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 on Atlanta Journal-Constitution: https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-ga-legislature-should-act-on-new-antisemitism-bill/QUMV6AHUYVDV5L657IGRDSJV3Y/