Beyond IHRA to a real definition of anti-Semitism

Today’s main “working definition” of anti-Semitism, from the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA), does not in fact define anti-Semitism at all. It is rather a good working guide for recognizing things that might be anti-Semitism.

It is importantly helpful as such a guide — a guideline to the sorts of things that might be anti-Semitism. But it should never have been called a “definition”.

That has proved not just a wrong word, but a self-defeating move.

Where IHRA succeeds, where it falls short

In its one line that might be mistaken for a definition, the working document only says that anti-Semitism “is a certain perception of Jews”. It is an almost empty phrase, not a definition.

IHRA adds that this perception “may be expressed” in other things, and gives 11 examples of words and deeds that might express anti-Semitism, depending on context. It rightly acknowledges this limitation on the examples.

But this amounts to acknowledging that the document is not a definition at all. It is, rather, a list of instances of words and deeds that have to be examined one by one to decide if they are in fact anti-Semitism. And that, in turn, would require having a real definition to evaluate them against.

The examples are indeed useful, I repeat, as a working guideline for recognizing things that might be anti-Semitism. But a real, and sound, definition remains indispensable. And it remains to be made.

What a real definition of anti-Semitism needs to do

A definition needs to define what is that “perception of Jews” that defines anti-Semitism. It must identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for anti-Semitism.

This means it needs to be fundamentally different from old definitions that have been used for anti-Semitism.

How the old definitions have hidden the new anti-Semitism – and even helped it along

The old definitions have conflated the modern ideology of anti-Semitism with the medieval religious hatred of Jews, and/or with the ancient world’s ethnic conflicts and repressions when directed against Jews. Or – moving to modern times – have conflated it with the kind of discrimination that can be found against any minority.

Actual anti-Semitism does indeed draw on these roots and prejudices, which provide a mass base for its spread. But it is not these things themselves. It is an ideology that uses these things and the base they provide, and re-inflames them in a modern form so that they will again fight Jews as an existential enmity.

The old definitions have mostly treated anti-Semitism as a disease of the political Right. This too is a dangerous misunderstanding of its essence.

The misunderstanding served, to be sure, what seemed at the time like a useful tactical purpose: to form alliances with other minorities. The Right does, after all, have a normally cautious toward societal minorities, one that can be used for making sound discriminations, but also often blends into unsound suspicions and discriminations.  But the tactic came back, like most ones based on false conflations, to bite those whom it was meant to protect.

Yes, anti-Semitism was a disease mainly of the counterrevolutionary Right from the 1800s to 1945. (1879 was the date when a German coined the term for his ideology of the Jews as the evil enemy of the society, and formed his League of Anti-Semites.) But defining it in terms of the Right enabled anti-Semitism to spread almost unhindered on the Left. Something that it often did; for it often fit Left-wing ideologies and served Left-wing strategic goals.

These old definitions are the ones that enabled the new anti-Semitism to grow and metastasize in the Western intellectual world for the last half century and longer. And to shield it from getting noticed as anti-Semitism.

They also prevented it from being effectively opposed.

Worse: they actually helped cause more anti-Semitism. They helped create the doctrine and alliance of “intersectionality” for minorities, with an implicit redefinition of the word “minorities” – today it has become explicit – to mean that group that is seen, at least by the Left, as being oppressed by the West, the Western Right, or the global Right.

This intersectionality is the very thing that has now spearheaded the new anti-Semitism.

A better definition

A new definition must be more honest. It must face the fact that anti-Semitism is an ideology, not just a list of instances. The instances are anti-Semitic when they are manifestations of the ideology. The definition must state the basic substance of the ideology.

That ideology consists, in fact, of a belief system that holds that the Jews are at the root of the major problems of society; or, more broadly, a belief that a major part of the Jews are part of a group that is at the root of all major problems. The Jews are thus the evil enemy that must be defeated at all costs; or a major part of the Jews are a part of that enemy-to-be-destroyed.

The simpler wording of that ideology – that the Jews are the root of all major evil – defines an ideology that is anti-Semitism pure and simple. The broader, more complex wording – that a major Jewish cohort is a part of some hated thing that is treated as the root of all evil – defines an ideology that carries anti-Semitism within itself.

The latter can always pull out its anti-Semitism when it wants to use it, as it does today. But doesn’t always or even usually focus on that part of itself.

The old Rightist anti-Semitic ideology; the new Leftist ideology that bears anti-Semitism

The old Right-wing anti-Semitism sounded like an anti-Semitic ideology pure and simple. Yet  in reality even it was always a part of a larger counterrevolutionary ideology, one that saw the liberals, Freemasons, etc. as the root of all major evil, with the Jews as only an easy-to-hate part of that evil liberal front. In that sense it too was only a bearer of anti-Semitism, although it liked to present itself in those days as anti-Semitism pure and simple.

The newer, Left-wing anti-Semitism, which caught many people by surprise in the last year, is of the type of being a “bearer of anti-Semitism”. It grew up in our leading institutions as a part of their leading ideology, which holds that the West is the root of all major evil in the world, with the Jews only as a part of the West. It views the Jews, accurately, as “West-adjacent”, i.e. naturally on the side of the West, despite their penchant for Left-wing anti-Western ideology, which it allows can exempt individual Jews from blame. And it views Israel, accurately, as on the side of the West — and therefore a part of the Left’s global Western enemy.

This ideology is primarily about anti-Westernism, not anti-Semitism. It has become the main bearer of anti-Semitism in the West today, because of the growth of its anti-Westernism in leading Western institutions.

The Left is not the sole bearer of anti-Semitism today, to be sure. Right-wing anti-Semites in the West are coming out of the woodwork, latching onto the Left’s new legitimization of anti-Semitism in the mainstream institutions. And the Western Left allies itself with the West’s external enemies; its most inflamed ally, Islamism, is huge, and is openly anti-Semitic. The Left adopted Islam in general as an “oppressed minority” ally against the West already in the 1990s, and even more so after 9-11-2001. That was when a French leftist converted to Islam on the argument that they’re the ones who are “doing it”. The liberal institutions proved themselves subordinate to the Left on this matter: they ran interference for Islam against any blame for the terrorist groups that define themselves as an Islamic movement; and that are not a marginal oddity in Islam, but have an unbroken chain of links from a small extreme to  a large semi-extreme to a huge mainstream Islam.

Most of the time, the new anti-Semitic ideology in the West doesn’t display its anti-Semitism openly. It’s usually focused on the West as a whole to accuse and bring down, or on hated parts of the West other than the Jews. People were long able to be in denial about its anti-Semitism.

Then it had its mass public coming out as anti-Semitic on October 7. Yet it is still enabled, in our leading institutions of thought and talk — the media and academia — to continue to deny its anti-Semitism. Is it that the institutions don’t know any better; they are accustomed to defining anti-Semitism the same way this ideology does: as another name for their Right-wing Western enemy? Or is it that they share the same overall ideology with the Left; and to admit the anti-Semitism of their leading Left flank would be to strike a blow against themselves? Either way, they deny or minimize it. They run interference for it. The new anti-Semitism continues to spread almost unhindered.

What a sound definition can do to combat anti-Semitism

We urgently need to supplement IHRA’s excellent working guideline for recognizing anti-Semitism with a definition that will actually define anti-Semitism. And do so accurately. And that will thereby enable us and our society to focus on combatting, not the shadows of anti-Semitism, as perceived from old definitions, but the actual phenomenon – the ideology – that is generating anti-Semitism today on a scale that has not been seen since the 1940s.

A sound definition will not by itself defeat anti-Semitism. But without it, anti-Semitism cannot be defeated.