Published: 29 October 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
MADDY BLAY and BEN WYATT: Debate over the IHRA definition of antisemitism shows how Jewish youth need education to sort half-truths from fair criticism about Israel
THE RECENT DISCOURSE surrounding the Australian government’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, the groups championing it, those opposing it and everything in-between has highlighted many things about the Australian Jewish community – diverse opinions, competing political interests and of course antisemitism itself.
Understanding the nuances of this complex topic should have yielded healthy, robust discussion across the political spectrum in the Jewish community and respect for different views, but that hasn’t been the case.
When the definition first came to light in 2016, many were quick to point out its possible productive role in defining and thus helping combat antisemitism around the world. However, this optimism was tarnished as it was swept up into the broader context of the Trump administration’s increasing opposition to Palestinian organisations and its support for a powerful right-wing agenda which entrenches the Occupation.
The manipulation of the definition by conservative Jews, something that the Evangelical Christian right quickly moved to support, prompted the author of the definition, Ken Stern, to write an article for the Guardian in 2019 to clarify its original intent as a way to monitor antisemitism in Europe, rather than as a “campus hate speech code”.
During the discussions in the Jewish community over the last week, since its adoption by the government, nothing has alarmed us as progressive Jews more than the number of people who seem so indiscriminately in favour of this definition.
