Fol­low­ing the release of the Plan to Com­bat Anti­semitism pro­duced by Spe­cial Envoy Jil­lian Segal AO, the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment has again con­firmed its endorse­ment of the Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Alliance Work­ing Def­i­n­i­tion of Anti­semitism (the IHRA Def­i­n­i­tion).

In response, sev­er­al crit­ics in the media and acad­e­mia have revived the myth that “the author” of the IHRA Def­i­n­i­tion has now dis­owned it.

In fact, the IHRA Def­i­n­i­tion had many authors. Also, the author referred to by the crit­ics has not repu­di­at­ed the IHRA Def­i­n­i­tion. Instead, he is crit­i­cal of the way that some pro­po­nents of the IHRA Def­i­n­i­tion dis­tort its mean­ing in order to over­state its effect. One could make an iden­ti­cal crit­i­cism of IHRA’s detrac­tors.

For a com­pre­hen­sive and accu­rate account of the ori­gins of the IHRA Def­i­n­i­tion, read a 2021 open let­ter from three of the oth­er authors of the IHRA Def­i­n­i­tion.