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Under the IHRA definition, it could be antisemitic for Daniel Blatman, head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to say – as he did recently: “I’ve studied the Holocaust for 40 years. I’ve read countless testimonies about the most horrific genocide of all, against the Jewish people and other victims. However, the reality in which I would read accounts about mass murder committed by the Jewish state (in Gaza) that, in chilling resemblance, remind me of testimonies from [the Holocaust] – this I could not have foreseen even in my worst nightmares.”
Under the IHRA definition, no vehement critic of Israel is safe from the accusation of antisemitism – no student protester nor vice chancellor, no media boss nor journalist, no politician, institutional leader, artistic director, artist, colleague or friend.
The Jerusalem Declaration says that hostility to Israel can be an expression of “antisemitic animus”, but it can also be a reaction to human rights violations, or “the emotion that a Palestinian feels on account of their experience at the hands of the Israeli state. In short, judgement and sensitivity are needed in applying these guidelines to concrete situations.”
Here are some concrete situations: On October 7, 2023 Hamas and its affiliates massacred nearly 1200 people and took more than 250 people hostage. Fifty-eight hostages remain in Gaza, one-third believed still alive. This has traumatised Israel in the most profoundly shocking ways, as it would any nation.
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Since October 7, Israel has – in what it claims to be “self-defence” and an attempt to destroy Hamas – killed nearly 53,000 people, including thousands of children, according to health officials in Gaza. Aid workers, first responders and journalists have been deliberately targeted, entire families wiped out, children bombed, shredded and decapitated. Almost all schools, homes, churches, mosques, hospitals, shelters and farmlands have been destroyed, and the majority of the territory’s 2 million people displaced countless times. Ethnic cleansing appears to be next.
Gaza is a wasteland where – since March 2 – no food, medical supplies nor fuel have been allowed to enter. People slaughter donkeys, horses and cats to survive.
“My name is Jori Al Areer, I’m 5 years old,” says a stick-thin girl to the camera, her face a rictus grin of despair. “I am from Gaza. I am starving.”
United Nations experts have described this deliberate starvation campaign as an “ostentatious and merciless … desecration of human life and dignity”.
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Can I write that these scenes are reminiscent of Europe 80 years ago when my own people faced extinction? Under the IHRA definition of antisemitism, perhaps not.
Today, the fate of millions rests in the hands of an unchecked Israeli government, one that the (Jewish) New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman wrote recently, “is not our ally”.
Time again to call this out, as hundreds of Jewish Australians (including myself) did in an open letter prior to the recent federal election. “For many of us, watching in horror, this is not a crisis we can turn away from,” the letter said. “It cuts to the heart of our Jewish values: the imperative to speak out in the face of injustice.
“Yet here in Australia, political leaders and commentators have worked to smear those who express solidarity with Palestinians. They claim that criticism of Israel amounts to antisemitism. They suggest that support for Palestinian rights – including from Australian political parties – is an attack on Jewish people.
“This is as false as it is dangerous. Not all Jews support the policies of the Israeli government or the actions of the Israeli army. We reject the idea that defending Palestinian life and dignity is antisemitic. On the contrary, it is an expression of our human and Jewish ethics. To imply otherwise erases the diversity within our community and exploits Jewish identity to shut down legitimate debate.”
As I said, it’s time to get clearer on what antisemitism is … and is not.
David Leser is a Walkley Award-winning writer and author.
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