In 1919, Jacob Israël de Haan, an Orthodox Jewish queer poet and lawyer, arrived in British Mandate Palestine from the Netherlands. Regardless of his preliminary sympathies with Zionism, inside just a few years de Haan would change into an outspoken critic of the motion. Pushed by what he known as a “pure feeling for justice”, he advocated for “one other Jewish neighborhood in Palestine” – one which sought cooperation with the Arab-Palestinian neighborhood. His steadfast opposition to mainstream Zionism made de Haan a controversial determine, drawing the ire of Zionist management. On 30 June 1924, de Haan was assassinated by a member of the Zionist group Haganah.
This political assassination represented not merely the elimination of 1 man, however a portentous assertion about which views can be tolerated within the rising political panorama. A century later, we’re witnessing the same troubling sample. As assaults in opposition to universities and intimidation of Palestinian activists change into ever extra rife, those that problem Zionist orthodoxy – whether or not out of political conviction, spiritual perception or moral precept – face exclusion, vilification and worse. This time, the principle instrument is a sweeping authorized redefinition of antisemitism in American legislation and coverage.
One thing unprecedented – and deeply unsettling – is unfolding: beneath the guise of a authorized redefinition of antisemitism, the essential structure of American public life is being radically reworked. What seems, at first look, to be a technical change in terminology has change into a robust instrument for political management, solidifying govt energy to implement a slender, state-sanctioned definition of Judaism. Within the title of combating antisemitism, this effort threatens to reshape American public life – and with it, the pillars of American liberalism. However regardless of what some may have you consider, two issues are clear: first, this marketing campaign doesn’t defend Jews – it endangers them; and second, this redefinition performs into a bigger Christian nationalist undertaking.
The conflict over the definition of antisemitism
Following the horrendous Hamas assault of seven October 2023, and the following warfare and utter destruction of Gaza, two sharply contrasting positions have emerged. On the one hand, many Jewish organizations and advocates have seen the rising pro-Palestinian protest motion as a manifestation of antisemitism, a traditional instance of the over-scrutinization of Israel, and the denial of Israel’s proper to defend itself.
However, many critics of Israel and of Zionism argue in opposition to this conflation and in favor of their proper to assist the Palestinian wrestle. For them, labeling anti-Israel positions as antisemitic is a solution to silence dissenting opinions and to stop an sincere dialogue of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Even earlier than this conflict entered the mainstream within the final yr and a half, American decision-makers and establishments had already taken a transparent aspect, framing anti-Israel positions as antisemitic. A landmark second within the emergence of this new understanding of antisemitism is little doubt the 2016 Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has quickly change into a authorized benchmark for outlining antisemitism within the US and has a rising presence in each state and federal legislation.
The redefinition of antisemitism isn’t merely a coverage shift – it’s a part of a deeper transformation of American democracy
Whereas the core definition makes no express point out of Israel, the examples of purported antisemitism that IHRA supplies inform a unique story. Among the many illustrative instances, it notes that antisemitism “may embrace the concentrating on of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”. Different examples embrace “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor”, and “[d]rawing comparisons of latest Israeli coverage to that of the Nazis”.
Again in his first time period, Donald Trump issued a 2019 govt order directing federal companies to think about the IHRA definition when implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded applications, cementing this problematic customary. It has been formally adopted in a number of federal and state statutes, by which it’s used to equate criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism. These legal guidelines have been utilized in a variety of authorized and coverage contexts – limiting free speech, shaping civil rights protections and even influencing the classification of hate crimes in state prison codes.
Trump’s January 2025 govt order on “Extra Measures to Fight Antisemitism” marks a harmful escalation on this development. The order directs a number of federal companies to “prosecute, take away, or in any other case maintain to account the perpetrators of illegal anti-Semitic harassment and violence”.
Simply days after the order, the administration slashed $400m in federal analysis funding from Columbia College over what it claimed was a systemic tolerance of antisemitic exercise and demanded adjustments to the varsity’s insurance policies – a transfer broadly seen as retaliation for pro-Palestinian campus activism, to which Columbia has consented in a unprecedented give up of its tutorial freedom. Comparable threats have adopted in opposition to quite a few further universities. In a current chilling growth, the Division of Homeland Safety arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian everlasting resident and pupil organizer whom the federal government is now looking for to deport, with extra arrests promised. (Certainly, they have begun.) The redefinition of antisemitism isn’t merely a coverage shift – it’s a part of a deeper transformation of American democracy.
We’ve by no means been secular
Little question, proponents of the IHRA definition increase an vital level. To grasp why, we have to acknowledge one thing distinctive about Jewish identification: it has all the time been deeply political. In contrast to trendy Christianity, which developed alongside a robust liberal separation of church and state, Judaism has by no means drawn such a pointy line. Jewish identification has lengthy resisted the tidy classes that liberal concept prefers – spiritual or secular, ethnic or political, non-public or public. From biblical occasions via the diaspora and into modernity, Jewish communities understood spiritual life not simply as a set of religious beliefs however as the muse of a political neighborhood. Jewish spiritual management historically held authorized and political authority – issuing binding rulings on property, taxation, even prison legislation. This isn’t a historic anomaly – it’s a defining function of Jewish custom. Zionism, regardless of the secular aspirations of a lot of its founders, constructed on this legacy by channeling the political dimension of Jewish identification into the framework of a contemporary nation-state.
Accordingly, for a lot of Jews, Israel is a vital factor of their Jewish identification. As Noah Feldman writes in To Be a Jew At the moment, for a lot of American Jews, “Israel can operate because the chosen focus of their Jewish identification and connection. Caring about and supporting Israel might be constitutive of what makes them actively Jewish.” An assault on that factor, a denial of its legitimacy, feels to many like an assault on who they’re as Jews.
However this doesn’t essentially forged anti-Israel opinions as antisemitic. After we criticize one thing vital to somebody’s identification, it doesn’t routinely imply we’re attacking their identification itself. When political positions change into enshrined as important elements of personhood, substantive disagreements danger being recast as assaults on identification. The end result, because the scholar Richard Ford as soon as put it, is the potential to “camouflage” ideological battle as discrimination.
Take male circumcision – a ritual on the coronary heart of Jewish custom practiced by most Jewish households worldwide. When medical specialists or rights advocates query circumcision based mostly on considerations about bodily autonomy or well being dangers, most individuals perceive they aren’t being antisemitic. Irrespective of the place they stand on circumcision, they acknowledge critics could also be elevating moral questions that exist independently of Jewish identification. This identical logic should apply to Israel. Criticizing Israeli insurance policies could, as an illustration, mirror real considerations about human rights reasonably than prejudice in opposition to Jews, even because the criticism is directed at a defining function of their Jewishness.
The labeling of criticism in opposition to Israel as antisemitism has already labored to quash critical discussions on Israel-Palestine in the US. Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted the unique working definition, argued in an opinion piece for the Guardian that the IHRA definition has been weaponized in opposition to legit political expression.
Silencing dissent
Federal measures equivalent to Trump’s 2019 govt order have fueled a wave of investigations by the Division of Schooling into universities over pro-Palestinian activism, pressuring directors to police pupil speech. At NYU, political statements equivalent to “Fuck Israel” have led to antisemitism expenses in opposition to college students. At Columbia, college students confronted disciplinary expenses for acts so simple as hanging Palestinian flags from dorm home windows or displaying them on campus statues, underscoring the rising constraints on Palestine-related activism in tutorial areas. Relatedly, just lately New York’s governor ordered Hunter School to take away a job posting for a Palestinian research place, claiming the necessity to “be certain that antisemitic theories should not promoted within the classroom”. This interference with tutorial hiring marks a harmful precedent.
The strain from federal and state authorities has led universities to internalize this surveillance logic. Final week, Columbia College unveiled an expansive compliance plan in response to the administration’s $400m funding reduce, pledging stricter enforcement of pupil self-discipline, new safety forces empowered to arrest demonstrators, necessary identification checks at protests and a top-down assessment of educational applications, together with scrutiny of hiring choices and curricula. These measures mirror not solely institutional capitulation, however the chilling normalization of ideological policing on campus.
The brand new definition of antisemitism imposes a straitjacket of Zionist identification on American Jews
An identical sample extends to Congress, the place lawmakers equivalent to Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have been formally censured over statements essential of Israel, in impact framing Palestinian advocacy as past the bounds of legit discourse. In the meantime, many people have misplaced jobs, been denied alternatives, or confronted disciplinary measures for expressing pro-Palestinian views or criticizing Israeli coverage. This dynamic narrows the area for legit dialogue on US international coverage and the Israeli-Palestinian battle. The cost of antisemitism shifts the main target from Israel’s actions to the credibility of its critics. Whereas combating antisemitism is crucial, the sweeping software of this label to pro-Palestinian voices endangers dissenting voices and erodes free expression, making open debate on one of many world’s most enduring conflicts more and more tough.
However that’s not the one drawback with the brand new definition of antisemitism. By legally enshrining assist for Israel as a defining attribute of Jewish identification, the brand new definition of antisemitism imposes a straitjacket of Zionist identification on American Jews, in impact telling them that sure political positions are incompatible with being authentically Jewish. However, exactly as a result of Jewish identification has all the time additionally been political, we shouldn’t be delegitimizing these whose Jewish identification entails a criticism and even outright rejection of ethno-national Judaism.
The historic range of Jewish identification
Jewish communities have all the time been various and plural of their orientations towards Jewish nationality. From the ultra-Orthodox Satmar neighborhood that opposes Zionism on spiritual grounds to the socialist Jewish Bund that promoted cultural autonomy with no state, to current-day Jewish American organizations that oppose Israel’s occupation and army management over Palestinians, anti-Zionist and non-Zionist actions have all the time been central to Jewish identification.
Many anti-Zionist Jews aren’t rejecting Jewish political life or denying Jews the suitable to self-determination. Relatively, they’re expressing totally different visions of Jewish political existence and self-determination. A few of them view opposition to the state of Israel as rising from Jewish values and traditions – whether or not stemming from spiritual beliefs about exile and redemption, or interpretations of Jewish moral traditions that emphasize common justice and opposition to oppression.
In his current guide The No State Resolution: A Jewish Manifesto, the faith scholar Daniel Boyarin displays on how he moved from Zionism into anti-Zionism, with “my dedication to Jewish identification and identification, Torah research, scholarship, observe, literature and liturgy, and modes of speech and considering undiminished, even rising stronger and stronger”. Criticism of Israel can stem from deep Jewish spiritual dedication.
The actual query, then, isn’t what the right connection between Israel and Jewish identification is, however reasonably how you can enable for a number of, generally competing interpretations of this relationship. By bootstrapping the definition of antisemitism to Israel, IHRA narrows the boundaries of legit Jewish identification. Whereas Palestinians have been, certainly, the first targets of this effort, it additionally takes goal at a wealthy Jewish custom. It restricts the liberty of Jews to outline their very own identification, limiting the methods by which Jewish beliefs, thought and activism might be expressed.
And certainly, on school campuses and in workplaces, Jews who categorical solidarity with Palestinians report being known as “self-hating Jews”, “un-Jews” or “traitors” by fellow college students or colleagues. In actual fact, simply this month, Trump – our self-appointed arbiter of non secular authenticity – introduced that the Senate minority chief, Chuck Schumer, is “not Jewish anymore”.
Defining antisemitism within the service of conservative Christians
Smearing progressive Jews as “not actual Jews” has ramifications that reach far past the Jewish neighborhood, serving a conservative Christian technique to use spiritual liberties for the sake of suppressing progressive values.
In recent times the US supreme court docket has taken a pointy flip in direction of conservative Christianity, altering the essential liberal construction of American constitutionalism. The court docket has upheld spiritual claims difficult pandemic restrictions on gatherings and vaccination necessities, LGBTQ+ non-discrimination legal guidelines, and the separation of church and state in public schooling.
This strengthens conservative Christian affect by reworking political opinions into constitutional protections – for instance, when the supreme court docket dominated the structure allowed a Catholic foster care company to exclude same-sex {couples} on spiritual grounds. Nevertheless, as David Schraub, a professor at Lewis & Clark Regulation Faculty, has identified, this technique faces a big impediment: progressive Jews. Progressive Jews, and some other group whose spiritual commitments may be threatened by conservative insurance policies, might leverage the growth of exactly these spiritual protections to decide out of conservative coverage initiatives.
This farcical efficiency of concern would merely be amusing had been it not for the very actual chance that it serves as a prelude for persecution
Progressive Jewish communities have already begun to problem conservative coverage agendas on spiritual freedom grounds – most notably round reproductive rights. Within the wake of the Dobbs determination overturning Roe v Wade and the wave of state-level abortion bans that adopted, Jewish ladies, congregations and neighborhood leaders have filed lawsuits asserting that such bans violate their spiritual freedom. In some instances, plaintiffs have argued that Jewish legislation not solely permits however could even require abortion beneath sure circumstances. Whereas many of those instances are nonetheless pending, in a landmark ruling in April 2024, the Indiana court docket of appeals acknowledged, for the primary time, the legitimacy of such claims.
A technique conservatives can eradicate this danger to their undertaking is by questioning liberal Jews’ Jewishness. “If liberal Jews might be erased – both pushed out of the general public eye or denied as real or genuine specimens of Judaism – then the problem of liberal Jews disappears with it,” Schraub explains.
This isn’t only a theoretical concern – it’s already taking place. Challenge Esther, a brand new initiative launched by the Christian nationalist Heritage Basis recognized for Challenge 2025, affords a blueprint for combating antisemitism that targets not solely pro-Palestinian teams however what it calls a broader “coalition of leftist, progressive organizations” – together with Jewish teams – via instruments equivalent to anti-terrorism prosecutions, deportations, public firings, and efforts to “disrupt and degrade” dissenting actions. Regardless of its use of Jewish spiritual language, the plan has just about no Jewish authors and is riddled with primary errors, together with misrepresentations of Jewish texts. It chastises American Jews who don’t align with its worldview, calling them “complacent” and their positions “inexplicable”.
This farcical efficiency of concern would merely be amusing had been it not for the very actual chance that it serves as a prelude for persecution.
Reclaiming Jewish spiritual freedom from the state
The more and more aggressive use of “antisemitism” as a political instrument was by no means about Jewish security. It has all the time been about energy: consolidating a political order that merges faith, nationalism and authoritarianism beneath the veneer of minority safety.
The convenience with which progressive Jews have been thrown beneath the bus makes this painfully clear. Their erasure just isn’t a aspect impact – it’s the mechanism via which this agenda advances. As a result of as soon as Jewish identification is outlined from above – even with the energetic participation of some Jews – any Jew who resists might be disqualified and delegitimized. This was true for de Haan, and it’s true at the moment.
The risk is instant and ongoing. Already, complete sectors of society – educators, college students, artists, political activists and immigrants – are paying the worth. And if this continues, we are able to count on the identical logic to be utilized throughout a wider vary of insurance policies: tightening ideological management, redefining constitutional norms and re-engineering public establishments within the picture of an authoritarian state.
However there may be one other path. The distinctive place of progressive Jews affords a solution to push again in opposition to the rise of the far proper within the US, each with regard to Israel-Palestine, but in addition extra broadly. Recognizing the distinctive hurt induced to Jews by the brand new definition of antisemitism permits us to develop new methods to fight it.
The institution clause of the US structure, as an illustration, prohibits the state from intervening in spiritual disputes. By adopting the IHRA definition into legislation, the US authorities has in impact taken sides in an intra-Jewish debate, recruiting Zionist Jews to aspect in a warfare in opposition to its ideological opponents. The redefinition of antisemitism is due to this fact not solely an assault on political dissent – it’s an intrusion into Jewish spiritual life. By codifying assist for Israel as a requirement for being Jewish, these legal guidelines operate as a state intervention in an ongoing Jewish theological and moral debate.
By pushing in opposition to the authorized redefinition of antisemitism, Jews can refuse to give up their identification to the state. By persevering with to anchor it firmly of their communities, they will resist the instrumentalization of Judaism in opposition to others.
Reclaiming spiritual freedom from the state, as a part of this act of resistance, wouldn’t simply defend Jewish dissenters – it will supply a broader framework for resisting state makes an attempt to manage spiritual identification. No authorities – not the Israeli authorities, and certainly not the American authorities – ought to have the ability to outline what it means to be a Jew.
-
Itamar Mann is an affiliate professor of legislation on the College of Haifa, and at the moment a Humboldt fellow at Humboldt College. He holds a doctorate from Yale Regulation Faculty
-
Lihi Yona is an affiliate professor of legislation and criminology on the College of Haifa. She holds a doctorate from Columbia Regulation Faculty. Her analysis focuses on antidiscrimination legislation in the US and Israel
Supply hyperlink
