Racially Profiling Resistance to Zionism in Europe: the Case of the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-semitism

Racially Profiling Resistance to Zionism in Europe: the Case of the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-semitism

By: Itai van de Wal

In recent years, the effort to delegitimize anti-Zionism by equating it with anti-semitism has intensified.  In reality, opposition to Zionism is a decades-old tradition defined by anti-racism and solidarity among many oppressed and downtrodden communities worldwide. But Zionists have tried since the 1961 Eichmann trial to paint anti-Zionism in the Arab world as an “ancient” anti-semitism, as old, or even older, than European anti-semitism. They say that anti-Zionist opposition to Israel is a mutation of this “ancient” antisemitism, and call it “new anti-semitism” or “Israel-related anti-semitism.” This generalization of anti-semitism in the Arab World can be considered a racist trope and a strategy to delegitimize the voices that challenge the Zionist narrative that claims that a settler colony in Palestine is the only possible expression of the Jewish people’s rights to self-determination and self-defense. In the early 2000s, the War on Terror saw the adoption of this colonial mythology by European governments, who presented themselves as fighting against terror and anti-semitism by Muslims persecutors in Europe. The same mixture of counter-terrorism and anti–antisemitism structures attempts to legitimize Israel’s persecution of Palestinian resistance.

Since the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti-semitism (IHRA-WDA) in 2016, the definition has been at the center of efforts to delegitimize anti-Zionism. It is necessary to illustrate how the IHRA-WDA is a racist form of policing.

The sociological origins of the IHRA-WDA

In order to concretely situate the IHRA-WDA in the War on Terror, it is crucial to pinpoint the origins of the text (that later became the IHRA-WDA) at working definition of anti-semitism published in 2005 by the European Union Monitoring Agency for Xenophobia and Racism (EUMC). The EUMC definition was drafted right after “[t]he EUMC got embroiled in controversy [in 2003] when it suppressed a report on anti-semitism […] [that] pinpointed Muslim expatriate communities, young Muslims and people of African origin in countries like Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom as responsible for much of the rise in anti-semitism.”

 

[1] The decision not to publish this report (which, to be clear, was made because the EUMC found that it lacked methodological rigor) led to outrage among European Jewish organizations of the Zionist bent. This forced the European Commission President to repent by doubling down on the “new anti-semitism” discourse that linked anti-semitism to “the Middle East” and its supposedly proprietary “conflicts.”[2]

The places in which the EUMC definition circulated, not only the time, also situate it in the War on Terror. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was an important policy platform where civil society organizations were able to demand that European governments acknowledge the “new anti-semitism” discourse by measuring anti-Zionism in anti-semitism research[3] and by combating it in the education of Muslim minorities and Muslim refugees.[4] The EUMC was first popularized at high-level European policy forums, such as the OSCE, where security, terrorism and anti-semitism were discussed side-by-side, leading to the bundling and cross-pollinating of policies that racialize and police Arab and Muslim populations in Europe.

IHRA-WDA: law or policy?

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is an intergovernmental body, whose members are almost exclusively European and Global Northern states (see fig. 1). The IHRA-WDA has been adopted or endorsed predominantly in these states, usually by means of parliamentary motion or government declaration (which are, in turn, neither legal nor binding devices).

 

After adoption, it is subsequently taken up by a wide variety of national and local actors—most importantly, branches of government, national universities, anti-semitism research institutes, and police and judicial training programs. Just by looking at the institutions that adopt the IHRA-WDA, we can see that it exceeds the sociological sphere of application of the EUMC definition. It seems to have become a form of policy that cuts across education, politics, and law enforcement—with its own national coordinators, European policy forums, and handbooks of best practices.

However, if it is just a form of (non-binding) policy, how come that it is used by universities to discipline students, academics, and by political parties to discipline or suspend their members in the UK?[5] Or used by the police to ban demonstrations in Germany?[6] Or used as a basis for the mandate of the so-called, often newly appointed, “coordinators combating anti-semitism” all around Europe?[7] One might ask: if it is used to sanction people and create government institutions, is it not also a form of law?

The IHRA-WDA has no legal status; its text states that it is “non-legally binding.” The facts paint a different picture: the IHRA-WDA empowers subnational institutions, such as political parties and universities, to discipline and punish individuals based on a law-like definition (with the added benefit of the IHRA-WDA not being subject to judicial review like most laws are) on the one hand. On the other, its promoters involve these institutions in a more or less coherent policy network dedicated to the further circulation, development and innovation of that definition, and managed by the national coordinators for combating anti-semitism. Like the EUMC definition, the IHRA-WDA holds its legitimacy by appearing as a scientific standard for researching anti-semitism.[8]

An emerging racial profile

In its quasi-legality, the IHRA-WDA is very similar to the concept of racial profiling, which is why and how it fits into what racism scholar Esther Romeyn calls the “transnational field of racial governance”, formed by “(anti) ‘new anti-semitism’.”[9] A racial profile is an explicit or implicit policy that marks out the combination of race and certain behaviors as subject to policing. It is often legitimized by crime statistics and reporting, which are already skewed by a history of racial profiling, the over-policing of racialized communities, and the colonial and racist past and present of European police forces.[10] Both racial profiling and the IHRA-WDA avoid legislative procedure and judicial review, enable policing and penalizing, and are sustained by a quasi-scientific commissioned research economy.

One might object that the IHRA-WDA does not itself directly point out racial characteristics. Yet, critical race scholar Jasbir K. Puar has explained how profiling in the War on Terror has evolved beyond targeting Black or Brown bodies to become an informational profile that is able to aggregate and recombine data into various racialized figures, who become the subject of policing.[11] In concert with other profiling practices, especially those related to terrorism, the IHRA-WDA can be used to police an expanded variety of racialized figures, by making suspect adherence to the anti-racist tradition of anti-zionism that cuts across many marginalized communities and leftist movements in Europe. Granted, cracking down on anti-colonial solidarity is an ancient tradition of European police, especially when ghettoized and primarily immigrant neighborhoods turn up for demonstrations. The IHRA-WDA, however, is also enabling newer forms of persecution. For example, UK universities have in recent years started subjecting anti-zionist academics and students, including high-profile Palestinian and Muslim activists for Palestinian rights, to disciplinary hearings on the basis of the IHRA-WDA (often in concert with smear campaigns).[12] Similarly, the UK Labour Party also purged anti-zionist Jews from its ranks using the IHRA-WDA.[13]

Anti-zionism and other characteristics with different, but linked, histories of (de-)racialization (e.g. Jews are de-racialized and “nationalized” at the expense of racialization of Palestinians and Muslims as antisemitic and “foreign”) combine(d?) to reorganize the modern matrix of policing to enforce racial-political hierarchies in the name of fighting anti-semitism. It intersects with bodies, their characteristics, behaviors, and voices in different configurations and intensities and with different ramifications depending on the histories of race, colonization, persecution, organization, and resistance that attach to the policed and the method of policing.

On not giving up our solidarity

What the policing of anti-zionism tries to achieve is to break the continuation of the long tradition of solidarity between Palestinians and Europe’s oppressed minorities and the anti-colonial and anti-imperial elements of the Left. Increased policing and stigmatization try to isolate those who adhere to this tradition, adherents and raise the costs of holding on to an antiracism that includes Palestine. Escaping the radius of the police radar, and the chokehold of stigma, comes at the price of their silence on or disavowal of Palestine. For Europe’s racialized populations, this acts as a surcharge on a ticket to “inclusion”, for which they are already expected to pay an arm and a leg.

It is worth noting that the IHRA-WDA is especially mobilized in those institutions, such as higher education and left-wing political parties, through which members of minorities in Europe are slowly acquiring a modicum of social mobility after decades of marginalization.. While policing the solidarity of the poor and racialized in the streets is an old European tradition, policing at the sites of class mobility is a newer phenomenon that arose in the War on Terror. Such policing does not enforce at the point of contact with a baton, but rather by threatening to close off access to socio-economic (out of poverty) and socio-geographic (out of the ghetto) mobility to groups and individuals. It enforces all the same, and similarly relies on the shock and awe at the use of force (whether physical, economic, reputational or the emotional duress of disciplinary investigation) to intimidate the next person to keep their mouth shut.

In short, the IHRA-WDA can be used as if it is a juridical definition that people can be found in violation of, spread like policy, and legitimized as a scientific standard. Yet, because it is neither based in science nor law—but rather in racial governance—it avoids review by the legal system and scientific institutions who could protect against its unfitness-for-purpose and its discriminatory use and effects that violate individuals’ rights. Pro-Israel advocates continue to use the IHRA-WDA wherever it has been institutionalized (or push for its institutionalization where it has not) to punish those brave voices speaking truth to power. They do so in the hopes of instilling silence about Israel’s crimes and breaking bonds of solidarity between the oppressed. It is crucial to emphasize that the IHRA-WDA is part of a wider strategy of Israel and its allies to further entrench Israeli impunity for its crimes against the Palestinian people and to allow Israel to maintain its functions as a colonial-apartheid state.

At the European Legal Support Center we use whatever legal or advocacy avenues we can exploit to fight back against the IHRA-WDA. Whether used by German police to ban commemorations of the Nakba, or by UK universities and lobby groups to go after (pro-) Palestinian academics and students, we confront it wherever it asserts itself. Our approach shows the public that the IHRA-WDA is more a tool of repression than a weapon against antisemitism. We do this by means of advocacy and by, often successfully,[14] confronting the working definition with legal counteraction wherever it is used against advocates for solidarity and Palestinian rights. So far, the most important thing we have learned is that not giving up on our solidarities and building power and support in our communities are what keeps us in the fight, no matter where it is fought.

 


[1] “(Anti) ‘new anti-semitism’ as a field of racial governance,” Esther Romeyn, Patterns of Prejudice 54, no. 1-2 (2020): P. 210.

[2] Ibid, Patterns of Prejudice, p. 211–2.

[3] “Whatever Happened to Anti-semitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the Collective Jew”, Antony Lerman,  (London: Verso, 2022).

[4] “Fighting Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Germany,” Anna-Esther Younes, Islamophobia Studies Journal 5, no. 2 (Fall 2020): P. 249–66.

[5] Ibid, “Whatever Happened to Antisemitism”.

[6] The official police order that cites the IHRA directly is on file with the European Legal Support Center. “Verbot mehrerer Versammlungen”, Polizei Berlin, available at: https://www.berlin.de/polizei/polizeimeldungen/2022/pressemitteilung.1205876.php.

[7] “SECCA [Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism],” World Jewish Congress, available at: https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/secca.

“Working group on combating anti-semitism”, European Commission, available at:https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/combatting-discrimination-0/racism-and-xenophobia/combating-antisemitism/working-group-combating-antisemitism_en#european-commission-working-group-on-combating-antisemitism.

On the drive to found national coordinators’ offices with the IHRA-WDA as their mandate, the EU Strategy on Combating Anti-semitism and Fostering Jewish Life says the following: “To have an impact, these strategies need to include targeted actions and be supported with the appropriate funding. The adoption of the IHRA definition 29 and the appointment of special envoys or coordinators by all Member States are also necessary steps for effective action at national level.” European Commission, p. 15, available at:https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2022-07/cafjl_antisemitism-strategy-doc-en.pdf.

For the handbook: see Bundesverband RIAS, European Commission, and IHRA, “Handbook for the practical use of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism”, 7 January 2021, available at:https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d3006107-519b-11eb-b59f-01aa75ed71a1/language-en.

For a legal critique of the handbook: “The European Commission ‘Handbook’ Promoting the Controversial IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism: A Legal Analysis”, The European Legal Support Center, 7 April 2022, available at:https://elsc.support/resources/the-euro.

[8] Although I dare say that hardly any independent researcher has adopted it, it almost exclusively features in commissioned research. And even when commissioned, researchers tear it apart: see “Onderzoek Online Anti-semitisme in 2020”, Joris Verbeek, Jeroen Bakker, Sahra Mohamed, et al.,  Utrecht Data School, Utrecht University, 31 March 2022, available at:https://dataschool.nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/425/2022/05/Utrecht-Data-School_Online-antisemitisme-in-2020.pdf.

[9] See generally, Esther Romeyn, “(Anti) ‘new antisemitism’ as a field of racial governance,” Patterns of Prejudice 54, nos. 1-2 (2020): 199–214 (emphasis added).

[10] See, for example, Mathieu Rigouste, La domination policière, expanded ed. (Paris: La fabrique éditions, 2021).

[11] Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, 10th anniversary edition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 197–8.

[12] See the case of Shahd Abusalama: European Legal Support Center, “A Palestinian Scholar Successfully Defeated Attempts to Silence Her,” February 17, 2022, https://elsc.support/cases/a-palestinian-scholar-successfully-defeated-attempts-to-silence-her; for the most recent development, see Shahd Abusalama (@ShahdAbusalama), “Public Statement #InSupportOfShahd,” Tweet, November 21, 2022, https://twitter.com/ShahdAbusalama/status/1594729115290337285. See also the case of Shaima Dallali: European Legal Support Center, “Joint Statement in Response to Dismissal of NUS President Shaima Dallali,” November 2022, https://elsc.support/news/joint-statement-in-response-to-dismissal-of-nus-president-shaima-dallali.

[13] Jewish Voice for Labour, “How Labour’s claim of countering antisemitism has resulted in a purge of Jews,” August 5, 2021, https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/statement/how-labours-claim-of-countering-antisemitism-has-resulted-in-a-purge-of-jews/.

[14] “Our Victories in the UK”, European Legal Support Center, available at: https://elsc.support/our-work-in-the-uk.