@mehdirhasan I honestly don't think the IHRA is the problem - or at least, it isn't enough of a problem to justify not using it. I have given this quite a bit of thought. In and around the debate over antisemitism is the debate over Israel-Palestine, the are connected as we all know.
@mehdirhasan The debate over Israel-Palestine is extremely polarised and there is a huge amount of point-scoring, talking points and zero sum argument (MY FACTS ARE BETTER THAN YOUR FACTS) on two sides. I have occasionally dipped into it and obviously experience it through my own community...
@mehdirhasan And to a large degree the "debate" is not really a debate between people who are listening to each other or trying to reach a reasoned conclusion, they are more like "teams" and expend most energy bolstering their own arguments and discovering new and better arguments to do that
@mehdirhasan And obviously the Israel advocacy movement ("hasbarah") has hugely contributed to that as have the panoply of Palestinian advocacy organisations. Both post endless videos and articles which are an extension of the dynamic I referred to earlier. Not a debate - point scoring
@mehdirhasan Within those advocacy movements there are aggressive individuals and teams who go out doing kind of guerrilla advocacy using a variety of political tactics. One of those tactics is attempting to shut down unhelpful opponents. E.g. the BDS movement attacking Israeli academics...
@mehdirhasan ... and the Israeli advocacy groups who may use blurred lines around the definition of antisemitism (and not usually in bad faith, but it doesn't really matter for these purposes as people have different motivations for doing stuff and bad faith is elastic concept anyway)
@mehdirhasan Now back to IHRA - I think as a definition it quite deftly straddles the line between antisemitism & political speech but because of the "could, taking into account context"/"criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic"
@mehdirhasan The key point is that it depends on a responsible tribunal or council or police force or whatever applying it. It allows for a big chunk of discretion. As with many, many codes of conduct or racism definitions. It has to be sensitively applied.
@mehdirhasan So I don't have a problem, really, with using it because I believe that identifying modern antisemitism isn't always straightforward (see also: Islamophobia) and IHRA provides a useful starting point. That's all it is really. BUT
@mehdirhasan In and amongst the extremely polarised debate over Israel-Palestine, with the talking points and advocacy groups etc, any leeway or discretion may be exploited. I think that is *unavoidable* and would apply equally to the original NEC definition or Corbyn's gloss.
@mehdirhasan Because the debate isn't going to get more sophisticated, it will remain as it is which is highly polarised and tribal (in the political sense of the word). Sorry this has been longer than I intended but I think the issues are really about the debate not IHRA
@mehdirhasan One more point about this which I think is a difficult one for many. Important to remember that *in fact* a sigfniciant amount of advocacy ostensibly around Israel-Palestine shades into antisemitism e.g. through conspiracy theories and careless or reckless hostility.
@mehdirhasan To change that will require modulating speech and to some extent changing the ground rules for the debate. How could it not? I'll give you an example. In Geoffrey Robertson QC's opinion which is a high point of the argument against IHRA, clearly done in god faith, there were...
@mehdirhasan ... two parts in the first version (later changed) which I would describe as keying into conspiracy theories. 1st that AIPAC stands for American Jewish [it's actually Israel] Public Affairs Committee, and so was in fact a powerful 'Jewish lobby'. 2nd that all Jews in the world...
@mehdirhasan ... are automatically granted Israeli citizenship "whether they like it or not". Guessing that must be a widely held fake fact amongst activists (I have been asked about it lots) but it's just not true - has never been true. It's a conspiracy theory which is about dual loyalty
@mehdirhasan Now I'm not making a point about that opinion really, I'm pointing to an example of where a high profile and important intervention in the debate was kind of infected with dodgy assumptions. I think much of debate is like that and it needs to change, really, as it's not helping.
@mehdirhasan Anyway, you'll be relieved to hear I'm done now.
