Jewish Groups Warn of Fallout from Anti-Semitism Label for Criticism of
Israel
As the Israel lobby pushes to erase pro-Palestine activism on college
campuses, it not only risks endangering free speech but allowing far-right
hatred to spread unchecked.
by Jessica Buxbaum
Mint Press News
January 28th, 2021
By Jessica Buxbaum
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Jerusalem -Not even a week after violent, anti-Semitic rioters stormed the
U.S. Capitol building, a collective of Jewish groups urged then
President-elect Joe Biden to target activism critical of Israel.
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (CoP) sent Biden
a letter on January 12, urging the incoming administration to adopt the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of
anti-Semitism across "all federal departments and agencies."
As the nation was reeling from a historic insurrection swarming with Camp
Auschwitz attire and Confederate flags, CoP decided to instead focus their
efforts on pro-Palestine activity in universities.
"[A]ntisemitism on college campuses is a serious problem," the Jewish
leaders wrote, emphasizing that previous administrations understood "some
anti-Israel activity is simply a modern form of antisemitism."
Two days after CoP sent their letter, the Democratic Majority for Israel
(DMFI) joined the call and urged Biden to adopt the IHRA definition in a
press release.
DMFI IHRA letter
The Democratic Majority for Israel's press release from January 14, 2021
"[T]his is no time to give cover to antisemites who attempt to disguise
their Jew hatred as mere criticism of Israel," the DMFI statement read. The
pro-Israel organization then countered any objections to the IHRA definition
by determining countries who adopted this definition have not "become
hotbeds of anti-free speech activity."
CoP and DMFI did not respond to requests for comment.
How IHRA can suppress free speech
Donald Trump's presidency was marred with anti-Semitic rhetoric from the
very beginning. The disgraced president defended white nationalists shouting
"Jews will not replace us" and ended his term sending a racist riot to
Congress' doorstep. Yet somehow the Israel lobby turns a blind eye to his
flagrant bigotry because of Trump's 2019 executive order adopting the IHRA
definition.
On Dec. 11, 2019, Trump signed an executive order requesting federal
departments and agencies tasked with enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 look to the IHRA definition.
Free speech advocates slammed the executive order as an attempt to quell
legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. And shortly after the executive
order was issued, that's exactly what happened.
"It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that's what
Donald Trump's executive order accomplished," Kenneth Stern, one of the
original drafters of the IHRA definition, wrote in a Guardian op-ed
following Trump's order.
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Weeks after the executive order was enacted, the Department of Education's
Office for Civil Rights opened two investigations into Palestine advocacy at
UCLA-the National Students for Justice in Palestine conference and a
professor's lecture on Islamophobia that discussed Zionism.
As Stern rightly pointed out in his editorial, conservative Jewish groups
are not using the IHRA definition to combat growing anti-Semitism. Rather,
it's become a tool to suppress conversations surrounding the ethnic
cleansing of Palestine in academia.
Now, as influential Jewish groups press Biden to adopt the IHRA definition,
critics worry free speech and academic freedom will be increasingly
targeted.
American Jewry's debate over IHRA
The members of CoP include 53 Jewish organizations. Yet only six (including
the heads of CoP) signed the letter. The signatories included the Jewish
Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the American
Jewish Committee, Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America, and
the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center.
CoP member Americans for Peace Now (APN) came out against adopting the IHRA
definition.
"The part that is problematic to us is the efforts to use this and use the
call of anti-Semitism as a weapon to squash criticism of Israeli government
policy, which is not anti-Semitism," Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of
Americans for Peace Now, told MintPress News.
The IHRA definition states: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews,
which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical
manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish
individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and
religious facilities."
Susskind explained APN doesn't take issue with this basic definition.
Instead, it's the definition's accompanying examples that are concerning.
"It comes very intentionally with a list of examples. And we've seen already
across the U.S. and in other parts of the world, the way in which this is
used to declare that anybody criticizing the [Israeli] occupation, anybody
criticizing various elements of the Israeli government policy is deemed
anti-Zionist. And by definition, then, anti-Zionist is deemed anti-Semitic."
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Susskind emphasized that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not one in the
same. Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews. Anti-Zionism, however, is a
political ideology opposing Zionism, a settler-colonialist movement
advocating for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The two terms, however, are
often confused given Israel and the Israel lobby conflates them together.
"If someone is an anti-Zionist and they don't believe there should be a
state of Israel, I would disagree with them, but that's not by definition
anti-Semitic," Susskind said. "And it's damaging, frankly, to the very
important fight against anti-Semitism to sprinkle that term so widely." For
Susskind, anti-Zionism and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement
are legitimate free speech and should be treated as such.
Since CoP and DMFI's statements, several Jewish groups have denounced these
attempts to codify the IHRA definition into law.
The Progressive Israel Network-made up of APN, Ameinu, Habonim Dror North
America, Hashomer Hatzair World Movement, Jewish Labor Committee, J Street,
New Israel Fund, Partners for Progressive Israel, Reconstructing Judaism,
and T'ruah-released a counterstatement.
In it, they warned the IHRA definition's examples "[risk] wrongly equating
what may be legitimate activities with antisemitism."
The Progressive Israel Network called on the Biden administration to
"refrain from legislating bans on constitutionally-protected speech and
legitimate activism, which often wrongfully target those who harbor no
hatred towards Jews, and which make it more difficult to identify and
confront genuine instances of antisemitism."
And Jewish activist groups, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow (INN)
published petitions telling Biden to reject any potential misuse of the IHRA
definition in silencing Palestinian rights activists.
This week, on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, CoP and 51
member organizations announced they adopted the IHRA definition in their
work.
The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) was one of the member organizations to
endorse using the definition, but it also released a statement advising
against its codification into law.
Like JVP and INN, the organization warns a more pressing anti-Semitic threat
stems from right-wing, white nationalists-like those who breached the
Capitol on Jan. 6.
"[W]e fully recognize that antisemitism today emanates from the left and the
right and the threats from all sources must be addressed," URJ said. "The
[IHRA's] examples' focus on Israel must not divert attention from the more
frequent manifestations of antisemitism, too often violent, emanating from
new streams in the hate movements that have threatened synagogues and other
Jewish and non-Jewish community institutions in the U.S. today - streams
primarily associated with the far right."
And APN's Susskind supports distinguishing how anti-Semitism on the right
and the left materializes.
"They're not the same, and they're not an equivalent problem or equivalent
threat," Susskind said. "And what we see in the political discourse too
often is people making these false equivalencies, such as 'I heard about a
college student on campus who said they were Zionist and somebody said
something mean to them' versus somebody has gone in and shot and killed
people in the synagogue."
So, as the Israel lobby pushes to erase pro-Palestine activism on college
campuses, it not only risks endangering free speech but allowing far-right
hatred to spread unchecked.
