Swastikas painted on walls. A hostage crisis at a synagogue in Texas. The rapper Ye tweeting, “I’m going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”
“The rise in antisemitism is astonishing, never before seen in this country,” Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House’s homeland security adviser, told the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday. “We’re not only seeing the kind of antisemitism that led to my mother being chased home from school in Omaha when she was a little girl. But that there’s actually increasing violence against our Jewish communities, threats of violence, acts of violence in synagogues.”
The number of incidents has risen to a new high. Because of that, President Joe Biden launched the White House’s first national strategy to address antisemitism, which was released this morning.
“In the past several years, hate has been given too much oxygen, fueling a record rise in antisemitism,” Biden said Thursday while announcing the report. “It’s on all of us to stop it.”
But that report, with 100 actions federal agencies will take within the next year to counter antisemitism, was first held up by the question of how to define “antisemitism.”
The State Department and other federal agencies use a definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The first part of the IHRA working definition is pretty straightforward: “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.”
But then it goes on to chart out 11 examples of its use in practice, seven of which relate to Israel. Governments’ and nonprofits’ embrace of that definition can effectively set the bounds of criticizing Israel, whether those are criticism of Israel’s policies or comments expressing…
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