How Bad Arguments Undercut Georgia Legislation against Anti-Semitism

Last week, the Georgia state senate decided not to advance a bill that would classify attacks on Jews as hate crimes—a legal category that in Georgia already protects those targeted because of their race, sexual orientation, national origin, and so forth. The bill, in part a response to the distribution of anti-Semitic flyers in the Atlanta area, may have floundered because of its use of the much-maligned definition of anti-Semitism produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). In February, Mark Goldfeder wrote the following in defense of the legislation:

Critics have challenged IHRA’s use in policymaking on two grounds. First, they claim that it conflates political speech against Israel with anti-Semitism. That part is simply not true; there is a safe-harbor provision in IHRA itself that says that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country” is not anti-Semitism, as well as an express caveat that all of the examples given, including the ones about Israel, “could, taking into account the overall context,” be anti-Semitic.

The second objection to using the IHRA definition in a policy context is that in the wrong hands, it could theoretically be used to stifle speech. That argument is a red herring. Of course, free speech is a core aspect of democracy; that is why such bills cannot and do not take the form of a speech code. But discriminatory harassment and criminal conduct are not just speech, even if words are sometimes used. Unlike speech, such conduct is absolutely subject to government regulation. Well-established Supreme Court precedent requires behavior to be “objectively offensive” to fall under the category of discriminatory harassment. To meet this “objectively offensive” standard, the definition used in the discriminatory anti-Semitism motivational analysis must be objectively well-accepted. The IHRA definition is once again the obvious choice.

Read more at Atlanta Journal-Constitution

More about: Anti-Semitism, Hate crime, U.S. Politics

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF