NJ Palestine solidarity organizations oppose resolution to adopt IHRA antisemitism definition

February 9th, 2023

Awake Goy

New Jersey Palestine solidarity organizations have released a petition calling on New Jersey legislators — and “all New Jersey citizens” — to reject a new joint resolution (AJR 211/SJR 113) pending in both houses of the New Jersey state legislature. The resolution resolves that New Jersey adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “Working definition of anti-Semitism,” which falsely conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

Even at face value, the resolution is unjustifiable. Resurgent white nationalist antisemitism notwithstanding, Jews are neither exceptional victims of racism in this country, nor are we subject, as Jews, to any of the systemic state violence and oppression inflicted on BIPOC communities. Existing anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws already apply to us. How can we defend any resolution or law that bestows special attention and protections on us, alone?

But as the petition notes, this resolution is not truly about defining antisemitism or protecting Jewish people to begin with. It is about employing the authority of the state — through the IHRA definition — to slander and silence the growing Palestine solidarity movement.

The apartheid Israeli regime was founded in 1948 through an open-ended campaign of ethnic cleansing and dispossession — the Nakba (Catastrophe) — to drive out the indigenous Palestinian majority. For 75 years and counting, the regime has denied Palestinian Nakba refugees their inalienable right to return to their homes and homeland. More than 65 discriminatory laws codify Jewish supremacy throughout historic Palestine, including the 2018 “Nation-State Law,” in regard to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu infamously declared: “Israel is not a state of all its citizens . . . Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.”

Unable to refute or answer for these facts, Israel’s enablers have seized on the IHRA definition, in the words of advocacy group and petition endorser Palestine Legal, “as a tool to censor political debate by tarring those who support Palestinian rights as anti-Jewish.”

The IHRA crusade emanates from the highest levels of the U.S. government, which relies on, and heavily arms, Israel as an outpost for U.S. imperial interests in the region. The State Department endorses IHRA on its website. In 2019, Donald Trump, whose casual antisemitism stopped neither Jewish Zionists voting for him in significant numbers, nor Israelis from extolling him as “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” issued an Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism with the working definition at its center.

Although, sustained pushback from civil rights and Palestine solidarity organizations recently helped defeat Zionist efforts to pressure the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to officially adopt the IHRA definition, on February 2, New Jersey Representative and vocal IHRA supporter Josh Gottheimer, along with 31 bi-partisan co-sponsors, introduced a resolution in Congress (H.Res.92) specifically condemning “antisemitism masquerading as anti-Israel sentiment.”

The drive to embed IHRA works in tandem with the “lawfare” assault on the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

The drive to embed IHRA works in tandem with the “lawfare” assault on the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This includes the passage of anti-BDS legislation in 34 states. It also echoes rightwing calls to muzzle Critical Race Theory (CRT). The anti-BDS and anti-CRT offensives, writes journalist Abe Asher, “shar[e] an array of financial backers, legislative tactics, and political motives to quash legitimate criticism of the racist and colonial practices of increasingly embattled states.”

The Zionist establishment’s witch hunt against anti-Zionists — many of them Jewish — ignores the real source of antisemitism: white nationalism. It also distracts from the growing alliance between Zionists and white nationalists over shared Islamophobic, ethno-supremacist, and social Darwinist fixations.

That bond is no aberration. The Zionist movement has always been rooted in the ideologies of racial separation and 19th century “blood and soil” nationalism that are at the core of white supremacist antisemitism. Today, the Israeli regime has forged close ties with pro-Israel antisemites from Trump, to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, to Hungarian Prime Minister and Putin ally Victor Orbán, while neo-Nazi and self-declared “white Zionist” Richard B. Spencer calls Israel “the most important ethno-state” he looks to “for guidance.” On this, the authors of AJR 211/SJR 113 and the IHRA working definition are silent.

If Jewish people in the United States are not exceptional victims of racism, we are exceptionally well-positioned to expose and confront the campaign to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. That is one of the most important contributions we can make to the struggle for a free Palestine — and to the fight against antisemitism.

In that spirit, Jews for Palestinian Right of Return calls on all supporters of justice, and Jewish people in particular, to sign the petition below and share it widely.

(To add your name as an individual, click here. To add an organizational endorsement, please send a message to [email protected])

Tell New Jersey Legislators: anti-Zionism is not antisemitism — Vote NO on IHRA!

February 1, 2023

The New Jersey state legislature is currently considering Assembly Joint Resolution 211/Senate Joint Resolution 113, titled “Establishes working definition of antisemitism in NJ.” Let’s be clear: this resolution is not about protecting Jewish people. Rather, it exploits legitimate anxieties over rising white nationalist antisemitism in an attempt to silence the movement for Palestinian freedom. We call on all New Jersey legislators and citizens to reject it.

AJR211/SJR113 requires the state of New Jersey to officially adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “Working Definition of Antisemitism” — a definition that falsely equates “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” with anti-Jewish discrimination, violence, and stereotypes.

Despite disingenuous assurances that it won’t infringe on our constitutionally-protected rights, a joint resolution of the Assembly and Senate that conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism poses a clear threat to any New Jerseyan who speaks out against 75 years of systematized apartheid, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Israeli regime against the Palestinian people.

The fight against resurgent right-wing antisemitism must be part of the struggle against ALL forms of racism and oppression, not conducted via resolutions, bills, or policies of any kind that use antisemitism as a pretext to muzzle the call for justice throughout historic Palestine.

Tell New Jersey legislators to reject IHRA and vote NO on AJR211/SJR113.

Signed,

Al Awda New York/New Jersey: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

American Muslims for Palestine – New Jersey

New Jersey Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NJ)

Jewish Voice for Peace – Central New Jersey

Jews for Palestinian Right of Return

Neturei Karta International

North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group

Palestinian American Community Center

Palestine Legal

Rutgers New Brunswick Students for Justice in Palestine