeli politicians and Hitler, Himmler or Goebbels, between Gaza and Auschwitz, between Israeli policies and the Holocaust, and so on. Can the JDA be an effective tool “to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism”, while failing to acknowledge the antisemitic character of these comparisons? Why does JDA choose to legitimise them with the phrase “other historical cases”? And why does it not do so explicitly?
Second, IHRA says that denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination could be antisemitic, “taking into account the overall context”. Do you accept that it is antisemitic “on the face of it” to denounce the Jewish desire for national self-determination as racist while acknowledging the legitimacy of the same desire of Kurds, Scots, Catalans, Georgians and Palestinians? If so, why does JDA omit this? Why does it acknowledge the legitimacy of the Palestinian demand for the “full grant” of their national rights, while remaining silent about the same demand by Jews?
Since you believe that JDA “provides clarity on when criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism lapses into antisemitism,” you should not find it difficult to answer these questions.
We are waiting.
JDA abandons protecting Jews from political antisemitism