When the Right Fights the Right About the Jews

Turns out, overbroad definitions of antisemitism might catch the wrong sorts of people in the net.

Muse AI went pretty literalist this time.

In some ways, this is a “grab your popcorn” newsletter, but the film we’re about to watch is by David Lynch.

Propelled by pro-Israel, or at least pro-pandering, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, the House this week passed The Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023, which would censor political speech critical of Israel, under the guise of addressing antisemitism. The bill’s fate in the Senate is uncertain.

The bill was championed by House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans who, five minutes ago, were railing against censoring speech on college campuses but are now attempting censor speech on college campuses. The vote was 320-91.

But in a delightful twist, some occasionally-antisemitic Republicans actually read the bill, and realized that it could censor. . . them.

Pass the popcorn.

For example, Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Taylor Greene stated:

Charlie Kirk wondered, “Did the House of Representatives just make parts of the Bible illegal?”  And Tucker Carlson answered:

I don’t even hate to say it: these people are mostly correct.  I mean, they’re also kind of antisemitic, but still.

Here’s the story. The AAA requires the Department of Education to adopt the so-called IHRA definition of antisemitism and penalize institutions for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act if they don’t punish offenders. 

This is a terrible idea, and both the ACLU and the normally right-leaning anti-cancel-culture organization FIRE have both come out strongly against the bill.

While the meaning of the term “antisemitism” may seem to be obvious, the last few months of contentious wrangling over it have demonstrated otherwise.  The easy cases are easy: harassing Jews, shouting longtime antisemitic lies at Jews, etc.  But there are also hard cases.  Is it antisemitism whenever someone criticizes Israel? Probably not.  But what about when someone says it has no right to exist? Some conservatives would say so. Is it antisemitic when someone shouts “Die, Zionists!” given that around 80% of American Jews say Zionism is part of their Jewish identity?  Or are all of these political speech – not only not bigotry, but part of our essential civil liberties?

These are highly contentious questions and there are different answers to them, depending on who you ask.  All of them are influenced by Israel politics – which is why the House is even wading into this issue in the first place.  The one embraced by the AAA, which comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) includes several highly controversial “examples of antisemitism in public life,” including:

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

• Applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

To my mind, as I’ve written about many times, these are examples not of antisemitism but of anti-Zionism, which is different.  There is a far more nuanced and careful definition of antisemitism, called the Nexus definition, but since America/Israel politics is dominated by right-leaning organizations, it hasn’t caught on as much.

The AAA, obviously, is part of the whole 2024 spectacle of Republicans—who regularly host antisemites at their gatherings and who frequently engage in structurally antisemitic rhetoric themselves (Soros, global elites, etc)—now suddenly becoming the Defenders of the Jews against all manner of left-wing antisemitism. of course, it’s a tidy coincidence that MAGA Republicans have been crusading against higher education for years, and just so happen to have a new line of attack now, but I’ve written about that elsewhere and won’t go into that here. But this is why we see Elise Stefanik, who has winked at antisemites in the past, railroading university presidents into submission.  And House Speaker Mike Johnson showing up at Columbia to castigate anti-Israel protesters, and the university itself, for making Jews feel unsafe on campus.  (Sidebar: Lots of Jews feel unsafe at ShopRite.  We feel unsafe everywhere.)

And this week’s vote.

Now, the reason Greene, Carlson, and Kirk are (gasp) right is that the IHRA definition, being overbroad and over-inclusive, does indeed demonize a lot of things that many Christians believe.  The provision that got MTG upset was provision nine, which describes as antisemitism “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”

As you might expect, Rep. Greene is also wrong, in at least two ways.  First, the provision kicks in only when the belief that Jews killing Jesus is applied to Israel – not when it’s applied to, you know, regular Jews.  That, itself, says a lot about the IHRA Definition’s priorities. 

Second, Greene and Carlson are wrong about the Gospel – but in fairness, they’re repeating a two-thousand-year-old mistake.  The New Testament does relate how the Pharisees handed over Jesus to the Romans for execution, and Matthew 27:24-25 does have a crowd of Jews taking responsibility for his death: “And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” (In Greek: Τὸ αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ τέκνα ἡμῶν)  But that’s still not the same as the Jews actually doing the killing.