Time for Premier Holt to rescind the IHRA definition of antisemitism

Last week, the Israeli media outlet Haaretz reported that Israel had “committed the largest child massacre in its history. Two hundred children […] were killed in one day.”

This horrific attack is another in a series of violations that have led to the end of the so-called “ceasefire” which was agreed would begin on January 19. The second phase of the ceasefire deal, in which Israeli occupation forces would completely withdraw from Gaza, has been rejected by Israeli Prime Minister and International Criminal Court fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu, paving the way for the continuation of the genocide against Palestinians.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently stated that U.S. President Donald Trump “fully supports” the attacks carried out by the Israeli military.

And in an interview with Fox News, the U.S. deputy special envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus said that the Trump administration started its term by giving Israel “all the weapons it needs to finish its fight.”

If Canada is to come to grips with its relationship to Israel, to Palestine, and to the genocide that is continuing to unfold before our eyes, governments at all levels must seek to undo the harms that have been done by obscuring and protecting Israel’s actions using the shield of the so-called IHRA definition of antisemitism. It was adopted by the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly on March 25, 2021, almost exactly four years ago. It’s time for the province to rescind that motion.

Crackdown on dissent

The widespread condemnation of the genocidal actions of Israel have come with an unprecedented wave of repression across the world, most notably in the “liberal democracies” of North America and Europe. Rather than stand as beacons of free speech and freedom of peaceful assembly, many countries have introduced a wave of authoritarian measures against those advocating for the human rights of Palestinians and the prosecution of Israeli officials for crimes against humanity.

In Canada, the widely adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism has served as a tool to bludgeon and silence those engaged in political activism — the primary goal of which is to halt the mass murder of Palestinian children — as being hostile toward Jewish people as a group.

As Independent Jewish Voices notes on its webpage detailing the numerous faults within the IHRA definition:

“The IHRA definition comes appended with 11 illustrative examples of antisemitism, seven of which specifically focus on the state of Israel, rather than on Jews as a group. The list of examples is intended to conflate antisemitism with criticism of Israel and Zionism.”

While the Canadian government has published an exhaustive Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, this publication contributes to actually existing antisemitism by explicitly associating all Jewish people with the State of Israel. In November of last year, Anna Lippmann wrote for Rabble that “The handbook not only fails to protect Canadian Jews against antisemitism, but actually further serves to isolate and exceptionalize Jewish communities.”

The practical implementation of the definition has led to the chilling of free speech across Canada, where citizens are afraid to publicly acknowledge the reality of what they are witnessing via social and regular media on a daily basis: genocide against millions of people based on their ethnicity.

The IHRA definition is specifically designed to silence anyone attempting to draw the now all-too-obvious comparison between what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians and the actions of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, an undeniably horrific and premeditated campaign of genocide against the Jewish people.

Sadly, it is a cold fact that the language being used by Israeli officials now resembles the type of administrative rhetoric that the Nazis used when carrying out the Holocaust. The recent announcement of Israel’s plan to establish an official government body to oversee the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians from Gaza, is disturbingly reminiscent of the Nazi concept of Sonderbehandlung, or “special treatment.” This plan comes as Israeli forces have re-entered the Gaza Strip, and demolished the only remaining specialized cancer hospital, leaving those with critical conditions with no choice but to leave or die.

In Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ted Morgan’s masterwork on the Vichy regime in Occupied France during World War II, An Uncertain Hour, the author describes the way that language concealed and marginalized the horrors that were being perpetrated:

The use of this kind of flat and unspecific language was part of the conditioning to do away with any moral reaction. To say that people were “treated” or “taken care of,” or that areas were “swept clean,” made mass murder impersonal and bureaucratic. It was a way of sidestepping all moral questions by focusing on logistics. The only conceivable way to implement the Final Solution was to convert it into a set of logistical problems, such as crowd control and railroad timetables. It was one thing to kill large numbers of civilians who were on the army’s invasion route in Russia. The problems there were how to kill them and how to bury them, and the morale of the troops who did the killing. But when you began deporting people from occupied nations like France, the problems were compounded. You had to identify and arrest those you wanted to deport. You had to transport them over long distances. You had to build and staff camps to receive them. You had to devise stratagems for killing them without alarming them beforehand. You had to dispose of the bodies. You had to negotiate with the government of the occupied country, if it had one. You had to deal with public opinion in that country. At each step of the way, there were practical problems to be solved. The men who were carrying out the Final Solution did not stop to consider what they were doing, so intent were they on how to do it. Their moral sense, already dulled by their conditioning, was further diminished by the mechanics of the task at hand. [My emphasis -RH]

No debate in legislature

New Brunswick adopted the definition under the PC government of Blaine Higgs in March 2021. The motion, which was brought forward by Dominic Cardy and seconded by Benoit Bourque, was received unanimous support in the Legislature. There was no debate on the motion, only statements of agreement from MLAs Bourque, Kris Austin and David Coon. The following year, Cardy also advocated for the creation of a national parliamentary group that would “focus on entrenching the IHRA definition of antisemitism throughout Canada.”

These initiatives, even if undertaken in good faith, have undoubtedly had negative consequences not only for political speech, but also for the Palestinians and progressive Jewish activists who are seeking to dismantle the systems of oppression, violence and apartheid that are devastating their communities.

There is also a risk that the continued weaponization of antisemitism will follow trends seen in the United States, with academic freedom being severely curtailed and McCarthyist witch-hunts being conducted against those who speak out in favour of Palestinian rights.

Continuing to deny reality by allowing those committing genocide to claim the right to total impunity based on the terrible crimes of the past will never result in true justice, and contributes to the erosion the very fundamental freedoms that Canada claims to uphold.

Premier Susan Holt should find the courage to introduce a motion to rescind the IHRA definition, and bring forward an open discussion regarding Palestine that is inclusive of both Palestinian and progressive Jewish voices, who, like so many New Brunswickers and Canadians, want to bring the atrocities being committed by Israel to a permanent end.

Ryan Hillier is a writer and settler living on the banks of the Petkootkweăk.