Abstract
The “Working Definition of Antisemitism” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has been adopted by the European Parliament and numerous national and local bodies worldwide. Although the document describes itself as “non-legally binding,” it has been characterized as a “quasi-law, in which capacity it exercises the de facto authority of the law, without having acquired legal legitimacy” (Gould, 2018: 1). This chapter subjects the IHRA definition to scrutiny via Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), examining not only its language but also its origins, its social and political context, and its implications for freedom of speech. Its authors’ objectives can be described as “lawfare”—the use of the law for political ends—in which this text is a linguistic weapon.
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Notes
- 1.
This move was fiercely opposed by a group of lawyers: see the letter to The Guardian from Bowring et al., 7th January 2021.
- 2.
The European Parliament has presented translations of the IHRA definition in 24 languages apart from English, as does the IHRA website. I will restrict myself to the English text.
- 3.
Headings and numbering were removed in order to render the texts maximally similar to that of the IHRA definition.
- 4.
The items “Israeli” and “Israelis” each occur once in the text, and therefore are not shown in Table 1.
- 5.
Geoffrey Robertson AO QC (Queen’s Counsel, i.e. senior barrister), is founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers. He has appeared in many ground-breaking cases in criminal, constitutional and international law, and served as First President of the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone and as a “distinguished jurist member” of the UN’s Justice Council.
- 6.
Stephen Sedley is a former Appeal Court judge.
- 7.
Antony Lerman is Senior Fellow (visiting) at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue in Vienna and Honorary Fellow at the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, Southampton University. He is the former founding director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) and is Associate Editor of the international academic journal on racism Patterns of Prejudice.
- 8.
Brian Klug is a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford, and a Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton.
- 9.
Peter Ullrich is a sociologist and cultural theorist based at the Technical University of Berlin, a Fellow at the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA), co-head of the research unit “Social Movements, Technology, Conflicts” at the Center for Technology and Society (ZTG) and a member of the Institute for Social Movement Studies (ipb).
- 10.
I have used the term “authors” in the plural throughout because, although Kenneth Stern describes himself as “the lead author” of the definition, others were involved: see Sect. 4.1.
- 11.
Hugh Tomlinson QC is based at Matrix Chambers. He is a specialist in media and information law including defamation, confidence, privacy, data protection, human rights and civil liberties.
- 12.
It “died” in January 2021, having not been enacted by the end of the 116th Congress. See: S. 852—116th Congress: Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2019.
- 13.
Stern has written numerous opinion pieces since then, all deploring the way in which the definition is being used to restrict free speech. See, for example, his piece in The Guardian, 13 December, 2019.
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Appendix: Working Definition of Antisemitism
Appendix: Working Definition of Antisemitism
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Blackwell, S. (2021). Language in the Service of Lawfare: The “Working Definition of Antisemitism” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. In: Chiluwa, I. (eds) Discourse and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76485-2_3
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