IHRA's True Intentions: This is the Speech About Israel and Palestine That IHRA Wants to Silence

This 14-page report demonstrates how the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism is used to silence critical political expression of Israel. Proponents of the IHRA definition of antisemitism claim that it does not silence free speech on Palestine. In practice, however, IHRA is used to target those who express their solidarity with Palestinians and risks being used daily against those who challenge Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Access the full report here.

Executive Summary

A new advocacy document endorsed by a coalition of 180 pro-Israel organizations from around the world reveals that the silencing of Palestinian voices and perspectives is the true objective of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism (known hereafter simply as “IHRA”).

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) has evaluated the document, entitled “Elon, Twitter Has an Antisemitism Problem,” and finds that the “Adopt IHRA Coalition” uses IHRA to attack criticism of Israeli human rights abuses, including criticism which uses the legitimate terminology of “apartheid”[i] or “settler-colonialism” to describe Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. To support its assertions, the Coalition’s document lists a series of tweets which contain these forms of political expression and claims that they violate IHRA guidelines.

This leaves no doubt that the leading proponents of IHRA conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

This conclusion highlights the grave and concrete threat that IHRA poses to free expression on Israel and Palestine, by showing how it would be used on a day-to-day basis to silence those who challenge Israeli racism or support Palestinian rights. If IHRA is interpreted and enforced as its proponents suggest, the right to free expression around Israel’s human rights abuses will be severely curtailed.

Given this new clarity around IHRA’s actual implications for free speech, CJPME reiterates its call that governments and institutions reject IHRA and look to alternative definitions of antisemitism – like the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism – which do not infringe upon the rights of Palestinians or their supporters.

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a major push by pro-Israel organizations around the world to compel governments, institutions, and companies to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. IHRA’s supporters are influential, and to date, the definition has seen wide uptake. In Canada, at the governmental level, IHRA has been adopted by the federal government, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Alberta.

Nevertheless, critics have long warned that IHRA conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel, and for that reason, it is seen by many as a threat to political expression about Israel as well as activism for Palestinian rights.[ii] As such, many groups have spoken against the IHRA definition and have recommended more substantive and less controversial definitions of antisemitism. In Canada, some of these groups include Independent Jewish Voices Canada, the BC Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Confédération des syndicats nationaux, and over 40 faculty associations and academic unions.[iii]

This threat to free speech is strongly denied by IHRA’s supporters who often point to a sentence on the IHRA website which says that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”[iv] The claim that IHRA could stifle criticism of Israel, they say, is “disingenuous.”[v] In practice, however, supporters use IHRA to denounce many forms of legitimate political expression about Israel, from human rights reporting to boycott campaigns, suggesting that they cross the line into antisemitism and should be shut down.[vi] Unfortunately, much of the debate over IHRA has taken place in the absence of concrete examples of how it would be used, leaving policymakers to deal with hypotheticals.

Now, however, a new document endorsed by 180 of IHRA’s biggest supporters offers concrete examples of the content that IHRA is intended to address, and in doing so reveals the true targets of IHRA: those who criticize Israel and/or advocate for Palestinian rights.

In its November 16, 2022 document entitled, “Elon, Twitter Has an Antisemitism Problem,” the “Adopt IHRA Coalition” urges Twitter CEO Elon Musk to adopt IHRA.[vii] Attached to the document, the Coalition provides a list of 50 “examples” of “Antisemitic Tweets” which they say violate IHRA (see Screenshot as Appendix). A minority of these tweets contain horrific and unacceptable antisemitic stereotypes and messages about Jews and would be easily identified as antisemitic under any one of the many existing definitions of antisemitism. However, a significant number of the enumerated tweets would not be considered antisemitic by most existing definitions, but rather constitute legitimate criticism (if sometimes harsh or comfortable) about Israel and its practices against the Palestinians.

Because the Coalition’s document was so broadly endorsed by pro-Israel groups from around the world, it should be viewed as an authoritative guide on how to understand IHRA’s implications. Canadian organizations to sign their name to the document include the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and B’nai Brith Canada, some of the most vocal domestic proponents of IHRA. Globally, signatories include StandWithUs, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the World Zionist Organization, and NGO Monitor. Clearly, the document reflects a consensus view from IHRA proponents about how the definition should be operationalized. As such, it is clear that the implementation of IHRA as desired by its proponents would 1) prohibit criticism of Israel's actions, and 2) prohibit criticism of some of Israel’s founding ideologies.

In this report, CJPME examines a number of the tweets which were enumerated by the Adopt IHRA Coalition as violating IHRA, but which ultimately amount to criticism of Israel. Most of them are from prominent Palestinian activists, while one is from a progressive Jewish organization. By accusing these tweets of violating IHRA, the Coalition’s document makes clear that:

IHRA targets those who use the legitimate[viii] language of apartheid to describe Israel’s practices against the Palestinians;
IHRA targets those who use the legitimate[ix] language of settler-colonialism to describe Israel and the Zionist movement;
IHRA targets criticism of Israel’s violations of international law and human rights;
IHRA targets those who use strong language to express outrage about the actions of the Israeli government;
IHRA targets those who say that Zionism is racism;
IHRA targets those who call for a single democratic state in Palestine-Israel;
IHRA targets those who criticize the actions of pro-Israel organizations, including their advocacy in support of IHRA.

This report does not discuss every tweet enumerated by the Coalition, but highlights a sufficient number to demonstrate the range of legitimate political expression which is being targeted by IHRA. The Coalition’s document focuses on the discourse on Twitter, but the implementation of IHRA is likely to result in similar forms of stifling speech in other forums.[x]

1. IHRA targets those who use the language of apartheid to describe Israel’s practices against the Palestinians

Among the Adopt IHRA Coalition’s examples of “Antisemitic Tweets” is Tweet 1 by Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive American Jewish organization. It criticizes US President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” in early 2020, comparing it to the "Bantustan" system in Apartheid South Africa. The tweet alludes to an eventual end to apartheid in Israel, just as South Africa eventually became a democracy in 1994.

The Adopt IHRA Coalition also targets Tweet 2, from a prominent Palestinian human rights activist in Hebron, featuring his own quote calling for the return of land to its original owners and an end to Israeli apartheid. The attached article is about Land Day, which commemorates the mass expropriation of Palestinian land and property by Israel after Palestinians were expelled from their homes in 1948.[xi] The article notes how his family still has ownership papers for property in Israel, and how Israel prevents him from living in his own house in the Old City of Hebron.

The Adopt IHRA Coalition accuses both tweets of violating IHRA’s 7th example: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

The context for this is critical: over the past few years, there has been a growing consensus within the human rights sector that Israel’s practices against the Palestinians amount to apartheid, which is a crime under international law. Supporters of this argument include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN Experts, Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Yesh Din, and hundreds of Palestinian NGOs.[xii] Unable to stop the international community from recognizing the reality of apartheid, the Adopt IHRA Coalition has chosen to promote IHRA as a way to shut down their speech.

2. IHRA targets those who use the language of settler-colonialism to describe Israel and the Zionist movement

Tweet 3 is by an American legal scholar, and it refers to Israel as a settler colony. The analytical framework of settler-colonialism to describe Israel and Zionism is accepted by much of the relevant academic literature,[xiii] and it is also the dominant framework used by Palestinian human rights organizations.[xiv]

Specifically, the tweet describes the deeply oppressive reality for Palestinians under Israeli control. Palestinians in the West Bank are subjected to Israel’s military court system and lack due process or other legal rights, especially when under administrative detention (when they are often held for long periods of time without charges or trial, and based on secret evidence).[xv]

Tweet 4 is from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led movement calling for economic pressure on Israel until it complies with international law. The tweet itself is a quote from an article in Al Jazeera on how far-right movements are learning from Israel’s experience vis-à-vis the Palestinians.[xvi] It uses the analytical framework of settler-colonialism to describe Israel and Zionism, including a discussion of Palestinians as an indigenous population.

3. IHRA targets criticism of Israel’s violations of international law and human rights

Tweet 5 is by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a leading Palestinian NGO based in Ramallah. It brings attention to the Palestinian prisoners who are held without charge or trial under administrative detention, and highlights the lack of COVID protections that they were given (as of April 2020). The same month, UN experts called on Israel to release Palestinian prisoners with high-risk of exposure to COVID-19 as a preventative step, as Israel had already done for Israeli prisoners, noting the discriminatory approach that Israel was taking towards two different imprisoned populations.[xvii]

Tweet 6 includes a link to a Reuters article on how Israel had been preventing the timely transfer of COVID-19 vaccines into Gaza in February 2021.[xviii] At this time, Israeli members of the Knesset were openly debating the idea that Israel should deliberately withhold the entry of vaccines into Gaza in order to extract political concessions from Hamas.[xix] Due to Israel’s blockade on Gaza, those who live there are not able to access medical care without the consent of Israel. As an occupying power, Israel has a responsibility to the health of the occupied population per the Fourth Geneva Convention.[xx]

The Adopt IHRA Coalition accuses Tweet 5 of violating IHRA’s 9th example: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.” They accuse Tweet 6 of violating IHRA’s 11th example: “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

4. IHRA targets those who use strong language to express outrage about the actions of the Israeli government

Tweet 7 is about the celebration of Easter in Jerusalem prior to the creation of Israel, when Palestinians were able to freely travel to the city from across the region. Now, Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza require permits to be able to travel to East Jerusalem for religious purposes, and these are limited and difficult to obtain. The tweet describes Palestinians as “caged” and refers to Israeli forces as “terror forces.”

Tweet 8 is about the killing of 26-year-old Ahmad Erakat by Israeli forces after he accidentally[xxi] crashed his car into a military checkpoint. An investigation by Forensic Architecture later found that his killing amounted to an “extrajudicial execution.”[xxii] The tweet responds to this event by calling Israel a “terroristic state” and to “Free Palestine from apartheid israel [sic].”

The Adopt IHRA Coalition accuses Tweet 7 of violating IHRA’s 11th example: “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.” They accuse Tweet 8 of violating IHRA’s 1st and 7th examples: “Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion,” and “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

5. IHRA targets those who say that Zionism is racism

Tweet 9 is from Mondoweiss, a major source for Palestinian news and perspectives. It says that Zionism is racism, and that there is no “liberal” version that would avoid the violence and oppression that Israel commits against the Palestinian people. This tweet came amid a significant escalation of Israeli violence against Palestinians, including evictions in Shiekh Jarrah and raids of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Moreover, it was commenting on a tweet featuring a quote by Jerusalem’s deputy mayor in the New York Times, who said, “Of course there are laws that some people may consider as favoring Jews [over Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah] – it’s a Jewish state. It is here to protect the Jewish people.”[xxiii]

Tweet 10 is by a prominent Palestinian-American poet and activist. It says that Zionists are racist, and that Zionism is settler colonial racism. It came amid reports that Facebook was considering a policy to censor anti-Zionist views.[xxiv]

The idea that Zionism is racist is a common perspective in Palestinian society. This is because Palestinians are Zionism’s “victims”[xxv]: Zionism[xxvi] is the ideology behind the creation of Israel and the associated dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, including the contemporary regime of apartheid. This perspective has historically been shared by countries which have experienced colonialism: In 1975, the United Nations adopted a resolution to define Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” and noted the similarities with Apartheid South Africa.[xxvii] It was adopted 72 to 35 with the support of post-colonial countries, but it was later revoked in 1991 as one of Israel’s conditions to join the Madrid Peace Talks.

6. IHRA targets those who call for a single democratic state in Palestine-Israel

Tweet 11 is by a prominent Palestinian-American poet and activist. It responds to accusations that Palestinians want to kick Jewish Israelis out of the country by asserting that the “liberation” of Palestine would involve a state where everyone is free. It is an expression of a political vision for equality within a decolonized state.

The Adopt IHRA Coalition accuses this tweet of violating IHRA’s 7th example: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

7. IHRA targets those who criticize the actions of pro-Israel organizations

Tweet 12 is about how pro-Israel advocacy organizations, (i.e. often described by critics as the “Israel lobby”), have promoted IHRA as a way to suppress Palestinian activism on campus. It alludes to past instances of harassment and intimidation against pro-Palestinian activists on campus.

The Adopt IHRA Coalition accuses this tweet of violating IHRA’s 9th example: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”

Conclusion

The tweets enumerated by the Adopt IHRA Coalition clearly constitute legitimate forms of political expression on Israel, whether one agrees with them or not. Many of them are by Palestinian activists and human rights groups, including Jewish organizations, some in Palestine-Israel, others international. They speak out about documented injustices against the Palestinian people, both historical and contemporary. In some cases, they justifiably use harsh language reflecting anger about a deeply unjust situation.

The fact that the above tweets have been singled out by the Adopt IHRA Coalition as being among their top examples of “Antisemitic Tweets” confirms that, as understood by its proponents, the restriction of legitimate expression regarding Israel is intrinsic to IHRA. While the Coalition’s full list of 50 examples includes a number of actual antisemitic tweets (which were not examined here), a significant priority of the Coalition is clearly the policing of speech about Israel and the suppression of unwelcome perspectives, whether from Palestinians, Jews or others.

As such, there can now be no doubt that proponents of IHRA seek to unfairly conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. CJPME therefore opposes the adoption of IHRA in the strongest possible terms, and proposes less controversial definitions of antisemitism instead.

CJPME believes that there are far more effective ways for companies, institutions, and governments to combat hate and address antisemitism. One respected definition that has emerged recently is the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was developed by scholars from the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies with the intent of “providing clear guidance to identify and fight antisemitism while protecting free expression.”[xxviii] The definition now has 350 signatories.

For institutions considering the adoption of IHRA, CJPME recommends the No IHRA campaign website (https://www.noihra.ca/) from Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) as a valuable resource. This website highlights the many shortcomings inherent to IHRA, and provides a dispassionate discussion of antisemitism, and the various ways to combat it effectively.

Appendix: Screenshot of Adopt IHRA Coalition Letter

Screenshot of the Adopt IHRA Coalition’s letter to Elon Musk, Appendix A: “Antisemitic Tweets According to the IHRA Working Definition.”

Notes

[i] The most prominent human rights organizations in the world, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israel-based B’Tselem, have issued reports detailing how Israel is practicing apartheid against Palestinians. See Amnesty International, “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity,” February 1, 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/; Human Rights Watch, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and persecution,” April 27, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution; and B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid,” January 12, 2021, https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid.

[ii] For detailed analysis and resources on the IHRA working definition, see the “No IHRA” campaign by Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV), https://www.noihra.ca/.

[iii] IJV, No IHRA campaign, “Partners,” https://www.noihra.ca/partners; IJV, No IHRA campaign, “Faculty against the IHRA definition,” https://www.noihra.ca/academic-campaign.

[iv] International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), “The working definition of antisemitism,” https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism.

[v] Spokesperson for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), quoted in Janella Hamilton, “Human rights advocates oppose Vancouver motion to adopt controversial definition of antisemitism,” CBC News, November 14, 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-ihra-definition-antisemitism-1.6647973.

[vi] For some examples, see Michael Bueckert, “Yes, the IHRA definition of antisemitism is intended to censor political expression,” Canadian Dimension, December 31, 2020, https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/yes-the-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism-is-intended-to-censor-political-expression.

[vii] Adopt IHRA Coalition, “Letter to Twitter,” November 16, 2022, https://www.adoptihra.org/twitterletter.

[viii] The most prominent human rights organizations in the world have issued reports detailing how Israel is practicing apartheid against Palestinians, see Note 1 above.

[ix] For a sample of key literature on Israel through the lens of settler-colonialism, see Patrick Wolfe, Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race (New York: Verso, 2016); Lorenzo Veracini, Israel and Settler Society (London: Pluto Press, 2006); Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities (Harvard University Press: 2020); and the special issue of the journal Settler Colonial Studies on “Settler Colonial Studies and Israel-Palestine,” Volume 5, Issue 3 (2015).

[x] Note that the Adopt IHRA Coalition has already published an open letter to Facebook, and has an initiative targeting academics. See https://www.adoptihra.org/adoptihrainitiatives

[xi] Lubna Masarwa and Mustafa Abu Sneineh, “Land Day anniversary: Thousands demonstrate across Israel, Gaza, West Bank,” Middle East Eye, March 30, 2021, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-land-day-israel-west-bank-anniversary.

[xii] See Note 1 above. For a longer list of human rights groups and notable individuals who have adopted the terminology of apartheid in recent years, see CJPME, “Who is talking about Israeli apartheid?” https://www.cjpme.org/apartheid_list.

[xiii] See Note 9 above.

[xiv] For example, see the recent report by Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, “Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism,” 2022, https://www.alhaq.org/publications/20940.html. The report was endorsed by a coalition of Palestinian NGOs including Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, Community Action Centre – Al-Quds University, and the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH).

[xv] Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, “Administrative Detention Fact Sheet 2022,” January 20, 2022, https://www.addameer.org/node/4665 .

[xvi] Denijal Jegic, “Israel: A model for the far right,” Al Jazeera, January 2, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/1/2/israel-a-model-for-the-far-right.

[xvii] United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “COVID-19: Israel must release Palestinian prisoners in vulnerable situation, say UN experts,” April 24, 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/04/covid-19-israel-must-release-palestinian-prisoners-vulnerable-situation-say.

[xviii] Rami Ayyub and Nidal Al-Mughrabi, “Palestinians accuse Israel of preventing COVID-19 vaccine transfer to Gaza,” Reuters, February 15, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/palestinians-accuse-israel-preventing-covid-19-vaccine-transfer-gaza-2021-02-16/.

[xix] Tovah Lazaroff, “Israel debates banning COVID-19 vaccines for Gaza until captives released,” Jerusalem Post, February 15, 2021, https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/israel-debates-linking-covid-19-vaccines-for-gaza-with-captive-release-659066.

[xx] CJPME Factsheet Number 224, “COVID-19 in Palestine and Israel’s Medical Apartheid,” June 2021, https://www.cjpme.org/fs_224.

[xxi] “Ahmad Erekat: Killing of Palestinian by Israel was ‘extrajudicial execution’,” Middle East Eye, February 24, 2021, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-ahmed-erekat-killing-extrajudicial-execution.

[xxii] Forensic Architecture, “The Extrajudicial Execution of Ahmad Erekat,” February 23, 2021, https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-extrajudicial-execution-of-ahmad-erekat.

[xxiii] Archived Tweet, now deleted, by Abe Silberstein @abesilbe, “A deputy mayor of Jerusalem gives an on-the-record quote to the New York Times confirming that the laws being enforced in Sheikh Jarrah are blatantly discriminatory,” https://web.archive.org/web/20210508212219/https://twitter.com/abesilbe/status/1391047284658511875.

[xxiv] Rabbi Alissa Wise, “Facebook might censor criticism of Zionism. That’s dangerous,” Guardian, February 11, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/11/facebook-might-censor-criticism-of-zionists-thats-dangerous.

[xxv] Edward W. Said, “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims,” Social Text, Number 1 (Winter, 1979), https://doi.org/10.2307/466405.

[xxvi] “Zionism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, October 19, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism;

[xxvii] United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 3379 (XXX): Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, November 10, 1975; Text of UNGA Resolution 3379 (XXX), Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/9987/unga-resolution-3379-xxx.

[xxviii] “The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism,” https://jerusalemdeclaration.org.

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