Video: The Politics of Defining: A Roundtable Discussion about the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism

An alternative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the recent Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) endorsed by scholars of antisemitism, Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies, and Middle East Studies challenges the politicization and litigation of antisemetism by rearticulating what is and is not antisemitism.

This panel featured some of the key framers of this alternative declaration as well as other interlocutors who navigate the legal, political, and cultural terrains consolidated by IHRA and similar discourses. The panelists reflected on its strengths and weaknesses, illuminating pathways for productive reassessment. For more information on the Declaration, please visit www.jerusalemdeclaration.org.

Panelists:

• Dr. Nadia Abu El-Haj, Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and Codirector of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia.
• Dr. Seth Anziska, the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Associate Professor of Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London.
• Lara Friedman, President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace
• Dr. Brian Klug, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford University
• Dr. Atalia Omer, RCPI Senior Fellow in Conflict and Peace, Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame
• Dr. Sara Roy, RCPI Affiliate, Senior Research Scholar at the Center of Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard

FULL TRANSCRIPT

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SARA ROY: Welcome, everyone. It is my pleasure to be introducing our guests today. Along with my colleague, Professor Atalia Omer, I will be in conversation with our esteemed panelists. This event is being hosted by the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School and is cosponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

The Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative centralizes in analysis of structural injustice, violence and power, and examines how our more capacious understanding of religion can yield fresh insights into contemporary challenges and opportunities for just peace building. I will now introduce our speakers.

Nadia Abu El-Haj is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Barnard College in Columbia University and co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia. She is the author of numerous journal articles published on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine to the question of race and genomics today.

Professor Abu El-Haj has published two books, Facts on the Ground, Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society published in 2001, which won the Albert Hourani Annual Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association a year later, and the Genealogical Science, The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology published in 2012.

While professor Abu El-Haj has two books today have focused on historical sciences, her third book, tentatively entitled, Soldier Trauma, The Obligations of Citizenship, and the Forever Wars forthcoming from Verso examines the field of military psychiatry and explores the complex ethical and political implications of shifting psychiatric and public understandings of the trauma of American soldiers.

Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Associate Professor of Jewish Muslim Relations at University College London. His research and teaching focuses on Israeli and Palestinian society and culture, modern Middle Eastern history, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics.

He is the author of Preventing Palestine, A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, which was published in 2018 by Princeton University Press and which was awarded the British Association for Jewish Studies Book Prize in 2019. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and Foreign Policy.

Professor Anziska was 2018 to '19 Fulbright scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute and has held visiting professorships at Dartmouth College, New York University, the London School of Economics, and the American University of Beirut.

Lara Friedman is the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. With more than 25 years working in the Middle East foreign policy arena, Lara is a leading authority on US foreign policy in the Middle East with particular expertise on the Israeli-Arab conflict, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, and the role of the US Congress.

In addition to her work at FMEP, Lara is a contributing writer at Jewish Currents and a nonresident fellow at the US-Middle East project. Prior to joining the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Lara was the Director of Policy and Government Relations at Americans for Peace Now. And before that, she was a US Foreign Service Officer serving in Jerusalem, Washington, Tunis, and Beirut.

Our last speaker, Brian Klug, is a senior research fellow in philosophy at St Benet's Hall Oxford and a member of the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University. In much of his work, Dr. Klug addresses the messiness of our talk about race, ethnicity, and religion, with an eye to questions about justice, human rights, and political belonging.

He has-- excuse me-- a special focus on Judaism, including Zionism and antisemitism, not least in the context of Arab-Jewish relations and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Drawing on resources within Judaism itself, his work takes philosophy across disciplinary boundaries into neighboring fields in the humanities and social sciences.

All this is reflected in his writing, his teaching, and his public speaking, and connects with his political activism. Dr. Klug helped draft and is one of the signatories of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. OK, then, Professor Omer, the floor is yours.

ATALIA OMER: Thank you, Sara. Greetings. And so as Dr. Rot mentioned, my name is Atalia Omer, the Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Studies. And I'm also a senior fellow with the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative which is one of the cosponsoring units of this event.

Before I say a few introductory and framing words about the session that we are about to have here, I wanted to acknowledge my presence here in South Bend, Indiana at the University of Notre Dame on the traditional homelands of native peoples, particularly, the Pokagon Potawatomi who have been using this land for education for thousands of years and continue to do so.

OK. So the recent Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism or JDA, as it's referred to here, interprets itself as an alternative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA or I-H-R-A, as working definition of antisemitism. IHRA is promoted internationally as the presumed outcome of a consensus of experts. This characterization may be misleading.

Indeed, it is the JDA that was endorsed by scholars of antisemitism at Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, and Middle East studies as well as other Jewish and Israeli public intellectuals. The JDA challenges the politicization of antisemitism which is a part of IHRA's legacy. It does so by be articulating what is and is not antisemitism.

The panelists, as our promotional material indicated, will reflect on the JDA's strengths, weaknesses, and silences, illuminating pathways for productive reassessment. Where the silences is one of our key questions. By silences, we refer primarily to the experiences of Palestinians vis a vis IHRA's rendering of a challenge to a zero-sum claims for Jewish self determination as antisemitic in flavor and any criticism of Israel as, at the very least, a potential flirt with antisemitism.

By some of silences, we also think in terms of overlooking the convergences between white supremacist violence and exclusionary politics which often comes in the form of Zionist antisemitism. For example, Richard Spencer, one of the ideologues of American white nationalism, in an interview for an Israeli TV station in 2017, referred to his own nationalism in terms of white Zionism, nevertheless, suggesting that Jews have no room in his imagined political community.

The lack of a focus on such self evidently antisemitic expressions and the very real violence it inspires in places such as the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, on the one hand, and the muscling effects of IHRA and its various antecedent variations on advocacy of Palestinian rights is where we all are recognizing that defining antisemitism as a political impetus.

And we aspire to interrogate it, centering an antiracist imperative. Not only a political impetus, of course, we are also talking about political ramifications, especially for those who live under military occupation and are therefore directly affected by this politics of defining antisemitism. This conversation is then about the politics of defining antisemitism.

The big picture questions guiding the conversation include, are certainly not restricted to, why does the antisemitism need its own definition? To what degree despite the JDA's acknowledgment that the fight for antisemitism is not disconnected from other antiracism struggles. It, nonetheless, reproduces, in its content, a form of exceptionalism.

Why is the process an act of producing a working definition political? When and where did the politics of defining antisemitism as a tool of censorship and smearing individuals primarily involved with Palestine advocacy begin and why? What is the relevance of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to this story? Whose politics does the politics of definition promote? And as I noted, who and what does it attempt to silence or downplay?

How to differentiate between weaponized antisemitism or false accusations of antisemitism and real antisemitism and between Israel and Jews? And to what degree has the politics of defining and now, redefining in the form of the JDA and other alternatives entrenched, whether we want it or not, any discussion of anti-Jewish hostility and racism in the politics of a particular nation state?

Should we disentangle the two conversations of Palestine-Israel on the one hand and antisemitism on the other? So with the help of illuminating those interrelated questions and issues, we gathered today with this esteemed panel of experts and interlocutors. With this framing in mind, let us proceed. And so the first round of questions will aim to get some basics on the table.

But already move beyond, the basics to analysis and substantive engagement as well as allow the panelists to share their perspectives on the JDA and related conversations. So with this, I'll turn to Dr. Roy to launch us into the discussion. And we welcome the audience to submit questions as we go along. We will try-- we'll do our best to shred them into our conversation.

SARA ROY: OK/ thank you, Atalia. All right. Our first question will be for you, Dr. Klug. And I actually have three questions. And you should feel free to answer any or all of them. The first is, how did the need for the JDA emerge? How does it diverge from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition. And why does antisemitism need its own definition? Right.

BRIAN KLUG: Right. Thank you for that introduction. And the first thing I want to say is that I'm so glad that this meeting is taking place because this is the best possible engagement that I can think of with the work that those of us who produce the JDA have put into it. The set of questions that Atalia read out earlier and three of which, you just reiterated, Sara, are spot on.

And they call for a thoughtful engagement with the issues that lie under the surface of what we're doing. But what I'm going to do in this initial answer is stick to the surface. I'm not going to go very deep because I want to try and set us the terrain. And later in the conversation, maybe we can probe more deeply under the surface. So I'm going to be sticking mainly to headlines.

And I'm going to be answering, I think, all three of your questions up to a point, Sara. I'm not sure. One of the things I want to say before I start is that I am speaking in a personal capacity. I'm not speaking for the whole of the drafting and organizing group in the JDA. I'm only speaking for myself.

However, I suspect that some, if not much of what I'm about to say, does also reflect the way my colleagues within the JDA project feel and think. So for me, the JDA is fundamentally an attempt to stop a runaway train. And that runaway train is the IHRA definition, working definition of antisemitism that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance-- to give them their full name-- produced in 2016.

So it's a train that has been gaining momentum for five years. At this point, it's been adopted very widely by-- for example, it's been endorsed by the Secretary General of the UN, adopted by governments, political parties, public agencies, universities, and other bodies. And the European parliament has called upon all member states to adopt the definition.

I'll leave it at that. But there's a lot more to be said about the extent to which it has gained traction over the last five years. And during this time, it has also generated confusion, especially within the arena of debate and political action concerning Palestine and Israel. Secondly and related to that, it has been instrumentalized.

The IHRA definition has been instrumentalized to advance a partisan political agenda. Whether or to what extent that was the intention of the original drafters is another issue. I'm only talking here about the effect, the impact, not necessarily about motive or intention. And thirdly, as a result, it has divided the fight against antisemitism.

At a time, when antisemitism is on the rise, all of this is due to deep flaws within the document itself, within the IHRA definition. And yet no amount of reasoned critique over the last five years has stopped this train. And I say that with some feeling, having tried my hand in writing and in speaking at pointing out, in a reasoned way, what those flaws are.

But it doesn't seem to make any difference. The train just keeps running along down the tracks. And therefore, I think a number of us felt it's time to try something different. The success of the IHRA definition, apparently, is due partly to the absence of a viable alternative. That is something that a lot of parties have said when they have been confronted with challenges to the IHRA definition.

But they proceeded to adopt it often in good faith, I think, though they may not have read it. But feeling that while there's nothing else around and we ought to say something about the importance of fighting antisemitism. So the absence of an alternative became so stark that, I think, it motivated-- perhaps there are other reasons as well. But that was one of the prime motivations for producing the JDA.

The runaway-- let me go beyond that because the runaway IHRA train runs along tracks that are laid down in the name of Jews and Jewish interests, in other words, in our collective name as Jews. And therefore, in that same collective name, we set out to derail the train. In short, the JDA came about to meet two needs.

First, the need for a superior tool for combating antisemitism while protecting legitimate political speech and action, especially in connection with Palestine and Israel and Zionism. And secondly, to be an authoritative, largely Jewish rejection of the idea that the IHRA definition speaks for us as Jews. So that's my answer to the question why the JDA.

Of course, Sara, in case you want me to stop altogether or I can continue to say something. And it'll be even briefer about how the JDA is different from the IHRA.

SARA ROY: Please continue, Brian.

BRIAN KLUG: OK. Thank you. Well, I will, again, only be getting some headlines here. The IHRA website says, and I quote, "in order to combat antisemitism effectively, it is important to have clarity about what antisemitism means and how it may manifest itself." But clarity, unfortunately, is precisely what that text lacks.

The core definition-- of problem in front of me here-- consists of two sentences. The first one says, antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews and to quote Professor David Feldman, who's Director of the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism by Birkbeck University of London. This is bewilderingly imprecise.

The second sentence, I think, is even more confusing, but I'm going to move on. We can come back to that. Because politically, the main problem with the text is with that 11 examples that are attached to the core definition. Seven of which are about Palestine and Israel.

Now people of goodwill look to that definition, the IHRA definition, for guidance concerning the key question, when should political speech and action about Israel, Palestine, and Zionism be protected? And when does it cross the line into antisemitism? It's a proper question for people to ask. And people want clarity.

And what they get instead, when they read IHRA definition-- as I put it in a recent essay in The Nation-- is a [INAUDIBLE]. It's a mess. The JDA guidelines, in contrast, are intended to equip people to judge particular cases for themselves. Concerning Palestine and Israel, unlike the IHRA, the JDA gives explicit guidance about examples that, on the face of it, are not antisemitic.

And that includes differing political views about constitutional arrangements within the territory covered by Israel-Palestine in the future. So that's whether it's two states, one state, a binational state, unitary state, a federation, all of that, on the face of it, in and of itself, is not antisemitic. Or making historical comparisons whether they involve settler colonialism or apartheid, not antisemitic.

Or pursuing in itself or pursuing actions like Boycotts, Sanctions and Divestment. Now what we're seeing in the JDA is not that-- we're not endorsing any of these positions. What we're saying is that they are political questions that need to be argued about as political questions. And that in and of themselves, none of the things that I just mentioned and others like them are antisemitic.

Now, as well as lacking clarity, the IHRA definition lacks breadth. It separates out the fight against antisemitism from any other context. And so, in contrast, our preamble invokes universal texts such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And we say in the preamble and I quote, "we hold that while antisemitism has certain distinctive features, the fight against it is inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender discrimination."

This perspective is absent from the IHRA text. Let me finish by saying, no definition can do what only people can do, individually and collectively. That's to say, make judgments about particular cases. What we've tried to do with this JDA is to give people an aid to help them, to help us judge for ourselves.

ATALIA OMER: Thank you, Brian, for getting us started with this. So the next question is to Seth, hi, from Cape Town. Can you speak to your involvement with the JDA when and where did the politics of antisemitism begin, by whom? Can you also speak-- if you want-- of the decision to include only Jewish and Israeli signatories in the JDA? Why not include Palestinians as signatories? And how might it relate or not with that Palestinian call for BDS? So as in the case of Brian, multifaceted question.

SETH ANZISKA: Well, thank you so much, Atalia and all of you for inviting me to this important conversation. And I want to preface my remarks building a bit on what Brian said by maybe distinguishing a bit between practitioners and the way they're thinking about these questions and those of us who teach in university spaces, which is part of where I come at, all of this from.

And I think, there's a way in which some of the background and the genealogy of the IHRA which emerge at a particular time, in a particular context, largely driven by practitioners, was very much at odds with the ways in which educators or scholars, who are in classrooms or spaces where debates around Israel and Palestine, for example, often intersect with the politics of antisemitism because of the conjunctural moment that we're living in.

And I think what you're seeing in the broader context of where these debates have now erupted is a kind of collision between a practitioners approach and the approach of those of us who study or teach these issues. And maybe I'll illustrate that a little bit with a kind of example of how I came to all of this in my own experience at UCL where I teach in London.

And I teach on Israel and Palestine and the modern Middle East. And in the summer of 2019, I was asked to look into an exhibit that was set up in the central gallery of the University called Moving Objects. And it was about histories of displacement and refugee experiences globally that several colleagues of mine across different departments had installed in UCL's Octagon Gallery.

And part of this exhibit-- part of the artifacts were Syrian experiences of displacement. Part of them were Palestinian's experiences of displacement. And among the artifacts that were put in on one of the vitrines was tatreez, a traditional tapestry map of Palestine that was taken from a Jordanian refugee camp to signify the experience of home.

And on this map, there was Arabic lettering of different Palestinian cities. And as you would imagine of such an artifact coming from where it did, there was no Hebrew lettering or delineation of an understanding or a demarcation of Israel, which would not be surprising, given that this was a representation of a lived Palestinian experience of displacement.

And the reason this came to my attention is that a student at the University raised a concern about hidden antisemitism in the presence of this artifact. And I was asked, along with several colleagues, to look into this. And of course, we immediately were concerned about the very framing of this idea of hidden antisemitism.

There was a petition that was organized after the student didn't feel the investigation had been taken seriously. And there was many signatories to this petition claiming that UCL had to get rid of this or had to change the exhibit and had to put up some form of a corrective.

And the immediate response from me and from other colleagues was a sense of a pushback that the very idea that in a University space, we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of these kinds of arguments about antisemitism where they have no place in the conversation.

And to be asked to look into this and to be asked to look into it, without Arab or Palestinian voices participating in that process, was a position that elicited for me deep discomfort in a sense that something much broader was at stake here. And at the same time that this was going on, UK government officials were also encouraging and later began demanding that universities adopt the IHRA working definition by Christmas of 2020.

And this was introduced at UCL early on. And many of us on the faculty felt strongly that there were serious concerns. Many of them that Brian drew out in his introductory remarks in the ways in which the IHRA came into conflict with some of the more complex debates, discussions, and topics that we all deal with in the classroom on a regular basis.

And so to speak to the kind of origin and some of the politics of these questions, I should say that what transpired brought me back to the early 2000s of my experience as an undergraduate at Columbia in New York at the time.

And a very toxic atmosphere-- that some of you who are listening who are on this panel will know-- where around the time of the second Intifada, there was a great deal of attention and public debate about the role of the teaching of Israel and Palestine at Columbia and the specter or the raising of concerns about antisemitism as well.

And this was often adjudicated through local media and the press. And it created a really damaging and, I think, destructive learning environment for a lot of us. And this idea that you go to university, you're in a space where you're going to tackle difficult questions.

And suddenly, these accusations are raised, made for a certain degree of pause and reflection about what is the purpose of the university space. How do we facilitate difficult conversations? How do we learn in a classroom setting on topics that might be politically problematic without imputing motives or accusing people of antisemitism?

And that's the kind of context that brought me to think about these questions in the UK. And there's an interesting lineage of how and why some of these questions have now sort of traveled in this direction. And we began working on studying the issue of the IHRA at UCL as part of a working group that I was involved with.

And at the same time, in speaking with Jewish students and talking to members of the UCL community, a kind of clear awareness that there were incidents of antisemitism that existed. And that those incidents, which often were not reported effectively or which were not dealt with by existing UCL policies and procedures, were not being-- were not being adjudicated or would not be adjudicated by the imposition of this external working definition.

And in fact, in the University context, we have rules and regulations. We have equality's law in the UK that should be protecting against groups where antisemitism or any form of racism and prejudice emerges. And so in the process of discussing and analyzing the role of the IHRA, it became clear that we were all in this impossible proposition that if you were for or against or critical of the IHRA, you were presented as being for or against antisemitism.

And this is a false and very dangerous narrative that is particularly febrile in Europe at the moment and in the UK. And I think what attracted me to the work of the Jerusalem Declaration is that this was a group that understood the political conjuncture, the nature of the need to shift the grounds of conversation and debate by introducing a new text, by thinking a little bit about how to not just fall against the lines of being for or against something but how might we provide new ways of thinking about some of these questions.

And also how do you do this in a manner that gained some political purchase and traction because as we all know, the IHRA continues to have its own political traction in these broader debates and discussions. And I think this is the context in which the JDA entered. And the JDA also very much understood that the way to try and open the conversation and shift the terms of debate emerged from the subject expertise in the field of antisemitism studies, Holocaust studies, as well as those working on Israel and Palestine.

And so in that sense, I think, the effort became very much targeted towards that constituency and community of scholars. And it's also a call very much to bring in a broad base of support. So you'll find many of the signatories on the list would position themselves perhaps as liberal Zionists, as some who are non-Zionist, some anti-Zionists.

But that the idea was that everybody could agree to a text and put their name to something that would help disentangle some of the ways in which anti-Zionism and antisemitism have been unhelpfully conflated. Now the question that you asked is also about where Palestinian and our voices in this conversation.

And I think this is a preeminent political and ethical question we need to consider. Because to dislodge the IHRA and its preeminence in these wider political debates is to engage in a discussion on the grounds and on the terms as laid out by the IHRA to begin with.

And for many of us, myself included, this was an impossible task because entering into the discussion, you found yourself working through the logic of how the IHRA position the problem. And so from a scholarly point of view, from a political point of view, it became very difficult to do that kind of disentanglement.

But I do think, in that context, there is a tactical way of thinking about the need to broaden and change the nature of the discussion and to use the JDA as a tool as an educational measure to think through some of the problems that the IHRA opposes.

Now, I do think there needs to be a much broader effort, which has continued to unfold and which, I think, has very much been led by Palestinians and Palestinian civil society, in particular, I think, about the work of Palestine Legal which has been bringing attention to the ways in which the IHRA has been used in an unhelpful and repressive manner when it comes to speech on Palestine.

And we can talk about lots of the examples that exist in the US and UK, elsewhere. And in that context, I think it is part of a broader need to get ourselves out of this false binary that we find ourselves stuck in. And so the JDA, in that context, I think, is opening up space for debate and discussion without letting things descend into these accusations of antisemitism like what I found so distasteful in my own experience at UCL.

I think there are many other ways one can go about doing this. I think, there are other forms of engagement and intervention. We could think about the context, for example, of The Guardian letter by Palestinian intellectuals and the way in which they engage with the question of antisemitism.

I think, there is a sense and a very persuasive sense among many Palestinians that to be implicated in this conversation, in its own right, brings about a kind of ethical dilemma. How is it that every time we're talking about antisemitism, suddenly we're talking about Palestine or Israel and Palestine. There's a problem that we have to address as a result of this linkage.

What would it be like to do this differently? We could maybe talk about that. I think you could think about different ways we might disentangle some of these questions. But in the context of my own engagement involvement to JDA, this is one possible avenue to do that. It's not to think about it as a prescriptive tool or as a codifying tool.

But it's to think about how this effort and this intervention might help us break some of the stuckness around these broader discussions that have unhelpfully entangled the politics of antisemitism with Israel and Palestine.

ATALIA OMER: Sorry, Sara. Just before you turn to the next question, I wanted to interject and say that-- one of that to be Professor Goldberg wanted to ask to make a correction that there are some signatories to the JDA who are not Jewish. But that doesn't change the kind of the arguments that you threaded into your response with respect to kind of the broader implications in the discourse of the politics of antisemitism.

SARA ROY: All right. Thank you. The next question, I'd like to direct to Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj. I would like to return to the question raised by Atalia Omer of whose politics do the politics of definition promote? And who and what does it attempt to silence?

One criticism of the JDA is that it does not confront strongly enough the fact that the deadliest form of antisemitism in the world today comes from the right and white supremacists and has little, if anything, to do with Palestine. Another criticism is that since the JDA is mostly about Palestine, it completely excludes the Palestinian perspective.

And as one colleague said, it's an example of denying Palestinians permission to marry. In this regard, what do the politics of defining antisemitism mean for Palestinians in Palestine and elsewhere with regard to free speech and the Palestinian national struggle?

NADIA ABU EL-HAJ: Thank you. Again, I'd like to thank you for inviting me to be part of this. So let me try to begin to respond-- sorry [INAUDIBLE]-- to those questions. And I want to say that in many ways, I think, Seth, the questions-- I mean, you did a very good job framing some of the responses from Palestinian intellectuals and activists.

So it's not cool that I'm going to be saying is particularly surprising here. But let me lay it out and hopefully open a discussion. And I will get to-- I guess-- to the politics of definition indirectly. So obviously, the JDA is a massive improvement over the IHRA definition. And I say this as someone who is in the US Academy and sees on a daily basis the ways in which that definition is being weaponized, whether officially or unofficially to shut down all kinds of speech.

And I think that the most-- some of the most important moves are desexualizing antisemitism and placing it squarely within the history of other forms of racism, pulling out the BDS and saying-- pulling out both the BDS, highlighting the BDS, and highlighting debates about solutions to the current political reality that might include the binational state or unitary Democratic state in the language of the Declaration and saying those are not antisemitic or priori antisemitic statements.

And much of the argument in the US goes on around the with that. Having said that, I'm ambivalent about it. And I'm ambivalent about it precisely through something that probably does get out or is about the politics of definition, which is what is it that we are focusing on defining? And how does that keep the conversation locked into a certain frame?

For Palestinians, the question really, I think, is how do we change the entire conversation? Why do we always have to answer the charge? Are we antisemitic or not? Even if we end up being exonerated, that charge is always-- the JDA in effect-- and I am very clear here, it was not the intention-- keeps the question of antisemitism focused on or at least tethered to the question of Palestine isn't it-- even if it tries to unravel that, right?

It follows the structure of IRA and of course, as both Seth and Brian said, that was the structure of what it was responding to. But I think that there are unintentional consequences of that. Why not clearly and explicitly produce a statement that says that antisemitism and rising forms of violence we're seeing around the world and very strongly in the US are primarily coming from the right as they have historically?

That would clearly say that the focus on the problem of antisemitism as it relates to p is not just a matter of weaponizing the charge but in the matter of diverting the focus away from where the danger really resides. Given that so much of the document tries to refute the IHRA definition or its 11 examples, most of its 11 examples. The document does not, in fact, effectively placed the problem where it needs to be situated.

The consequence, I think, is the very framing of the Declaration means that critical speech and activism on Israel and Palestine will continue to be monitored. Is it antisemitic or not? For example, even if it is not necessarily antisemitic, anti-Zionism can be antisemitic under certain circumstances. That is to quote from the Declaration depending on context, quote, "which can include the intention behind the utterance, a pattern of speech over time, or even the identity of the speaker," unquote.

So the problem, again, to restate is this. The Declaration does not challenge the reality of the constant policing and self policing even with regard to Palestinian speech or speech on Palestine. Because the specter of that accusation continues to move, it moves the margins, or it would move the margins if it became-- if it could challenge IHRA.

It would move the margins of what counts as antisemitic. But it doesn't remove the monitoring. And the real question is why should that question even be asked vis a vis Palestinian or co-Palestinian speech? Moreover, of course, how does one adjudicate? And quite clearly, how do we know intention? And honestly, I ask this as someone who's been involved in discussions with Facebook of late, the content which are private.

But I mean, only because we have promised to keep that. But the question they're struggling with when how to adjudicate, when the use of the term "Zionist" is really a standard for antisemitism. And the whole problems of making that decision with a better or worse definition, I think, is something one can't get around, right. So why not reframe the entire conversation?

From Palestine's as starting point, would be to start with the question of Palestine, the problem of Israel as a settler state, and with anti-Palestinian racism. In other words, racism that is structural and built into the Israeli state. And quite frankly, pretty rampant in the US today. The burden of suspicion has to be lifted.

And if not-- because if that is not lifted, the cloud of antisemitism will always hover over all Palestinians speech and over Palestinians themselves, even if that speech is ultimately deemed. And then the question is by whom, not antisemitic. And I just want to end by saying something as a side note. But it's about a specific clause that, I think, really quite centrally will keep this problem and accusation alive.

And I have no doubt it had to do with the problem of compromising between people with different politics signing the Declaration. But this is my question. So why is the following, on the face of it, antisemitic, which is the category under which it is? "Denying the rights of Jews in the state of Israel to exist and flourish collectively and individually as Jews in accordance with the principle of equality," unquote.

So let me be clear. I am not saying Israeli Jews, I emphasized here, Israeli Jews do not have rights in Israel and Palestine at this moment in time. That is not my position. In any settler nation, rights are gained by settlers over time. And I, at least, ascribe to that when I think about the future. But more conceptually and a bigger historical frame, all sorts of anticolonial movements struggled for and insisted on the expulsion of settlers.

The French or the so-called Pied-noirs in Algeria, Whites in Zimbabwe, the list goes on and on. I might disagree with that as a form of anticolonial politics. And one might even think it's an obstacle to a solution. But in Zimbabwe or in Algeria, it was not taken to be an index of racism. That claim would certainly not have been self evident.

So again, I ask, why is it self evidently antisemitic? Why is it antisemitic on the face of it? Why isn't that context or intention dependent? And for me that's just one example of the ways in which this conversation or this sort of suspicion will continue to hover over critical political speech on Palestine and over Palestinians in particular. I think, I'll stop there for now.

SARA ROY: Thank you. The next question, I think, you've probably, in your own way, already answered. But I'll ask it anyway. Based upon what you've just said then, Professor Abu El-Haj, do you think that the JDA can make a difference in any manner given that so many institutions and governments continue to embrace the IHRA? And more specifically, do you think the JDA, as an alternative, can adequately address the IHRA's conflation of discriminatory and political activities?

NADIA ABU EL-HAJ: Yeah, I probably have already answered that question. I would say two things. In the political reality we're in, would I prefer that the Department of Education use the JDA definition to the IHRA definition for monitoring speech on university campuses? Of course, I would. But I think it would continue what it-- I mean, first of all, let's be clear.

No matter what that note Title IX-- is it Title VI of the DOE Act has actually won in court. And Palestine Legal that Seth has mentioned has effectively shut down a lot of these challenges. Nevertheless, the JDA would be a better weapon that we could use to fight against it. But the problem would remain.

It would not solve the problem of the constant accusations that people teaching on Palestine and Israel or Palestinian scholars make a certain kind of claims and it's for right certain kinds of things can be taken up on these charges. Because in fact, it continues to frame antisemitism around this conversation even as it says it's a misreading of that conversation. So in that sense, I don't know-- I mean, I think it really ends up--

It could end up perpetuating the problem of what democracy has called the free speech-- Palestine and the free speech exception, right. That there's an exceptional attention to speech on Palestine here that has to be adjudicated and has not simply received its free speech of the US Academy. So I'm wary of trying to go down this road at all. And really that comes from my own personal experience, as well as watching it happen with so many other people.

ATALIA OMER: Thank you. Of course, the worry is that with a definition that doesn't at least explicitly claim itself to be legally binding, that it's kind of a legal bite to a Title VI mode of litigation. So thank you for your reflection. I now would like to turn to Lara. And I know that-- the question-- the main question I wanted to ask you--

We want to ask you, as a start, is really to invite you to reflect on the basis of sustained conversations on IHRA that you hosted and the Foundation for Middle East Peace over the past few months, which I tuned into all of them and listen to them multiple times. What are some of the key takeaways points you garner regarding whose politics does the politics of defining and redefining antisemitism promote?

And whose politics it doesn't or it silence or downplay? And I know that one of the events that you hosted brought together the kind of reflections and interventions from Jews of color. So this is kind of an interesting dimension to bring in. So just wanted you to reflect kind of sympathetically on the kind of conversations that you've been hosting. And also, to what degree you see JDA intervening in the discourse? Thank you.

LARA FRIEDMAN: Thank you for the question. And thank you so much, all of the organizers of this event. I think, it's been an already enormously rich conversation. I come into this conversation from a very different perspective. I'm not part of the Academy. I'm very much of a practitioner.

And I-- just as a little background-- got sort of sucked into the debate around the IHRA definition really starting back in 2010 when the State Department first adopted what was then the precursor to the IHRA definition, which looked a lot like the IHRA definition. And at the time looking at it and kind of thinking, well, this is kind of weird. But it's not good.

And then sitting down and talking with a colleague at an Arab-American organization who said, you need to pay really close attention to this particular piece of the wording because it is going to be weaponized against Palestinian voices, against the activists for Palestinian rights, and probably eventually against American or Jewish Americans who are critical of Israel. And she was absolutely right.

And I've really been tracking this ever since. Where this really came to a head, I think, for a lot of Jewish Americans who maybe had been blissfully unaware of this, even if Palestinian-Americans and Palestinian advocates had been watching this closely, was with the advent of the Trump era and particularly, the adoption of the Executive order on antisemitism which would put the IHRA definition effectively gave it the force of law in certain ways.

And that was accompanied, I should say, by bipartisan support, including from a gentleman named Ted Deutch, who was the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Essentially, he wrote an article in The Times of Israel right around the time just before Trump issued his Executive order. Deutch had an article basically making the case that the IHRA definition should be adopted across the whole of the US government as a definition that would be grounded in law and applied across the board.

So this isn't just a Trump thing, and it wasn't somehow just partisan. The conversations that we've hosted over the past few months around the IHRA definition, all of which were before the JDA became public and before the other definition, the Nexus definition was also released. We're really trying to sort of socialize, in a broader way, for people what the IHRA definition is, and why it is problematic.

And there's-- I've been having debates on Twitter with a lot of folks, the people in this webinar probably know, about words like "weaponized," "instrumentalize." And some of that has to do with the discomfort about attributing intent. And I don't know the drafters of the IHRA definition personally. I've gotten to know Kenneth Starr, and I know his view.

But I mean, the bottom line for me, at this point, is it doesn't matter what the intention was when it was drafted. The intentions of the sort of core effort around promoting it are very clear. And they're clearer today than maybe they even were before the JDA because the response to the JDA has been very clarifying.

And the intention around the IHRA definition is to essentially marginalize all the normal, the old depth of antisemitism. Don't worry about that. We all are familiar with it. We'll put that aside. And really shift all focus and all urgency around fighting this new antisemitism which is entirely about delegitimizing, quashing, if possible, criminalizing criticism of Israel, criticism of Israeli policy as the political view as anti-Zionism.

And what's really come through-- I mean, on the one hand, I think, there's the bad news, which is pre-JDA, which was nobody was really-- there was no one contesting the space in any effective way against the IHRA definition, except the activist class, right? And there are articles being written in Palestinian voices. And it really hadn't broken through. We had a little ship with the Trump era.

And I think a growing realization amongst progressive Jewish-Americans that this might come and bite them in the butt, too. And it's a shame that it takes-- for a lot of people, I think, it took the, oh, my god, this might affect me, before they develop some empathy for the people it was already affecting. And I think that's quite regrettable. And people should do some soul searching on that.

But regardless, there has been this realization that implementing a definition that effectively says that not just if you're someone who is anti-Zionist. And the idea that being anti-Zionist is definitionally antisemitic. It is really quite striking. It's essentially saying-- I was on another webinar where someone said, well, but Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people. And I said, you need to read your history. Zionism is a national movement of some Jewish people.

Not all Jewish people were on board with Zionism when it was first promoted. Not all Jewish people were on board with the establishment the state of Israel. And not all Jewish people support the state of Israel today or just see themselves as Zionists. So essentially, you're saying that if you don't support Zionism, you're not Jewish. And Jewish people are saying, no, that's not true.

The JDA has, I think, becoming into this discourse. And we've actually sort of suspended our IHRA events for now, to try to see how this takes shape. Because it's really interesting what the-- I think, the previous speakers have talked about some of the challenges and weaknesses around the JDA, both in terms of, I think, obviously, the question of Palestinian input.

I think, a lot of the Palestinian voices we've had on our webinars have also been outspoken in saying there should have been Palestinian engagement on this. They are the people who are the most affected. They are the people who are at facing the tip of the spear. And there's, I think, Professor Abu El-Haj comments about this sort of perpetuates. And Seth, as well, this sort of perpetuates the IHRA framing.

It is problematic from a practitioner perspective. Though, having these other definitions out there to contest the space and challenge the statement that there is universal acceptance around IHRA and it's only marginal outliers who disagree with it is incredibly important.

And the fact that-- I think, it may have been Seth or may have been Brian-- that if you look at where the JDA came out of, the sort of signatories that it has, coming out of essentially the core of experts on antisemitism, Holocaust, all of that. You have a document which right now is being attacked almost everyday.

I track all the articles. It's almost everyday, one or two articles attacking it, essentially claiming that the people who signed it are all antisemites and defenders of antisemitism. And it's really quite clarifying. There is no way to come at this, except to delegitimize the very voices who would say, antisemitism is a terrible problem. We should focus on it.

And IHRA is not about antisemitism. It's about criticism of Israel. You have to delegitimize even that train of thought because you can't challenge it otherwise. So I mean, we've had some really interesting conversations. The webinar that we had focused on Jews of color was amazing. I mean, for me, I learned an enormous amount. I hope people will watch it.

One of the things that comes out of that kind of conversation, the Jewish community has a lot of soul searching to do about how it's dealing with antisemitism, in general, but also how it's dealing with the various forms of racism, discrimination within its own community, the failure to defend members of the Jewish community, largely when Israel is involved.

And this-- you sort of find at that point, the people who are the most vulnerable, the most exposed, and least defended here are Jews of color. And anyone who is on social media who has seen the vicious attacks against Jews of color, who come out in any way critical of Israel. It really reflects what appears to be an almost overt racism, right?

We don't really consider you Jewish because you're people of color. But we'll tolerate you being Jewish so long as you line up behind a greater Israel Zionist agenda. The minute you move away from that, you're beyond the pale. And that's beyond the pale that goes further beyond the pale than someone say like me who is Ashkenazi Jewish to the core and critical of Israel.

So you can dislike me. You can call me a self-hating Jew and antisemitic Jew. I've been called all of those things. It's a little harder within-- I'm not as exposed as Jews of colors are to absolute outright denial of my identity and my right to speak as a Jew and criticize Israel as a Jew.

ATALIA OMER: Thank you, Lara. And my next question is to you, still with you, is still very much on that same level of analysis and relates back to kind of the framing of the session that I articulated earlier. So we've seen-- as other people also commented-- upsurge of white supremacist attacks that include-- in the US and elsewhere-- that include, but are not restricted to, Jews.

And this is really important. And this has been clear from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to a man wearing a 6 million people were not enough sweater and in the January 6 insurrection in the US. And also, interestingly, in that same context with the kind of an occupational Israeli flag also kind of scattered across the crowds.

So do you believe that the politics of antisemitism put Jews at risk by differentiating antisemitism from other hatreds and forms of racism? Should we reconsider the need of an exclusivist definition of antisemitism? So I think we already [INAUDIBLE] the table some reflections on this question. Why have a separate definition? But I'm really curious to hear from you about this point.

LARA FRIEDMAN: Thanks. And that really does sort of get to the heart of the question for a lot of Jewish-Americans, really, wherever you fall on the political spectrum. I really-- I believe that separating out antisemitism from every other form of hatred and racism. I think when you start sort of stovepiping this and creating special protections one by one, well, I think, A, you actually create more problems for this new exempted special category.

And I think you're also essentially admitting that you have failed to protect-- have broad enough protections for everyone. Because if you really are-- if you really are fighting racism, hatred, discrimination, all of that, if you have good laws in that, then you don't need special exemptions for anybody. You don't use special definition.

Beyond that, going back to the beginning of your question with white supremacy and violence and all that's happening. It is baffling. And I would say-- at times, judgmental-- I would say it's unconscionable that at this moment in time, we have the energies around combating antisemitism are not aimed at the kind of antisemitism, actual antisemitism, the stuff that's actually threatening the lives of Jews.

The stuff that means that we need armed guards at synagogues. Immediately after the Pittsburgh massacre, where Jews were-- the worst antisemitic attack in my lifetime. I mean, immediately after that, there was efforts-- we saw immediate efforts that people saying, members of Congress saying, we see, we have to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act. That's great.

The Antisemitism Awareness Act is about quashing criticism of Israel. It's not about going after white supremacists who buy into neo-Nazi old school, Jews rule the world refugee, the stuff that actually was at play there. I mean, it is just-- it's extraordinary. And the other side of that coin, I will point at-- there was a Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is the member of Congress who had the space lasers and all that.

It's pretty open in her association with those who seem to support antisemitism in rather virulent ways. She's now positioning herself in Congress as the great protector of Israel, against the terrible Democrats. I mean, you have this absolute bizarre situation which, again, we saw throughout the Trump era, where the opposite of-- fighting antisemitism is-- the calculus has shifted from the opposite of antisemitism is ending antisemitism.

So the opposite of antisemitism is embracing philosemitism where you fetishize Judaism and Israel. And you put them on this fetishized pedestal. And anyone who doesn't buy into that is part of the problem. And anyone who supports that philosemitism is A, OK, even if they buy into the oldest, most vile antisemitic tropes.

And by the way, it has been an enormously effective way for the most illiberal forces in American society to effectively take the most vulnerable and most courageous progressive voices who are overwhelmingly people of color, women of color, and some Muslims of color in the political sector, and try to make them absolutely radioactive.

Again, in terms of who is being hurt the most-- we just had the J Street Conference last weekend. And Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders can go to the J Street Conference and talk about putting more pressure on Israel, potentially conditioning aid, whatever. Ilhan Omar says any word about the Middle East. And she is attacked as an antisemite. [INAUDIBLE] says anything.

They can articulate things that could come out of the mouth of a Peace Now activist. And it would be nothing, but they say it. And the Democratic Party, the Progressives have really not-- have done a very poor job pushing back on this. And fundamentally, then doing a poor job pushing back on this comes back to them adopting-- again, as practitioners-- adopting this IHRA style framework, which absolutely conflates criticism of Israel antisemitism and turns it into a weapon to be used to shut down those voices.

ATALIA OMER: Thank you. And I should add that Marjorie Greene is also declared an aspiration to create Anglo-Saxon white caucus. The same person who spoke-- for the Senate-- perhaps in the audience who are not aware of this antisemitic construct that played into her declaration that the fires in California were-- what is it exactly-- started because of some Jewish space laser.

So just to highlight the connections between white supremacy and racism, exclusionary politics, nationalist politics in various countries. In the US is fine, but you have Hungary, we have other places, France. And how the kind of that fetishization of Israel plays into this kind of discourses that care about the US or other places that are very localized. At this point, I would like to invite everybody, perhaps, to turn on your camera so that we'll open up the conversation if you are willing.

And invite whoever wants to jump in on that same question that I posed to Lara or any other kind of thread that you want to pick on with respect to the specific questions to Lara was to what degree you actually [AUDIO OUT] antisemitism who choose at risk by differentiating antisemitism from other [INAUDIBLE] and forms of racism, the kind of analysis of white supremacy or there-- again, other threads to carry the conversation before we move to the next-- on the next round of questions. Who wants to jump in?

LARA FRIEDMAN: I'll just add-- I'm sorry-- very quickly. And this is speaking as a Jewish-American. I was raised by progressive Jewish parents. And I was raised very much to believe-- and this was so obvious that it barely needed to be said. Unless rights are protected for everyone, they're protected for no one. And that Jews vulnerability as a minority led us to understand that what you're talking about free speech or freedom of religion, freedom of worship.

It is really striking to me to reach this age in my life and find that whole framing, which was so fundamental to progressive Jewish identity, United States just turned on its hat. It really seems to be buying into a much more illiberal tribalist approach, which says, we can only be interested in ourselves first and other people. It's very tribalist and very regressive.

BRIAN KLUG: I wasn't sure whether you were inviting everyone at the seminar or whether it was addressed-- your invitation was addressed to the panel.

ATALIA OMER: Oh, yeah. I mean, to the panel, everyone on the panel. Yeah.

BRIAN KLUG: I would-- first of all, let me just quickly say that my experience is very much the same as Lara's in terms of growing up. And that's a conversation that could be had, I think, in its own right. But I don't want to get back to largest critique because I think it was a very incisive critique. And much of what you said, Nadia, I can't really disagree with.

But what I would say is that the very things that you're pointing out as weaknesses in the JDA looked at from another angle of its strengths. And this is the problem. But I think we find ourselves caught in a way between a rock and a hard place. Do we try to put the IHRA definition to one side and reset as it were the parameters of a public statement about antisemitism? Or do we engage it head on?

Because we couldn't do both in a document that would be brief enough to be a viable candidates to offer parties in the public as an alternative to the IHRA. And here I think, the ground has been laid for what I want to say, both by Seth and by Lara. Lara really laid it out fairly clearly by bringing in this term, the new antisemitism.

I mean, the question is-- to go back to the question of whether or not there should be a special definition for antisemitism. Where do you begin with this? I mean, one place to begin is to ask the question, what is the definition? And the definition, I think, is a form of words that is intended to clarify a concept.

And if that's a definition, then the IHRA definition, by definition, is not a definition. Then what is it? It's an instrument that's being used. Whatever the intention is-- to go back to the point you made, Lara, and I agree. Whatever the intentions of the original drafters of the IHRA document, which calls itself a definition, it's actually functions as an instrument to promote the politics of the so-called new antisemitism.

And this is a politics that has been around now for quite a long time. And some of us have written critically about it for over 20 years, I think. But it is a politics that redirects, refocuses the whole question of antisemitism today precisely on the area that, Nadia, you are challenging-- and I agree with you-- namely, on the arena of Palestine and Israel and Zionism.

To give you an idea of what we're up against, let me just-- if I may share with you all-- I don't know how to share these things on screen, so I have to hold it up to the camera. This is a document that's called Handbook for the Practical Use of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. This is the document. It's been produced by the European Commission in conjunction with the IHRA.

It came out fairly recently, a few weeks ago. It's about 48 pages long which leads me to think that they have begun to realize how much that document is in need of clarification. But let me quote you this sentence as an example of the clarification. That concerns the so-called example 7 in the IHRA definition, which is one of the most contentious.

Denying the Jewish criticism meant to be an example of antisemitism depending on context, they say. Denying the Jewish people their right to self determination, for example, by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor. And the commentary on that handbook-- and I read it out to you-- is this. Denying the Jewish people the right to self determination in the national homeland is antisemitic.

Doesn't say anything about context-- is antisemitic because it denies the religious sense of historic ties of Jews to the land of Israel. Well, that's new antisemitism in a nutshell. But that is in a document that's been produced by the European Commission to advance the IHRA definition. That's what we're up against.

The extent to which this idea has somehow insinuated itself even into documents that are produced by a body like the European Commission. And now I know in the United States, there is a debate going on about the appointment of an antisemitism's soaring effect by Joe Biden's government. Presumably, the momentum of what I called a runaway train will continue unless-- and this was our conundrum-- unless we can find a way of stopping it.

And we felt, what it's worth-- and maybe our judgment is wrong-- that the only way to stop it is to fasten on the very thing in it that is causing the most trouble. And that is the whole sort of concept of the new antisemitism which turns-- to put it very crudely, very roughly-- anti-Zionism into antisemitism.

So we've taken pains in this document to separate those two things out, to dismantle that conjunction, and to put forward a document which could be signed and endorsed by people with a whole spectrum of political views concerning Zionism, Palestine, and Israel. I don't think we could have done that without adopting the structure that we did adopt.

And this is what you may well disagree, and I could be wrong. And we may be wrong. But I want to leave this with going back to a point that Seth made, which I think is worth bearing in mind. It's not only a question of what we're up against. It's also a question of what we are or are not preventing. I think that our initiative doesn't exclude others.

And matter of fact, I think as Seth put it, it opens the door to others, precisely by posing a serious challenge to the IHRA definition and the underlying, the subtext, the underlying premise, which is basically that of the so-called new antisemitism, conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. I think it does open that door. And I for one, would welcome other initiatives.

I think that I can't answer some of the criticisms in play because I think they're valid. I think there's a serious problem with the way in which this initiative seems to continue a kind of focus on not only Palestine and Israel but also the very fact that it comes from mainly Jewish sources. And I take the point that was made by someone in the audience. It's true, of course, amongst the signatories and indeed amongst the drafters.

There were people who were not Jewish. But overwhelmingly, it is. Primarily, it is an initiative that comes from voices that identify as Jewish, that are identified with Jewish, and that carry a certain sort of authority because of the scholarship in their position, because it needed to say, this so-called new antisemitism which the IHRA definition has been used to promote does not speak for Jewry, collectively.

It speaks for some people, but it doesn't speak for us, collectively. And I don't know how we could have done that without having the focus that we had. And I regret the collateral damage, which I think there is. But I also think that there are ways of addressing that damage and rectifying it going beyond the change yet, because in the end, what are these definitions?

People are looking for answers in definitions, definitions of a very limited use. And the truth is that one of the purposes served by ours, I believe, by the JDA, first of all, it's not a definition. It's a declaration. And within that declaration, there is a short definition. But much of the work of the document lies elsewhere, lies in the preamble, that lies in the guidelines.

And the purpose is educational. And the intention is to open up the debate and to open people's minds which currently are being closed down because there's only this runaway train. There's only this juggernaut. And people are intimidated by it and therefore, unable to address the larger issue.

So I want to end by appealing to people in the audience who feel to share this sort of worries about the JDA and the criticisms of the JDA that have been posed here very clearly and very, I think, effectively, especially by Nadia. I want to say you don't treat this JDA as though it's intended to be the last word.

It's intended to be the first word. It's not meant to be a finishing document. It's meant to be a document that, as Seth puts it, opens up, opens the door to further push back against the politics of the depth of defining antisemitism that you see with the IHRA.

ATALIA OMER: Thank you for this important clarification and restating that critical point about opening how did JDA participates and seeks to open up the conversation. And in one conflict-- one of the big questions that we wanted to pose to you-- and I'll start with Nadia-- responding to it is to what degree is it forever impossible to disentangle antisemitism from the question of Palestine-Israel and the politics of a particular nation state?

So it's a different way of asking the question that we posed to Lara about why antisemitism needs its own definition outside of the antiracist discourse. And I would like to invite everybody to respond to it, but maybe I will start with you, Nadia.

NADIA ABU EL-HAJ: OK. If I can just briefly say a couple of things, Brian, to what you said, which are not unrelated. I want to be clear, I may be an outlier on this. But I don't actually have problems with it being a document that was primarily signed by the vast majority, by people who self identify as Jewish. I have, for decades, been thinking, I can't be the one to keep saying, this isn't antisemitic.

There needs to be a public voice among Jewish intellectuals and activists and others that fight that battle because I have no credibility saying that. So in fact, my issue is much more with the frame than with the process and the signatories. I also recognize what was caught in a rock and a hard place here. I totally get that. I just, also, just really fear-- and this may get to the Israel-Palestine thing.

We have to change the conversation. And it just seems to me that one can change the conversation a little bit by saying the IHRA definition is ridiculous. And I'm going to tell you where they're wrong specifically. But I think one also just has to redirect attention, which is what I think is it looks like.

The document could have also said, OK, let me give you some examples of the rise of antisemitism and the rise of white supremacy are incredibly entangled again. And there are these enormous instances of this that nobody is paying attention to. Let's pay attention to this, right.

And I think without doing that, the frame just continues with, can you ever separate this conversation about antisemitism or what you're calling the new antisemitism, which I think is right, from Israel, from it being tethered to the struggle over Palestine. And until that is severed, I just-- I feel like we are caught between a rock and a hard place, right?

I mean, as my daughter came home from high school the other day and said, mom, I you now. I was called an antisemite for the first time. I mean, it's like it's just-- and these are kids who don't know anything. That's just their need your go to, right? So in that sense of what it means to stop us being answerable to that charge all the time, I think, has to really not just try to navigate around the edges.

And I don't mean these are insignificant interests. They're important interests. But to actually say, let's pay attention to where this risk really is and this risk is part of this much larger shift to the right, where racism-- you know, it's not the same for all different groups. But I mean, even in terms of intensity or what it means, Black men being shot almost everyday in this country.

But that's the alliance, right? we have to think about this in the same political framework. Because without that, we're just going to keep arguing this. And maybe it'll move little by little. But the question of Palestine is not going to escape that being the first question asked and the first thing we have to answer to.

And I just don't see an exit if we're arguing or debating details because we're still monitoring the speech, right? Even though that's a clearly-- JDA does not want to be monitoring speech. But if it were adopted, it would still monitor speech, right?

SETH ANZISKA: Can I just come in here because I agree with Nadia, with your frustration and with what I think is the broader point about thinking about antiracist politics and how do we-- how do the politics of definitions actually trap us because then, you become embedded in this whole Olympics of suffering and who do we focus on and how do we play this.

And if there's a definition of antisemitism, there should be a definition for anti-Palestinian racism. And this has already come up in my own institution. And where does anti-Black racism fit in? And it becomes absurd at the end of the day because actually there should be a broad base struggle that we can wage in thinking about racism and prejudice.

And it doesn't mean we have to undermine the particularities of different forms of racism and the particularities of antisemitism. It's that we can understand that it also is always changing. What antisemitism means today in 2021 is different than what it meant in the 1980s, in the 1990s, or in the 1940s.

And that conjunctural moment or reality, as a historian would always point out, is why if you look behind Brian's shelf and you asked him to pull off the books on antisemitism, he'd probably pull '75 from the top two. Because it's an ongoing debate that's been happening for decades by scholars about how we understand and whether we should even try and define antisemitism, if you listen to David Engel's very important critique.

Given that reality and given that conjunctural moment, we also have to contend with the fact-- and here, I'm very attentive to the critiques of the Israeli philosopher, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who talked about what happens when you have the nationalization of Judaism. And this is something you cannot simply disentangle with the snap of your fingers.

This is a reality and a circumstance that we are living with in the post '48 moment, that the attainment of power and sovereignty by Jews, as a collective, in a way that goes against the historical experience of powerlessness. And this is where the historian, David Beale, writes this really remarkable book on power and powerlessness in Jewish history in the wake of the 1982 Lebanon war.

When the critiques of overreach reached this fever pitch and in many ways resonate with our current moment because of the way people talk and invoke antisemitism, the accusation of the blood libel, the pogrom in the way that the Israeli government is critiqued and attacked. I should say that Benjamin Netanyahu, at the time, is the Ambassador's Assistant or working in the UN.

And it gets his political education in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion. So that entanglement of nationalism and Judaism in the way in which we are forced to contend with its implications is not going away. You can call it the new antisemitism, you can call it something else. But I don't think the JDA is going to solve it. I don't think any of this is going to resolve it.

I actually think it's a symptom of the fact that this is the teleological endpoint of that kind of entanglement. And here we are living a particular moment where this is only going to get worse before there is some resolution to the question. It's why the accusation of apartheid, for example, becomes this explosive moment. We were there in the '70s with Zionism as racism at the UN.

So it's, I think, are recurrence with a different kind of fevered pitch because some of the assumptions and the linkages that had been made in earlier decades are now questioned and critiqued so effectively and so powerfully, that there is a kind of anxiety and a resistance to the disentanglement of these ideas. And so I'd love to not be in a space where we're talking about this.

I didn't want to be spending my last year thinking about these questions working on the JDA, thinking about the implications of the UCL-- at UCL. But in a sense, this is a circumstance that is in existence. I mean, this is the reality of the political conjuncture. And one other thing I'd say on that, I'm listening and I'm thinking about the American context. But the story doesn't come on the out of the United States.

I mean, we cannot overstate the way in which the transnational dimensions of this conversation have made it so complex. How does the IHRA get received in the US. Whether in the Trump context or what comes after is one question but the same if you turn to Germany and the same if you turn to the UK, where I teach.

These debates are latching on to a whole host of other political questions that have kind of captured the imagination and the question of identity politics. So in the UK, it's about the aftermath of the psychodramas around the Labor Party and Corbyn. That's the context in which you're entering this conversation. In Germany, it's a different one. So how do you shift that? How do you open up the space?

How do you allow for a different kind of discussion to unfold? And I think, we're all stuck in the fact that it's really complicated and toxic. But it's also the case that we're dealing with realities on the ground that are happening all the time. I mean, we don't have to go through the examples of all the ways in which the silencing or the self silencing has function. But I don't think we can lose sight of the fact that it all emerges in a particular the moment in time.

ATALIA OMER: Lara, you wanted to jump in?

LARA FRIEDMAN: Just to ask that-- again, this is the practitioner in me. The particular moment in time, I think, the part that isn't being mentioned here. And maybe it's so obvious, but I think it needs to be mentioned. This effort to redefine and really officially, in a way that we've never done before seeing an official formal conflation of criticism of Israel antisemitism, which wasn't something new, right?

The '70s, the 80s, this was something you heard. But it wasn't so formalized. This is very much-- when I look at the timeline here. It goes along with the shift in politics on the ground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict away from any notion, any serious notion that this would be resolved in a peaceful way.

And the shift in the idea that if you were going to support Israel, it means you support greater Israel. And this sort of zero tolerance-- if there had been a period of tolerance that started around the beginning of the Oslo process, which basically led to a worldwide legitimization of Palestinian organizations, of Palestinian voices, of Palestinian narratives. In a way, that was very healthy.

And that spoke of a glide path to some sort of negotiated solution where both peoples lives in peace, blah blah blah. By 2010, we were far from that. We were well into the [? BB ?] era and the outright embraced by the Israeli government of a binary-- one side wins, one side loses, we're the winners. And the only way to justify that is with the wholesale delegitimization of the Palestinian cause.

And the reason why I think it's important to recognize that isn't going away. That's getting worse on the ground. While we're struggling here with this intellectual exercise of trying to properly define what it means what antisemitism, means the limits of free speech, all of that, the right way to protect voices. On the ground, the situation is moving deeper into this Black and white zero-sum framework.

And that is going to pose a terrible challenge to this effort because there isn't room to compromise. If your world view says, I need to find a way to-- I need to find a way to defend Israel, maintaining permanent dominion over millions of people who aren't citizens, and possibly looking to start expelling them after decades of giving priority to the rights of people who are Jewish over the rights of these people.

But I talked about peace. Now it's just straight up superiority. This is Jewish supremacy which is the language as now being used when we talk about apartheid. There is no gray area to accommodate this conversation on antisemitism. So we're going to have it in the US. And we're going to it in Europe. And maybe in the Israeli peace camp. But the fact is the politics on the ground are moving in a direction that has no space for this at all.

SARA ROY: Would anybody else like to comment before we turn to the questions? OK, then. There are many, many questions. And as I said in my opening remarks, I apologize in advance for not being able to get to all of them. We have literally four minutes left.

I will start with this one. The questioner asked, can political speech be both legitimate and antisemitic? I asked because while I want the law in America to protect antisemitic speech as speech so long as it does not incite violence. I also want to be able to point out someone's antisemitism or argue about it.

LARA FRIEDMAN: Look, I think here-- partly, this is a differentiation between campus issues and free speech on campus and free speech, more generally. And I think it'd be great to have someone from the ECLU weigh in on this. The bottom line is under US law, it's not illegal to be an asshole. It's not illegal to be hateful. I think, this question of, if you can define it to fight it, which is the language that's used by-- I think, that's the actual hashtag for the Lawfare Project's efforts behind the IHRA definition. The idea here is that we will define it, and then we will go and use every possible lever in court and try to get laws passed. And that's where this gets really dicey. But it gets dicey before that. So for example, we have the question of Arizona last year trying to add the IHRA definition to their hate speech, their hate crimes legislation, which is pretty clear. That is a terrifying prospect if you are arrested for trespassing in a demonstration. And this didn't pass into law. But this is what it would mean. You're carrying a Palestinian flag. And someone says, ah, that's now hate-- it's now a hate crime. So you'll get an extra sentencing because you committed a crime. But you're carrying the flag, itself, as in a crime. So the argument would be-- it's not a problem. But if you look at-- going back to Brian holding up that report for the EU. NGO monitor issue the report right after that, explaining, OK, here's how you operationalize the IHRA definition. And NGO monitor, in effect, is arguing things like, well, OK, fine. You don't have to-- Facebook doesn't have to adopt the IHRA definition because people are afraid of free speech. So instead, they can just put warning labels on criticism of Israel, saying it's under the IHRA definition this is antisemitic. So how does that play in terms of quashing free speech? We'll just say you're an antisemite every time you post an article from Haaretz on Facebook. The implications of going down this road go beyond actually just the outright criminalizing of speech. And it's much dicier than that.

SARA ROY: OK. I guess--

NADIA ABU EL-HAJ: If I could-- oh, sorry. I might just follow up on campuses. Yeah. I mean, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, so as I mentioned before-- and again, private universities in relationship to free speech is very different. And this is very US conversation, obviously. Germany has a very different position on certain kinds of speech.

But this group Palestine Legal has won every case of accusation against students for justice in Palestine, et cetera, on the grounds of being antisemitic. It has really been thrown out of court before it got there, not because it was adjudicated not to be antisemitic but on sort of free speech grounds. But that does not change the climate, right? I think that's the issue.

There's the Canary Mission that follows people and posts and-- for someone like me, at this point, it's irritating. But it doesn't really matter. But students who are going on the job market, if you Google them, you're going to find the accusation that they're antisemitic. So it has this function of intimidation, the accusation, regardless of its legal standing. And I actually think that this campaign is much more about that in the US.

And in particular, on college campuses, than really believing that one is going to win the legal cases and shut down certain kinds of speech. I think it's actually a coordinated harassment campaign. And it has its effects. I mean-- and it has its impacts on lots of people who won't even enter the conversation not because they don't agree.

But they think, why would I weight into this? It's just going to get me in trouble. So I think one has to think about this more as a harassment campaign than a legal one, even though it often uses the judiciary as its [INAUDIBLE].

SARA ROY: Atalia, would you like to wrap up since we're out of time?

ATALIA OMER: Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for all the important insights and interventions and those important distinctions, in particular, in the last two responses between the issue of harassment and how it plays out in that register of free speech, that politics of definitions and rather, politics of defining.

So we use the concept of defining because it illuminates the-- that there is a strategy behind it. But also there is what Lara really highlighted is the issue of the actual realities on the ground and those who are affected the most by this politics of defining.

And we tried in this panel in this conversation and hopefully-- unfortunately, this conversation will have to continue because of many of the points that we raised to really highlight and bring into-- to highlight those tensions and really foreground in my view.

And I feel this is kind of my own positionality and responsibility, as an Israeli-Jewish academic working in the US, the issue of what are the implications from the ground, not only Zionism, not only Israel. It's greater Israel and how the discourse of Jewish supremacy also plays into it. So with this, we'll conclude. Thank you so much for everybody for your time and your attention.

SARA ROY: Thank you, all. It was an excellent conversation. Thank you.

LARA FRIEDMAN: Thank you.

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