Their Rule 4:

No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don’t question the statehood of Israel.

Europe@feddit.org removed my comment for de-tangling the conflation of antisemitism and anti-zionism. A dangerous conflation that is genuinely antisemitic and fuels antisemitic hate as it conflates the actions of Israel and Zionism to all Jewish people and Judaism.

This prioritization of the German definition, the adopted IHRA definition, is promoting antisemtitism and is diametrically opposed to the ‘No antisemitism’ aspect of the rule. The definition has been condemned by the writer of the definition, a multitude of human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch (HRW), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), B’Tselem, Peace Now, and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and over 120 leading scholars of anti-semitism.

Germany Is Trying to Combat Antisemitism. Experts Warn a New Resolution May Do the Opposite

Fifteen Israeli nongovernmental organizations, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, B’Tselem and Peace Now, issued an open letter in September stating their concern that the resolution, especially the IHRA definition, could be weaponized to “silence public dissent.”

This could also affect Jewish voices speaking out for Palestinian rights and opposing the occupation, they added. “Paradoxically, the resolution may therefore undermine, not protect, the diversity of Jewish life in Germany,” the letter argued.

Rights groups urge UN not to adopt IHRA anti-Semitism definition

"The IHRA definition has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe,” the letter said.

US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Israeli rights group B’Tselem, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) were among the signatories

The letter is the latest attempt by human rights advocates to urge the UN not to adopt the IHRA definition. In November, more than 120 scholars called on the world body to reject the definition, due to its “divisive and polarising” effect.

128 scholars ask UN not to adopt IHRA definition of anti-Semitism

In a statement published on Thursday, the 128 scholars, who include leading Jewish academics at Israeli, European, United Kingdom and United States universities, said the definition has been “hijacked” to protect the Israeli government from international criticism

Why the man who drafted the IHRA definition condemns its use

The drafter of what later became popularly known as the EUMC or IHRA definition of antisemitism,including its associated examples, was the U.S. attorney Kenneth S. Stern. However, in written evidence submitted to the US Congress last year, Stern charged that his original definition had been used for an entirely different purpose to that for which it had been designed. According to Stern it had originally been designed as a ”working definition” for the purpose of trying to standardise data collection about the incidence of antisemitic hate crime in different countries. It had never been intended that it be used as legal or regulatory device to curb academic or political free speech. Yet that is how it has now come to be used. In the same document Stern specifically condemns as inappropriate the use of the definition for such purposes, mentioning in particular the curbing of free speech in UK universities, and referencing Manchester and Bristol universities as examples. Here is what he writes:

The EUMC “working definition” was recently adopted in the United Kingdom, and applied to campus. An “Israel Apartheid Week” event was cancelled as violating the definition. A Holocaust survivor was required to change the title of a campus talk, and the university [Manchester] mandated it be recorded, after an Israeli diplomat [ambassador Regev] complained that the title violated the definition.[See here]. Perhaps most egregious, 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 university [Bristol] then conducted the inquiry. And while it ultimately found no basis to discipline the professor, the exercise itself was chilling and McCarthy-like. [square brackets added – GW]

  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldOP
    6·
    11 hours ago

    The main issue here is that Israel is an Apartheid Settler Colonialist State. The German law prevents even mentioning the reality of Israel as an Apartheid or as a Settler Colonialist Entity, both of which are critical to the understanding of the current situation and the resolution.

    Controversially, the German government officially classifies the following as antisemitic: the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, the accusation that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, and the depiction of Israel as a colonial or settler-colonial entity. Many of those arrested and cancelled in Germany over allegations of antisemitism have been Jews critical of Israel’s policies.[4]

    Due to the Settler Colonialism that have atomized the West Bank into hundreds of isolated Bantustans, it’s already a one-state reality. I’ll quote Avi Schlaim and Ilan Pappe below as they explain the situation quite comprehensivly.

    An Apartheid State has no right to exist. This was the same for Apartheid South Africa. The state was abolished and replaced with one that has equal rights. It did not mean the expulsion of all Afrikaners, it meant the creation of a new state with the integration of equal rights and reparations for the oppressed. It’s the same situation with the current state of Israel, and the way forward also requires the right of return for all Palestinians.

    Settlements and the One-State Reality

    The reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.

    This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice. See: The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948, the Transfer Committee, and the JNF which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate, before the mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948: Plan Dalet, Declassified Massacres of 1948, and Details of Plan C (May 1946) and Plan D (March 1948) . Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967: Haaretz, Forward; while the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements (Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ). The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.

    The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

    "Its support – and this includes what is even called the ‘peace camp’ in Israel – for a two-state solution is an idea that says that you do not have to directly control every part of historical Palestine in order to establish your dominance and hegemony between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. So, if you can squeeze the Palestinians into small Bantustans and allow them to have a flag and a semblance of a government, there are quite a few Israelis who do not mind at all, so long as this will be the last and final kind of settlement for the Palestine question. Which means no real political rights for the Palestinians, no right of return for the refugees, and keeping all Palestinians in different parts of historical Palestine, at best as second-rate citizens, at worst, as subjects in an apartheid state.

    State violence – official and otherwise – is part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The regime treats land as a resource designed to serve the Jewish public, and accordingly uses it almost exclusively to develop and expand existing Jewish residential communities and to build new ones. At the same time, the regime fragments Palestinian space, dispossesses Palestinians of their land and relegates them to living in small, over-populated enclaves.

    The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.