In 1998, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)—a European-based organization that has the formal backing of a few dozen countries, including the U.S. and Israel—composed a “working definition of anti-Semitism,” so that Jews would have some formal standard to appeal to when faced with the various deflections and dodges employed by those who hate them. Recently, as the definition has gained the endorsements of government agencies, universities, and other institutions, it has become the subject of controversy. Gerald Steinberg looks at the forces behind the opposition to the IHRA definition:

Like so much of the discourse on Israel, the Jewish people. and anti-Semitism, the IHRA debate has become entangled in fierce ideological wars and the accompanying symbolic politics. Joining the campaign under the banner of “progressive values,” influential groups that frequently critique Israel—including J Street, the New Israel Fund, and American Friends of Peace Now—claim that the “codification of the IHRA working definition,” specifically its “contemporary examples,” create the potential for misuse to “suppress legitimate free speech,” and prevent “criticism of Israeli government actions.”

In reality, there is no such misuse—there is plenty of room to criticize Israeli policies without resorting to discriminatory boycotts, comparing the IDF to the Nazis, or labeling the Jewish state as inherently racist, [that is, without coming close to meeting the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism].

Amidst the mudslinging, the core issues of anti-Semitism and the escalating attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions are marginalized and even forgotten. . . . By politicizing and undermining this consensus, the counter-IHRA campaign is opening the door for even more violence targeting Israeli and Jewish institutions.

In the United States, it is important that Biden administration officials give serious attention to the fights against anti-Semitism and implement the IHRA working definition. Samantha Power, who has been designated by Biden to head the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and will preside over a massive increase in funding for NGOs, should follow the EU’s lead and ensure that any group that promotes anti-Semitism will be ineligible for American government funding.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.