JNP rejects the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)definition of antisemitism as it is politically motivated and has been weaponised to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights. Seven of its eleven “examples” explicitly conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism—most notably, defining as antisemitic the description of Israel as a “racist endeavour.” This attempts to silence opposition to the Israeli state’s ethnonationalist structure, its apartheid policies, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Israel quite clearly is a racist state founded on supremacist policies, and the IHRA definition attempts to obscure this reality.
All adoptees should immediately drop the IHRC Working Definition of antisemitism for the following reasons:
1. The definition identifies Jewish interest with those of Zionism, and as such is itself antisemitic.
2. By doing that, British Jews are identified as a Zionist community in support of the Gaza genocide and other war crimes, denying Jewish individuals and Jewish groups the ability to disagree with war crimes of the worst kind.
3. The IHRA assumes Jews in the UK support the genocide, which is likely to cause an increase in antisemitic sentiment by people who only have scant knowledge of the issues and are inclined to racist conclusions about Jews and other groups.
4. Israel’s Genocide, supported by the BOD and Zionist organisations in the UK, includes the destruction of ALL Gaza’s universities, schools, colleges, kindergartens and other education facilities, as well as the targeted murder of University presidents and professors. Using the IHRA is evidence of collusion with this scholasicide on a scale and kind never witnessed before.
5. By accepting the IHRA “definition”, the EU is buying into an artificial separation and ranking of racism types in Britain, and affords what the IHRA considers “antisemitic” a higher rank than other racisms. It also means that it accepts anti-Zionism as being antisemitic – while it is a law-abiding political movement, a principled opposition to Zionist apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This places EU on the side of the genocidaires and ethnic cleansers.
6. Finally, we want all institutions to abandon the IHRA definition as a Jewish group which upholds international law and supports the full human and political rights of the Palestinian people. As Jews who would like to see deep social and political change in the UK, an honouring of UN and Geneva Conventions and other instruments of international law, like the ICJ and ICC rulings, all which have been negated or ignored by Britain’s current and past governments. Instead of supporting this flawed and damaging IHRH “definition”, the west should be supporting action against genocide.
Also, see ‘Free Speech on Israel’ statement from 2017
