Quoting Amos Goldberg on the #IHRA:
[…] The definition doesn’t deal with antisemitism at all, but rather is a powerful tool to set the boundaries of discourse about Israel, to silence critical voices toward it and toward Zionism, and to restrict freedom of expression.
[…] It completely inverted the meaning of the concept of antisemitism and the meaning of the fight against the phenomenon. For the fight against antisemitism was meant to protect a defenseless minority, sometimes lacking rights, from the tyranny of the state and majority society, and now the ‘fight against antisemitism’ serves as a powerful tool in the hands of Israel as a state and the Jews within it to persecute the Palestinians, who constitute a group without rights, to the point of an effort to eliminate them.
[…] In practice, Israel and its supporters succeeded in shifting the discussion from criticism of the apartheid, the Nakba, the occupation and the annexation (even before the genocide), to the question of whether discussion of all these is legitimate, or whether it is actually an expression of antisemitism.
The IHRA definition weaponizes #antisemitism accusations to protect Israeli state violence against Palestinians. In this essay published on the Israeli website Local Call, #Holocaust and #genocide researcher Amos Goldberg from Hebrew University praises New York City Mayor Zuhran Mamdani for immediately canceling his predecessor’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) antisemitism definition.
Goldberg argues that the IHRA definition - adopted in 2016 and now used globally to regulate speech about Israel - fundamentally distorts what antisemitism means by conflating #Judaism with #Zionism and treating criticism of Israeli apartheid, occupation, and now genocide as inherently antisemitic. The definition has succeeded, he contends, in shifting discourse away from Israeli actions against Palestinians toward endless debates about whether discussing these actions is even legitimate. In fact, Goldberg reminds, Even the definition’s original drafter, Kenneth Stern, later testified against its use as a regulatory tool.
By inverting antisemitism from a concept meant to protect vulnerable minorities into a weapon wielded by #Israel to suppress Palestinian rights and silence their supporters, the IHRA definition has caused “incalculable damage” to genuine efforts against antisemitism while enabling actual antisemites - particularly on the American right - to flourish as long as they support Israeli policy.
