Activists block adoption of IHRA definition of antisemitism by Maryland county

Grassroots activists, beware. Your town or county may at this very moment be falling prey to a stealth attack by the Israel lobby. You may awake tomorrow to find that your local government has signed on to an expanded definition of antisemitism that makes it antisemitic to criticize Israel or Zionism. In late July, Montgomery County, Maryland, narrowly avoided exactly that fate, at least for now. Neighboring Arlington County did not – and no one knew what was coming.

On July 23, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) sent out an urgent action alert to Montgomery County residents warning that in three days their county council was going to adopt, without public notice or hearing, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition of antisemitism,” which conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. In response, more than 180 residents quickly sent protests to all the councilmembers; the item was then pulled from the July 26 council meeting agenda.

In contrast, Arlington County, Va., went ahead and adopted the same IHRA antisemitism definition at what the local Sun Gazette newspaper termed a “sparsely attended afternoon meeting with no public input.”

The outcomes differed in the two counties only because Alexandra Melinchok, co-chair of Maryland 2 Palestine, got wind of the Montgomery County Council plan to adopt the IHRA definition. Melinchok heard a rumor about a press conference being called to applaud the council’s action the day after it happened. She alerted her lists and relayed the news to Chris Habiby, Legislative and Policy Coordinator of the ADC, who alerted residents. (Md2 Palestine, a new group, identifies as a “grassroots abolitionist organization comprised of Palestinian diaspora, comrades, and allies fighting for Palestinian liberation from Maryland to Palestine.”)

It appears that it wasn’t hard for pro-Israel lobbyists to persuade councilmember Andrew Friedson to push a resolution to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. He put it on the council’s “consent calendar,” which allows for expedited action on noncontroversial items. Friedson had easily and quietly lined up the consent of the full council. However, according to Melinchok of MD2 Palestine, it also wasn’t very hard to convince councilmembers that the IHRA definition is very controversial, as the flashflood of emails from unhappy county residents showed.

“It didn’t appear that the council members were aware of the issues raised by the definition,” Melinchok said. “The only thing they had seen was IHRA’s 38-word general introduction to antisemitism, which is conventional enough – and doesn’t mention Israel. They hadn’t seen the illustrative examples that are attached to the definition which equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, which is how the definition shuts down the Palestinian viewpoint.”

Melinchok noted that a 2020 academic article in The Political Quarterly by Rebecca Ruth Gould, states that “In every context in which it has been adopted or applied, the working definition has faced sharp criticism. Scholars of Jewish and Holocaust studies have played a prominent role in exposing its shortcomings.”

Councilmembers had heard nothing about those shortcomings from the regional heads of three major Jewish organizations – the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Community Relations Council – which lobbied the council in favor of the IHRA definition. According to Melinchok, “When we spoke with individual council-members and officials, they said they felt the question deserved more consideration.”

But the threat still looms. Councilmember Friedson has stated that the Council will soon take up the resolution to adopt the IHRA definition, perhaps as early as its next meeting on September 13.

Opponents of the IHRA definition remain on their guard, Melinchok says. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Right now, it’s August recess. We don’t think they’ll try to put it on the consent calendar again. What is imperative, however, if and when this comes up again, is that community members be given ample opportunity to share their concerns – especially individuals and groups that would be directly impacted by adoption of the IHRA definition.

Despite Friedson’s promise to resubmit the resolution, his reaction at the meeting — and that of the pro-IHRA lobyists — to the sudden blocking of the resolution was less than emphatic. In an Aug. 1 article, JewishInsider recounted how an activist “pressure campaign” had derailed the planned vote. Friedson was quoted as saying the council pulled the item from its agenda merely because it was “a very busy day.” The article undercut Friedson by noting that the antisemitism resolution was the only item postponed, while two other items were added to the agenda.

For their part – surprisingly — the IHRA advocates were quoted as claiming to support postponement of the vote, as this would give them additional time to “clarify … the importance of passing this measure at a time of escalating antisemitism and hatred towards other minority groups,” as Ron Halber, director of the Washington Jewish Community Relations Council, put it.

There is irony in the fact that the leaders of Montgomery County — which Jewish Insider calls the “historic hub of the Jewish community in the Washington area” – along with the Zionist groups pushing for the definition would, in effect, be hosting a debate about Israel’s human rights abuses, which is exactly what the IHRA definition is meant to silence. What’s really new – and would likely drive the debate – is that the people and politicians of the county would learn how Israel and its lobby in the U.S. are busily reaching into the farthest corners of society to suppress the right of Americans to freely discuss the policies and actions of a foreign state.

It is also yet to be seen how Arlington County’s application of the pro-Israel IHRA definition will play out. The more widely the definition is adopted – and it has already been widely adopted in the U.S. and other countries — the less controversial it may seem, and the more likely it is that people will avoid criticizing Israel, if only to avoid getting into sticky situations. That’s a classic case of hard-to-detect chilling of speech and even of thought. On the flip side, however, activists, who can find it difficult to convince friends and neighbors that events in distant Israel-Palestine should be of pressing concern, will be able to point out that Israel’s heavy hand is now weighing on them.

All of this effort to beef up the meaning and impact of the word antisemitism points up how bothered Israel must be about the steady worsening of its image in the West. For decades, merely calling someone or something antisemitic, without any further gloss, has always been very easy to do and quite effective in deflecting from and delegitimizing criticism of Israel. Recently, that is practically all that Israel has felt it necessary to do in the face of an unprecedented wave of apartheid accusations. On the other hand, gaining broad adoption of the expanded IHRA definition may prove a heavy lift, as the Montgomery County case indicates. Going on to actively use it to shut down speech in schools, government programs, social agencies, and even in corporate settings could trigger lots of resistance and backlash.  

Numerous experts have said that the IHRA definition is a strange and unwieldy document. Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted the “working definition” that ultimately became the IHRA definition in 2016, has spoken often and forcefully against having the definition adopted as a rule by governments or others. Writing last year in Forward, a newspaper aimed at Jewish readers, Stern called such adoption a “gross abuse” of the definition “to suppress and chill pro-Palestinian speech.”

Stern, who directs Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate, wrote that his original objective was to “provide European data collectors common guidelines of what to include or exclude in reports about antisemitism.” His original draft, like the IHRA definition, relied on 11 examples of possible antisemitism that could “serve as illustrations” that would “guide IHRA in its work.” After listing four obvious examples of antisemitism, such as “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing of Jews in the name of a radical ideology” — the last seven examples all involve criticisms of Israel. Stern wrote in the Forward article that Israel was brought in “because there was a correlation (as opposed to causation) between increased anti-Israel expressions and upticks in attacks on Jews (something we recently witnessed again this May [2021].” On this point, ADC’s Habiby noted, “The reason that Stern has to make the distinction between correlation and causation is precisely the reason political criticism of Israel has no place in a discussion of antisemitism.”

The most confusing of the examples of antisemitism – and potentially the most effective as a silencer — is someone “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” In her article in The Policy Quarterly, Rebecca Ruth Gould cites the example to point out how “the weaknesses of the ‘working definition’ have served as the gateway to its political instrumentalization.” In other words, the sloppier the definition gets, the greater its potential to punish — or chill — criticism of Israel. So, in the case of the self-determination example, she argues that it doesn’t help identify antisemitism because “it is not per se antisemitic to call Israel a racist endeavor.” A person doing so may also happen to be antisemitic but there is “no necessary link.”

Beyond such linguistic ambiguities in the IHRA definition, there lies another vast layer of ambiguity in how “adoption” of the definition by any given organization may actually impact individuals. Gould wrote that every adoption of the definition that has occurred has left it unclear “what adoption means.” ADC’s action alert concerning Montgomery County made the point by asking, “Can teachers be fired for discussing the reality that Palestinians face under Israeli occupation?”

The success of Israel and its lobby in promoting the IHRA around the country is impressive proof of its clout, but it carries risks of overreach. The continued spread of the definition opens opportunities for activists to advocate in support of Palestinians’ human rights, and Americans’ freedom of speech. However, such battles will only take place, Habiby cautions, if groups like ADC and MD2 Palestine — which can quickly mount strong resistance – “hear about these moves, in time, from people on the ground. Without that, none of us has the resources to monitor the action.”