It’s crunch time. Over the next two days, the Labour party’s national executive committee will meet to decide whether or not to adopt the
IHRA definition of antisemitism in full. Many are saying the debate is essentially over. The former prime minister Gordon Brown
has urged the party to incorporate the IHRA definition and 11 examples into its rulebook “unequivocally and immediately”, as has Unite’s general secretary Len McCluskey. It has been reported that Jon Lansman, founder of Momentum and previously a prominent supporter of
the proposed NEC code of conduct, has since been lobbying the Labour leadership
for full adoption(it should be noted that Momentum itself has not taken a position either way).
It might appear contrarian and needlessly divisive to argue against such an overwhelming uniformity of opinion. However, this seeming consensus excludes British BAME and Palestinian voices on the issue. Full adoption of IHRA in the name of anti-racism is a self-defeating enterprise. As
Margaret Hodge’s comments yesterday demonstrate (“It might have been enough three months ago, it might have just enabled us all to start talking to each other and bring trust again, but I think that moment has passed”), full implementation of IHRA as a tactical measure to contain or mitigate the crisis is inherently flawed. Most importantly, it is a danger to the fundamental right to freedom of expression.
Let me be clear: I recognise the necessity of tackling antisemitism in the Labour party head-on. Jews are once again being painted as rootless cosmopolitans and subverters of democracy in Europe (see Nick Timothy’s
broadside against George Soros in the Telegraph a few months ago). Such tropes are part of a wider project to use idea of the “enemy within” to break and remake society in the image of increasingly hardline ethnonationalism. Antisemitic hate crime in the UK
is at an all-time high. The left cannot afford any complacency. In such a context, and with Jewish trust in Labour at a low ebb, I think it’s necessary to adopt some version of the IHRA definition.
But the IHRA is a proposition with 12 moving parts in total, and that deserves serious scrutiny. This itself has been a point of contention. On Sunday night I joined Mike Katz from the Jewish Labour Movement and Lee Harpin from the Jewish Chronicle
on BBC 5Live for a debate on this issue. As many have argued, Katz said that had the discussion been about any other form of racism, the Labour party would “do what [they] do with any other minority and ask: ‘What is your definition of hatred against you?’ And adopt it.”
This is simply not true. The
Labour party has not adopted working definitions for any other religious or racial minority. It is a statement of fact that even if they adopted only the IHRA top paragraph and none of the examples, Jewish people in the party would be afforded safeguards that no other religious or racial group in the organisation have. Any implementation of a working definition must be attentive to the fact that this creates a hierarchy of racism, in which one minority group is deemed worthy of protection and others are not. This is corrosive to the politics of solidarity, mutual aid, and the shared struggle against racism in all its forms.
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Some might reply that there is no reason why there cannot be a definition of racism for each racial and religious minority – if other groups want an IHRA, nothing is preventing them from asking for one. This is where we must think very seriously about what the work of anti-racism is. Antisemitism, at this point in history, is
primarily experienced as prejudice and hostility towards Jews as Jews, largely without aspects of material dispossession (such as structural unemployment) that
manifest in other forms of racism. Islamophobia and racialised xenophobia
has a much greater proximity to shaping policy, particularly related to immigration, integration and criminal justice. You cannot define these forms of structural discrimination out of existence. The gesture of “IHRA for all” would do very little to fight the institutional racism that dictates the politics of the everyday.
What’s more, this suggestion is an evasion of the fundamental issues presented by the IHRA text. It has been noted by sharper legal minds than mine that the vagueness of the IHRA definition (“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”) means that the 11 examples are invested with an incredible amount of power when it comes to how the code will be applied in disciplinary and data-gathering contexts. Indeed, former judge Stephen Sedley
has suggested that the effect of the definition’s gaps “whether or not it is their purpose, is to permit perceptions of Jews which fall short of expressions of racial hostility to be stigmatised as antisemitic”. Seven out of 11 examples are about how people talk about the state of Israel.
A definition of racism that ought to help us open up a conversation about protecting marginalised groups is primarily concerned with closing down what may be said about a geopolitical conflict. Others have invoked a
version of the Macpherson principle to argue that only victims of a particular form of racism can define the terms of that racism; this is an inherently undemocratic proposition when the definition is so closely entwined with what half a million Labour members may or may not say about Israel.
I do agree wholeheartedly with Katz when he says: “If we violate the rights of one minority, we violate the rights of all of them.” Take the condemnation of IHRA’s working definition by
Palestinian civil society organisations. In an open letter, Palestinian trade unions and other networks argued that “this non-legally binding definition attempts to erase Palestinian history, demonise solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality, suppress freedom of expression, and shield Israel’s far-right regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid from effective measures of accountability in accordance to international law”. They have not been formally consulted on IHRA by the Labour party, nor enjoyed anywhere near the amount of mainstream media coverage as advocates of the definition.
Kenneth Stern, one of the authors of the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia text that IHRA is based on, gave testimony in 2017 to the US House of Representatives judiciary committee regarding the ways political expression has been formally suppressed on UK campuses by those invoking the definition. An “Israel apartheid week”
event was cancelled. A Holocaust survivor
was forced to change the name of a talkfollowing pressure from the Israeli ambassador. And an off-campus group citing the definition called on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor (who received her PhD from Columbia) for antisemitism, based on an article she had written years before.
The adoption of IHRA has never been in isolation – careful study of its application shows that it works alongside external pressure from organisations and individuals aligned with the aims of the Israeli state. Perhaps those in charge of the Labour party disciplinary processes will be able to withstand that pressure.
But let’s take example 7: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.” This is what I consider the most toxic example. Much has been made of the difference between “a” state of Israel and “the” state of Israel. But in reality this has had very little impact on how IHRA has been applied. Even if we are to take this distinction between “a” and “the” to be meaningful, there is a potential effect of imposing uniformity of thought with the prospect of censure for an opposing view. It is Labour party policy to support a two-state solution in
Israel and Palestine. But should a member who thinks that it is legitimate to pursue, through democratic means, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Palestine potentially face reprimand, suspension or exclusion?
Example 7 has been invoked by Joan Ryan, chair of Labour Friends of Israel, in
a recent letter to Jeremy Corbyn urging him to renege on his commitment to upholding UN general assembly resolution 194 guaranteeing Palestinian refugees the right of return, as this would “destroy the Jewish people’s right to self-determination”.
The ambiguity regarding IHRA’s interpretation presents an unacceptable level of risk to Labour members’ freedom of expression regarding solidarity with the Palestinian people, in line with international law. Complaints explicitly invoking example 7 will be made, proceedings initiated and, as Stern observed, such exercises, regardless of the outcome, can be “chilling and McCarthy-like”. My fear is that this will have the effect of restricting free expression and political action.
With the Trump administration de-funding United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees – the agency responsible for service provision to more than 5 million Palestinian refugees – and
stating that right of returnwill not be on the table for any forthcoming peace talks, it is more important than ever that British progressives stand in solidarity with an oppressed people. Full adoption of IHRA – which, even with caveats, only acknowledges Palestinian rights as subordinate to the concerns of Jewish people in the Labour party – is a danger to freedom of expression, the fundamental right upon which all democratic participation rests.
The left cannot be complicit in the marginalisation of Palestinian people in the interest of fighting racism. We can, and we must, do much better than that.
• Ash Sarkar is a senior editor at Novara Media, and lectures in political theory at Anglia Ruskin and the Sandberg Instituut