Israel haters immediately attacked.
More than 40 organizations, both those that are explicitly anti-Israel and "progressive" organizations, joined a campaign claiming that the IHRA Working Definition chills free speech. "Any embrace of the IHRA definition by the ABA would legitimize and encourage this undermining of core democratic rights," they say, without explaining exactly how.
The National Lawyers Guild said, falsely, that "the IHRA definition would provide a tool to stigmatize and suppress lawyers, legal
advocates and law students from expressing political criticism of Israel or advocacy for Palestinian human rights." Of course, they cannot point to any wording in the IHRA definition that would do anything like that.
Human Rights Watch wrote a similar letter.
The main point that these critics make is that the IHRA definition has supposedly been used to suppress free speech. They cannot point to where the definition actually does that, because it doesn't mandate anything: the definition is filled with caveats that in the end only provide guidance. If the IHRA Working Definition is being misused, then these organizations should fight the misuse, not the definition. The fact that they don't tells you all you need to know.
Moreover, the ABA resolution explicitly said that nothing in the resolution is intended to diminish or infringe upon the Bill of Rights or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so even if their lies about IHRA were true, the text wouldn't allow it to be misused that way.
They are lying when they say that their opposition to the definition is based on human rights and free speech concerns. The only problem they have with it is that it notes that singling out Israel as uniquely evil far out of proportion to its supposed crimes is antisemitic. And they want to have the right to do exactly that.
Their objections are based on their hate of the Jewish state, not their interest in Palestinian human rights or in fighting antisemitism.
The original draft resolution also included an attached 17 page report on antisemitism that went through a history of antisemitism in Europe and in the US. It mentioned Natan Sharansky's "3-D" test for antisemitism as well as further references to the IHRA and US State Department definitions of antisemitism.
In the end, the ABA removed everything that could be considered a definition, including virtually the entire report, and left the eviscerated resolution to condemn something that could mean anything:
Without a definition, this is entirely meaningless. Some Israel haters define antisemitism as hating Arabs. Others define Zionism as antisemitism. There is nothing in this resolution that contradicts those bizarre definitions.
The resolution doesn't even mention Jews - only a single reference to improving security at "Jewish institutions and organizations." It mentions "houses of worship," not synagogues.
Right now, the resolution is about as meaningful as a resolution saying that puppies are cute. It is a checkbox - now the ABA can say they oppose antisemitism (whatever that is)! Mazel tov!
Because of the modern antisemites who use obsessive, conspiracy-theory driven hate of Israel as a proxy for the age old obsessive, conspiracy-theory driven hate of Jews, the ABA believes that it passed a resolution that didn't upset anyone.
Well, this Jew is upset.
The Jews who publicly identify as Jews, those who wear identifiably Jewish clothing, those who publicly support the Jewish state or speak Hebrew in public or who stand proud in their Zionism - they are the biggest targets and victims of antisemitism today.
This resolution doesn't give a damn about them.
