Al si del món jueu existeix, actualitzada, una intensa controvèrsia sobre quin és l’abast de la definició d’antisemitisme.
D’una banda: “La Alianza Internacional para el Recuerdo del Holocausto (IHRA por sus siglas en inglés) reúne a Gobiernos y expertos a fin de reforzar, impulsar y promover la educación, la memoria y la investigación en todo el mundo sobre el Holocausto, así como de mantener los compromisos de la Declaración de Estocolmo de 2000. El 26 de mayo de 2016, los 31 países miembros de la IHRA adoptaron la definición práctica, jurídicamente no vinculante, de «antisemitismo»:
«El antisemitismo es una cierta percepción de los judíos que puede expresarse como el odio a los judíos. Las manifestaciones físicas y retóricas del antisemitismo se dirigen a las personas judías o no judías y/o a sus bienes, a las instituciones de las comunidades judías y a sus lugares de culto».
Para orientar a la IHRA en su trabajo, los siguientes ejemplos pueden resultar ilustrativos:
Las manifestaciones pueden incluir ataques contra el Estado de Israel, concebido como una colectividad judía. Sin embargo, las críticas contra Israel, similares a las dirigidas contra cualquier otro país no pueden considerarse antisemitismo. A menudo, el antisemitismo acusa a los judíos de conspirar contra la humanidad y, a veces, se utiliza para culparles de que «las cosas vayan mal». Se expresa a través del lenguaje, de publicaciones, de forma visual y de las acciones, y utiliza estereotipos siniestros y rasgos negativos del carácter.
Ejemplos contemporáneos de antisemitismo se observan, en la vida pública, en los medios de comunicación, en las escuelas, en el lugar de trabajo y en la esfera religiosa y, teniendo en cuenta el contexto general, podrían consistir en:
– pedir, apoyar o justificar muertes o daños contra los judíos, en nombre de una ideología radical o de una visión extremista de la religión,
– formular acusaciones falsas, deshumanizadas, perversas o estereotipadas sobre los judíos, como tales, o sobre el poder de los judíos como colectivo, por ejemplo, aunque no de forma exclusiva, el mito sobre la conspiración judía mundial o el control judío de los medios de comunicación, la economía, el Gobierno u otras instituciones de la sociedad,
– acusar a los judíos como el pueblo responsable de un perjuicio, real o imaginario, cometido por una persona o grupo judío, o incluso de los actos cometidos por personas que no sean judías,
– negar el hecho, el ámbito, los mecanismos (por ejemplo, las cámaras de gas) o la intencionalidad del genocidio del pueblo judío en la Alemania nacionalsocialista y sus partidarios y cómplices durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial (el Holocausto),
– culpar a los judíos como pueblo o a Israel, como Estado, de inventar o exagerar el Holocausto,
– acusar a los ciudadanos judíos de ser más leales a Israel, o a las supuestas prioridades de los judíos en todo el mundo, que a los intereses de sus propios países,
– denegar a los judíos su derecho a la autodeterminación, por ejemplo, alegando que la existencia de un Estado de Israel es un empeño racista,
– aplicar un doble rasero al pedir a Israel un comportamiento no esperado ni exigido a ningún otro país democrático,
– usar los símbolos y las imágenes asociados con el antisemitismo clásico (por ejemplo, las calumnias como el asesinato de Jesús por los judíos o los rituales sangrientos) para caracterizar a Israel o a los israelíes,
– establecer comparaciones entre la política actual de Israel y la de los nazis,
– considerar a los judíos responsables de las actuaciones del Estado de Israel.
Los actos antisemitas son considerados delitos en el momento de su tipificación (por ejemplo, la negación del Holocausto o la distribución de material antisemita en algunos países).
Los actos delictivos son considerados antisemitas cuando los objetivos de los ataques, ya sean personas o propiedades –como edificios, escuelas, lugares de culto y cementerios–, son seleccionados porque son, o se perciben como, judíos o relacionados con judíos.
La discriminación antisemita es la denegación a los judíos de oportunidades o servicios disponibles para otros, y es ilegal en muchos países.”
D’altra banda, al març d’enguany, es va aprovar una definició que ciontestava l’anterior: The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism is a tool to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism as it manifests in countries around the world today. It includes a preamble, definition, and a set of 15 guidelines that provide detailed guidance for those seeking to recognize antisemitism in order to craft responses. It was developed by a group of scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to meet what has become a growing challenge: providing clear guidance to identify and fight antisemitism while protecting free expression. It has over 200 signatories.
Preamble
We, the undersigned, present the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, the product of an initiative that originated in Jerusalem. We include in our number international scholars working in Antisemitism Studies and related fields, including Jewish, Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, and Middle East Studies. The text of the Declaration has benefited from consultation with legal scholars and members of civil society.
Inspired by the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the 1969 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the 2000 Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, and the 2005 United Nations Resolution on Holocaust Remembrance, we hold that while antisemitism has certain distinctive features, the fight against it is inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender discrimination.
Conscious of the historical persecution of Jews throughout history and of the universal lessons of the Holocaust, and viewing with alarm the reassertion of antisemitism by groups that mobilize hatred and violence in politics, society, and on the internet, we seek to provide a usable, concise, and historically-informed core definition of antisemitism with a set of guidelines.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism responds to “the IHRA Definition,” the document that was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016. Because the IHRA Definition is unclear in key respects and widely open to different interpretations, it has caused confusion and generated controversy, hence weakening the fight against antisemitism. Noting that it calls itself “a working definition,” we have sought to improve on it by offering (a) a clearer core definition and (b) a coherent set of guidelines. We hope this will be helpful for monitoring and combating antisemitism, as well as for educational purposes. We propose our non-legally binding Declaration as an alternative to the IHRA Definition. Institutions that have already adopted the IHRA Definition can use our text as a tool for interpreting it.
The IHRA Definition includes 11 “examples” of antisemitism, 7 of which focus on the State of Israel. While this puts undue emphasis on one arena, there is a widely-felt need for clarity on the limits of legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel, and Palestine. Our aim is twofold: (1) to strengthen the fight against antisemitism by clarifying what it is and how it is manifested, (2) to protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine. We do not all share the same political views and we are not seeking to promote a partisan political agenda. Determining that a controversial view or action is not antisemitic implies neither that we endorse it nor that we do not.
The guidelines that focus on Israel-Palestine (numbers 6 to 15) should be taken together. In general, when applying the guidelines each should be read in the light of the others and always with a view to context. Context can include the intention behind an utterance, or a pattern of speech over time, or even the identity of the speaker, especially when the subject is Israel or Zionism. So, for example, hostility to Israel could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian person feels on account of their experience at the hands of the State. In short, judgement and sensitivity are needed in applying these guidelines to concrete situations.
Definition
Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).
Aqueixa segona declaració, essencialment, desvincula l’antisemitisme de l’antisionisme, (que considera una crítica legítima, així com el BDS), és pro-palestina, i deslegitima Israel com l’estat-nació del poble jueu. El proppassat 3 d’aqueix mes, Dana Barnett publicava aqueix report al BESA Center: “The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism Is Itself Antisemitic:
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), presented in March 2021, was created to replace the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which had been adopted by 35 countries by 2020. The writers of the JDA wished to “clarify” the IHRA, which they feel is insufficiently obsequious to the Palestinians. Their real object is to use the fight against antisemitism as another weapon with which to vilify Israel.
The Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism (JDA) is the product of a group of international scholars of antisemitism and related fields who have been meeting since June 2020 in a series of online workshops convened by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Essentially, the new document charges the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism with blurring the “difference between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism.” As a result, the IHRA definition “delegitimiz[es] the voices of Palestinians and others, including Jews, who hold views that are sharply critical of Israel and Zionism.”
The JDA was purportedly written as a resource for strengthening the fight against antisemitism, because “there is a widely felt need for clarity on the limits of legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel, and Palestine.” The JDA is presented as the alternative, a “corrective to overcome the shortcomings of the IHRA definition.”
Nowhere in the IHRA definition are Palestinians mentioned; nor does it mention BDS. There are, however, three clauses that can be construed as applying to the actions of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists. These are:
– the denial of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination; e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor
– the application of double standards by requiring of Israel behaviors that are not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation
– the comparison of Israeli policies to those of the Nazis.
Pro-Palestinian activists and anti-Israel groups have long complained about the IHRA definition because, in the grip of their fixation on Israel as fundamentally illegitimate and their flat denial of the Jews’ right to self-determination, they reject the premise that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
It should be noted that some of the authors of the new document are radical academic activists, including Israelis and non-Israeli Jews. Among them are Richard Falk, Neve Gordon, Anat Matar, David Feldman, Chaim Gans, Snait Gissis, Amos Goldberg, Avishai Margalit, Hagar Kotef, David Shulman, Dmitry Shumsky, Yair Wallach, Moshe Zimmermann, Moshe Zuckermann, Gadi Algazi, Seth Anziska, Bernard Avishai, Peter Beinart, Louise Bethlehem, Daniel Blatman, Daniel Boyarin, Jose Brunner, Naomi Chazan, Alon Confino, Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, and David Enoch. Some of them have also called for the boycott of Israel. Recruiting Israelis and Jews to deflect accusations of antisemitism is a longstanding practice in anti-Israel and antisemitic circles.
As for its content, the JDA is essentially a wholesale denunciation of the IHRA definition. Some points stand out. The declaration accuses the IHRA definition of malpractice because it considers criticism of Israel antisemitic. However, the IHRA definition clearly states, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” The JDA suggests that “Institutions that have already adopted the IHRA Definition can use our text as a tool for interpreting it.” It doesn’t explain why an institution that had adopted the IHRA definition should wish to adopt the JDA version, which opposes it.
The JDA makes its political agenda clear by declaring its support for “the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights, as encapsulated in international law.” Similarly, the JDA wishes 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.”
What the JDA fails to mention is that in Palestinian parlance, the “demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights” is a euphemism for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state on its ruins. Similarly, the Palestinian demand for a “binational state” or a “unitary democratic state” has been used by the PLO since the late 1960s as code for the transformation of Israel into an Arab state in which Jews are reduced to a permanent minority living on the sufferance of the Muslim majority, a status known in Islamic history as Dhimmis. In the words of Edward Said: “[T]he Jews are a minority everywhere. A Jewish minority can survive [in Arab Palestine] the way other minorities in the Arab world survived.”
As for dismantling the “occupation,” this was effectively ended in January 1996 when Israel relinquished control of 95% of the West Bank’s Palestinian population in line with the Oslo Accords (control of Gaza’s Palestinian population had been transferred to the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) in May 1994).
The key problem with the JDA is the claim that “Criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism” is not antisemitic. It betrays its bias by failing to reject any form of nationalism other than the Jewish one. Needless to say, such a discriminatory denial of this basic right to only one nation (and one of the few that can trace its corporate identity and territorial attachment to antiquity) while allowing it to all other groups and communities, however new and tenuous their claim to nationhood, is pure and unadulterated racism.
No less disingenuous is the JDA’s claim that it is not antisemitic “to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid”—another attempt to discredit Israel’s right to exist on account of its alleged dispossession of the (supposedly) indigenous population. Apart from failing to indict any other manifestation of “settler-colonialism” (from the US, Canada, Australia, to most of Latin America, to earlier manifestations of this phenomenon in Europe and the Middle East), this claim ignores the fundamental fact that the Jews are not “colonial settlers” but rather the indigenous inhabitants of the Land of Israel (renamed Syria Palaestina by the Roman occupiers). This millenarian attachment was specifically emphasized by the 1922 League of Nations mandate, which tasked Britain with establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine.
If anything, it is the long string of Muslim occupiers of the Land of Israel (or parts of it)—from the 7th century Arab invaders, to the Seljuk Turks, to the Mamluks, to the Ottoman Turks, to the Egyptians, Jordanians, and newly formed Palestinians—that can be defined as colonial settlers.
As with the “settler colonist” slander, the apartheid canard is not only false but the complete inverse of the truth. Whether in its South African form or elsewhere, such as the US South until the late 1960s, apartheid was a comprehensive and discriminatory system of racial segregation, on the basis of ethnicity, comprising all walks of life—from schooling, to public transportation, to social activities and services, to medical care. None of this has ever been applied in Israel, where the Arab minority has enjoyed full equality before the law and has been endowed with the full spectrum of democratic rights—including the right to vote for and serve in all state institutions. (From the first, Arabs have been members of the Knesset.) From the designation of Arabic as an official language, to the recognition of non-Jewish religious holidays as legal rest days for their respective communities, to the granting of educational, cultural, judicial, and religious autonomy, Arabs in Israel may well enjoy more formal prerogatives than ethnic minorities anywhere in the democratic world. This is at a time when apartheid has been an integral part of the Middle East for over a millennium, and its Arab and Muslim nations continue to legally, politically, and socially enforce this discriminatory practice against their own minorities.
The JDA argues that calls for “boycott, divestment and sanctions are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic,” but it does not call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against any other nation except Israel. Quite clearly, the document is intended to legitimize the anti-Zionist boycott movement against Israel.
Ironically, after the JDA’s writers bent over backward to appease the Palestinians, a leading Palestinian group rejected the JDA. According to the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the highest authority on BDS, there are inherent flaws in the document, such as the following:
– The JDA excludes the Palestinian perspective as expressed by Palestinians themselves. “Some liberals still try to make decisions that deeply affect us, without us. Palestinians cannot allow any definition of antisemitism to be employed for policing or censoring advocacy of our inalienable rights,” including “[our] history of struggle against settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
– The JDA fails to mention that “white supremacy and the far right [are] the main culprits behind antisemitic attacks.”
– The JDA guidelines still try to “police some speech critical of Israel’s policies and practices, failing to fully uphold the necessary distinction between hostility to or prejudice against Jews on the one hand and legitimate opposition to Israeli policies, ideology and system of injustice on the other.”
Aljazeera, the Qatari media outlet, which favors the Palestinians, published a negative article about the JDA, calling it “an orientalist text.” Mark Muhannad Ayyash, an associate professor of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada, authored the piece. He says the core problem with both the IHRA and the JDA definitions of antisemitism is their failure to address the “silencing and erasure of Palestine and Palestinians.” He argues that by proclaiming that the Jews have a right to their own state, it obscures the fact that “this state was established on a land that was already inhabited by Palestinians.”
Ayyash goes on to say that like the IHRA definition, the JDA sets out to determine “which kinds of anti-Zionist critiques and views constitute antisemitism, and which do not.” But “like all liberal documents that have been produced in the thick of a colonial or settler-colonial moment, this document keeps intact the colonial contract whereby the colonial masters retain the position of privilege and supremacy in voice and status over the colonized.” Ayyash calls the JDA an “orientalist text” because it does not oppose the core problem of the IHRA definition: the “silencing and erasure of Palestine and Palestinians.”
Ayyash considers the JDA an example of “covert orientalism” because “hostility to Israel could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian person feels on account of their experience at the hands of the State.” Therefore, the JDA, “in supposed opposition” to the IHRA definition’s “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” premise, tells its audience—the Euro-American world—that even the Palestinians, whom Ayyash apparently believes should be absolved of such attentions, should be policed for possible antisemitism. Because the Palestinians “are so reactionary, emotional, and hostile,” they are a “source of statements and campaigns that Euro-Americans should tolerate but also remain vigilant against.”
According to Ayyash, the JDA dares to question “the reasonableness and lack thereof of Palestinians,” and that very assessment is presumptuous and Orientalist. His concern is that according to the JDA, any Palestinian who “question[s] the validity of the idea of a Jewish State for a Jewish majority“ could be characterized as “at best unreasonable and at worst antisemitic.” This is “Orientalism at its best,” Ayyash concludes.
The JDA tried to appease the Palestinians by asserting that anti-Zionism is not antisemitic. But for the Palestinians, this is splitting hairs. In their view, both the IHRA and the JDA are inherently flawed because they accept the basic premise that Jews have a right to a Jewish State. The Palestinians flatly reject the Jewish right to self-determination in any form. No matter how the pro-Palestinian writers of the JDA might want to spin it, that view is fundamentally antisemitic.”
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