What the Biden Administration’s Campaign against Anti-Semitism Lacks

Last week, the White House—to its credit—released a 60-page strategy for combatting anti-Semitism, a step unlike anything undertaken by previous administrations. But the document studiously avoids adopting the standard guidelines for identifying anti-Semitism endorsed by the Antidefamation League, the World Jewish Congress, and other mainstream Jewish organizations. The editors of the New York Sun comment:

The administration feints at moral clarity, acknowledging that the “most prominent” definition of anti-Semitism is the one adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. (IHRA), which the United States has “embraced.” The government of Germany, for crying out loud, has endorsed it. For America, though, it is a grudging first among equals. It’s given hardly a ringing, or any, endorsement. That’s a dodge. The issue, of course, is Israel.

The IHRA labels as anti-Semitic “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” by “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to the Jewish state by “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” It recognizes that anti-Semitism is an inherent feature, not a bug, of anti-Zionism. The Jewish state and the state of the Jews are intertwined.

But the White House document goes on to state that it “welcomes and appreciates” the rival definition of anti-Semitism known as the Nexus Document, which takes pains to defend hatred of Israel.

[I]f Nexus is true on its face then the IHRA definition can’t be true—and vice versa. So by letting Nexus through the door, President Biden negates the first endorsement and makes kosher a range of the attacks on Israel from the left. . . . With friends of the Nexus approach numbering the [Hamas-linked] Council on American-Islamic Relations—they are acknowledged by the administration in an accompanying “fact sheet” that lists those who contributed to its efforts—who needs enemies?

One sage with whom we spoke, Ruth Wisse, makes the point that it’s not all that complicated. She calls the administration’s strategy an “attempt to misdirect anti-Semitism so that you are justified in not dealing with it” and an example of “fighting yesterday’s war” at a time when anti-Zionism is the “great unifier” among those hostile to Jews. “Iran intends to destroy the state of Israel,” she observes. “What are we talking about?”

Read more at New York Sun

More about: Anti-Semitism, IHRA, Israel on campus, Joseph Biden, Ruth Wisse

 

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa