The following article has been published in the ABC Religion & Ethics by ECAJ Co-CEO, Peter Wertheim.

Pro­ponents of boycotts, divest­ment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel typically react with indig­na­tion when their views are denounced as anti­semit­ic.

They tell us it’s not racist to criticise the policies of any gov­ern­ment, or to speak up for human rights; that some Jews (albeit a tiny minority) support BDS, so BDS can’t be anti­semit­ic; that it cannot be racist to state a fact, and it’s a fact, so they tell us, that Israel is an apartheid State.

BDS sup­port­ers are not only wrong about the facts, the law and history.  Under­pin­ning their thinking is a false dichotomy: their belief that cri­ti­cisms of Israel and anti­semit­ism are mutually exclusive.

Yet whether they acknow­ledge it or not, the inter­na­tion­ally-recog­nised Working Defin­i­tion of Anti­semit­ism adopted by the Inter­na­tion­al Holocaust Remem­brance Alliance (IHRA), emphat­ic­ally affirms that they are not mutually exclusive.

Made up of 33 demo­crat­ic countries, including Australia, the IHRA in 2019 received support for its defin­i­tion of anti­semit­ism from Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rap­por­teur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, who encour­aged countries “to adopt it for use in education, awareness-raising and for mon­it­or­ing and respond­ing to mani­fest­a­tions of anti­semit­ism”.

The IHRA defin­i­tion says that when criticism of Israel:

• is couched in terms which employ or appeal to negative ste­reo­types of Jewish people generally;
• or denies the Jewish people their right to self-determ­in­a­tion;
• or applies double standards by requiring of Israel standards of behaviour not expected or demanded of any other demo­crat­ic nation;
• or holds Jews col­lect­ively respons­ible for actions of the state of Israel,

then the line has been crossed.  It’s anti­semit­ism.

When law-abiding Aus­trali­an Jews who support Israel are accused of being more loyal to Israel than Australia, it’s anti­semit­ism.

When classical ste­reo­types are deployed about Jews as a people having inor­din­ate control over the media, economy, gov­ern­ment or other societal insti­tu­tions as a means of sup­port­ing Israel, it’s anti­semit­ism.

According to the author­it­at­ive Gen 17 study, 88% of Aus­trali­an Jews feel a sense of respons­ib­il­ity to ensure that the State of Israel continues to exist in peace and security.  When BDS sup­port­ers denigrate us as “the Jewish lobby”, “the Zionist lobby” or “the pro-Israel lobby”, a sinister influence rather than Aus­trali­ans legit­im­ately exer­cising the right of all citizens to promote our views, that’s anti­semit­ism.

According to the IHRA defin­i­tion, claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour, for example by smearing Israel as an “apartheid State”, is a way of denying the legit­im­acy of a Jewish State and thus denying Jewish people their right to national self-determ­in­a­tion.  Israel’s detract­ors wouldn’t deny that right to any other people, least of all the Palestini­ans.  It’s a double standard, and therefore anti­semit­ism.

Contrary to the dogma of BDS sup­port­ers, the apartheid smear is not a “fact” at all.  It’s a political and legal opinion, rejected by most eminent inter­na­tion­al lawyers, including many who are generally critical of Israel.  All of Israel’s citizens, Jews, Arabs and others, have equal voting, civil and religious rights.   The BDS-ers’ skewed concept of apartheid could be applied to almost every country in the world, including Australia.  Yet they only seek to boycott Israel. Another double standard. Another example of anti­semit­ism.

During the Gaza war in 2014, the Jewish community, and many other Aus­trali­ans, were shocked by a cartoon which appeared in a daily newspaper. It portrayed a classical negative ste­reo­type of a Jew, with a prominent hooked nose, wearing a Jewish religious head-covering and, in case readers missed those two give-aways, a con­spicu­ous Jewish Star of David placed on the back of the armchair in which he was seated. The figure was shown operating a remote detonator to blow up civilians in Gaza, with no more thought than a person operating the remote control of a tele­vi­sion set.  Anti­semit­ism?  Of course it was.

Yes, it is also a fallacy to suggest that every criticism of Israel is anti­semit­ic. The IHRA defin­i­tion itself states that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti­semit­ic”. The serious charge of anti­semit­ism should never falsely be made in order to stifle political debate.  However, as the IHRA defin­i­tion demon­strates, it is equally fal­la­cious to assert that there are no forms of criticism of Israel which are anti­semit­ic.

Little wonder that habitual polemi­cists against Israel either rarely mention the IHRA defin­i­tion, or try to dismiss it.  That was the tack initially taken by UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn until the political stench sur­round­ing his promotion of anti-Israel forms of anti­semit­ism within his own party became too much. UK Labour finally accepted the IHRA defin­i­tion in its entirety.

Many critics of Israel in Australia have yet to undergo a similar evolution.  They are still under the illusion that their sub­ject­ive opinions about Israel and anti­semit­ism are incon­tro­vert­ible sci­entif­ic truths.

The choice is clear: the inter­na­tion­ally accepted Working Defin­i­tion of Anti­semit­ism of the IHRA; or a self-serving false dichotomy advocated by pro­ponents of BDS.  The way anti­semit­ism is under­stood by the vast majority of Jewish people – the people who are the targets of anti­semit­ism and are the best qualified by history and exper­i­ence to recognise it when they see it – aligns with the IHRA defin­i­tion.

That is why the ration­al­isa­tions of BDS sup­port­ers fail to persuade most Aus­trali­an Jews. To para­phrase former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, we will not be lectured to about anti­semit­ism by those people.

Peter Wertheim AM is co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.