A tired Jewish cliche states, “two Jews, three opinions.” As a member of the tribe for, well, my entire life, I have to agree that it has a clear ring of truth.
However, I’m inclined to say that it’s not just Jews who seem to disagree about almost everything. That certainly seems to be the case these days, and perhaps always has been. To quote the Talking Heads (one of my favorite post-punk rock bands), “same as it ever was, same as it ever was…”
So, President Joseph R. Biden, unity will not be had just for the asking. But I digress.
Among the latest Jewish communal verbal slugfests is one an outsider might reasonably think Jews would likely agree upon — which is, how do you define anti-Semitism?
But we don’t, because nothing is simple in life (allow me to refer you back to the “two Jews, three opinions” cliche above), no matter what we’d like to pretend.
This is particularly so when you add Israel to the equation. Or, to be more precise, the question of what constitutes fair political criticism of Israel and what is unfair — or biased — criticism of Israel that bleeds into hateful anti-Semitism?
The top of this JTA (the international Jewish news agency) story from mid-January lays out the issue.
(JTA) — When is it anti-Semitic to criticize Israel?
Anti-Semitism signifies hatred of Jews and the ways that hatred is perpetuated through age-old conspiracy theories and their modern variants. But what about when that hatred is expressed through rhetoric about the Jewish state? Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism?
Those questions have divided American Jews in recent years — and are doing so again. …
Establishment Jewish groups want Joe Biden’s administration to treat some anti-Israel speech as anti-Semitism. Progressive Jewish groups disagree, worried about chilling or criminalizing legitimate criticism of Israeli policy.
At the center of the debate is a 500-word “working definition” of anti-Semitism, published in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA. That definition seeks to provide a guide to which statements or actions qualify as anti-Semitism.
It ranges from stereotypes about Jews to incitement of violence to Holocaust denial. A growing list of countries, international agencies, universities and sports teams have adopted the definition in an effort to help them recognize Jew-hatred.
But its provisions on rhetoric around Israel have sparked contentious debate, which was heightened last year when President Donald Trump signed an executive order essentially adopting the working definition as a reference for adjudicating civil rights complaints on campus. This debate has continued even as the IHRA has emphasized that the definition is not legally binding.
This debate keeps evolving, of course. Thus, I should note that after I initially drafted this post a Biden official said the administration would, in fact, adopt the IHRA definition.
Here’s a bite of the JTA short update on the subject.
‘We must educate ourselves and our communities to recognize anti-Semitism in its many forms so that we can call hate by its proper name and take effective action,” Kara McDonald, a deputy assistant secretary of state, said Monday [Feb 1] at an experts’ meeting on anti-Semitism.
“That is why the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism, with its real-world examples, is such an invaluable tool,” she said at the meeting convened by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a security umbrella for Western nations. “As prior U.S. administrations of both political stripes have done, the Biden administration embraces and champions the working definition.”
Despite her statement, I’d wager this will not end the internal Jewish verbal tussle over the IHRA wording. (Allow me to refer you yet again to the “two Jews, three opinions” comment.)
Click here to read the U.S. State Department’s website entry on the IHRA statement. Notice that it includes the following actions as examples of unacceptable anti-Semitism: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” and “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.”
Take note as well that some of Israel’s most vociferous critics — including some who are not above violence — often do invoke the Nazi parallel and sometimes do equate all Jews with Israeli government actions, regardless of where they live or the passports they carry.
I admit that criticism of Israeli policies sometimes does strike me — but certainly not always — as barely disguised anti-Semitism. But as someone who is sometimes critical of Israeli policies myself, including Jerusalem’s treatment of its Palestinian citizens and neighbors, I hasten to add that this is generally a very subjective call.
Bottom line: I’d say that at its core what we have here is another argument over what constitutes free and protected speech, even if it’s offensive and off the wall, and what constitutes undue incitement. In short, it’s yet another conflict over what we Americans like to call First Amendment freedoms. And that’s something that journalists should care about, perhaps more than ever in this wild-west social media age.
But just how big is his story? This piece from the liberal American Jewish newspaper, the Forward, implies, as its headline states, that the issue is “splitting” the community apart.
Believe me when I tell you that, for now, at least, it ain’t splitting anything.
I say that because (a) as the story notes nearly every single entity (51 out of 53) belonging to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the national Jewish organizational umbrella group, backs the IHRA wording, and (b) the vast majority of ordinary American Jews do not give a hoot about the internal bickering of the community’s professional bureaucrats, of whom they are largely unaware and certainly did not vote them the authority they imagine they have.
This, I believe, is because there’s just too much going on. I include in this our monumental national political problems, the dismal economy most of us must contend with, plus the school closings and the rest of the COVID-19 upheaval, plus the very real street-level uptick in anti-Semitism in the U.S.
Who, I ask, other than the professionally engaged has time left over to worry about the IHRA wording?
In addition to American Jews, Palestinians and their supporters (such as the World Council of Churches and Human Rights Watch) have, as you’d imagine, also chimed in on the IHRA wording, and they don’t like it.
This Al Jezeera opinion piece written by a Jerusalem-born Palestinian who now lives in Canada, explains Palestinians’ fears that their ability to openly oppose Israeli policies could be curtailed by the IHRA wording.
For the record, here’s a statement released by self-identified progressive Jewish groups who also oppose the IHRA formulation. And here’s a recent column from the center-right Jewish Journal of Los Angeles defending the IHRA language as an important tool for fighting anti-Semitism. Read them all to obtain a nuanced understanding of debates on this issue.
As with many religion stories these days that are not about ex-President Trump’s conservative Christian backers, the IHRA flap has been virtually ignored by the elite legacy press for the same reason so many other stories have also been passed over. Simply stated, they just don’t have the time to cover much else.
Journalists not working for Jewish diaspora outlets or the Israel beat simply lack the bandwidth to take it on. Nor will they as long as we keep hearing about the possibility of more extreme-right, pro-Trump, anti-Biden political violence.
That is not to say, however, that if Biden is ever able to crawl out from under the massive mound of pandemic-related issues that must take priority that he won’t redirect some major administration energy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue. That could change this story’s import.
The IHRA wording could also gain a higher-profile if anti-Semitism were to keep growing to the point — gulp! — that it became as concerning an issue for non-Jewish Americans as it is for Jewish Americans. Ditto for a substantial increase in terrorism or inter-state military conflict in Israel — which in my opinion warrants a second gulp.
So file this post away. Should either of these possibilities come to pass you might want to reread it..