To share the actual definition of antisemitism

[LemonyTicket]

The boards have been full for a week with cries of woe that you can't criticise Israel without being accused of antisemitism. So to make life easy, below is a summary of what defines antisemitism as agreed by more or less the leading experts in the world. If you'd like to discuss Israel without being antisemitic, you can follow these guidelines to say what you would like to say without causing pain to Jewish people:

POINT 1
What is particular in classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil. This stands at the core of many anti-Jewish fantasies, such as the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in which “the Jews” possess hidden power that they use to promote their own collective agenda at the expense of other people. This linkage between Jews and evil continues in the present: in the fantasy that “the Jews” control governments with a “hidden hand,” that they own the banks, control the media, act as “a state within a state.

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

So when you're criticising Israel, please do so without implying Jews, Israel or anything relating to Jews is part of a plot to control things or act in evil ways generally or that Jews or any Jewish organisation have control over institutions. This isn't how other countries are spoken about and it's particularly antisemitic in line with Nazi propaganda.

POINT 2
Antisemitism can be manifested in words, visual images, and deeds. Examples of antisemitic words include utterances that all Jews are wealthy, inherently stingy, or unpatriotic. In antisemitic caricatures, Jews are often depicted as grotesque, with big noses and associated with wealth

This is one most people instinctively know is racist - to apply certain characteristics to Jews - like having lots of money or big noses etc.

POINT 3
Antisemitism can be direct or indirect, explicit or coded. For example, “The Rothschilds control the world” is a coded statement about the alleged power of “the Jews” over banks and international finance. Similarly, portraying Israel as the ultimate evil or grossly exaggerating its actual influence can be a coded way of racializing and stigmatizing Jews. In many cases, identifying coded speech is a matter of context and judgement, taking account of these guidelines

This means, don't be antisemitic when using any words which clearly refer to Jews in particular. "Jews own the banks" is antisemitic. It remains antisemitic when you substitute words, like "The Israel lobby owns the banks" or "Zionists own the banks" or "George Soros owns the banks". Substituting code words is not a free pass for being antisemitic.

POINT 4
Denying or minimizing the Holocaust

A pretty obvious one which needs no explanation.

POINT 5
Applying the symbols, images and negative stereotypes of classical antisemitism to the State of Israel

So this means taking classic antisemitic tropes or canards, such as "The Jews are puppet masters" and applying the same language to the only Jewish state. We see right through this, please don't do it!

POINT 6
Requiring people, because they are Jewish, publicly to condemn Israel or Zionism (for example, at a political meeting)

This means making a Jewish person, anywhere, anytime feel obligated, pressured or required in any way to condemn Israel or Zionism. It means you don't "put them on the spot" in public by singling them out as a Jew to ask their opinions on Israel's atrocities. Their views of these things will be coloured by a completely different perspective to yours, and likely more personal knowledge, their family history and so on - so please be respectful of their right to determine their Jewish identity and opinions without your critique.

POINT 7
Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion

Another one which should be obvious, but clearly "gas the Jews" is unacceptable.

POINT 8
Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews

Again, fairly obvious.

POINT 9
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations

This is a common form of prejudice in Britain where Jews are frequently accused of being in on some plot with Israel, or part of a group of Jews acting against their own country for the benefit of Israel. It's madness, and please don't do it.

POINT 10
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor

Jews, like everyone else, have a right to self-determination. If you don't make other countries feel ashamed of existing or if you don't make other groups feel ashamed of their national identity; then Jews should be entitled to the same. You are free to have your own opinion on if Israel should be a country or not, and how it should be. You are not free to deny Jews the right to decide that for themselves though.

POINT 11
Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation

Another very common one, where Israel is often held to a very different standard to other countries. An allowance can be made for the fact surrounding countries generally aren't democracies and as such are generally held to a different standard, but you should aim to treat Israel in the same, balanced way that you would treat any other country.

POINT 12
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis

This is another very common one. Do not compare things which are incomparable just for the sake of hyperbole. It's very offensive. Almost every Jew in existence lost family in the Shoah. Please don't use it to attack.

Those are the things you can't do. What you can do is criticise Israel robustly, like you would any other country

No one else here has derailed the thread. They have responded to others, like yourself, who have. You're here about 6 pages in still trying to do it.

And you're specifically derailing a thread about antisemitism to bash the Jewish state.

Haha, yeah.

@LemonyTicket All I have done is respond to posts other people have made on the thread. If everyone else was ‘on topic’ then so am I.

Oh yes, entirely true. But all the while their leaders are committing acts of terrorism and going on TV to say they want to kill all Jews, then that hate will persist.

I think both countries need to begin with an agreement of no public statements calling for the death of the other, and no terrorist attacks or killings before the population can be expected to "humanise" the other.

If I heard someone outside calling for Jews to be gassed, I would hope you'd not call on me to humanise them. I also suspect your post ignores that the population of Palestine and other places is fairly openly educates to be racist to Jews.

I think if people are making an effort to understand that's a very good start. Thanks for making that effort!

Interestingly enough the population of Palestine is roughly 20% Jewish, with a good chunk of those living in East Jerusalem. Does this population of Jews live by Palestinian law?

I was staying on topic that's all. I quoted you talking about what you think Israel can do and I replied talking about what I think Israel can do.

I think you've been hanging around for days saying and supporting hugely antisemitic ideas and getting very angry about being called out for it.

Unsurprising you're drawn to this thread.

As I said upthread: this is what antisemitism is according to most Jews, most experts, most organisations and most international governments. If you want to decide you know better, go ahead, but just don't whine about being accused of antisemitism. Most people will think you are.

It's not though. There are no Jewish citizens in Gaza and the West Bank settlers aren't citizens.

What I mean is, make them citizens, but under Palestinian rule as its legally Palestinian territory.

I think you're unreasonable to expect posters to stick to those very narrow parameters about what can be discussed on this thread.

Is it unreasonable to share the definition? Has anyone actually said yes or no to that question, but not gone on to discuss wider context.

For instance, two recent posts have asked questions about some of the definitions in the list, and how they can reasonably be enacted. That's people discussing what you say has already been debated by others.

As a point of interest, the poll suggests it's pretty much neck and neck in answer to the question "AIBU to share the actual definition of antisemitism?"

Do people think it's unreasonable because they don't agree with that specific definition? What other defenitions are there? Is it antisemetism leading some people to vote no?

I'd be interested to know.

I don't really care.

The definition is there for people who are genuinely interested in understanding what antisemitism is, so they can discuss antisemitism without causing harm or pain to innocent Jewish people.

Everyone else isn't really of much interest to me and I'm not a mindreader. But I imagine the title of the thread is a homing beacon to people with hostile attitudes to Jews.

I don't agree with all the points in it. Jewish people on this thread have said that they don't agree with all the points on it. It may be the biggest list, used by the most people, but that does not make it definitive and shouldn't make it closed to discussion.

Actually you brought me into this thread by misquoting and lying about my contribution to another thread, then accusing me of being antisemitic on the basis of it.

I'm sorry your passive aggression is offended by my choosing to be clear about what I actually said and what I actually believe.

Actually I'll say outright that I don't accept the idea that just because something is said by jewish people to be antisemitic, it therefore is. And to be clear, I'd say exactly the same thing about any other form of racism or discrimination against minorities.

A simple example should make it clear that many Mumsnet contributors, particularly, can't sustain this attitude consistently:

"If a trans person says it's transphobic, then it is transphobic."

As we all know, there's a massive industry spanning the media, medical profession, online and real life activists, expressing a particular - largely incoherent and unevidenced - set of beliefs about gender identity. And one of those beliefs is the deep harm caused to trans people by anyone expressing gender critical views. So must we all refrain from doing so because we're told it's transphobic, and we as not-trans people don't have the right to question that? Well a certain forum on Mumsnet would be a hell of a lot less active if we did. 😀

This idea of unquestionable minority authority about their own sources of offence is largely accepted across the left, but there's a simple reason why it can't work. That is that minorities are not singular entities that speak entirely and always with one voice. To return to the example above, there are plenty of trans people who are gender critical, or who have beliefs about the subject which contradict the dogma of those activists who shout loudest and claim to speak for everyone.

Returning to the issue at hand, I personally have jewish friends who believe that the state of Israel is a racist endeavour and various other things that contradict the IHRA definition of antisemitism. How many of them are there in the world? I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure my friends are not the only ones. The OP refers confidently to what "nearly all jews" think, without enlightening us exactly when somebody did a census of Every Jew In The World and exactly what the results were. And then when confronted with the fact of those jews who disagree, turns to personal attack to silence the uncomfortable facts that don't fit her narrative and verbally bulldoze over them. Because actually engaging with the argument would be so much more difficult than just calling everyone who disagrees with you an antisemite or a crackpot.

There are all kinds of reasons why people can be wrong about things, and people belonging to minorities are no different to anyone else in that respect. It's perfectly possible to acknowledge that somebody has a set of experiences you don't, and make an effort to take those into account in understanding what they say, without pretending that that makes them some fount of Absolute Truth on the subject that is beyond question.

And as has already been pointed out, if you really believe your beliefs are beyond question, WTF would you choose a forum whose specific status purpose is to question people's beliefs, on which to express them?

I think it’s useful to have these definitions but I honestly haven’t seen many people saying Israel should cease to exist, denying the holocaust happened or that Jews secretly rule the world.

I appreciate this thread and all your contributions @LemonyTicket

I don't believe my beliefs are unquestionable. There's several things I find antisemitic which aren't on the list because they've not been agreed upon in consensus.

What I do believe is that if any minority group largely believe something to be racist or discriminatory, and that's agreed by most of the experts on the topic, major institutions globally and most governments, I'd accept they:

A) likely knew more than me
B) deserved me to respect it even if I didn't agree

But, of course, many on the Corbynite left take the same attitude as you - which is why there was and contines to be a huge problem. That's why we've more or less left political life in the country I was born in.

But I guess it's more important that you get to continue to say what you want :)

I didn't mention your name at all! You were obviously scouring. Undoubtedly as you've expressed a specific topic in the corbynite hobby of telling Jews they're wrong about antisemitism.

"But for anyone with a genuine interest in understanding antisemitism, what is quoted is the Jerusalem Declaration, Initially signed by 210 scholars, which now around 350 signatories of top academics and leading experts from around the world"

I think those 210 scholars should work on a simpler definition of anti-semitism. they might find it more effective in reducing anti-semitisim..

What's wrong with the current definition?

What's wrong with the current definition?

Read back through the thread. People, including Jewish people, have disagreed with many of the points. Although a lot of posts have been deleted by Mumsnet.

I've just been looking into this more, both the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism (JDA) and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

The House of Commons website states that it has adopted the IHRA's definition.

House of Commons website page

That definition being: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

It includes a list of eleven "manifestations" or definitions from the IHRA website. I've listed these at the end of this post.

IHRA website definitions

And the CST (Community Security Trust), a British Jewish organisation has an article about the JDA, criticising it for its flaws.

CST Blog post by Dr Dave Rich

From what I can gather the JDA has been heavily criticised elsewhere, and it is the IHRA definition that has been adopted by numerous countries. This also has flaws, but it is the one that has been adopted.

The list of countries you've provided OP is a list of countries who have signed up to the IHRA's working definition, not the Jerusalem Declaration. The EU, UN and Council of Europe have also signed up to the IHRA definition.

The 200-odd academics who published the JD want it to replace the IHRA definition, but that has not happened.

Link to the JDA

When I read the eleven manifestations I see that you've used some (all? I haven't gone through all of them to check) of them in your examples plus some extra ones (are these from the JDA?).

So why have you said that your list is the JDA with extra ones from the IHRA? When, if anything, it's the other way around?

And why have you intimated that it's the full list of 15 points from your OP that is, quoting from your post, "the legal definition of antisemitism in most countries around the world, including this one" when it's not?

The IHRA themselves say it's a "working definition" and the House of Commons website (link above) also says that it is not enshrined into law in the UK.

Yes, it's good to highlight what antisemitism is, but don't make things up by conflating the two definitions, and saying your list that you've compiled is a legal definition when it's not. (In fact, I seem to recall in one of your posts you telling someone that it wasn't your list it was the official list!)

If you'd posted the correct information we could have at least had a discussion on the two different definitions and what the flaws are in both, and what the good parts of both are. That might have been productive.

LIST of ELEVEN MANIFESTATIONS

• Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
• Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
• Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
• Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
• Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
• Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

@AFieldGuideToTrees

What @LemonyTicket has "quoted" appears to be a portmanteau of the two documents, choosing the parts that best suit her own definition. This has of course been accepted by every government and jewish organisation in the world (even though it's never actually appeared in precisely this form until she put it together here) because all right-thinking people (who aren't antisemites) agree with her.

You're correct that there are differences between the two, differences between which organisations have signed up to one and not the other, and criticisms by various high profile people including experts in the field and jewish academics of one or the other.

One example: One of the IHRA examples of antisemitic conduct is:

"Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor."

But the JD changes this to:

"Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the principle of equality."

And then goes on to specify, in it's list of things that are NOT antisemitic:

"Criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism, or arguing for a variety of constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants “between the river and the sea,” whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form."

IOW, the IHRA equated anti-zionism with antisemitism, and said the former is by definition the latter. Many people took issue with that, and after some debate and consultation the JD revised that to say that anti-zionism, ie opposing the establishment of the specifically jewish state of Israel that expelled many of the original inhabitants of the area and denies their right of return, is NOT antisemitic. Obviously denying the current jewish inhabitants of Israel their right to live in peace and equality under ^some political structure or other" would be, but that political structure does not have to be Israel. (This seems perfectly reasonable to me).

Who'd a thunk it? It's almost like it's a complex question without a single eternally certain answer, with room for nuance, debate, disagreement and revision.

But guess which statement @LemonyTicket included in her "quote", despite pretending that the quote was basically of the JD with only some additional material from the IHRA. 😁

For anyone interested, this is on BBC IPlayer at the moment:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00b91vj/the-birth-of-israel