The refusal of the Biden administration to back what is emerging as the gold standard definition of antisemitism is a shocking default. It throws into the mix a competing definition that allows antipathy to Jews to masquerade as criticism of Israel. Why is President Biden backsliding on this, save to accommodate the growing anti-Jewish flank of his party? He throws into doubt America’s resolve in fighting the world’s oldest hate.

The administration feints at moral clarity, acknowledging that the “most prominent” definition of antisemitism is the one adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which the United States has “embraced.” The government of Germany, for crying out loud, has endorsed it. For America, though, it is a grudging first among equals. It’s given hardly a ringing, or any, endorsement. That’s a dodge. The issue, of course, is Israel.  

The IHRA labels as antisemitic “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” by “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to the Jewish state by “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” It recognizes that antisemitism is an inherent feature, not a bug, of anti-Zionism. The Jewish state and the state of the Jews are intertwined.

Next, the backtrack: “The Administration welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.” Nexus, drafted at the University of Southern California, maintains that “paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of antisemitism” because “there are numerous reasons for devoting special attention to Israel and treating Israel differently.”

What malarky. For if Nexus is true on its face then the IHRA definition can’t be true — and vice versa. So by letting Nexus through the door, President Biden negates the first endorsement and makes kosher a range of the attacks on Israel from the left. This is evident in an accompanying “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education trumpeting an “Antisemitism Awareness Campaign” that fails to mention the words “Israel” or “Zionism.” 

It does mention kosher food. How nice. A catering plan would have done little to deter an address like, say, that offered at CUNY’s Law School this week, in which the speaker called — to applause — for “fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world” and claimed, to a room full of graduates and family, that “Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshipers, murdering the old, the young.” 

With friends of the Nexus approach numbering the Council on American-Islamic Relations — they are acknowledged by the administration in an accompanying “fact sheet” that lists those who contributed to its efforts — who needs enemies? In a statement, CAIR marks that the strategy “does not adopt the disputed IHRA definition” of antisemitism as “binding policy” and sees in it a green light to “engage in BDS.”

Ambassador Haley, running for president, offers a helpful dose of clarity. She tweets that antisemitism is “not hard to define if you’re serious about stopping it.” She would know, having spent time at the United Nations, where Zionism was once declared racism and where antipathy to Israel is the constant — and leading — drumbeat. She calls the strategy “shameful”  and an act of “pandering to the radical Left and siding with Israel’s enemies.”

Our own view is that it was a mistake to try to codify antisemitism in American policy or law. A decade ago in Germany an attempt was made to defend an attack on a synagogue by suggesting that the attackers’ motive was not antisemitic but merely anti-Zionist. The IHRA definition of antisemitism would have blocked that defense. Nexus enshrines it. It would be better to avoid adopting any official statement than opening the door to such mockery. 

One sage with whom we spoke, Ruth Wisse, makes the point that it’s not all that complicated. She calls the administration’s strategy an “attempt to misdirect antisemitism so that you are justified in not dealing with it” and an example of “fighting yesterday’s war” at a time when anti-Zionism is the “great unifier” among those hostile to Jews. “Iran intends to destroy the state of Israel,” she observes. “What are we talking about?”