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Biden administration says IHRA definition of antisemitism is ‘gold standard’

The Biden administration has reiterated its support for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The controversial interpretation conflates antisemitism with legitimate criticism of Israel.

The IHRA working definition was formally adopted by the Trump administration in 2018. In April a group of Democratic House members, three of them Jewish, sent Secretary of State Tony Blinken a letter urging Biden’s team to consider alternatives to the IHRA’s working definition. The letter, which was led by Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, suggested two different definitions: The Nexus Document and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Both of these allow for broader criticism of Israel.

The letter (which was also signed by Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Andy Levin (D-MI), Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) was sent to Blinken just a month after he told American Zionist Movement President Richard Heideman that the Biden administration “enthusiastically embraces” the IHRA definition.

Schakowsky’s letter did not actually condemn the IHRA definition, but suggested that the Nexus Document and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism be used as tools alongside it. “These two efforts are the work of hundreds of scholars and experts in the fields of antisemitism, Israel and Middle East Policy, and Jewish communal affairs, and have been helpful to us as we grapple with these complex issues,” it read. “We believe that the Administration should, in addition to the IHRA definition, consider these two important documents as resources to help guide your thinking and actions when addressing issues of combatting antisemitism.”

Last week Rep. Schakowsky received a response from the Biden administration. It does not address the two alternatives at all and merely reiterates Biden’s support for the IHRA definition.

“The Department agrees that it is crucial that governments and publics are able to recognize anti-Semitism in its many forms, traditional and contemporary, so that we can call hate by its proper name and take effective action,” wrote Acting Assistant Secretary Naz Durakoğlu from the Bureau of Legislative Affairs. “To those ends, like prior U.S. administrations of both political parties, the Biden Administration embraces and champions the IHRA non-legally binding working definition of anti-Semitism in its entirety, including its examples, and the Administration continues to encourage other countries as well as international bodies to do the same. The IHRA working definition is the ‘gold standard.'”

Durakoğlu’s response asserted that, despite embracing the definition, the Biden administration would not attempt to criminalize free speech in any way. “This, however, does not mean we let anti-Semitic speech and other forms of hate speech go unchallenged,” he added.

During his presidential run Biden’s campaign website declared that he would “firmly reject the BDS movement, which singles out Israel — home to millions of Jews — and too often veers into anti-Semitism, while letting Palestinians off the hook for their choices.”

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Biden has been duped by the zionistas.

Joe , not critising Israel for it,s crimes because it is connected to Judaism is Anti semitism.

So there you are Joe , you are an antisemite.

Maybe you should expand your list of close advisers and include people who have different opinions on the so called only democracy in the midle East.Your present gang of confidants are making a fool of you.

NOW would be a good time for Joe Biden to right this wrong, when Israel’s violent bombing of Gaza (leaving 68 babies killed) is still in the minds of many, to do a major upheaval of our policies, and re-set it, to be far more democratic, neutral, and work to secure the freedom of people under a brutal occupation, in keeping with our supposed concerns for human rights. The occupier being our good “ally” that we have been guilty of sending billions of dollars, and the weapons used to killed civilians, enabling them to keep continuing this damn occupation for decades.

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“The second sentence elaborates the possible reach of ‘rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism’ but adds nothing by way of further definition.
“How then has the supposed IHRA definition come to include such examples as
“’the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity’ and ‘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” ?
“So far as can be ascertained, the grafting one of the list of examples was the work of representatives of two uncompromisingly pro-Israel organisations, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the American Jewish Committee. There appears to be no evidence that the list was ever adopted by a plenary meeting of the IHRA. None of this has prevented it from being weaponised.
“Anti-semitism, like pornography, may be easier to recognise than to define, but a straightforward and hard-edged definition is that it is hostility towards Jews as Jews. It is neither something as subjective as a ‘perception’ (to use one of the IHRA’s two inappropriate nouns) nor necessarily something as flagrant as hatred (to use the other). In neither instance is it coextensive with criticism (shared, incidentally, by many Jews worldwide) of Israel’s laws, policies and practices, or of Zionism itself.
“Failure – or more realistically refusal – to recognise the legitimacy of such critiques is a gag upon freedom of thought and speech, a human right no less real than freedom from racial discrimination.”
Stephen Sedley, 5 June 2021

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Stephen Sedley: Statement on IHRA (labourfreespeech.org.uk)
“Stephen Sedley: Statement on IHRA”
“Former Lord Justice of Appeal and Judge ad hoc of the European Court of Human Rights; past visiting professor of law, Oxford University. Stephen Sedley has sent us this statement for publication ahead of our meeting on ‘Palestine/Israel and academic freedom.”
“It is now five years since the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (the IHRA) published what it called ‘a non-legally binding working definition of anti-semitism’. It is a clumsy piece of drafting distinguished by two particular features: it fails the first test of any definition by being open-ended and indefinite; and it is accompanied by examples some of which are visibly designed to protect Israel from legitimate criticism. 
“In spite of its self-description as ‘non-legally binding’, the supposed definition is rapidly acquiring the force of law by being used as a basis for witch-hunts within institutions and organisations against bona fide critics of Israel. Ignoring the Home Affairs Select Committee’s warning that the document, if unqualified, risked stifling free speech, government has set about enforcing its adoption by threatening to defund institutions which fail to adopt it.
“It may therefore be relevant to say a word about the IHRA and the genesis of its ‘working definition’. Although the IHRA is a publicly-funded intergovernmental body, based in Berlin, it publishes no minutes and does not reveal who attends its meetings. Among its first member-states were the US, the UK and Israel.
“Recent research, however, has established that the ‘definition’ adopted by the IHRA’s Bucharest plenary in 2016 consisted only of the two initial sentences, taken from an abandoned document produced by a European predecessor body. The first is:
“’Anti-semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.’” (cont’d)

The IHRA definition is pyrite – fool’s gold. The man who wrote it said he never intended it to be used as official policy.
As for criminalizing free speech, Biden knows any attempt to do that would get shot down by the courts. Even the present Supreme Court. But it’s not necessary. Unfounded accusations of anti-semitism do just fine to shut people up.