By Lawrence Davidson

A definitional dispute

On 25 May 2023, the Biden administration released a 60-page plan for combating domestic anti-Semitism. Generally, anti-Semitism is but one, albeit an historically significant one, of many violent racial and ethnic biases. In recent decades there has been an outburst of such hate and bias that is doing harm to many groups worldwide. It appears to be part of a resurgent fascism which, in turn, appears to be a backlash against liberal trends. This reactionary process has hit the United States and no one should doubt the seriousness of the problem of ethnic hatred here in the “land of the free”. Every minority group in the country suffers from it. Jewish Voice for Peace has correctly contextualised the struggle against anti-Semitism when it tells us that “at a time when the dangers of white nationalism, including racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, are all too apparent, the need to build safety for all people has never been greater”. The safety of the Jews is linked to the safety of others.

Nonetheless, anti-Semitism in the US has earned special attention from the federal government because (1) Jews can muster the horrors of the past along with the hate-filled outbursts of the present, and (2) bring to bear the political clout of a well-honed lobby – hence the recent report that calls for a full-court press against anti-Semitism at just about every level of society.

It may, therefore, come as a surprise that the main controversy flowing from the Biden plan is just how to define anti-Semitism. For instance, though addressing the issue in only one paragraph, the administration report acknowledges that the definition is in dispute. 

“There are several definitions of anti-Semitism…The most prominent is the non-legally binding “working definition” of anti-Semitism adopted in 2016 by the 31-member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which the United States has embraced. In addition, the Administration welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.

To clarify the issue, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism reads as follows: 

Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

This is standard as far as it goes. Problems start to appear when the IHRA lists examples that it considers antisemitic – specifically, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”. Not coincidentally, most older, established Jewish organisations with close ties to Israel have latched on to this example and used it as a weapon against those critical of the policies and practices of the Zionist state towards non-Jewish citizens and subjects, particularly Palestinians. 

Mentioning the IHRA document on anti-Semitism, much less calling it “the most prominent” and the one that the US “has embraced” was a mistake on the part of the Biden administration. This is so for several reasons: (1) It immediately shifted attention from the report and its goals to the controversy over definition. (2) It confirmed that the government had taken sides in this controversy. (3) It complicated the fight against anti-Semitism by publicly announcing that the administration was willing to ignore the prima facie fact that Israel has been documented to, in fact ,be “a racist endeavour”. Every well respected human rights organisation in the West, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations Office of Human Rights, and B’Tselem, among many others, has laid out this indictment in detail.

It is probable that the Biden administration made this mistake with eyes wide open. And, it is probably President Biden’s own self-confessed Zionism that dictated it doing so. Yet, as a bone thrown to those who own the facts, the administration also mentioned that there exists other definitions of anti-Semitism that it “welcomes and appreciates”, such as the Nexus definition. This definition reads:

Anti-Semitism consists of anti-Jewish beliefs, attitudes, actions or systemic conditions. It includes negative beliefs and feelings about Jews, hostile behavior directed against Jews (because they are Jews), and conditions that discriminate against Jews and significantly impede their ability to participate as equals in political, religious, cultural, economic, or social life.

The Nexus document recognises that those who hate Jews “because they are Jews” may well hate Israel too. However, it contains a list of actions which cannot be judged anti-Semitic. For instance, “criticism of Zionism and Israel, opposition to Israel’s policies or nonviolent political action directed at the State of Israel and/or its policies should not, as such, be deemed anti-Semitic”. This approach is nuanced to fit well within the US principle of free speech and avoids the problem at the heart of the IHRA statement. 

The IHRA’s category mistake 

The controversy over definition has focused not on traditional sociopathic traits such as hatred of Jews. Everyone agrees that such an outlook and its associated behaviour is anti-Semitic. Rather, the debate focuses on what is, in essence, a political question: whether there can be such a thing as legitimate criticism of Israel’s Zionist project. If you think this might reflect a category mistake, you are right.

Israel is a nation-state (one category) whose leaders have made an arbitrary claim to represent all the Jews worldwide (a qualitatively different category). For instance, the published aims of the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations says it “represents the State of Israel, its citizens and the Jewish people on the global stage”. This claim cannot be substantiated for two reasons (1) there are tens of thousands (the number is growing all the time) of Jews outside of Israel who do not want to be represented by that state. Many are neutral as regards Israel and many others are appalled by Israel’s Zionist ideology and the racist behaviour it has generated, and (2) the claim of representation is called into question by the positions taken by the rabbinical officialdom controlling religious practices in Israel. These are orthodox and ultra-orthodox rabbis who believe that Jews who do not practice the religion as they do – which happens to be most Jews in the US and Europe – are not real Jews. Thus, Israeli leaders are caught in a dilemma. They claim to represent a diaspora community of Jews, many of whom their “official” rabbis say are not really Jews. 

Leaving aside the “who is a Jew” problem, Israel implements policies and practices that have produced institutional and legal discrimination against non-Jews. This is perhaps an inevitable result of designing a state for one group in a territory awash with many groups. The effort has progressed so far that it is now factually accurate to call Israel an apartheid state. Is criticism of such policies and practices the same as anti-Semitism? Do those critical of Israel’s official racism hate Jews? Again, part of the problem with the Zionist argument is that many of the critics are Jews (despite what antiquarian rabbis might say). In response, the boosters of Israel, the descriptive term here is “political Zionists”, have, once more arbitrarily, invented a class of people they call the self-hating Jew – this is supposed to account for Jewish opposition to Zionist Israel. 

The case of Jonathan Greenblatt

One such political Zionist, who claims that he and his organisation had a lot to do with the Biden plan, is Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Greenblatt asserts that the administration’s effort draws “heavily from our plans and our recommendations. My team was collaborating actively with the interagency policy committee that staffed and led this.” This might be the case, for there has been no public recognition by the US government of just how radical the ADL and most other traditional Jewish American organisations have become in defence of Israel. Thus, Greenblatt is convinced that the Biden administration is now fully on board with the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. “The White House plan elevates and embraces IHRA as the preeminent definition that it is now using to understand anti-Semitism in all its forms.” He dismisses the Nexus paper as a “supplementary document”.

One should be very suspicious of Greenblatt’s ability to access, much less analyse, the rapidly evolving American culture and politics as regards Zionist Israel. As I noted in an earlier analysis, he offers a remarkably inaccurate picture of Israel’s official ideology. He tells us “Zionism isn’t just a light for the Jewish people, it’s a liberation movement for all people. We should take strength in it, we should find inspiration in it, and we should share it with the world.” This same skewed argument was used by the Zionists in the mid-1940s – while they promoted a colonial-settler project during a period marked by decolonisation. Somehow, Greenblatt has also got it into his head that “Palestinians should embrace Zionism”. As utterly delusional as this sounds, Greenblatt is again reviving an earlier ploy. The New York Times reported in early April 1921 that Winston Churchill (then colonial secretary) had travelled to Jerusalem and met with local Palestinian leaders. He told them that creating a Jewish national home in Palestine would be “good for the Arabs dwelling in Palestine” because they would “share in the benefits and progress of Zionism”. At the time this was known as “the full-belly theory of imperialism”. In 1921, the real impact of Zionism in Palestine was in the future. Today, Greenblatt’s apparent disregard of that history is unforgivable.

Nonetheless, that ignorance, real or fabricated, is necessary if one is to adopt the IHRA statement as the “preeminent definition that is now used to understand anti-Semitism in all its forms”. What is the dark logic in all of this? The progressive Israeli news site +972 explains,

what the IHRA definition does is provide Israel and the wider hasbara apparatus with a highly effective tool for bashing Palestinians and the Palestinian liberation movement, and grant the global far right an equally effective tool for whitewashing its own anti-Semitism… allowing anti-Semites to propose that the absence of criticism of Israel indicates a lack of animus toward Jews… lobbying for the universal adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism based on this inner logic is terribly bad for Jews around the world.

Conclusion

On 5 June 2023, the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) released a report on the impact of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism on the rights of free speech and assembly in the European Union and the United Kingdom. It came as no great surprise that this case-based assessment showed that the IHRA definition was quickly weaponised in order to stifle criticism of Zionist Israel. The ELSC report documents 53 such cases. All of them targeted groups or individuals expressing criticism of Israeli policies and practices towards Palestinians. 

There can be little doubt that this weaponisation of the IHRA definition is what Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL have in mind. Likewise, it is probably a safe bet that many in the Biden administration, including the president himself, will go along with this distorting practice unless they are confronted both in the streets and the courts to the point that they are publicly embarrassed by their own hypocrisy. It is only by ending this illegitimate misdirection that any real fight against anti-Semitism can progress. The struggle to do so is already ongoing.