Purpose

According to the document's preamble, The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism was created in order to clarify the "limits of legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel, and Palestine", and to be used by those seeking to identify and oppose antisemitism.^[3] It does so through its definition of antisemitism and by providing guidelines intended to characterize distinctions between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel.^[8] Its creators intended for it to be used as an alternative or supplement to the IHRA definition.^[9]

Coordinators

The Jerusalem Declaration was coordinated and authored by an eight-member group that included seven academics and a journalist/filmmaker. The group consisted of two Britons, three Germans, two Israelis and an American.

Drafting and signing

The declaration's coordinators began drafting the document online in June 2020,^[9] and the declaration was publicly released on March 25, 2021, nine months later.^[11][12] Following its completion, the declaration was signed by about 200 scholars in various fields including Jewish studies, Israel studies, Middle Eastern studies, comparative literature, and sociology.^[1][13][3]

Name

The declaration is called the "Jerusalem Declaration" because it was created under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.^[14] The group that drafted its text also intended to do so in Jerusalem but could not as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.^[4]

US State Department

In April 2021, several Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives led by Representative Jan Schakowsky wrote a letter to the United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, urging him to make use of tools against antisemitism beyond the IHRA definition, including the Jerusalem Declaration and Nexus Document. Organizations including Americans for Peace Now and J Street supported the letter while the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and American Jewish Committee (AJC) opposed it.^[5][6]

Responding to the letter, Acting Assistant Secretary Naz Durakoğlu said "the Biden Administration embraces and champions the IHRA nonlegally binding working definition of anti-Semitism in its entirety, including its examples, and the Administration continues to encourage other countries as well as international bodies to do the same". The State Department did not directly address the Jerusalem Declaration in its response.^[7]

Criticism

In an April 2021 opinion article in The Jewish Chronicle, David Hirsh, a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths University of London, criticized the Jerusalem Declaration on the grounds that it "does not help the fight against antisemitism", and has a blind spot for antisemitism that originates on the political left. The JDA, he wrote, is flawed because it "asks institutions to affirm that BDS ... singling out Israel as uniquely colonial or apartheid, and saying that Israel has no right to exist, are not, 'in and of themselves', antisemitic", when, according to Hirsh, those things "are at the heart of contemporary left antisemitism".^[17]

In an April 2021 opinion article in Al Jazeera, Mark Muhannad Ayyash, an associate professor at Mount Royal University criticized the Jerusalem Declaration, saying it was "an orientalist text that fails to produce true opposition to the core problem of the IHRA definition: the silencing and erasure of Palestine and Palestinians". He also said the declaration presents Palestinians as "hostile, reactionary, and emotional", and that "there is very little substantive difference between [the Jerusalem Declaration's 10th] guideline and the IHRA definition's claim that arguing that Israel is a racist endeavour constitutes antisemitism".^[18]

In an April 2021 article in The National Interest, Gerald Steinberg and Asaf Romirowsky said that the Jerusalem Declaration legitimizes increasing violence against Jews and their institutions by politicizing and attempting to undermine efforts to reach a consensus on antisemitism. The authors criticized the declaration for its extensive use of "weasel words" like "on the face of it" and "in and of itself/themselves", which they said obscures the fact that arguments are often reinterpreted in different contexts and take on meaning beyond that of the words used to express them. The authors also claimed the Jerusalem Declaration "marginalizes the core issues of antisemitism" by subordinating it to the fight against all other forms of discrimination.^[19]

In an April 2021 essay in Fathom Journal, Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, criticized the Jerusalem Declaration on the basis that it seeks to accommodate manifestations of "new antisemitism" rather than challenge them. Nelson said the declaration's preamble is dismissive of the ways that antisemitism has stood apart from other forms of racism historically and how that history has shaped Jewish identity. He also said the declaration makes generalizations about antisemitism that do not apply under many circumstances, like claiming that the hallmark of classic antisemitism is "the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil". Nelson also said that many amongst the signers of the declaration are "fierce and uncompromising anti-Zionists who cross a line into antisemitism", including Sergio Luzzatto, a historian at the University of Connecticut who, according to Nelson, believes the medieval blood libel was true.^[20][21]

In an April 2021 op-ed in Haaretz, David Schraub, a law professor at the Lewis & Clark Law School, criticized the Jerusalem Declaration's framing of some forms of speech and conduct as not antisemitic "in and of themselves". According to Schraub this framing has resulted in the "JDA ... being interpreted almost solely as a tool for denying things are antisemitic". He said as a result the JDA has been embraced by those whose main concern about antisemitism is that "we hear too much about it" and whose own conduct could be labeled antisemitic by the declaration. Schraub gave the examples of Richard Falk, a 9/11 truther^[22][23] and signer of the declaration, and Yvonne Ridley, who endorsed the declaration and once said "the Zionists have tentacles everywhere".^[24][25]

In a July 2021 essay in Mosaic, Joshua Muravchik, a professor at the Institute of World Politics, criticized the Jerusalem Declaration for seeking to contextualize antisemitism within a broader fight against all other forms of discrimination because that framing ignores that Jews are often discriminated against by other minorities. He claimed that "In asserting, as a rebuke to the IHRA definition, that the struggle against anti-Semitism is inseparable from similar struggles, the JDA seems to be addressing the wrong audience; much of the anti-Semitism that plagues Jews arises from non-majority groups."^[26]

Response to criticism

In Fathom articles from April and May 2021, Michael Walzer, an original signer of the Jerusalem Declaration, responded to criticisms registered against him and the declaration, and reaffirmed his support for the IHRA definition. He conceded that like the IHRA definition, the Jerusalem Declaration can be misinterpreted. He said the organizers of the declaration should have rejected the signatures of the declaration's antisemitic signatories. He also said he had signed the declaration because he "thought that JDA offered to create a little distance, nothing more, between antisemitism and the Israel/Palestine battles" which he said he knows "often overlap". With regard to calls to repeal the IHRA definition in Great Britain, he said that "rescinding IHRA or replacing it with a definition perceived as more permissive would send a very bad message to students and teachers at British universities".^[27][28]