Is Criticizing Israel Anti-Semitic?
- Submitted by: Love Knowledge
- Category: Politics
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The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is promoting a three-year plan to help secure Jewish communities and bolster awareness of anti-Semitism. This effort includes a controversial redefinition of anti-Semitism, which touches on one of the most polarizing issues in the Middle East and the West: Israel’s political, military and diplomatic actions toward the Palestinians and the occupied territories.
As part of its three-year plan, OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) published what it called a “practical guide” to “Understanding Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes and Addressing the Security Needs of Jewish Communities.”
This report provided recommendations to governments, law enforcement officials, civil servants, activists, teachers, religious representatives, Jewish community representatives, and MPs on how to recognize and address anti-Semitic hate crimes.
The report relies on a controversial definition of anti-Semitism, which includes criticism of Israel as an indicator of anti-Semitic behavior. Critics contend that an Israel-centered definition blurs the focus on a serious human rights matter, and in this sense dilutes a form of racist and religious bigotry by extending it to moral and political policy positions that can be properly debated in public forums.
Photo credit: ODIHR (PDF)
Stretching the Definition
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“Whereas classical anti-Semitism is aimed at the Jewish people or the Jewish religion, ‘new anti-Semitism’ is aimed at the Jewish state,” said Nathan Sharansky in 2004. Sharansky is founder of the Global Forum on Antisemitism, an organization seeking to push forward a new understanding of anti-Semitism, which sees hostility toward the state of Israel as hostility to the Jewish people as a whole.
The European Union Monitoring Committee (EUMC) was the first institution to officially adopt this interpretation — criticism of Israel — for their “Working Definition of Antisemitism” (WDA).
It says, for example, that an indicator of anti-Semitism is the “denial of Jewish rights of self-determination.” This formulation could include denouncing Israeli military actions to extend the occupied territories — actions which both Amnesty International and the UN have labeled war crimes.
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