Despite global protest, Israel's assault on Gaza only continued. In July 2025, Bartov wrote: "My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. [Israeli Defense Forces] as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one." Ongoing denial of the genocide, he added, "will cause unmitigated damage not just to the people of Gaza and Israel but also to the system of international law established in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, designed to prevent such atrocities from happening ever again."
In fact, Bartov observes, there is now an overwhelming consensus among genocide scholars (who study comparative genocide or different genocides worldwide) that what we are witnessing in Gaza is indeed a genocide. Holocaust scholars mostly hold the opposite view and many have argued, in line with the IHRA, that any such accusation against Israel could only be motivated by antisemitism. "The Holocaust has been" relentlessly invoked by the state of Israel and its defenders as a cover-up for the crimes of the IDF," concludes Bartov, citing an array of publications that accuse genocide scholars of antisemitism for simply describing what Israel is doing in Gaza and quoting Israeli officials about their aims.
What About Other War Crimes -- Or Any Crimes at All?
Yet another IHRA example of antisemitism refers to "blood libel," which it doesn't define, but which generally refers to the grim myth that Jews killed non-Jewish children to use their blood in rituals. The IHRA text cites "using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis" as examples of antisemitism.
And such accusations haven't just been made against critics of the present war in Gaza outside of Israel. When Israeli politician Yair Golan spoke out against Israeli atrocities in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately accused him of "blood libel." When the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz published an investigative report with soldiers' testimonies about being ordered to shoot at Gazans approaching humanitarian aid sites, the paper was subject to the same accusation. When Israeli opposition politicians accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war in the service of his own political interests, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. accused them, too, of "blood libel."
Is it antisemitic for the World Court to hear a case accusing Israel of the crime of genocide in Gaza? Benjamin Netanyahu has openly claimed so, as did the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the U.S. Combat Antisemitism Movement. Is it antisemitic for genocide scholars to study this particular case of mass killing, just because its perpetrator happens to be Israel? Is it antisemitic for Israeli journalist Dahlia Scheindlin to point out that "Israel's plan to herd 600,000 Palestinians into a special camp at Gaza's southern border with Egypt" is in fact a plan to create the equivalent of a concentration camp?
The impunity that such a proscription attempts to grant Israel is immense.
There's More: It's Legally Binding
Although the IHRA originally insisted that its definition was "non-legally binding," it is, in fact, becoming so. The group itself and major Jewish organizations in the United States have launched political campaigns to promote their definition and turn it into law.
By mid-2025, 46 countries had adopted the definition. President Trump implemented it with an executive order in 2019, citing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin for any program that gets federal financial assistance. As a result, Title VI proscriptions can now be applied to a person who criticizes Zionism, who uses the term genocide to describe Israel's slaughter in Gaza, or who advocates the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement or indeed any withdrawal of U.S. support for what Israel is now doing.
The Biden administration maintained Trump's policy and the current Trump administration, and universities now pressured into following in its footsteps, have used it to fire, punish, or, in the case of the government, deport people under the guise of preventing antisemitism. In fact, Harvard University's decision in January 2025 to become the first Ivy League university to join the trend, adopting the definition (followed by Yale in April), specifically designated "Zionists" as a protected class. Thus, the policy prohibits "antisemitic, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Zionist, anti-Arab, Islamophobic, anti-LDS, or anti-Catholic" behaviors.
The IHRA document was not written to be turned into law, and even some of its authors have protested this use. Yet there it is in law and policy throughout the United States and Europe.
Weaponizing Antisemitism as a Shield to Enable Genocide
The IHRA'S definition goes far beyond the obvious one, that of stereotyping, prejudice against, or harm against Jews, and has little to do with preventing genocide. It is an eminently political definition that tries to prevent criticism of Israel by defining such criticism as antisemitic. Turning it into law heavily limits freedom of speech and political debate -- and has nothing to do with antisemitism.
As Israel, in fact, continues to carry out mass killings of Palestinians, attempting to destroy every institution of Palestinian life and culture in Gaza, and herding them into militarized camps, this definition has been mobilized to try to silence any hint that it might be engaging in war crimes, creating concentration camps, or committing genocide.
Copyright 2025 Aviva Chomsky
Âï ? ?... ï ? ? ÂÂ(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
