For some time, pro-Israel lobby groups in the UK and Europe have been trying to promote new, much vaguer definitions of anti-semitism that would cover strong criticism of Israel. The IHRA's is the most significant and successful. Its working definition is: "Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews." (PDF)
As Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former British appeal court judge, has noted, this raises many problems. If anti-semitism is defined as a "perception," who is qualified to do the perceiving? And if anti-semitism "may be expressed as hatred," does that not also imply, more troublingly, that it "may not be" so expressed.
In fact, the examples of anti-semitism provided by the IHRA include several that are clearly designed to include criticism of Israel:
* Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.
* Applying double standards by requiring of [the state of Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
* Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.
Any discourse that takes as its premise that Israel is not a liberal democracy, but rather a Jewish state, as it declares itself to be, or that it practices apartheid, or that it should be subject to a boycott, appears to fall foul of this definition.
A dangerous trendUnder pressure from the JLM, the National Executive Committee, Labour's ruling body, and last week's conference accepted a compromise amendment to the membership rule book. An existing clause protecting freedom of thought and speech was dropped. From now on, members can be expelled if their behavior "might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice."
The JLM, however, had tried to foist on the party a more draconian definition: that an anti-semitic incident should be "defined as something where the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice." Noticeably, the letter from Labour head office to Machover echoed this rejected definition. It objected to the use of "language that may be perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive" (emphasis added).
As Labour activist Bob Pitt observed, in the letter to Machover party officials rode roughshod over the new rule. "It is not enough for someone to perceive that an incident is antisemitic and be offended by it; it is necessary for the party to establish that the perception has a reasonable basis," he wrote of the approved rule change. Instead, officials were "apparently trying to introduce the JLM's abandoned rule change through the back door. According to [the letter], Moshe' has opened himself up to disciplinary action because he has written articles that are 'perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive' by Zionists who don't like to be reminded about embarrassing episodes from the history of Zionism."
This process of redefining anti-semitism by the Labour party is not happening in a vacuum. Politicians and media pundits are starting to push the debate about anti-semitism in disturbing new directions more generally -- and this process has accelerated since Corbyn became leader.
This dangerous trend was highlighted in a commentary last week in the midst of the conference. Jonathan Freedland, a senior columnist at the Guardian newspaper and the Jewish Chronicle, is highly influential among Britain's liberal Zionist community. He is possibly the most prominent arbiter of "anti-semitism" on the British left.
He used his Guardian column to attack three well-known Labour figures closely identified with Corbyn who had each dismissed the "Labour's anti-semitism plague" as mischief-making. Freedland accused former London mayor Ken Livingstone, award-winning film-maker Ken Loach, and trade union leader Len McCluskey of anti-semitism denial and leading Labour into a "dark place."
In a circular proof of Labour's anti-semitism crisis, Freedland cited calls from some Labour activists -- in fact, a handful -- to expel the JLM from the party. He avoided mentioning why: that the JLM had been caught redhanded conspiring against the party leader by the Al Jazeera investigation.
Freedland also noted that there were "Marxists" at the conference handing out leaflets -- presumably a reference to Machover's article -- repeating Livingstone's point about the documented negotiations between Zionists and Nazis in the early 1930s.
Orwellian "newspeak"Freedland, a former winner of Britain's Orwell Prize, then indulged in some trademark Orwellian "newspeak." He argued that the three leading Labour lights were not in a position, as non-Jews, to assess whether there was an anti-semitism crisis in the party. Only Jews could make that call -- and, he added, Labour's Jews were adamant that the party had a big problem.
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