London Assembly votes for IHRA antisemitism definition

The London Assembly in session.

Emergency motion on antisemitism passes at London Assembly

Andrew Dismore’s website
February 08, 2017

Labour London Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden Andrew Dismore proposed successfully an emergency motion at the London Assembly to adopt the definition of antisemitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).  (text of motion, passed unanimously, below)

Mr Dismore said:

Last week’s annual report by the Community Safety Trust (CST) is shocking but regrettably not surprising.

They recorded a significant rise in UK antisemitism with 1,309 incidents in 2016, a rise of 36%.

Antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, is a very light sleeper and easily triggered. by events at home and elsewhere.

Nothing in this motion is aimed at stifling legitimate criticism of Israel, but it makes clear where that ends and demonization of the Jewish state as a manifestation of antisemitism begins. Indeed I have my own criticisms.

Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank is wrong and against international law.

I recognise the Palestinian people’s desire for national self-determination as the same for Jewish people.

And If I were Israeli I would never have voted for Mr Netanyahu.

But when people from the left proclaim that Israel is a Nazi state or compare Israelis to SS murderers, they are using the most horrific and personal imagery to Jewish people. To do so is not only antisemitic in itself, but also downplays the significance of the Holocaust and the suffering of its victims and survivors.

Conversely, on the right, believers that the world is engaged in a clash of cultures approve of a strong Jewish state in the Middle East – they support Israeli settlement building as part of a generational struggle rooted in Islamophobia. These same groups on the right hold in disdain the majority of diaspora Jews, who are overwhelmingly centrist liberals especially in the UK and North America. This in the eyes of the alt-right makes them enemies of their national projects.

Steve Bannon, chief strategist to President Trump is on record using various demeaning terms about Jews. When he refers to a shadowy group of “cosmopolitan elites in the media that live in a handful of larger cities” He means Jews.

At a meeting of Jewish Republicans, President Trump stated how honoured he was to be in a room of ‘great negotiators’ and then went on to suggest that they wouldn’t like him because he doesn’t want their money. Another antisemitic trope.

So why is this relevant to this motion?

As former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks said, antisemitism is a mutating virus that can attach itself to the political left or right, minority or majority or within the national consciousness of a people.

Thus 2016 was a woeful time for antisemitic incidents with spikes around the EU referendum and Brexit vote; and the election of US President Trump.

2017 has not started well, either. During the weekend after the inauguration of President Trump, in Edgware and Mill Hill a brick with swastikas was thrown through the window of a Jewish home, eggs were thrown at Jewish people and others subject to verbal abuse.

The hyped up anti-immigrant campaigns around Brexit and in the USA are not merely co-incidental but causal, used by some misguided and unpleasant individuals as permission to display openly their prejudices- prejudices directed not just at Jews, as the CST has so graphically shown, but including the full gamut of hate crime creating a perceptible climate of increased racial and religious hate and xenophobia.

Placards for Allianz für Deutschland. They say ‘No socialism ever again. Freedom and prosperity’

And the prognosis remains bleak throughout wide swaths of continental Europe too, with the French Presidential election seeing the rise of the Front Nationale’s Marine Le Pen, the mounting challenge of Alliance Für Deutschland in Germany , and other far right parties making ground in Austria and the Netherlands.

The CST statistics were published around Holocaust Memorial Day, an event in the calendar I was instrumental in founding when I was MP for Hendon. This year’s commemorations were especially poignant, and came as a sadly necessary reminder that divisive and racist rhetoric can lead to the most appalling crimes. If we really mean “never again” then we must all play our part in calling out, challenging and rooting out antisemitism and hatred.

It is a long motion for which I make no apology. Too many people have tried to argue over whether or not a particular comment was antisemitic. This motion makes clear what is not acceptable.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan shares our concerns. He has given a clear personal lead by making combating hate crime a key priority for the Metropolitan Police; and by demonstrating through personal example and his interfaith and inter-community initiatives there is no space for racism and antisemitism in London.

By passing this motion, the Assembly will also demonstrate its commitment to fighting antisemitism.

But this is something we need to do not just as London’s Assembly but also as individuals, calling out, challenging and rooting out antisemitism and hatred, whenever we see it personally.’

Labour team in the London assembly election. Andrew Dismore is third from the Right, front row.
Photo from Camden New Journal

The full text of the Motion is:

This Assembly expresses alarm at the rise in antisemitism in recent years across the UK including London. This includes incidents when criticism of Israel has been expressed using anti-Semitic tropes.

We therefore welcome the UK Government’s announcement on December 11th 2016 that it will sign up to the internationally recognised International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) guidelines on antisemitism which define antisemitism thus:

[The IHRA guidelines are published in full in the posting below this one. They contain one sentence about the ‘right to self-determination’ which many object to.]

The definition is:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

….

This Assembly hereby adopts the above definition of antisemitism as set out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and pledges to combat this pernicious form of racism.

NOTE

It is this sentence in the guidelines giving examples of antisemitism that many object to:

“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”

• By elision, it is saying that any distinct ethnic or religious group has the right to self-determination in the form of a national state.

There are no criteria on what qualifies which communities to have this ‘right’. In fact, no such right exists. If it did there would be hundreds more national states especially in Africa and Asia.

• The definition of being Jewish was made exclusively  racial by the Nazis.   It also provides the grounds on who has the ‘right’ to immigrate to Israel – anyone with a Jewish parent. It is also why, now, Jews do not proselytize; indeed, converting to Judaism is a long and arduous process.

The foundation and formation of Israel was on racial, or ethnic, grounds. A portion of the  existing inhabitants, the Palestinian Bedouin were accepted as bona fide citizens of the new state. But the raison d’être of the new state of  Israel was exclusively to provide a  homeland for Jews. This, it was racist. No serious historian of the creation and formation of Israel denies it was done on racial grounds.