Published: 8 April 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
THE RECENT RELEASE OF TWO new documents, the Nexus Task Force and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, both of which attempt to define anti-Semitism, reveals the extent to which these definitions, and particularly as they relate to anti-Zionism and Israel, are dividing an already-polarised Jewish world.
Both documents were composed in response to the "working definition of anti-Semitism" produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016.
The IHRA definition has been endorsed or adopted by use for leaders of the European Union, the United Nations, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the US State Department, Australia and more than 30 counties, and by hundreds of municipalities and non-governmental agencies, including universities and football teams.
It was also incorporated into an Executive Order signed by US President Donald Trump in December 2019, which makes it easier to sue laws prohibiting institutional discrimination, including opposition to policies undertaken by the government of Israel.
However, as acceptance of the "working definition" grows, controversy about its use and efficacy is also increasing. Supporters of the IHRA definition say that most expressions of anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism are, in almost all cases, indeed inherently anti-Semitic.
However, numerous attempts to integrate the definition into civil and criminal law in the US have led some to argue that this codification will lead to limits on free speech, especially with regard to criticism of Israel.
The Nexus Task Force (ND), published on March 17, was produced at the University of Southern California/Annenberg Knight Program. It focuses almost exclusively on the nexus between anti-Semitism and Israel and was developed to address what it describes as a “disturbing trend to politicise and exploit anti-Semitism and Israel [that] is growing in conservative and right-wing political circles”.
Attempts to integrate the IHRA definition into civil and criminal law in the US have led some to argue that this codification will lead to limits on free speech, especially with regard to criticism of Israel.
The ND specifically describes circumstances under which applying a double standard to Israel is not anti-Semitic.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism (JDA), published on March 25, was developed, according to its website, "to meet what has become a growing challenge: providing clear guidance to identify and fight anti-Semitism while protecting free expression".
Organised by the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, it has been signed by an international group of more than 200 scholars, most of them experts in anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and/or the Middle East.
The JDA refers to universal principles of human rights and notes that while anti-Semitism has certain distinctive features, its fight cannot be separated from the "overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and gender discrimination".
While both the JDA and the ND are critical of the IHRA, Dov Waxman, professor of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that, taken together, they "actually point to how effective the IHRA has been in showing that how we talk about Israel and Zionism matters".
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However, Waxman, who is an author of the ND and a signatory of both documents, notes that they also constitute an attempt to modify the use of the IHRA as "the gold standard" for anti-Semitism.
Waxman notes that there are numerous similarities between the two documents. "Both accept the premise that criticism of Israel could be potentially anti-Semitic and that just justifying statements by claiming that they 'are about Israel and not about Jews' is not a 'get out of jail free card'.”
The most controversial component of the IHRA definition defines as anti-Semitic “applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.
The most controversial component of the IHRA definition defines as anti-Semitic “applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.
According to the ND, “paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of anti-Semitism…There are numerous reasons for devoting special attention to Israel and treating Israel differently, e.g., some people care about Israel more; others may pay more attention because Israel has a special relationship with the United States and receives $US4 billion in American aid.”
Waxman explains: "The reasons for disproportionate attention on Israel may or may not be good reasons, but that does not mean that they are anti-Semitic, although they might be. The Right uses the equation of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism as a reflexive, off-the-shelf rebuttal to any criticism of Israel, and so it doesn't ever have to deal with the substance of that criticism."
The differences between these two documents, says Waxman, relate primarily to the question of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and the issue of Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS). The ND states that Jews have a right to self-determination and a denial of that right is anti-Semitic but does not explicitly state that anti-Zionism in general is, or is not, anti-Semitic.
In contrast, the JDA states that "nationalism, Jewish or otherwise, can take many forms, but is always open to debate." The JDA also goes further than the ND in explicitly saying that the movement to boycott Israel is not in and of itself anti-Semitic.
These differences between the two documents primarily stem from their target audiences. While the ND was written to be presented to the hoped-for (and subsequently elected) US Democratic administration, the JDA is an attempt to engage non-Jewish organisations, primarily on the Left, in the fight against anti-Semitism.
In a recent editorial essay in Jewish Currents, the authors argue that the Jewish world is placing too much emphasis on anti-Semitism. "The anti-Semite’s ideology has not dominated white Jewish experience in 21st-century America" although some may regard "every oblique – or even straightforward - trope as a track laid on the way to an American Auschwitz," the authors write.
Together, the two new definitions "actually point to how effective the IHRA has been in showing that how we talk about Israel and Zionism matters" - Dov Waxman
They call for the "confidence to name anti-Semitism when it appears on 'our side,' the creation of more inclusive Jewish communities, the integration of a compelling analysis of the role of intergenerational trauma in forging modern-day Jewish politics" which, they note, have better prepared Jews for solidarity work, and have proved "particularly important at moments when Jews have been targeted for violence".
However, as the ND and the JDA, along with the responses to them, reveal, the argument over anti-Semitism must be viewed within the context of the polarised Jewish community. Indeed, as noted by the Community Security Trust (CST) in a recent statement, "the belief that the IHRA definition has a chilling effect on pro-Palestinian activism is so widespread that opposition to it has become totemic for many opponents of Israel, just as support for the definition is seen by others as indicating an institution’s desire to take anti-Semitism seriously.
Referring to the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, one of its initial authors, told The Jewish Independent in a previous interview that it had become "a test of how loyal or good a Jew you are, whether you are an 'us-Jew' or a 'them-Jew."
Stern declined to be interviewed for this story and has not signed either document, although he has been very outspoken regarding his objection to the "political uses to which the definition is being used".
There have been some attacks against the ND and the JDA, especially from pro-Palestinian sources who contend that they continue to squelch free-speech and "contribute to the policing of Palestinian resistance".
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The more virulent criticism, however, has come from the Right. Historian Lars Fischer, for example, writing in The Algemeiner, describes the JDA as a declaration "of anti-Semitism," whose only purposes are to declare that the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state is a legitimate goal and to obfuscate, so that "endless debates about this or that turn of phrase in either definition will henceforth distract attention from their outright commitment to the legitimacy of the call for Israel’s destruction."
And writing in Jewish News Syndicate, columnist Ben Cohen described the JDA as "yet another attempt to sanitise anti-Zionism [that points to an] enormous gulf between those of us who fight anti-Semitism in all of its forms and those who regard Jew-hatred as a problem only when it emanates from the extreme Right."
Waxman says the documents should be seen as an attempt to create a bridge across this polarisation. "We must address anti-Semitism, but we can't if we are losing allies on the Left, who are so suspicious of anti-Semitic claims, or on the Right, who see any nuance or attempt to develop the definition as tantamount to supporting anti-Semitism."
Image: Daniel Sarmula (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)
