The 2023 report, in effect, provides clear evidence that the IHRA definition’s impact goes well beyond curtailing debate.
Chronicling how the definition ‘erases the experiences of the Palestinian people, hides from public view documented evidence of the crimes committed against them and thereby prevents universities, staff and students from contributing to informed public debate on the matter’, the report demonstrates how false accusations of antisemitism have also caused severe mental stress to staff and students and served ‘to unfairly damage the reputation and careers of [those] who speak about the violations of Palestinian human rights and crimes committed by [Zionism’s régime]’ (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies and the European Legal Support Centre 2023, 8).
Even its main drafter, Kenneth Stern, now admits the definition is not fit for purpose in university settings, claiming that ‘rightwing Jewish groups took the ‘working definition’ […] and decided to weaponize it […] complain[ing] about speakers, assigned texts and protests they said violated the definition’ (Stern 2019). He even added that it is often used to ‘protect pro‐[Zionist] students from hearing unpleasant things too’ (Stern 2017).
[…]
More concretely, the IHRA definition plays an active rôle in the production of experience by manufacturing and encouraging an affective attachment between individual Jews and [Zionism’s neoclony]. And yet the affective ‘stickiness’ (Ahmed 2013) the IHRA illustrative examples generate towards [the neocolony] is presented as if the bond with [it] emanates naturally—and thus unmediated—from within the individual and the ‘fact’ of their Jewishness, while the sociality of emotions, experience and indeed of Jewish subjecthood is erased.
This erasure carried out by the IHRA definition, as well as other forms of […] hasbara, enable the link between the individual Jew and the Jewish State to appear as if it were natural, which, in turn, is vital for generating a sense among Jews that the utterance ‘Israel is an apartheid régime’ is a personal affront and threat to their own Jewishness and thus to their very selves.
[…]
Both political and practical strains of Zionism held the belief that antisemitism could only be challenged through the establishment of a nation‐state, which, it is important to note, was part of the existing zeitgeist of the late nineteenth century (Avineri 2017). The allocation of equal rights to Jews within a European setting was not perceived to be a viable solution to antisemitism.
This not only related to how Jews had experienced the discriminatory way in which rights had been distributed in different European countries, but also how they had seen that any assertion of rights is often powerless in the face of nationalist racist violence. Hence, due to Jewish experience in Europe, the Zionist movement advocated the establishment of a new nation‐state rather than the enhancement of equal rights within existing nation‐states, as the only tenable response to antisemitic forms of racial governance (Gordon 2023).
In the words of the Zionist leader and […] president Haim Weizmann: ‘the upbuilding of Palestine is our answer to antisemitism’ (cited in Arendt 2009, 360).
And, for that matter, equating anti‐Zionism with antisemitism also inhibits Palestinians’ autonomy:
The preservation of difference—cast as a basic right not only of individuals and groups but also of States—operates by framing those who differ from the dominant group or ‘the people’ as a threat. Within this imaginary, egalitarian projects that cut across difference and aim to expand the notion of ‘the people’ to render it more inclusive are often framed as extremely dangerous.
Indeed, the elementary idea that [Zionism’s régime] must offer equal citizenship to Palestinians has been cast as the destruction of the State and stigmatized as racist and a form of cultural and physical annihilation because demands for equal citizenship that disregard race, ethnicity, religion, etc. do not respect Jewish difference and will ultimately lead to ‘the people’s’ destruction.
This ‘annihilatory anxiety’, to use Lara Sheehi’s (2024) phrase, is integral to the Zionist imagination—which constitutes ‘the people’ not only as made up solely of Jews but also Jews as the eternal victim—and has always been a fundamental component of [Zionism’s] ethos’.
Former Supreme Court Justice, Gabriel Bach (1984), for example, expressed [the régime’s] anxiety of inter‐ethnic and cultural crossings when asked to disqualify the Progressive List for Peace, a left‐wing joint party of Palestinian and Jewish citizens, which sought to advance equal Jewish and Palestinian citizenship [under Zionism] and by so doing to expand the notion of ‘the people’ and to allocate rights based on citizenship rather than ethnicity or race.
According to the former Supreme Court Justice, the Progressive List for Peace endangered the ‘integrity and the existence of the State […] and the maintenance of its uniqueness as a Jewish State in accordance with the basic essence of the State as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Law of Return’.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
Were I a Palestinian gentile under Zionism, not only would it be more difficult for me to promote a truly plurinational state, but it would be very difficult (if not impossible) for me to attend synagogues as a guest, to attend somebody’s seder, to marry a Jew, to adopt Judaism, or even to acquaint myself with any unarmed Jews. If I lived in Gaza, the scarcity of electricity would seriously inhibit my research on Judaism, and I might not even have any life left in me to try it, let alone share the results with you.
What would be the likeliest response from 96% of the foreign Jews if I asked them if I could observe a synagogue service, try their kosher cuisine, study the Torah with them, practise my Ladino, learn Yiddish, share anecdotes from Jewish history, help somebody on the Sabbath, or even help them with anything else, like groundskeeping? My guess: “Not interested.”