The nefarious, prejudicial and deeply-flawed IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-semitism – Part 1
By Dr Ranjeet Brar, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (ML) and consultant vascular surgeon
I have recently been arrested for the 5th time, on charges of alleged racism – for the words of a speech delivered opposite the US Embassy in Nine Elms, London. The speech denounced the aggressive and illegal Anglo-American and Israeli war on Iran – another Labour Party backed crime – and their double-tap cruise missile assassination of 186 primary school children in Minab, in the opening 20 minutes of their attack. The war, once more, was launched in the midst of US negotiations with the Iranian leadership. I was also suspended from my major London teaching hospital and barred from the premises. I was told by the senior hospital management that his was an “emergency measure” to investigate my alleged anti-semitism. As I will demonstrate in my forthcoming book on the subject, this is integral to the process of tightening the political policing of British society. All of this rests upon the bogus IHRA definition of antisemitism.
My hostility to racism and nationalism – the concepts of superiority of one people or nation – does not prevent me expressing legitimate criticism of the national policy or criminal actions of any state, government, movement or organisation – including and by no means limited to Israel.
Nor does my medical practice, or the injunctions of the General Medical Council’s (GMC) document Good Medical Practice (a guide for good professional conduct that in Britain has generally superseded the formal taking of the Hippocratic oath) prevent me from holding political views or participating in political activity, in accordance with my fundamental human rights.
The GMC is the professional regulatory body in the UK. Doctors who practise must be registered with a ‘licence to practise’ issued by the GMC in order to do so. This is designed to ensure doctors have appropriate qualifications and experience to practise their speciality safely. It has not traditionally been used as a means of political censorship of doctors.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism is not long, but its ‘examples’ are. I will trouble the reader by quoting them in full, while mentioning the obvious pitfalls that arise from them. We will then in the next part of this article briefly trace the spread of this definition from the Zionist organisations of Israel, linked to the British Zionist ‘charity’ the Community Security Trust, through the EU bureaucracy, back to the UK, and then look at the recent efforts of the Labour Party and Wes Streeting in particular to force it more aggressively upon the NHS – with very real consequences for freedom of speech on the one hand, and the collaboration of our government and state in the imperialist-Zionist genocide being carried out in Palestine on the other.
From the outset I will state that what is controversial, indeed very harmful to the cause of all workers and progressive humanity – Jewish or not – is that the IHRA definition has been deliberately devised as an instrument and ‘semi-legal’ device and institutional framework, precisely to conflate antisemitism (hatred of Jews) with anti-Zionism (being against the racist and ultra-nationalist movement that supported the creation of Israel, and opposing the actions and crimes of that settler colonial state). The IHRA definition in fact seeks to label legitimate criticism of the criminal and genocidal policies and actions of the Israeli state as ‘racist’ – and therefore outlaw the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people and the anti-imperialist movement which supports them. And that is the crux of the issue.
IHRA definition of antisemitism
From its corporate, quasi-governmental website, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) declares that “On 26 May 2016, the plenary [meeting] in Bucharest decided to adopt the following non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism”:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
“To guide IHRA in its work, the following examples may serve as illustrations:
“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 antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for ‘why things go wrong.’ It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.”
Manifestly the Zionists themselves describe Israel as a Jewish state. This is clearly discriminatory against the non-Jewish Palestinians who make up the majority of the highly repressed population living within the state borders of Israel and within the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – i.e. the territory of ‘Israel’ that is essentially the true borders of undivided Palestine. Netanyahu has made increasingly overt references to Israel’s claim to this whole area in the lead up to the current escalation of the genocidal ethnic cleansing launched on 7 October 2023. For example, when he addressed the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York City, on 22 September 2023, he held up a map that erased the West Bank and Gaza showing the area as being part of Israel (see Tovah Lazaroff, ‘Netanyahu under fire for using Greater Land of Israel map at UN’, The Jerusalem Post, 23 September 2023).
Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary on 12 July 1937: “the compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the projected Jewish State…. We have to stick to this conclusion the same way we grabbed the Balfour Declaration, more than that, the same way we grabbed at Zionism itself” (Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, World Publishing Company, New York, 1970, p. 299).
Thus Israel is in reality an apartheid state – a racist state, dedicated to ‘solving’ its apartheid status through ethnic cleansing, by a mixture of expulsion of the native Palestinian population and genocide of those who remain. This is the essence of Zionism.
The Zionists in referring to the state internally call it a Jewish state. It is their creation. They recognise a project of ethnic cleansing to achieve it, yet any criticism of that project will be termed racism – ‘antisemitism’.
A critique of the IHRA definition’s ‘examples’:
“Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:
“1. Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.”
This is almost unheard of in our society. The right of the Palestinians to resist occupation, including by military means, however, is enshrined in international law, as can be seen for example in Resolution GA 37/43 that “Reaffirms the inalienable right of the Namibian people, the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference;” and “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle;” But international law is deliberately ignored, overshadowed and negated by this IHRA formulation.
“2. Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, 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.”
This is again interesting. It is ‘hiding in plain sight’! Imperialism, monopoly capitalism, the British and American billionaire ruling class, the EU and NATO are the principal sponsors of Israel.
All the leaders of Western imperialism – from Biden to Trump, Sunak and Braverman to Starmer, Lammy, Reeves and Streeting – are avowed Zionists and supporters of Israel’s genocide, without themselves being Jewish. Israel looks extremely powerful precisely because it has imperialism behind it pursuing its own geopolitical interests that for the moment include using the ideology of Zionism to fool as many Jewish people as it can to act to further imperialism’s interests in the Middle East, even at the cost of their own lives.
This is why the monopoly corporate capitalist media are totally biased towards the state of Israel. The media and social media in Britain and the world are precisely monopolised by the capitalist ruling class – the same class that has interests in the arms manufacturers, oil conglomerates, banks and the entire edifice of global exploitation of wage-labour. This class is the originator and the supporter of Israel – as a tool to further its own interests. Hence all British imperial institutions, and therefore British ‘society’ connected to these institutions are biased toward Israel.
Obviously, it is the height of naivety to imagine that Jews control imperialism rather than the other way round, but to the extent that ordinary people see most Israeli Jews gleefully doing imperialism’s dirty work while imperialism hides itself behind them, it is a natural mistake to make. Incidentally, even if a person does hold such a mistaken view, it does not follow that they hate all Jews and are incapable of recognising that most Jews have no more control of the world than any other working-class people have.
Criticism of Israel is thus being outlawed as ‘antisemitic’ – and at the same stroke, all criticism of monopoly capitalism, of wage slavery, is obliquely labelled as ‘antisemitism’!
What is interesting is that despite this huge British, EU and US institutional bias, the vast majority of British workers support the Palestinian cause, perhaps 70 percent backing an end to Israeli genocide (see Edna Mohamed, ‘Most Britons back immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli arms embargo: Poll’, Al Jazeera, 17 May 2024). Ten million British workers have marched and demonstrated for Palestine and continue to do so despite the elapse of time and all the misinformation and repression of the capitalist ruling class.
“3. 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.”
Using this definition, attributing the crimes of an Israeli soldier – say a member of the IDF who had shelled to death a family in their car, and then cruelly murdered the one surviving little girl, surrounded by her dead family, in plain sight of the ambulance and medical team trying to rescue her; or a group of IDF soldiers who had opened fire on a convoy of ambulances, murdered all of the paramedics and buried their bodies together with their phones – as being the crimes of Israel, a ‘Jewish Collectivity’, could be recorded as an ‘antisemitic act’. Indeed it is precisely in this way that the definition is increasingly being interpreted and applied – by an ever-broadening group of legal and professional bodies who have been pressured to adopt it.
“4. 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).”
This is usually interpreted to include denying the ‘uniqueness’ of the Jewish Holocaust, that it was a purely anti-Jewish exercise in genocide. But what is usually denied, or ignored, is not that these events transpired, but the fact that these methods were by no means only used against Jews in isolation, but against Slavs, Russians, communists, trade unionists and workers, partisan fighters and all political opposition to the expansionist German imperialist project.
These other groups, largely ignored in this context, are the very groups that the Anglo-American and EU imperialists still seek to target and suppress. Notably there is no mention of the 27 million Soviet citizens, or of the 40 million Chinese who died defeating German and Japanese fascism, or the 60 million workers who died in WW2, and that these are essentially victims not just of German imperialism and Nazism, but of the capitalist system and imperialism in general.
Nor is there mention of the many other holocausts that have been perpetrated before or since by the various imperialist powers, whether by Nazi Germany, Belgian colonialism in the Congo, British imperialism in India, Kenya, Malaya, Aden, Yemen, Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean… or the ongoing war crimes of US imperialism – whose true death toll may exceed 54 million in its endless global war on the peoples of the world since WW2, and may total 300 million over the duration of its bloody history (see David Michael Smith, Endless holocausts. mass death in the history of the United States empire, Monthly Review Press, 2023). To say nothing of the 40 million human beings who perish each year in our world from malnutrition and related diseases. All on the altar of greed of the monopoly capitalists.
It is this ‘holocaust exceptionalism’, and indemnifying of imperialism, which are the chief harms of this definition. And it is particularly egregious to apply them while Israel – the European Zionist settler colonial state, proxy of Anglo-American imperialism – is actively engaged in perpetrating a holocaust against the Palestinian people, which moreover, it ardently claims is being carried out in the name of all Jews!
The holocaust industry has become a prime mechanism for enforcing a historical exceptionalism, and therefore a historical blindness. Only the anti-Jewish holocaust of the Nazis during WW2 (sometimes supplemented by cursory mention of the Roma) is admitted to as having taken place. As a corollary, in this fairy-tale of ‘recognised’ history, it is often not even acceptable to point out that it was the Soviet Union’s Red Army that liberated Auschwitz and other concentration camps, as they did all of Europe. The Russians are a target nation, and all state-propaganda must also be anti-Russian!
All other wars, all other genocides, all other violence and criminality in the service of the rapacious emperors of finance capital are secondary, lesser, incidental, of no value, not seen, or are even justified, denied or deliberately ignored. It is this great utility of ignoring the colossal weight of the ongoing crimes of monopoly capitalism – indeed, branding those who campaign against imperialist crimes and for a better, fairer, just and socialist world, as ‘racists’ and ‘antisemites’ – that is the true reason behind the advancement of the IHRA definition.
“5. Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”
It is, however, OK for Israel and the Zionists, and Anglo-American imperialism to use the horrors of the holocaust cynically to further their own ends, or to use this past crime, in which Zionism collaborated (see Harpal Brar, ‘Zionism – a racist, antisemitic and reactionary tool of imperialism, CPGB-ML, 2017) to create political capital – and economic reparations paid to Israel (see Norman Finkelstein’s Holocaust industry, Verso Books, New York, 2000).
“6. 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”.
Because of the prevalence of Zionist ideology among Jews living in imperialist countries, there are many who would indeed feel more loyalty to Israel that to their own country.
This is of course the position of Zionists, rather than Jews who reject Zionism (as more and more do as a result of the Gaza genocide). As pointed out by Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of Lloyd George’s war cabinet, in his response to the adoption of the Balfour declaration by the UK cabinet in his famous ‘Montagu memorandum’, the fundamentally anti-semitic concept of the home for Jews being in Palestine amounted to a declaration that Jews belonged there and not in their own countries. It would follow that the loyalty of Jews would primarily be to this supposed ‘home’.
Turning to rather lesser figures, the current editor of the Jewish Chronicle Jake Wallis Simons stated in a Guardian interview in 2010: “The prospect of Britain and Israel going to war is an unlikely one. At the orthodox Jewish school that I attended… we used to regularly debate which side we would fight for… The feeling was unanimous: we would take up arms on behalf of the Jewish state. …This was more than just an abstract exercise. Many of my schoolmates volunteered for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) after completing their A-levels and my younger brother, Zack, was among them” (‘I broke out of my orthodox cocoon’, The Guardian, 23 September 2014).
Of course, there is for the time being no real contradiction between imperialist Britain (or the imperialist United States, for that matter) and Zionist Israel, as the Zionists are keen to point out when they wave their flag together with the Union Jack or Stars and Stripes.
“7. 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.”
Religions do not have a right to ‘self-determination. Because they are religions – not nations. Where is the ‘Catholic’, ‘Muslim’, or ‘Christian’ self-determination?
While it is true that many, or even most, countries where a particular religion is predominant to the extent of being thought of as a ‘state religion’, it is not usually the case that this is the religion of a settler population that does not even admit the conversion of locals even if they were willing to do so. Whereas European settlers in Africa and Latin America brought an alien religion – Christianity – with them, it was to use it as a method of conversion in order to control the local populations, not as a justification for apartheid. In other countries where perhaps Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism predominate, these religions have grown up within the various territories. Even where originally imported by conquerors, they have been built up by conversions. However, even in these countries it is considered reprehensible for there to be discrimination or other ill-treatment of religious minorities. Yet as regards Israel we are expected to tolerate the discrimination and ill-treatment of non-Jews as conterminous with Israel’s supposed right of self determination! Of course it has to crush resistance by force, people are required to think, because it is established on, and is continuously expanding into, the land of other people who, naturally, are going to resist! If it can’t crush this resistance, it can’t have self-determination! Obviously all this goes to prove that the whole idea of the right of Jewish people to self determination cannot but be racist and fascistic, however good the intentions of the self-deluded may be.
The state of Israel, of course IS a racist endeavour. It is an apartheid state which accords different rights to Jews and non-Jews. As such the International Court of Justice on 19 July 2024 declared that Israeli law and society should be classified as a system of Apartheid. The president of the ICJ noted that Israeli conduct, policies and laws “demonstrate the systematic and deliberate nature of Israel’s conduct in breach of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, namely settlement and apartheid”. Although Judaism is a religion, the state of Israel treats it as a racial category, as did Hitler’s Third Reich, and ascribes superior citizenship status to Jews. It is a settler colony that is inherently racist and discriminatory towards Arabs, Muslims, Christians and darker skinned non-Europeans (including, tellingly, the original domestic Arab and Palestinian Mizrahi Jews). It is actively and currently engaged – must we point out again? – in a genocide.
“8. Applying double standards by requiring of it [presumably Israel?] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
Well! To the extent others do not campaign against Anglo-American and EU imperialism as the chief genocidal states, that may have a degree of validity. We do not fall into that category of error. It is imperialism that is the principal criminal and stakeholder in the genocide. The Zionist movement from its inception made it clear it would be a colonial tool and was ultimately adopted as such by the British imperialists with the Balfour declaration – in anticipation of the outcome of WW1 and the falling of the Ottoman colonies, including Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, into their hands (see Harpal Brar and Ella Rule, Imperialism in the Middle East, Lalkar Publications, 2002). “During the First World War, all three powers [Britain, France and Germany] had designs on Palestine. Indeed, the Balfour Declaration was made in November 1917 precisely because the British wanted to pre-empt the Germans and keep the French out” (David Cesarani, ‘Zionism in England’, European Judaism, Vol,25 No. 1, Spring 1992 (Issue 48)).
“9. Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.”
We entirely agree that anti-semitic mythology is disgraceful and must be universally condemned wherever it is found. We note, however, that Israel is a great promoter of Zionist mythology that we consider should equally be condemned. Israel, while calling itself the Jewish State, has adopted the symbol of the Star of David – or Star of Remphan, as several Christian sects term it – between two blue lines as its national symbol. The Zionist doctrine expressly ascribes a meaning to the flag, namely, that the entire region of West Asia or the Middle East between the Nile and the Euphrates should be an exclusively Jewish state. As such, all the crimes of Israel (apartheid, occupation, theft, torture, murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide) are indelibly linked to its adopted symbol of statehood. Israel and the Zionists expressly say that every crime they commit against the Palestinian and Arab peoples is justified biblically, by the word of God, and can be committed in the name of the Jewish state as a Jewish collective. Is it surprising that their victims take them at their word? Is it surprising that the Star of David as enshrined upon the flag of the genocidal armies and nation of Israel has been rightly recognised by the whole world – including non-Zionist Jewry – as a symbol of fascism?
In terms of the use of the symbol of Israel (its flag, the star of David) or the use of the symbol of the Nazi states and fascist armies and parties (including the swastika, Wolfsangel, Iron cross, etc.) including incidentally the Ukrainian fascists, or the flags of the US and British imperialists in illustrations and political cartoons, or book-covers, this is neither new nor a crime. It can hardly be described as ‘antisemitic’.
The right to criticise political ideology, ideas, states and movements is rather central to the alleged ‘political freedom’ that is claimed as a central tenet of ‘Western democracy’. What we are seeing, with the adoption of the IHRA and its widespread attempted enforcement is that in its economic crisis and political duress, the capitalist class is turning increasingly from the pretence of ‘inclusive democracy’ toward its core state essence – that of the naked political dictatorship of finance capitalism.
“10. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
This scarcely warrants comment. The comparisons come from the fact that both are forms of fascism and both are guilty of similar crimes against civilian populations, with similar aims of generating ‘national purity’ and ‘lebensraum’ – this is the vision of ‘Eretz’ Israel – as well as the constant policy of war with neighbouring states and aggressive expansionism.
It should in fairness be added that the German and Hungarian Zionist organisations, as well as the leadership of the World Zionist Organisation then centred in Palestine and New York, in fact have an extensive pre-war history of collaboration with the actual German Nazis, including but not limited to the Ha’vaara or ‘transfer’ agreement, used by the Nazis to ethnically cleanse Germany, and the Zionists to populate their settler colonial project in Palestine. This should not be a surprise to anyone who is at all familiar with the Zionists’ history of close collaboration with the equally genocidal British, French, US and EU imperialists after the latter emerged as the dominant world powers post WW1 and even more so since WW2.
“11. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel. “
This is of course the aim of the imperialists and Zionists alike, largely achieved for decades, of “Zionising Judaism and judaising Zionism.” We note that despite the initial caveat contained within the definition, it is the constant endeavour of political Zionism to continue this mission of conflating its own racist ultra-nationalism with the Jewish religion (see for example Rebecca Guzman, ‘After October 7, one truth is clear: Judaism and Zionism are inseparable’, excerpted from David Hazony, ed., Young Zionist voices: a new generation speaks out, Wicked Son, New York, 2024).
The IHRA definition ends by stating that antisemitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law (for example, denial of the Holocaust or distribution of antisemitic materials in some countries).
Criminal acts are antisemitic when the targets of attacks, whether they are people or property – such as buildings, schools, places of worship and cemeteries – are selected because they are, or are perceived to be, Jewish or linked to Jews.
Antisemitic discrimination is the denial to Jews of opportunities or services available to others and is illegal in many countries.
One might simply add: that crimes are indeed crimes. In which case – what is the need for any ‘new’ definition? The answer, of course, is not to catalogue or punish some new ‘crime’, but rather to combat the rising global tide of anti-imperialist sentiment, brought forth by the genocidal state of Israel, that is threatening to expose the entire edifice of imperialism. But no law can be so explicitly and openly promulgated and disseminated. For it would defeat the object, by further educating and radicalising the global working class.
IN THE NEXT ISSUE THIS ARTICLE WILL CONTINUE, DISCUSSING THE ATTEMPTS BEING MADE TO HAVE THE IHRA DEFINITION OF ANTI-SEMITISM ADOPTED BY VARIOUS ENTITIES THAT EMPLOY WORKERS IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO USE IT AS A BASIS FOR DISCIPLINARY ACTION, EVEN WHERE ALLEGED ANTI-SEMITISM HAS ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION WITH ABILITY TO DO THE JOB FOR WHICH THE WORKER IS EMPLOYED.