“Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
– The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

Today, the UK Labour Party’s ruling council approved a concocted definition of anti-Semitism called the IHRA “working definition,” which defines anti-Zionism and comparisons of Israel to Nazism as Jew-hatred. Over the past few weeks, I’ve written three articles about the witch hunt within the Party orchestrated by a sordid cabal of Tories, the UK Israel Lobby and the Israeli government. One of the articles specifically profiled the IHRA, who created it, their motivations, and the toxic effect it would have if adopted.
Apparently, in order to put this entire controversy to bed, the Party has conceded defeat to the powers arrayed against it. It has accepted the entire definition, including the most controversial aspects, the “examples” offered:
Contemporary examples of anti-Semitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:
- Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
- Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis
Here is my critique of these examples from Middle East Eye:
Though the dual loyalty claim may be used by anti-Semites to disparage Diaspora Jews, the fact is that the most rabidly pro-Israel Jews may legitimately be criticised for espousing views which harm the interests of their native land, while promoting Israel’s own interests. This is not an anti-Semitic charge.
Claiming that Israel is a “racist endeavour” is in no way anti-Semitic. In fact, it is a justified critique, as the most recent passage of the Jews-only nation state law shows.
The final provision forbidding comparison of Israel to the Nazis is equally troubling. Of course, Israel and its Diaspora advocates don’t want to be compared to the Nazis. But the fact is that Israel has become ever more racialist in nature, especially during the 12-year premiership of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Promoting Jewish-only developments, ethnically cleansing Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, forced expulsion of African refugees, proposals to exclude Israeli Palestinian towns from Israel: these are policies defined by their racial character. And that’s not even to mention the Nakba, during which over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in order to make way for the state of Israel.
In other words, some of the same criticisms of the Nazi racialist platform apply to today’s Israel. This example, had it been restricted to an issue like the Holocaust or the claim of Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, might have had some validity. But the sweeping refusal to consider any comparisons to Nazism is appalling and a violation not just of free speech, but of valid historical analysis.
The Party governing body also rejected a statement prepared by Corbyn which fought back against some of the worst IHRA provisions. It included this paragraph:
“It cannot be considered racist to treat Israel like any other state or assess its conduct against the standards of international law. Nor should it be regarded as antisemitic to describe Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
In other words, Israel may not be called racist even if it violates international law and its policies are indeed racist.
The only concession made to critics was a statement appended which guaranteed free speech to critics of Israel. But that’s like a man whose house survives a tornado, while all his neighbors homes are destroyed; then suggesting what good luck the Lord bestowed on his town. The right to free speech means nothing when you’ve foreclosed all of the topics which critics might use to criticize Israel.
Though I am not British and cannot join the Labour Party, it saddens me to think that if I was British I could be expelled for offering clear-eyed, careful and precise criticisms of Israel which violate this vague definition of anti-Semitism concocted by Israel Lobby apparatchiks in the past decade. Here are a few others who would also be expelled from the Labour Party: Profs. Yeshaya Leibowitz and Zeev Sternhell (h/t to reader, Deir Yassin), one of whom called Israeli far-right nationalists “Judeo-Nazis.” Former IDF chief of staff, Yair Golan, who noted that Israeli society today reminded him of the period just before and after Hitler came to power.
And why don’t we flip this situation on its head: if comparing Israel to Nazis is anti-Semitic and grounds for expulsion, why aren’t similar ridiculous comparisons of Iran’s leadership, or Hamas, or any Palestinian leader to Nazis similarly proscribed? Why shouldn’t we demand that Israeli leaders be similarly expelled from their parties for making such odious and ridiculous comparisons? The answer of course, is that Israeli racism is perfectly acceptable both in Israel and even outside it. Further, why not demand the Tories expel leaders like Boris Johnson for making such offensive comments about women wearing the hijab?
If we draw out such comparisons to their logical conclusion you can see how IHRA takes you down a very slippery slope. If the Israel Lobby wants to rule Nazi comparisons anti-Semitic then it surely ought to police its own for their outright Islamophobia. Not doing so reveals the level of hypocrisy in the current anti-Labour campaign.
The Party is naïve if it thinks it has put this episode to bed with this bit of hocus-pocus. The Lobby will not be satisfied. It will be only relent once Corbyn is toppled as Party leader. In the meantime, its minions will be ferreting through the membership rolls and social media accounts searching for offenses they can use to demand massive purges of the membership. Then, it will move on to other wedge issues it can dredge up to damage his reputation. And there will be other concocted claims and scandals to come. Mark my words, this is not the end (to paraphrase Churchill). Not even the beginning of the end. Labour must eventually rid itself of this ill-considered definition and stand up to the Lobby. It must be prepared if necessary to tell its critics, most of whom aren’t Labour Party members or supporters, to take their business elsewhere.
We must not permit the Israel Lobby to determine who is a kosher Labour Party member. We must not permit it to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. This is a crime against truth, history and justice.
Would you be open for a comparison of Iran to Nazi Germany for Iran’s treatment of LGBT?
@ Yoni: I could care less what you claim. Everything you write is propaganda, not to mention Islamophobic.
There is absolutely no way such a comparison is valid. The Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of gay men, Gypsies, Jews, Communists, etc. They committed genocide. How does Iran compare to that? Yes, they’re homophobic. Yes, they’ve engaged in violence against homosexuals. But genocide? Are you daft?
And do show me anything you’ve ever written supporting gay rights. Then I’ll entertain your bogus claims without a snicker.
My patience is wearing thin, my friend.
You couldn’t ask for a better reply from you.
It is hard to believe any country can match the crimes committed by the Nazis. Not Assad with the Syrians citizens, not MbS with the Yemen, not Myanmar with Rohingya and even not ISIS with whoever they were burning alive. The Nazis caused the death of over 50 million people and the Jews were only one of the groups slaughtered by them.
Therefore when you write “But the sweeping refusal to consider any comparisons to Nazism is appalling…” – why won’t you consider Iran’s treatments of LGBT or Assad or MbS or Myanmar or China or the US?
Somehow, the only people that can be compared to Nazis are Israelis. IHRA says this is antisemitism.
Other then Israel, what other country in the world is being compared with the Nazis?
I’d really like to hear.
Richard. Regarding your decision to moderate my comments, I can only say that, ‘you take the most flak when your hitting the target’.
@ Li Hing Lo: The U.S. and our foreign policy is often compared to Nazis. That’s happened for many decades. THe dictators of many Latin American countries are often compared to, and themselves are, Nazis.
Pro-Israel hacks like you don’t hit their target. You try but miss every time.
“The Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of gay men, Gypsies, Jews, Communists, etc. They committed genocide. How does Iran compare to that? ”
The Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of gay men, Gypsies, Jews, Communists, etc. They committed genocide. How does Israel compare to that?
BTW, the only dictators left in Latin American are leftists like Ortega, Castro and Maduro, and no one is calling them Nazis.
I googled American foreign policy and ‘Nazi-like’, but I’ve drawn a blank. Can you point me in the right direction?
@ Li Hing Ho: Apparently, you don’t understand that there is a distinct difference between the actual act of genocide and the laws and events that culminated in that act. Regarding the Nazi racial laws including prejudice and violence against a religious-ethnic minority, the comparison is more than apt. Concerning the commission of genocide, luckily for you and your sorry hasbara ass Israel has not gone there…yet. Thus, it is not justified to compare Nazi genocide to what Israel has done to the Palestinians, so far. Of course, Israel has murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians since 1948 and that is a crime. But not on the order of genocide.
And this is precisely the problem with IHRA: it takes a sledge hammer to an issue that demands a scalpel. You wield the hammer, while I wield the scalpel. There are careful historical analogies that can be made comparing latter-day Israeli laws and policies to those of the Nazi era. But wholesale global comparisons are wrong and should be condemned (as Elisabeth correctly noted in her comment). That’s where IHRA falls completely flat.
As for Latin American dictators, the former right wing dictators were actual Nazis who glorified its ideology and implemented it in their countries. The left wing strongmen you mention do not embrace Nazi ideology. Ortega and Maduro are certainly evil leaders who deserve to be toppled and brought to justice. But they are not Nazis. Despite the awful violence and starvation they’ve wrought, they have not killed ethnic minorities inside their country on the scale Israel has.
Oh, please. You’re being stupid beyond words. Every other word out of the mouths of the radical left during the Vietnam era compared U.S. foreign policy to Nazis. YOu never saw images of Barack Obama as Adolf Hitler? Or how about this Google search which offers scores, if not hundreds of examples. Where have you been? Under a rock? Or perhaps Taiwan is now censoring its Google results, as well as China? Stop relying on Google as your only source of reality and do some real research (or learn to use Google better).
BTW, how did I find the image comparing Obama to Hitler? Google.
I suggest you return to Hasbara Central for retraining (do they offer refresher classes in Taiwan or will you be summoned back to the mother ship?). When you make ludicrous claims about Google as you have you show how flimsy your efforts really are.
It is not just racism that links Israel to the Nazis. Both of them conquered territory to their east in order to create “living room” for their own citizens, and also subjected the inhabitants of that territory to a brutal military occupation. In the case of the Nazis, that lasted for six years, In the case of Israel, it has lasted for 70 years, and is ongoing.
I am British, a registered supporter of the Labour party but not a member. I have just written to my Labour MP, who is generally supportive of Palestinian rights, giving my view of the IHRA examples, and asking what would happen to me if I applied to become a full member. I will let you know what happens.
“Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”
So Israeli academic Zeev Sternhell who wrote an Op-Ed in Haaretz saying that Israel has some common traits with Germany in the thirties is an antisemite and would have been expelled from Labour ?
And Zionists who’ve always been keen on calling Nasser, Arafat etc “Nazis”, whar are they ?
@ Deir Yassin: Not to mention a former IDF deputy chief of staff, Yair Golan, who is a candidate to become chief of staff, who compared Israel’s domestic political scene to the onset of the Nazi era. He too would be expelled from the Labour Party.
I’d like to demand that the Likud create a policy specifying that any member who calls Muslims or Arabs ‘Nazis’ will be expelled from the Party. They’d have to expel every member including all of its leadership.
The comments at Mondoweiss are often not much more than a screed (“genocidal Zionazi scum”, that kind of thing). I find such linking of Israel with Nazism too dumb for words, and I even have no problem labeling it anti-Semitic. (That is because the commenters seem to take a perverse joy in accusing Israeli Jews of being the same as the movement that caused their greatest historical trauma.)
Because I want to stay away from that, and also because it is ineffective if your goal is dialogue and not just venting, I try to find other comparisons. But it is hard, because comparing with the Nazi period comes easily.
In my country people tend to compare anything that has to do with coercion, destruction or occupation with the Nazi period. That is the nearest equivalent that is still in living memory as everyone’s parents and/or grandparents experienced it. (The Roman and Spanish occupation are way too long ago.)
But now to how universally accepted the IHRA definition is: The EU called upon its member states to adopt it, so it was discussed in the Dutch parliament and rejected. (“Vague, confusing, unnecessary, as a solid anti-Semitism monitoring system is already in place.”) Many more European parliaments must have discussed it seeing that they were called upon to do so by the EU, but it seems to have been almost universally rejected as only the UK, Scotland, Germany, Rumania, Lithuania, Macedonia and one other European country which I forgot, adopted it. Outside of Europe only Israel adopted it. Not even the US.
Yet in the British press it is ALWAYS called “the internationally accepted IHRA definition.”
Fake news. Sad!
Judging by that definition, no dialogue can ever be had because any dialogue is considered anti-Semetic. That’s the point of the definition.
Elizabeth – I guess the “people in my country” you refer to didn’t go through Auschwitz or or the killing pits. So while the suffering of many in WW2 cannot be compared to anything and it was all the caused by the Nazis, when the comparison is made it is more mild than saying “it is just like the Nazis”.
Peter Dahu – A lot of dialog can be made and a lot of criticism can be put on Israel and Zionism, but comparison to the Nazis is basically saying “Israelis are pure evil, just as the Nazis were”. IHRA says this is very untrue and if one believe so, it is based on prejudice which makes one antisemitic.
?
Elisabeth – I’ll try again.
Saying, times are hard and it was also hard during the nazis is different than labeling someone or a group as Nazis.
That bad was very different if you were Jew, LGBT or PoW in WW2 or if you just lived under Nazi occupation.
So, when people complain do they say the politicians responsibile are Nazis or a vague statement that it is bad.
There have been and there are many examples of occupations around the world. The comparison to Nazis does come to make factual comparison but to demonize the subject of comparison.
People associate any kind of coercion, oppression or control with the Nazi period. This can go pretty far. Say a policemen asks people to identify themselves (the police need to have a reason, by the way; they are not allowed to do it just on a whim) then you have the chance that people will respond by sticking their arm in the air and shouting “Ausweis bitte!”. It is absolutely not limited to things having to do with Israel. (South American dictators for instance were also routinely compared to Nazi’s, and the term ‘islamofascist’ is everywhere on the airwaves, whereas I have never heard the term ‘Zionazi’ used.)
So when people use Nazi comparisons for Israel part of it is just habit. They do not realize that in the case of Israel, expressing your anger in a different way would perhaps show better taste and be more effective.
I am not saying that any parallels drawn between Israeli policies and (early) Nazi policies are automatically anti-Semitic, but I think that in general it should be avoided, unless it would be done very cautiously and for very good reason.
@ Yoni: On the contrary. You don’t know anything about Elisabeth. She lives in Holland which certainly did suffer immensely during WWII. It’s Jewish citizens were sent to Auschwitz.
“All suffering” was not caused by the Nazis during WWII. Learn your history.
You’ve completely missed the point of my comment, which explains why comparing Israeli policy, laws, etc. to the Nazis is NOT saying “Israelis are just as the Nazis were.” Find my comment, read it, and stop spouting nonsense.
Israel can be compared with the situation in Nazi Germany. What Israel is now resembles in many ways Germany in 1938, constant bulling to neighbours, racist laws, misstreatment of millions, open violent racism, concentration camps, political prisoners, building weapons for new wars etc. Israel is not yet the Germany of 1942. But what Israel will do to the 5 million Palestinians under their rule is still open. Only a total naive optimist can believe, that this all will be solved peacefully and equality will be the new norm. More likely is a mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands Palestinians. The only comparison point in western world’s near history with Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews themselves constantly use Nazi Germany as the “example” of racism, misstreatment, unequality, genocide, concentration camps, ghettos etc. It would be easy to support denying the comparison of present days Israel and Germany of 30’s as naive “antisemitism”, if there would not be so many similarities. The problem for us watching this “show” is that there is much same and likelyhood that the present path leads to the same as in Germany of the 40’s.