International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of Anti-Semitism
By September 2018 a total of 31 countries have adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, as well as more than 130 UK local councils, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary. In September 2018 it was adopted by the Council of Bishops of the Church of England, and on 3rd October 2018 by the PCC of St Martin’s Potternewton. The definition was an offshoot of one created in 2005 by the European Union’s Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia, then the EU’s leading anti-racism body. When EU directives changed the role of the agency, it no longer promoted the definition, and the IHRA stepped into the breach.
The IHRA definition specifies eleven “contemporary examples of anti-Semitism”, while making it clear that there may be others.
These are:
- Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
- Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
- Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
- Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
- Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
- Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
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