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Lawmakers in several U.S. states push for laws defining antisemitism

Politics Jan 29, 2024 9:21 AM EDT
Lawmakers in more than a half-dozen U.S. states are pushing laws to define antisemitism, triggering debates about free speech and bringing complicated world politics into statehouses.

Supporters say it’s increasingly important to add a definition that lays out how to determine whether some criticism of Israel also amounts to hatred of Jewish people. In so doing, lawmakers cited the Oct. 7 attacks in which Hamas killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza, which sparked a war that has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politi...tes-push-for-laws-to-define-antisemitism

“For anybody that didn’t think that anti-Zionism could cross into antisemitism, the rest of the world could see that it had,” said Democratic Rep. Esther Panitch, the only Jewish member of Georgia’s Legislature and one of the sponsors of a bill that the state Legislature passed last week. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is expected to sign.

Defined in 2016 by the the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, antisemitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

But Kenneth Stern, the author of IHRA’s definition, said using such language in law is problematic.

“There’s an increasingly large number of young Jews for whom their Judaism leads to an antizionist position,” said Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate. “I don’t want the state to decide that issue.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politi...t-would-define-antisemitism-in-state-law

Some Democrats said that if Georgia moves to define antisemitism, then it should also define what prejudice against Muslims, African Americans or LGBTQ+ people looks like.

“If we’re going to define antisemitism in the law, then there a lot of other groups that experience racism, and they should also have definitions,” said Sen. Sally Harrell, an Atlanta Democrat who didn’t vote on the bill.