JTA – A group of more than 200 scholars has unveiled an explanation for anti-Semitism specifically shutting down attempts to boycott Israel – the latest push back against a campaign by several founding Jewish groups to boycott campaigns that opposed Israel as anti-Semitic.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism released on Thursday comes just over a week after a separate statement by a liberal group of Jewish scholars that dual standards imposed in Israel were not always Semitic face.
The Jerusalem Declaration goes further than the earlier statement by the Nexus Action Group by making it clear that the move to boycott Israel does not exist and in itself is anti-Semitic.
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“Boycott, disinfection, and sanctions are common, non-violent forms of political protest against states,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration, signed by scholars in the fields of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Jewish thinking. , Israel and other spheres. “In the case of Israel, they are not, in themselves and against Semitics.”
Both statements seek to reiterate a bid by several mainstream Jewish organizations to allow state and national governments to adopt the 2016 definition created by the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance. The most controversial part of the IHRA definition defines as anti-Semitic “Enforcing dual standards by demanding unexpected or unsolicited conduct from any other democratic country.”
The Jerusalem Declaration, so named because it is the initiative of a group of scholars who came together in 2020 under the auspices of the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute, makes it clear that it was partly motivated by protests against the IHRA definition.
“Because IHRA’s definition is unclear in primary ways and widely open to different interpretations, it has caused confusion and controversy, thus weakening the fight against antisemitism,” the assertion states. say.
Signatories to the Declaration of Jerusalem include well-known critics of current Israeli policies, including Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania, and the writer Peter Beinart, as well as others in the mainstream of contemporary Jewish scholarship. today, including Susannah Heschel, chair of the Jewish study program at Dartmouth; AB Yehoshua, novelist of Israel; and Dov Waxman, chair of the Israeli study at UCLA.
Key versions of the experiment include anti-Semitism scholars in the United States, Israel, Germany and Britain.
