Some Footnotes

 NO ONE HAS requested that I post Simp's rote accusation of "antisemitism" against me so I can answer it for at least the fiftieth time.   Not even Simps or his sock drawer.  So I don't expect I'll be posting it and will remove it from the cue in comment moderation after a while.   I guess the People who read this blog are as tired of it as I am.

This post from six years ago is, I believe the first time I criticized the IHRA project of coming up with an "official" definition of antisemitism which is, for the most part, an attempt to shield Israel and its elected governments from legitimate criticism.   In looking over it again and in light of the recent history of Israeli elections and the governments that a majority of Israelis put in power,  I think the project is entirely discreditable and has to discredit those who were involved and, tragically, the group that generated it.   I will note that I noticed something in the definition that I haven't ever seen taken seriously by those who use it and support its adoption as a legal definition:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

Let me highlight that last sentence.

However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

That is certainly not a part of the IHRA definition that is much ever put into effect.  As I noted in one of my recent posts, I and many of those who have been scathing in our criticism of the Israeli government and, at least in my case, the majority of Israeli voters who repeatedly, over decades, vote those governments in HOLD THEM TO THE SAME STANDARD AS WE HOLD OTHER COUNTRIES, INCLUDING OUR OWN COUNTRIES.   I have said nothing about the Israeli government that I haven't said about other governments entirely unrelated to Israel, first and foremost, the United States.  I don't think I have made a criticism of Israel, the majority of Israeli voters and the Israeli government and military and Supreme Court that isn't matched dozens of times over with the same or its equivalent of those in my own country.  Not to mention many times more for some other countries from Britain to China to Australia and back to the USA.  I may have been less critical of Canada, though I've been plenty critical of Canada, too.  

It is one of the obvious problems of such a long, vague, convoluted "definition" as it is used is that such an internal correction will fall by the wayside.  And it's a pretty weak internal correction, I would say ass-covering.   And especially as, in the case of the IHRA definition, it mostly consists of ways of insisting that Israel and the Israeli government is not to be treated as all other nations should be treated but insists that to do that is antisemtic, it's classic doublespeak. 

And that's not the most serious way in which the entire enterprise was an exercise in doublespeak.  I will also note that first sentence which calls this a manifestation of antisemitism:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. 

This is supremely ironic because the very ideology of zionism AND OFFICIAL ISRAELI LAW CONCEIVES OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL AS A JEWISH COLLECTIVITY.   It is one of Rabbi Yakkov Shapiro's main points in rejecting zionism and the Israeli state that the Israeli state and Supreme Court has insisted on Israel as "a Jewish collectivity" not only for the citizens of the country BUT CLAIMS TO REPRESENT EVERY JEW IN THE WORLD, thus encouraging the antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty and collective Jewish responsibility for the actions of the government and military of Israel.   The very thing that the IHRA committee was trying to shield from criticism by labeling all such critics, Jews as well as gentiles as antisemitic IS ENGAGED IN EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAY IS A MANIFESTATION OF ANTISEMITISM.  

Every time I am forced to revisit this the more the blatant dishonesty of the use of the word becomes obvious.  And, remember, it's one thing that both the Biden administration and the Trump goons agree on, that they accept the IHRA definition AND TRUMP INTENDS TO WEAPONIZE IT in exactly the way that even Kenneth Stern, one of those who was in on its drafting, has admitted it would be used for that,  ‘The Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA) and other groups will hunt political speech with which they disagree and threaten to bring legal cases."

I don't know if Kenneth Stern has disassociated himself with the project, but if I'd been in his shoes and seen how it was used after 2019, when he said that,  I'd renounce being any part of it.  I think, given the origin and the way the term is used, a new, clean and clear word for hatred of Jews is needed a lot more than a corrupt and muddling redefinition of that word. Its use will increasingly come to mean nothing because it is used to mean anything on any different occasion.