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April 2nd, 2021 
Awake Goy 
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, although flawed in parts and open to criticism, not least because of its unfortunate title, should be welcomed by all those concerned about seeing the fight against antisemitism being part of the fight against racism rather than being counterposed to it.
The JDA should also be welcomed by those who are sick and tired of seeing ‘antisemitism’ weaponised on behalf of a ‘Jewish’ state that has just seen 2 Jewish Nazis elected to the Knesset, one of whom could become a government minister.
Unlike the IHRA which labelled opposition to Zionism and Israeli racism as antisemitism, the JDA makes a clear distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The JDA states that the following are not antisemitic:
Criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism, or arguing for a variety of constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants “between the river and the sea,” whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form.
Evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state.
The difference between the IHRA misdefinition of antisemitism and the JDA is the difference between night and day.
Of course the JDA should have been unnecessary. The idea that it is necessary to define antisemitism in order to oppose it would have been ludicrous but for the cynical attempt by racists and imperialists, antisemites included, to use the historic oppression of Jewish people in order to support not only the Israeli state but western imperialism and its wars in the Middle East.
It is no accident that some of the most virulent antisemites and White Supremacists, from Viktor Orban of Hungary, Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland and Donald Trump, have all supported the IHRA. Indeed no genuine antisemite could possibly take exception to the IHRA. What is there not to like about it if you are a racist?
I remain of the same opinion as Justice Potter Stewart in his famous comment on pornography in a 1964 Supreme Court case — I don’t need a definition of antisemitism to recognise it when I see it. When my father and thousands of Jews like him took part in the Battle of Cable Street in order to prevent Moseley’s British Union of Fascists marching through the Jewish East End in October 1936, they did not need a definition of antisemitism in order to understand what they were fighting. However we are where we are, and today the primary benefit of a genuine definition of antisemitism is that it can be used to replace the bogus and fraudulent IHRA definition.
Unlike the IHRA misdefinition of antisemitism, the JDA is concerned with antisemitism not tarnishing the struggle of the Palestinians and opponents of Zionism as ‘antisemitic’.
What is truly frightening about the IHRA is how many people of sound mind, people who consider themselves intelligent and in the normal world are intelligent, have nevertheless subscribed to a definition of antisemitism that was intellectually bankrupt, the academic version of the three-card trick. The IHRA is embarrassingly incoherent, dishonest and internally contradictory. Indeed the IHRA is itself, by its own definition antisemitic when it says on the one hand that Israel is the collective representation of all Jews and then says that it is antisemitic to associate all Jews with Israel’s crimes.
The IHRA’s vagueness and obfuscation was itself demonstrably dishonest. It was deliberately opaque. Indeed a 500+ word statement cannot, by anyone’s imagination, be called a definition and, as Stephen Sedley wrote, the IHRA cannot be a definition because it is indefinite.
The core IHRA definition of 38 words, leaving out its 11 Israel-centred examples, is nothing if not slippery and vague.
The IHRA was an exercise in intellectual dishonesty and it was eagerly grasped by racists such as the British representative to the IHRA, Lord Pickles, as a way of smearing and demonising anti-racists. Anyone who genuinely believed it was a definition of antisemitism can only be classed as intellectually bankrupt. And the IHRA rested on the assumption that the State of Israel was a normal, democratic state. As such the IHRA took sides in the battle between Jewish supremacy and Zionism on the one hand and anti-Zionism on the other.
The 38 word core definition of antisemitism at the beginning of the IHRA states that:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
Although we are told that antisemitism is ‘a certain perception of Jews’ we are never told what that perception is. We are told that antisemitism ‘may be expressed as hatred toward Jews’ without saying what else it might be expressed as. In raising the bar of antisemitism to the level of hatred the IHRA missed out all sorts of examples of antisemitism which are hurtful or discriminatory but which are not derived from hatred.
It is perfectly possible for someone to inflict violence on someone because they are Jewish, not because they hate them but because they despise them or fear them. According to the IHRA they are not antisemitic! Likewise someone who objects to their son or daughter marrying a Jew, not because they hate them but because they believe Jews are dishonest and untrustworthy, to say nothing of being mean and stingy, is not antisemitic according to the IHRA. The IHRA has but one function. To protect the Israeli state and Zionism not Jews.
The first advantage of the JDA is that it formulates a clear and easily understood definition of antisemitism: ‘Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).’ The latter 5 words could have been omitted but based as it is on the Oxford English Dictionary definition ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ it is infinitely preferable to the IHRA definition.
We now have a very clear and useful definition of antisemitism that clearly distinguishes between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The JDA does not attempt to police political speech in the way that the IHRA did. It does not for example suggest that if someone criticises Israel without at the same time criticising every other country that abuses human rights (‘double standards’) that they are antisemitic.
The JDA does not describe comparisons between the Israeli state and its policies and that of Nazi Germany as antisemitic. It is clear that there are many comparisons today between Israel and Nazi Germany as the walls of Shuhada Street in Hebron, which are daubed with settler slogans ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’ testify.
As Neve Gordon and Mark Levin point out, under the IHRA two of the greatest Jewish personalities of the 20th century, both of them refugees from Nazi Germany, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, have to be classified as antisemitic! In 1948 when Menachem Begin, the leader of Herut, visited the United States, Einstein and Arendt signed a letter with other Jewish personalities, to The New York Times claiming that Herut was:
“closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”
In particular Guidelines 10-15 are welcome. They are a clear statement that support for BDS has nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with a non-violent protest against Israel. The statement that evidence-based criticism of Israel cannot be antisemitic is also to be welcomed. Similarly that support for a unitary state of Palestine (and by implication opposition to a Jewish state) is not antisemitic.
However, there are many criticisms that can also be made of the JDA.
Firstly it lacks any Palestinian perspective or input. Given that the JDA came about as a result of the attempts of the IHRA to silence free speech on Palestine it should have been a given that Palestinians might have an input into the JDA. Unfortunately the drafting of the JDA was an all-Jewish affair despite the fact that it has a whole section B, ‘Israel and Palestine: examples that, on the face of it, are antisemitic’.
Although it has been created in opposition to the IHRA, the JDA focuses far too heavily on the Israeli narrative and concerns. Although, given the context, this is understandable, the authors fight shy of saying outright that the main threat from antisemitism comes from the far-Right and fascist groups, not from the Left. Perhaps this statement was too much for people like Professor David Feldman of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism. However, we need to say loud and clear that the main threat to Jews today comes from people like Donald Trump and his White Supremacist neo-Nazi supporters. Historically, the left has always fought antisemitism and Nazi Germany, the opposition to antisemitism and Nazism came almost exclusively from the left.
This is especially pertinent since the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism includes the statement that ‘In 2019, Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics had surpassed that of the far-right.’ This was based on fraudulent ‘research’ carried out by Dr Daniel Allington of King’s College and others.
The CAA’s 2019 Antisemitism Barometer introduced six absurd new questions about antisemitic attitudes which were based solely on one’s attitude to Israel and Zionism. This redefinition of what constitutes antisemitic statements had but one purpose – to brand opponents of Zionism and the Israeli state as antisemitic. From now on Israeli zealots could claim that the real enemy of Jews was not their neo-Nazi friends but those on the Left.
For example if you are not comfortable spending time with Zionists, then that makes you an antisemite! I confess I didn’t find the company of supporters of Apartheid in South Africa particularly congenial but I never considered that that made me a racist!
Below are three new ‘antisemitic’ statements that Allington, Hirsh and company devised:
1. “Israel and its supporters are a bad influence on our democracy.”
2. “Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media.”
3. “Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.”
And three others that prove or suggest ‘antisemitism’ if the respondent disagrees:
4. “I am comfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel.”
5. “Israel makes a positive contribution to the world.”
6. “Israel is right to defend itself against those who want to destroy it.”
What are the problems with the JDA?
However the JDA is not unproblematic and should not be seen as the final word on what is and is not antisemitic. Here, for instance, is an example of antisemitism.
Guideline No. 6, ‘Applying the symbols, images and negative stereotypes of classical antisemitism to the State of Israel.’
This guideline is closely allied to the IHRA’s 9th illustration : ‘Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.’
The logical fallacy here is to substitute ‘Israel or Israelis’ for Jews. Israel is not a Jew.
One of the traditional antisemitic stereotypes of Jews in medieval Europe was poisoning the wells of non-Jews. Another was the murder of non-Jewish children in order to bake Passover bread. These are undoubtedly antisemitic.
However these examples refer to Jews not Israel. It is a fact, confirmed by archival evidence, that Israel poisoned the water supply of Acre in the 1948 war of expulsion. It is also a fact that Israeli settlers have regularly poisoned the water and wells of Palestinians in the West Bank. This is what settlers do to the indigenous population, regardless of whether they are Jewish or Christian. It cannot be right to characterise factual assertions as antisemitic. Nor can it be right to associate traditional antisemitic stereotypes of Jews with a racist state which treats Palestinians as the Untermenschen.
Israel has tested poisoned gas and chemical weapons on Palestinians. It is not antisemitic to state this. It is a fact that Israel has harvested stolen body parts of Palestinians. The Chinese government uses the body parts of those executed. Such an accusation is not racist.
Guideline No. 8 ‘Requiring people, because they are Jewish, publicly to condemn Israel or Zionism (for example, at a political meeting).’
This is also not antisemitic. It is understandable, given that the Zionist movement makes the claim that they speak on behalf of all Jews (except us self-haters!) which reinforces peoples’ confusion between being Jewish and being a Zionist.
It cannot be antisemitic for non-Jewish people to fall for Zionist propaganda, and further it is reasonable for a Palestinian to ask that Jewish people distance themselves from the Israeli/Zionist assertion that to be Jewish is to support the oppression of Palestinians. If there is any antisemitism it is on the part of the Zionists.
I also find Guideline 10 problematic:
‘Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the principle of equality.’
I acknowledge the right of Israeli Jews to live in Palestine/Israel. However I do not acknowledge that they have any collective rights as settlers and oppressors. The settlers are not oppressed and therefore the rights we should recognise are individual rights. I would therefore strike out the words ‘collectively and individually’.
However, apart from Guideline No. 6, these are minor disagreements. The JDA is an overwhelmingly positive contribution to detoxifying the debate over antisemitism and the dishonest attempts of Israel’s antisemitic supporters to conflate antisemitism and anti-Zionism. It should therefore be welcomed as a wholly positive contribution to demystifying the question of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
We should therefore feel free to use this definition and to propose that trade unions, universities and labour parties be encouraged to ditch the IHRA in favour of the JDA. We should be open and explicit. The IHRA is a definition that antisemites support. The JDA is a definition for opponents of antisemitism.
We should ask hypocrites like Caroline Lucas, a Member of Parliament, who professes to support the Palestinians, to put her money where her mouth is. If Lucas supports the Palestinians then we need to keep asking her why she is supporting a definition of antisemitism which defines the Palestinian struggle as antisemitic.
We know that racists like John Mann, Keir Starmer and Eric Pickles will cling to the IHRA as their main purpose is to sanctify western support for Israel and legitimise imperialism’s operations in the region. However we should demand that members of the Socialist Campaign Group adopt and endorse the JDA. Likewise Momentum should abandon the IHRA and adopt the JDA. If these groups refuse to break with the racist and imperialist consensus over Zionism then they should be ostracised as enemies of the Palestine liberation struggle and as racists.
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