The working definition of antisemitism (also called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism or IHRA definition) is a non-legally binding statement on what antisemitism is, that reads:
Accompanying the working definition, but of disputed status, are 11 illustrative examples whose purpose is described as guiding the IHRA in its work, seven of which relate to criticism of the Israeli government. As such, pro-Israeli organizations have been advocates for the worldwide legal adoption of the definition.
The definition was developed during 2003–04 and first published on 28 January 2005 on the website of the European Union agency, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). The publication was made "without formal review", and remained a working draft until November 2013 when the EUMC's successor agency, the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), removed it from its website in "a clear-out of non-official documents".
The working definition was adopted by the IHRA Plenary (consisting of representatives from 31 countries) in Bucharest, Romania, on 26 May 2016. It was subsequently accepted by the European Parliament and other national and international bodies and employed for internal use by a number of governmental and political institutions. However, many such adoptions have either not referenced or excluded the examples, given the ongoing controversy. The controversy led to the creation of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and the Nexus Document, both of which expressly draw distinctions between antisemitism and criticism of Israel.
The IHRA definition has been criticised by some academics who say that it stifles free speech relating to criticism of Israeli actions and policies. High-profile controversies took place in the United Kingdom in 2011 within the University and College Union and within the Labour Party in 2018. The definition has been contested for weaknesses that critics say lend themselves to abuse, for obstructing campaigning for the rights of Palestinians and for being too vague. One of the original drafters, Kenneth S. Stern, has opposed the "weaponizing" of the definition on college campuses in ways that might suppress and limit free speech.
Background
European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia
The Commission on Racism and Xenophobia (CRX) (also known as the Kahn Commission) was established in 1994. The CRX was transformed into the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) by Council Regulation (EC) No 1035/97 of 2 June 1997 and commenced in June 1998. Its mandate was to monitor different forms of racism and xenophobia.
In 2002, it published a large-scale monitoring report on Islamophobia since 9/11, including a total of 75 reports, 15 from each member state and a synthesis report. This was to be followed by a comparable report on antisemitism. A report entitled Manifestations of antisemitism in the EU 2002–2003 was published in May 2004, along with a second report on perceptions of antisemitism based on interviews with European Jews. The antisemitism report was based on data collected by the 15 contact points of EUMC's monitoring network, RAXEN, then the robustness of the data evaluated by an independent researcher, Alexander Pollak. The report included a section on definitions, which concluded by proposing this definition: "Any acts or attitudes that are based on the perception of a social subject (individual, group, institution, or state) as "the ('deceitful', 'corrupt', 'conspiratorial', etc.) Jew".
The report also explored the question of when anti-Zionist or anti-Israel expression might be antisemitic (pp. 13–14) and highlighted the need to develop a common EU definition in order to collect and compare incidents across countries (pp. 25–29).
In December 2003, the Centre for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) analyzed a pre-release version of the EUMC report. The ZfA report was leaked to the press and poorly received. According to civil rights lawyer Kenneth L. Marcus, in the report the primary cause of rising antisemitism in Europe was assigned to young Muslim males, while in a press release for the subsequent final publication the EUMC assigned the rise in antisemitism to "young, disaffected white Europeans." Marcus writes, the larger issue was missed that the definition of antisemitism that the EUMC used was based on "seven stereotypical traits: deceptiveness, strange-ness, hostility, greed, corruption, conspiratorial power, and deicidal murderousness." The EUMC report concluded that anti-Israeli and anti-Zionism expression could only be considered antisemitic if it was based on the stereotype of Israel as the collective Jew.