Amendment to Resolution on IHRA Definition
We resolve:
To initiate a campaign against the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism in trade unions and other bodies such as universities. To do this in conjunction with other groups such as JNP and JVL. We need to build a broad campaign against the IHRA. We mandate the calling of a public meeting.
The IHRA is not a definition of anti-Semitism. It is indefinite. It is an attempt to conflate support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism with anti-Semitism and as such should be rejected.
The IHRA is deeply racist and anti-Palestinian since it deliberately excludes any recognition of the Palestinians, their identity or experiences of Zionism and Israeli Jewish Supremacy. Any attempt by Palestinians or their supporters to define Israel as a racist or genocidal state is automatically termed anti-Semitic.
Indeed the IHRA doesn’t even mention Zionism, the founding ideology of the Israeli state. Nor does it make any mention of the Palestinians who, like all indigenous people are invisible.
Palestinians have experienced systematic racism, ethnic cleansing and genocide yet any attempt to raise these issues and the Israeli state and Zionism’s role in this is termed anti-Semitism.
The IHRA has thus provided a potent political and ideological basis for undermining solidarity and support for the Palestinians at a time of genocide and holocaust in Gaza.
Proposed Tony Greenstein
A More Detailed Analysis of the IHRA
The IHRA negates the national and individual rights of the Palestinians by counterposing it to the national rights of Jews, despite the fact that defining Jews as a nation is in itself anti-Semitic. Indeed it doesn’t mention the Palestinians.
The IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism is an exercise in sophistry, aimed at exploiting the memory of the Jewish victims of Hitler’s genocide to excuse and provide a moral justification for the genocidal treatment of the Palestinian people.
The 38 word definition is banal and virtually meaningless since it applies to everyone. Its defining of anti-Semitism as a perception of Jews omits anti-Semitism which isn’t hatred as well as discrimination. The Oxford English Definition of anti-Semitism ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews as Jews’ is more than sufficient.”
In fact when the IHRA first adopted the WDA it excluded the 11 illustrations from the definition. It is only through a dishonest sleight of hand that the illustrations have in fact become the definition. See Jamie Stern-Weiner: IHRA: The Politics of a Definition
The examples’ main purpose is to suggest that opposition to the Israeli state as a ‘Jewish collectivity’ is motivated by anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews.
The definition takes it for granted that Israeli is a democratic state when it is clear that it is an apartheid police state for Arabs and even for its most privileged Jewish citizens Israel is now an authoritarian state. The IHRA’s purpose is to forbid meaningful criticism of Israeli ethnic cleansing and its systematic racism.
As the history of the Nazi regime shows, the original plan was to expel Germany’s Jews, not exterminate them. Extermination was only decided upon when ethnic cleansing was no longer possible. As Gaza demonstrates, ethnic cleansing and genocide go together.
The following ‘example’ is aimed at associating criticism of the Israeli state with holocaust denial.
“Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”
The reality is that the main cause of holocaust denial today is Israel’s abuse of the holocaust to defend its treatment of the Palestinian people.
The following illustration appears innocuous:
“Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”
It is true for example that Jews were accused of poisoning the wells of non-Jews historically. That was anti-Semitic. However, the Israeli state has carried out actions that resemble ancient blood libels. It deliberately poisoned the water supplies of Palestinians in Acre and elsewhere in Operation Cast Thy Bread with dysentery bacteria in the Nakba.
Another example is:
“Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews”
Since the Israeli state claims to act in the name of all Jews it is Zionism itself which is responsible for this belief.
There is another category of ‘examples’ which may or may not be innocuous, depending on context. For instance:
“Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”
Some Jews are more loyal to Israel than the states in which they live. That is a simple fact and Israel in fact encourages diaspora Jews to alienate themselves from their surroundings. In 2013 Israel’s immigrant absorption and foreign ministries distributed a poll ‘asking them to indicate where their allegiance would lie in the case of a crisis between the two countries.’ See Netanyahu Halts Distribution of ‘Loyalty’ Poll to U.S. Jews, Israeli Expats, Ha’aretz 27.10.13.
Another illustration of ‘anti-Semitism’ is ‘“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.” Given that the the Zionist movement does nothing else but proclaim that all Jews owe their first loyalty to Israel this is pure hypocrisy. The IHRA itself describes Israel as a Jewish collectivity! If this is ‘anti-Semitic’ Israel is its main cause.
Then there is the illustration
“Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective – such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.”
This is one of 4 illustrations that doesn’t mention Israel but it’s clearly is about the Zionist state. Israel does its best, through the Israel lobby, to give the impression that there is a world Jewish conspiracy to take over Palestinian and Arab lands. Its representatives boast about the control they allegedly exercise in Western countries, as when Netanyahu boasted that Israel easily manipulates the United States. If this concept gains credence it is not necessarily because of hatred of Jews, rather because of what Zionist leaders themselves say.
There remains one more example:
“Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.”
This example is deliberately dishonest in that it assumes that the Palestinian struggle for freedom and national liberation is dictated, not by hatred of occupation and oppression but by antagonism towards Jews as Jews. Why else would the illustration mention ‘a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion’? Surely advocating killing Jews for being Jewish is anti-Semitic by definition? Why the qualifiers? Because the example is concerned with Palestinian resistance not anti-Semitism.
