In a few weeks, Vice-Chancellors will be discussing a request by a group of federal politicians to endorse the latest weapon in Zionists’ longstanding bid to suppress criticism of Israeli apartheid on campus—the highly controversial definition of antisemitism produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The VCs were asked to endorse the definition in December by a new group, the Australian Parliamentary Friends of the IHRA. Their decision will constitute a watershed moment for universities’ already somewhat threatened credibility as centres of independent analysis and truth-telling. Far from a necessary instrument in the fight against antisemitism, the IHRA definition is a hammer to crush Palestine advocacy, and has been the subject of intense debate internationally for several years.
There is now a very significant body of evidence about the political instrumentalisation of the IHRA definition to suppress criticism of Israel around the world. Amidst the panoply of critiques, including from Jewish and Palestinian groups and even from the definition’s original author, we can thank Independent Jewish Voices Canada for the most comprehensive analysis yet produced. A report from October last year, Unveiling the Chilly Climate: The Suppression of Speech on Palestine in Canada, concludes that the IHRA definition ‘represents an unprecedented attempt to frame criticism of the State of Israel or of the political ideology of Zionism as ‘antisemitism’.
Read the article by Nick Riemer in Overland.