Last week, Monash University became the fifth Australian university to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of “anti-Semitism” (following Melbourne, Macquarie, Wollongong and Sunshine Coast universities).
It’s been a quiet progression without much fanfare, but it’s the consequence of extremely heavy lobbying.
In Canberra, the multipartisan Parliamentary Friends of the IHRA launched last year, and its first order of business was to write to universities “urging them to adopt the IHRA working definition”.
If nothing else, the fact politicians are demanding universities take an action directly related to academic freedom should trip everyone’s antennae. What’s going on?
Politics is what’s going on, as is the case any time universities are being monstered by political entities, large or small. What happens on campus never stays on campus; for all their corporatisation, universities remain major cultural forces in every country. For the same reason that the Chinese Communist Party is so fascinated by what gets taught at Australian universities about China, powerful interests care deeply about how “Jewish” concerns are handled.
But let’s get specific. Anti-Semitism is a problem because of what it caused (the Holocaust) and because it has made a comeback. As a species, it’d be nice if we took it more seriously this time around.
The IHRA definition is an attempt to address not just the most brutal iterations of anti-Semitism (overt hatred of Jewish people) but its more subtle manifestations as well, on the basis that’s where it always begins: with distortions and blood-libel, whatever emerges as the contemporary equivalent to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The basic IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is unremarkable, but it adds “contemporary examples” to illustrate — and there’s where the problem comes.
The definition first emerged in 2005, created as a “working definition” for the purpose of data collection. It laid fallow until 2016, when the IHRA picked it up and adopted it as its “non-legally binding working definition of anti-Semitism”. Then the lobbying began.
Interestingly, lead drafter of the definition Kenneth Stern has argued strongly that it is being misused and is antithetical to academic freedom. He testified to the US Congress that it “was never intended as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus”.
Stern’s worries are widely shared. In November 2022, 128 scholars who all specialise in anti-Semitism, Holocaust studies or modern Jewish history published an open letter opposing the adoption of the definition. They called it “vague and incoherent”, arguing that it “has been generating confusion about what constitutes anti-Semitism”.
In January, 70 Australian academics did much the same, going public to argue that “Australian universities should not be relying on a partisan definition as a means of determining what is proscribed political speech. The independence of universities and their commitments to free thought and speech, research and teaching should be paramount.”
What are they so worried about? The devil is in the detail: the examples the IHRA definition provides. Some are unexceptional, but consider this stated example “of anti-Semitism in public life”:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.
Or this:
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Both these propositions hold a totemic significance for the pro-Israel movement globally. Many people, not just Jews, would vehemently argue that you cannot call Israel racist or compare anything it does to the Nazis, because that’s sticking a hot knife in an open wound and is simply intolerable. Because of the Holocaust.
Fair enough. It’s a legitimate point of view. I happen to hold an analogous personal view on a related question as to the use of the word “genocide”, which I believe needs to be wielded more sparingly than it tends to be, lest we misunderstand by inappropriate equation just how unique the Holocaust was.
However, my personal view is contestable, and so are these others. Not everyone agrees that you can’t point to one of the current actions of the Israeli government in the West Bank and call it racist; or even, if that’s your opinion, compare it to Nazism.
The IHRA definition says no, you can’t say those things, ever, because doing so is by definition anti-Semitic. Again, arguable point, but only arguable. When it comes to definitions, when those definitions are being encoded in policy (which is usually a precursor to their being enshrined in law) as proscriptions on what one may say, precision is paramount. If it’s not unarguable (putting aside bad-faith arguments), the definition is an overreach.
The point made by the 128 Jewish scholars is that adopting the definition in that form “would transform any factual discussion about Israeli violations and accountability into a fraught debate about alleged anti-Semitism”.
Even if you believe that anti-Israel and anti-Semitic are synonyms, surely it’s not too difficult to see the danger down the road when we try to define non-definitive points of debate out of existence.
Is denouncing Israel’s actions in the West Bank anti-Semitic? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I must be an Anti-Semite. I have long admired the people, but utterly despise the state of Israel which is now run by crooks and land thieves. The average Israeli is way better than that, but we even see Netan the Yahoo trying to rort the legal system. Unthinkable 30 years ago. It is nonsense to make comparisons with the Nazis in terms of today’s events, but the Nazis did not begin on that scale and some of the actions of the Zionists have only a little way to go before some comparison might be valid.
What the article missed was how ‘anti-Zionism’ was very much a creation or tactic of Stalin’s USSR in support of Arab states late ’60s, but had previously supported creation of the Zionist Israeli state; also Stalin’s Jewish doctors’ plot till his death ’53 viewing Zionism as a threat.
There is a social science analysis issue ignored in media i.e. need to define the definition, as it stands it’s presented as black or white binary, but in fact is a Venn diagram i.e. much grey and confusion in the middle.
Would be an interesting challenge for media, politicians, academia and commentators to analyse and present the situation without relying upon old loaded definitions for which there is too much subtext and dog whistling.
Final point of interest, one of many ‘great replacement’ conspiracies around Soros was ‘cooked up’ by two US Jewish GOP linked electoral consultants, referred by Netanyahu to Hungary’s PM Orban’s Fidesz Party, for which it has become a central tenet of their electoral, national and political agitprop.
There is a social science analysis issue ignored in media i.e. need to define the definition, as it stands it’s presented as black or white binary, but in fact is a Venn diagram i.e. much grey and confusion in the middle.
Would be an interesting challenge for media, politicians, academia and commentators to analyse and present the situation without relying upon old loaded definitions for which there is too much subtext and dog whistling.
Another related point of interest, one of many ‘great replacement’ conspiracies around Soros was ‘cooked up’ by two US Jewish GOP linked electoral consultants, referred by Netanyahu to Hungary’s PM Orban’s Fidesz Party, for which it has become a central tenet of their electoral, national and political agitprop.
Condemning the existence of Israel may well be antisemitic. But what about the expansion of Israel? Or the tactics of Israel against the Palestinians or Israel’s critics? How far does this go?
If your last question was not rhetorical you might look up Eretz Israel – “from the Great River (Nile) to the Euphrates” as nastyNetty put it when as a NY supporter of Meir Kahane.
The return of Sinai to Egyptian control was the death knell for their democracy and that of Gaza strip was the final straw .
Condemning the existence of the state of Israel is anti-Zionist, not anti-semitic. Many Jewish people (both orthodox and liberal) oppose the whole Zionist project, not just its excesses.
Yep, so much for intelligent discussion on Crikey. Can someone with half a brain at Crikey tell the Madbot that ‘Zionism’ and ‘Zionist’ are not words of abuse but legitimate terms without which no sensible discussion of the Palestinian issue can be discussed. Or are the Crikey editors also shivering in fear of the Zionist lobby? Pathetic.
Ha, ha. I actually had a comment about Gina Rinehart erased after two hours of collecting ‘likes’. (Admittedly not many). But the bot didn’t even warn me.
Gina’s watching you, Frank. Or maybe artificial intelligence (?artificial stupidity) learns to suck up to the rich and powerful.
There is, of course, no chance whatsoever that Israel will engage in actions that fully match what the Nazis did. If to claim that Israel will match the Nazis is what the Holocaust Remembrance definition meant to say is anti-Semitism, then that is acceptable. However, if the definition is meant to imply that rulers of old or present day Israel have never taken racist actions and that any claim to the contrary is anti-Semitic, then that is not what Universities should condemn as a form of religious or racial hatred of Jews. Scholars are perfectly entitled to ask whether the Canaanites, who occupied the land of old Israel before the Exodus from Egypt of the people led by Moses, were absorbed, expelled or killed during the progressive settlement of their land by the tribes that worshipped Yahweh. They are entitled to ask whether the policies of today’s government of Israel will led to Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land of Palestine.
So using the same logic, criticism of Putin is deemed criticism of Russia, criticism of Xi is deemed criticism of China, criticism of Erdowan is deemed criticism of Turkey (the new spelling is a wank) und so weiter……………………
………I think all the wannabe dictators would be onboard with that.
Trump certainly tried in the USA.
… “Does condemning those Christian institutions that carried on in that disgraceful way they did, in the wake of revelations of pedophilia within their institutions, make you anti-Christian?”
“Religion” would be a lot better off without those parasites hi-jacking it to (ab)use it, to further their own temporal ends.