6 | JUNE 22 • 2023
1942 - 2023
Covering and Connecting
Jewish Detroit Every Week
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opinon
The Hole in Biden’s Antisemitism Plan
O
n May 25, the Biden
administration
published its much
anticipated U.S. National
Strategy to Counter
Antisemitism.
It was much
anticipated,
in large part
because of
the alarming
and well-
documented rise
in antisemitic
attacks
against American Jews and
Jewish institutions. To the
administration’s credit, this
rise in antisemitic attacks led
to the White House investing
considerable resources to
shape and create its 60-page
National Strategy.
Before the plan was
released, practically
every mainstream Jewish
organization had urged the
White House to use the
most accepted definition
of antisemitism, adopted
by numerous democratic
governments and Jewish
institutions around the world
— the IHRA definition.
After all, it’s common sense
that before one can solve a
problem, one has to define it.
Albert Einstein supposedly
once said that if he were
given an hour to solve a
problem, he would spend 55
minutes defining the problem
and then five minutes solving
it.
The reason the IHRA
definition is so important
is that it captures how
antisemitism has evolved
over the last 100 years to
include not only irrational
xenophobic hatred for the Jew
as an individual, but also for
the Jews as a nation — that is,
hatred of Israel and Zionism.
The late U.K. Chief Rabbi
Lord Jonathan Sacks defined
antisemitism as “Denying
the right of Jews to exist
collectively as Jews with
the same rights as everyone
else. It takes different forms
in different ages. In the
Middle Ages, Jews were hated
because of their religion.
In the 19th and early 20th
century they were hated
because of their race. Today,
they are hated because of
their nation state, the State of
Israel. It takes different forms,
but it remains the same thing:
The view that Jews have no
right to exist as free and equal
human beings.”
More importantly,
Rabbi Sacks noted how
the 21st century version of
antisemitism has mutated
in a way that allows haters
to deny the hate: “The new
antisemitism has mutated
so that any practitioner of
it can deny that he or she
is an antisemite. After all,
they’ll say, I’m not a racist. I
have no problem with Jews
or Judaism. I only have a
problem with the State of
Israel. But in a world of 56
Muslim nations and 103
Christian ones, there is only
one Jewish state, Israel, which
constitutes one-quarter of one
percent of the land mass of
the Middle East. Israel is the
only one of the 193 member
nations of the United Nations
that has its right to exist
regularly challenged, with one
state, Iran, and many, many
Micha
Danzig
Jewish
Journal
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