When definitions disappear, violence fills the gap
Zohran’s removal of the IHRA definition of antisemitism concerns far more people than just Jews, as it encourages all types of hatred. This is not a symbolic gesture; it is not a semantic debate. These changes structurally weaken the system meant to protect people from hatred and set a dangerous national precedent.
Definitions such as the IHRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, matter because of their anchorage in the enforcement of laws and what counts as antisemitism. When a government removes a widely accepted framework for identifying hatred without replacing it with a clear, enforceable alternative, it creates unsustainability and instability. Law enforcement, universities, and Civil rights bodies are left unclear about what qualifies as hate and what does not. That vacuum discretion replaces standards, and individual discretion has historically not favored any minority.
Evaluating and disregarding protections does not create neutrality; it exposes one to risk. When guardrails are removed, violence does not pause; it does not wait for a new framework; it accelerates. An unchecked system will always accelerate. Hate does not require permission or acceptance; it thrives on ambiguity. Hatred needs room to wiggle and push, something it gets when guardrails are removed.
The removal of the definition also enables something far more insidious; it encouraged the re-labelling of antisemitism as merely “anti-zionist”, allowing perpetrators to evade existing hate crime statutes. Not only that, but this provides for harassment, threats, and violence against Jews to be reframed as political expression. When it is reframed as political expression, accountability collapses in institutions that do not protect; the harm is the same, yet the consequences disappear.
This is not a hypothetical; we already see chants like “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” defended as political speech, despite the history and contemporary use as calls of violence and threats against Jews. We see the globalization of the intifada, whether it be the attacks on the New York City subways of Orthodox Jews or the mass shooting at Bondi. By stripping antisemitism of a clear definition, this administration affectionately signals that rhetoric can be used. That threats can be excused, contextualized, or ignored. A signal that will not stay local, that sets a precedent that can be replicated anywhere within the United States by any political party.
We have to ask ourselves if this is happening in a city that has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, what else will happen? We also must face the fact that this is a city where Jewish students already faced some of the most violent and vulgar behavior on campuses. Where intimidation, doxing, threats, and attacks are routine, what reason is there to believe that conditions will improve when the Administration hands perpetrators an excuse?
Protections are not abstract; they are deterrents. Definitions that enable effective deterrence. When you weaken definitions or deterrence, you embolden those who are willing to test the limits. When you blur the line between hatred and politics, you guarantee that individuals will cross it.
This is not about shielding Israel from criticism; it’s about whether Jewish safety is treated as a conditional subject to political fashion, ideological opinions or convenience. Removing definitions does not reduce harm; it redistributes it away from the institutions to the bodies of those it’s meant to protect. Once that line is crossed, no other minority’s protection is secured. History is very clear about who pays the price of prejudice and hate first.
