In the UK, as in other European countries, there has been an effort by Jewish groups to encourage the government and public institutions to make use of the “working definition of anti-Semitism” proffered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). This short document—intended not as an ironclad legal definition, but simply as a useful rubric for determining what is and isn’t anti-Semitic—has been adopted by some British universities, the Labor party (after much contention), and, for certain narrow purposes, by the U.S. government. But it also has its enemies, including eight lawyers who recently penned an open letter calling it an attack on freedom expression. Dave Rich begs to differ:
[I]t is hard to see how a nonlegal definition with no legal authority could undermine legally guaranteed rights to free expression and academic freedom. Most universities understand this, even if these eight lawyers don’t: the University of Oxford, in announcing its recent adoption of the IHRA definition, stated that, [it] “does not affect the legal definition of racial discrimination, so does not change our approach to meeting our legal duties and responsibilities.”
What then, Rich asks, is the source of the intense opposition?
The answer lies in [the letter writers’] misrepresentation of what the definition says and does. They claim, as others have before them, that “the majority” of the IHRA definition’s “illustrative examples” of potentially anti-Semitic speech “do not refer to Jews as such, but to Israel. They have been widely used to suppress or avoid criticism of the state of Israel.” The implication is that the IHRA definition is more concerned with, or directed against, anti-Israel speech than anti-Jewish speech.
This is simply not true: of the eleven “illustrative examples” of potentially anti-Semitic speech listed in the IHRA definition, nine explicitly mention Jews or the Jewish people (seven mention Israel, of which five mention both Jews and Israel). . . . The examples that mention both Jews and Israel include “Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”
[Most] likely . . . they object to the examples stating that it “could” be anti-Semitic to deny “the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.” . . . . Perhaps the lawyers who wrote this letter believe that these examples of anti-Israel speech could never, in any circumstances or context, be evidence of anti-Semitism. Again, if that is what they believe, let them argue the point.
Read more on Fathom: https://fathomjournal.org/the-ihra-a-reply-to-the-guardian-letter-from-sir-stephen-sedley-et-al/