Last updated: August 9, 2021 Challenging the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Date Headline/Link Source/author(s) Excerpt 9 Against the IHRA: Why it’s TriBune Magazine (UK)/Julia Bard “The IHRA Working DefiniAon is finally unravelling, But over the last five years it has set August Time to Adopt the Back the real fight against anAsemiAsm. We have a lot of work to do to replace it, to end 2021 Jerusalem DeclaraAon its use in weaponising anA-Jewish racism, and to reBuild alliances and solidarity with other minoriAes. The Jerusalem DeclaraAon on AnAsemiAsm, on the other hand, has presented us with an opportunity to strengthen the fight against racism everywhere, including the vital challenge to anAsemiAsm which has Been so ill-served By the IHRA Working DefiniAon. If we seize this opportunity, we can also ensure that it is used to create crucial space for progressive campaigners to understand and contriBute to the liberaAon of the peoples of PalesAne and Israel.” 27 July Biden’s pick for The Forward/Kenneth Stern “Unfortunately, as I tesAfied Before Congress in 2017 and wrote in a recent Book, the 2021 anAsemiAsm envoy will working definiAon has Been primarily used (and I argue, grossly abused) to suppress and need to answer these chill pro-PalesAnian speech, starAng on campus in 2010, and then more Broadly…As I tough quesAons and many others have wri\en — no one more eloquently than Joe Cohn of the FoundaAon for Individual Rights in EducaAon — there already exists a tendency of the poliAcal right and the poliAcal le` to censor and chill poliAcal opponents. A definiAon applied like IHRA, as one reviewer of my Book pointed out in criAcism of my role, has a clear effect: ‘[I]f you give witch hunters a manual for the discovery of witchcra` they will find witches.’ IHRA’s zealous supporters o`en say that to comBat anAsemiAsm, one has to define it. In my view, that simply isn’t true. DefiniAons are useful for data collectors, But it’s not as if people didn’t fight anAsemiAsm Before the definiAon was created over 16 years ago.” 8 July The Zionist assault on The Israeli Commi\ee Against Home DemoliAons (ICHAD)/ “It is clear that the actual menace of anAsemiAsm Bothers Israel less than criAcism of its 2021 Judaism Jeff Haler policies. By focusing so narrowly on Israel, weaponized anAsemiAsm lets real anA- Semites off the hook. Evangelicals who teach that at Armageddon Jews either die or are converted to ChrisAanity, But who are “pro-Israel” Because they need Israel to Bring about the End of Days. Or classic European anA-Semites like Hungary’s Viktor OrBan or Poland’s Andrzej Duda who support Israel Because they see it as the kind of ethnically exclusive society they aspire to impose on their own countries, to which we might add the likes of Modi in India. By contrast, the BriAsh Labour Party, kowtowing to Israel and the organized Jewish community, expels or suspends prominent Jewish memBers criAcal of Israel.” 7 July UniversiAes - the new Labour Briefing (UK)/Jonathan Rosenlead “The struggle for free speech on Israel/ PalesAne is at a criAcal stage. It could go either 2021 ba\lefield in the way. UniversiAes’ willingness to take their staff and students through disciplinary anAsemiAsm wars processes for things they teach or write or tweet about Zionism, se\ler colonialism or apartheid, affects more than those directly involved. Just as in the Labour Party, people Become unsure what it is permi\ed to say, and many decide it is Be\er not to say anything at all. The chilling effect is the weapon of mass silencing. That is why the current phase of the campus Ba\le against imposiAon of the IHRA definiAon is so crucial.” Author: Lara Friedman, Foundation for Middle East Peace Page 1 of 49 Last updated: August 9, 2021 Date Headline/Link Source/author(s) Excerpt 14 June AnA-Zionism, INSS/Kenneth Stern “The weaponizaAon of the ‘working definiAon’ of anAsemiAsm and the asserAon that 2021 AnAsemiAsm, and the anA-Zionism is anAsemiAsm as US government policy (Kushner, 2019) clearly show that Fallacy of Bright Lines not all such allegaAons are wrong or made in Bad faith. Let us not forget that this scarlet le\er ‘A’ was advocated By the Trump administraAon against groups like Amnesty InternaAonal and Human Rights Watch (with potenAal implicaAons for their funding) (Toosi, 2020). Let us not ignore that some pro-Israel acAvists champion the chilling effect of the anAsemiAsm charge as a good thing (Marcus, 2013). The Simon Wiesenthal Center even says that the ‘working definiAon’ of anAsemiAsm should Be used to Bar ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ on college campuses (Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2017). Meanwhile, many mainstream Jewish groups not only remain silent about such efforts But conAnue to insist that the use of the ‘working definiAon’ in this witch-hunt fashion does not restrict free speech.” 6 June Stephen Sedley: Former Lord JusAce of Appeal and Judge ad hoc of the “It is now five years since the InternaAonal Holocaust RememBrance Alliance (the IHRA) 2021 Statement on IHRA European Court of Human Rights; past visiAng professor of puBlished what it called “a non-legally Binding working definiAon of anA-semiAsm”. It is law, Oxford University. a clumsy piece of dra`ing disAnguished By two parAcular features: it fails the first test of any definiAon By Being open-ended and indefinite; and it is accompanied By examples some of which are visiBly designed to protect Israel from legiAmate criAcism. “ 10 May PalesAnian lives ma\er, The OBserver (student paper of notre Dame, Saint Mary’s, “One of these controversial IHRA’s illustraAons reads that anAsemiAsm amounts to 2021 too &Holy Cross)/Atalia Omer, professor of religion, conflict and “[d]enying the Jewish people their right to self-determinaAon, e.g., By claiming that the peace studies existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” If this illustraAon appears to you as self-evidently anAsemiAc, you need to check your ethical Blinders. What this illustraAon does not menAon is that the fulfillment of the “right to self-determinaAon” for Jews entailed the ethnic cleansing of the PalesAnians. This is not “an opinion” But a historical fact established By Israeli and PalesAnian historians as well as, of course, By the intergeneraAonal memories of the people who resist amnesia in refugee camps and the diasporas. Indeed, the real story is who is omi\ed from IHRA and why and whose agenda does it serve?” 27 April Le\er: UMass should not Le\er to the Massachuse\s Daily Collegian/Jon Blum & “despite the good intenAons of those seeking to adjudicate cases of anAsemiAsm, the 2021 adopt the IHRA definiAon Sonya Epstein IHRA definiAon has increasingly Been used By Pro-Israel groups to advance their own of anAsemiAsm agendas in the name of fighAng anAsemiAsm. The definiAon includes examples which conflate criAques of the State of Israel and anA-Zionism with anAsemiAsm, a move that could suppress PalesAnian liBeraAon acAvism. For example, StandWithUs cited the definiAon in a 2019 case which sought to Ban the Fordham chapter of Students for JusAce in PalesAne (SJP). Among other examples, it is clear that this definiAon is acAvely being used to sAfle free speech in an effort to silence PalesAne solidarity acAvists. Kenneth Stern, one of the leading authors of the 2005 working definiAon has repeatedly spoken out against this adopAon of the IHRA definiAon Because of the way it has Been weaponized against pro-PalesAne speech.” Author: Lara Friedman, Foundation for Middle East Peace Page 2 of 49 Last updated: August 9, 2021 Date Headline/Link Source/author(s) Excerpt 23 April THE POLITICS OF A Jamie Stern-Weiner, PhD candidate, Wolfson College, “It has Been claimed that the InternaAonal Holocaust RememBrance Alliance (IHRA) 2021 DEFINITIOn - How the University of Oxford Working DefiniAon of AnAsemiAsm, ‘including its 11 examples’, reflects an internaAonal IHRA Working DefiniAon consensus of anAsemiAsm experts. This report, Based on my doctoral research at the of AnAsemiAsm Is Being Also see: IHRA ‘misrepresents’ own definiAon of anA- University of Oxford, exposes that claim as untrue: 1)There is no expert consensus Misrepresented SemiAsm, says report (Al Jazeera); How the IHRA supporAng the Working DefiniAon. 2)IHRA’s decision-making Body, the Plenary, did not anAsemiAsm definiAon Became a pro-Israel cudgel adopt any examples of ‘anAsemiAsm’ as part of its Working DefiniAon. 3)Senior IHRA (MondoWeiss) officials and pro-Israel groups have misrepresented the IHRA Plenary’s decision in order to smuggle into the Working DefiniAon examples that can Be used to protect Israel from criAcism. 4)These examples have Been used, in pracAce, to censor Israel’s criAcs.” 22 April If I am only for myself, VashA/Rivkah Brown interviews Professor David Feldman “The [IHRA] working definiAon has Been widely adopted. For many organisaAons, the 2021 who am I? Professor (director of the InsAtute for the Study of AnAsemiAsm act of adopAon Became a convenient symBol of their opposiAon to anAsemiAsm. But David Feldman on the (formerly the Pears InsAtute) at BirkBeck, University of the definiAon is not only a symBol: it is also intended to Be an operaAonal and Jerusalem DeclaraAon on London since its founding in 2010) educaAonal document. This is where proBlems arise, and why it has Been important for AnAsemiAsm us to offer an alternaAve. The working definiAon points to the fact that criAcism of Israel and Zionism can Become the sevng for anAsemiAsm; seven of its 11 examples deal with this. But it is in its imprecise dealing with this thorny issue that the working definiAon’s authors created a proBlem.