Last February Massachusetts state representative Steven Howitt (R-Seekonk) filed H.1558 ("An Act relative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism") which, like a recent U.S. House Resolution, seeks to define any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. The Massachusetts bill declares:

The term ‘Antisemitism’ shall have the same meaning that is endorsed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which shall mean a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Howitt's description is incomplete if not intentionally dishonest. While the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, originally concocted by Israel's Foreign Ministry, does enumerate actual manifestations of antisemitism found in the politically-neutral Jerusalem Declaration, much of the IHRA's definition centers on Israel and Zionism and is intended to weaponize any criticism of Israel, particularly to criminalize the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement.

Anti-BDS legislation, which threatens Americans' First Amendment rights, is now found in 37 states. How such bills can even be filed boggles the mind. The right of Americans to boycott was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1982 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. Fortunately, most Massachusetts legislators have had the good sense to reject anti-democratic bills like these, as they ought to reject the adoption of a weaponized, revisionist definition of “antisemitism.”

The Jerusalem Definition of antisemitism explicitly rejects several elements of the IHRA definition Israel and Zionist groups use for transparent political purpose. Regarding Israel (and not Jews), the Jerusalem Definition says:

1. Supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights, as encapsulated in international law.
2. Criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism, or arguing for a variety of constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants “between the river and the sea,” whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form.
3. Evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state. This includes its institutions and founding principles. It also includes its policies and practices, domestic and abroad, such as the conduct of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, the role Israel plays in the region, or any other way in which, as a state, it influences events in the world. It is not antisemitic to point out systematic racial discrimination. In general, the same norms of debate that apply to other states and to other conflicts over national self-determination apply in the case of Israel and Palestine. Thus, even if contentious, it is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid.
4. Boycott, divestment and sanctions are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic.
5. Political speech does not have to be measured, proportional, tempered, or reasonable to be protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and other human rights instruments. Criticism that some may see as excessive or contentious, or as reflecting a “double standard,” is not, in and of itself, antisemitic. In general, the line between antisemitic and non-antisemitic speech is different from the line between unreasonable and reasonable speech.

Opposing Zionism, criticizing or boycotting Israel is not antisemitic

Long before the establishment of the State of Israel — and long after — there has been considerable disagreement about the nature of the Israeli state, especially among Jews.

Orthodox Judaism rejected Zionism until the establishment of Israel, and Jews like Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, and Albert Einstein voiced numerous criticisms of the Zionist founders of Israel. For over a century even Zionists themselves have warned of the dangers of harshly treating Arab neighbors in Palestine. For example, see Hannah Arendt’s articles in Aufbau, recorded in her “Jewish Writings” (ISBN 9780805211948) .

Zionism and the nature of the Jewish State have long been a polarizing issue within Reform Judaism. The American Council for Judaism is a contemporary anti-Zionist organization that formed after Reform Judaism abandoned its previous condemnation of Zionism (see Thomas A. Kolsky’s “Jews Against Zionism” (ISBN 9781566390095).

Today anti-Zionist Jews include people from the Reform, Reconstructionist, Havurah, Humanist, and Masorti movements, even some Orthodox sects such as the Satmars and Neturei Karta. One public intellectual, Peter Beinart, a modern Orthodox Jew, was once a well-known Zionist but has since joined the anti-Zionist camp. The most likely anti-Zionist Jews today are young people who grew up embracing the promises, if not the reality, of American democratic values, not racist ethnocentrism. There are dozens of organizations in the United States, Europe, and even Israel who represent these overwhelmingly young Jews, among them Jewish Voice for Peace and Not In Our Name.

At the end of the day, Americans have a Constitutional right to disagree about foreign policy. Should we fight with Taiwan if China invades? Should we have expanded NATO after Gorbachev? Should we have invaded Iraq? Is India a democracy? As with any of these examples, Americans ought to be free to hold an opinion on whether Israel is a democracy or not, whether its treatment of Palestinians respects human rights and human dignity, and whether we ought to continue pumping billions of dollars into the economy of a nation that keeps millions of people caged in concentration camps.

Most controversial of all, should Americans support the continued existence of Israel as an illiberal ethnocracy or are we free to advocate for a true democracy “from river to the sea”? Anti-Zionists answer this question with a call for freedom — while those who promote the IHRA definition dishonestly characterize any call to abandon Zionism's inherent racism and colonialism as somehow advocating a second Shoah.

As it happens, the IHRA definition has a long and twisted history. It was concocted by an extremist settler, Natan Sharansky, ideologically related to settler extremists Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich who serve in Netanyahu’s coalition government. Sharansky's definition of antisemitism wended its way from the Israeli government to an Israeli think tank, to Zionist advocacy groups, to the US State Department, only to be subsequently weaponized against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. A short chronology:

• 1978: For many years the Hansell Memo was the policy of the United States in terms of illegal Israel settlements. "While Israel may undertake, in the occupied territories, actions necessary to meet its military needs and to provide for orderly government during the occupation, for reasons indicated above the establishment of the civilian settlements in those territories is inconsistent with international law."
• 1986: Soviet Refusenik Natan Sharansky is released in a prisoner exchange and moves to Israel
• 1995: Sharansky founds the Yisrael BaAliyah Party to advocate for the eventual absorption of 2 million Russians, many not Jewish, as a demographic offset to rising Arab population growth. He holds a variety of governmental posts.
• 1999-2005: Sharansky serves as Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Minister of Housing and Construction, Interior Minister, and Minister of Industry and Trade. Sharansky becomes Israel's Minister without Portfolio, responsible for Jerusalem's social and Jewish diaspora affairs. In this position, Sharansky chairs a secret committee that approves the confiscation of East Jerusalem property of West Bank Palestinians.
• 2005: Sharansky resigns from Ariel Sharon's cabinet in protest of the Prime Minister's withdrawal from Gaza.
• 2005: Sharansky invents the New Anti-Semitism (his term). This innovation includes the "3D Test" – demonization, double standards, delegitimization. The definition eventually finds its way into the EU working definition and then, after being dropped by the EU, is recycled by the IHRA. As employed today, "demonization" can refer to any type of condemnation of Israel. Avoiding "double standards" requires that, as the only Jewish state in the entire world, Israel must not be criticized. And "delegitimization" means that Israel has a right to exist in any form — even as a repressive state. Hence, criticism of Israel's Apartheid system, for example, is off-limits if since calls into question Israeli self-determination, regardless of the form.
• 2005: The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights develops a working definition of antisemitism in conjunction with the Wiesenthal Center. It doesn't take long before that definition is misused to smear critics of Israel.
• 2005: The EU drops the use of the working definition precisely because it is so political, igniting anger from Israel.
• 2010: Israeli Think Tank, the Reut Group, creates a "conceptual framework [as a] response to the assault on Israel's legitimacy." Reut has specifically studied critiques of South African Apartheid in order to develop a political firewall against so-called "delegitimization" of Israel.
• 2010: Israel's National Security Council determines that a Palestinian state will delegitimize Israel — hence both Palestinians and supporters of a Palestinian state are by definition antisemitic.
• 2010: President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorse Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's demand that Palestinians recognize Israel's "right" as a Jewish state. HIllary Clinton begins using the draft version of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition in her State Department.
• 2016: If at first you don't succeed… The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance announces its working definition of "antisemitism" which includes Sharansky's 3D test and recycles the EU's working definition. The Pompeo State Department formally adopts the IHRA definition.
• 2018: Israel approves the Jewish Nation-State Law affirming that Israel is not only a Jewish state but “a state for all Jewish people.” The Law also establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.” When the law is passed, Arab parliamentary members rip up copies of the bill and shout, “Apartheid,” on the floor of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament). United States Secretary of State (under Trump) Michael Pompeo voids the Hansell memo.

The IHRA definition is not benign. It is intensely political and the creation of an Israeli extremist in a previous extremist government who then turned it over to a think tank tasked with weaponizing it. The purpose of the IHRA definition is to pervert the natural meaning of antisemitism (baseless hatred of Jews) and punish any criticism of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state.

For any legislature to regulate what is “acceptable” speech is not only a violation of civil liberties but also (when directed at anti-Zionist Jews) both laughable and antisemitic.

Yes, antisemitic because for any legislative committee to hold a preconceived notion of what all Jews believe, or ought to believe, is the very definition of antisemitism.