Last week, the Biden administration announced that — in line with prior administrations — they would be embracing the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) have a “working definition” of anti-Semitism:
“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 its work, they provide a list of examples which “may serve as illustrations.”
- 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, 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.
- 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.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
This definition has been adopted or endorsed by multiple countries and organizations across the world, including the United States (since December 2019), United Kingdom (since December 2016), and Germany (since September 2017). The United Nations and European Union have also “expressed support” for the IHRA’s working definition.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Kara McDonald, announced the Biden administration’s decision, saying “As prior US administrations of both political stripes have done, the Biden Administration embraces and champions the [IHRA’s] working definition [of anti-Semitism]. We applaud the growing number of countries and international bodies that apply it. We urge all that haven’t done so to do likewise.”
Speaking to an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting, McDonald also said, “We must educate ourselves and our communities to recognize anti-Semitism in its many forms, so that we can call hate by its proper name and take effective action. That is why the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism, with its real-world examples, is such an invaluable tool.״
However, if the Biden administration truly wishes to “recognize anti-Semitism in its many forms,” and “take effective action,” they should explain why multiple prominent anti-Semitic Democrats and Leftist organizations have yet to be condemned by Biden or the Democratic party.
Ilhan Omar
Voted as 2019’s biggest anti-Semite by StopAntisemitism.org, Omar has a consistent history of peddling anti-Semitic rhetoric. She has accused American Jews of possessing dual loyalty, alleged that Jews buy their influence with money — “It’s all about the Benjamins” — accused “evil” Israel of having hypnotized the world, supported the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and submitted a resolution in the House of Representatives comparing boycotting Israel to boycotting the Nazis.
She remains a member of the House Budget Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rashida Tlaib
Tlaib has continued to associate with open anti-Semites, as well as organizations which have praised Palestinian suicide bombings which target Jewish civilians. She has shared and promoted rhetoric calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, including the Palestine Liberation Organization’s slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as well as cartoons mocking Holocaust victims.
She also supports the BDS movement, has spread blood libels, and described a false history of Israel, saying that the home of Judaism for thousands of years was created out of thin air in the aftermath of the Holocaust, to “create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.” Tlaib also favors a one-state “solution” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
She remains a member of the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Black Lives Matter
In addition to multiple instances of anti-Semitism during Black Lives Matter marches, such as harassment, and chants of “Israel, we know you, you murder children, too,” the 2016 platform of Black Lives Matter claimed that providing aid to Israel is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” and described Israel as “an apartheid state.”
In June 2020, Black Lives Matter United Kingdom tweeted, “As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades. FREE PALESTINE.”
Al Sharpton
As part of a long career of controversy and alleged corruption, “civil rights icon” Al Sharpton has routinely engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric. He faced heavy criticism for his role in the Crown Heights race riots of 1991. During the funeral of Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old boy who was accidentally killed by one of the cars in the motorcade of the leader of an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement, Sharpton said: “It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights.” During the Crown Heights riots which followed, Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Jewish student, was surrounded, beaten and stabbed, later dying in the hospital. Many criticized Sharpton for his role in inflaming tensions, citing remarks such as “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house”.
In March 2000, a House resolution was introduced “Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton,” and included claims that Sharpton “condoned anti-Semitic views in that protesters from the Reverend Sharpton’s National Action Network have referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘bloodsucking [J]ews’, and ‘Jew bastards,’” and “referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘white interlopers’ and ‘diamond merchants,’” and also criticized his “vicious verbal anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith, and in particular, a Jewish landlord, arising from a simple landlord-tenant dispute with a black tenant, incited widespread violence, riots, and the murder of five innocent people.”
The Women’s March
Former national co-chairs of the Women’s March — Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory and Bob Bland — were all “edged out” from the organization after they “alienated donors and the grassroots with their unapologetic embrace of Louis Farrakhan, despite his notorious anti-Semitism.” Sarsour, in particular, has endorsed the BDS movement, supported a one-state solution, and stated in an interview that one cannot be both a feminist and a Zionist, despite the fact that Israel is the only country in the region to offer any form of gender equality.
Zahra Billoo, who then joined the Women’s March board, was quickly removed after past tweets surfaced, including “apartheid Israel kills children as a hobby” and that she saw no “difference between American youth leaving the country to join isis or idf . . . both are murderous, war crime committing terrorist entity.”
Other members of the organization include Charlene Carruthers, who tweeted about a supposed “massacre in Gaza,” and that she is “afraid . . . to speak out against the Israeli occupation [because she’s] witnessed the consequences,” Samia Assad, who retweeted a video with the caption “Israel = worse than the devil,” and Rinku Sen, who wrote a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed criticizing America’s acceptance of the “supremacist aspects of Zionism,” and has also called Zionism a “movement that claims all of the land from Iraq to Egypt for Ashkenazi (white) Jews.”
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.