State Dept. Push to Label Human Rights Orgs ‘Antisemitic’ Exposes Repressive Intent of Redefinition Efforts
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the Israeli prime minister.
In the latest manifestation of a Trump-backed campaign to redefine antisemitism, the U.S. State Department reportedly plans to designate three prominent human rights groups as antisemitic due to their criticism of Israel’s violations of international law.
According to news sources, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo could soon release a report that would label Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam International as antisemitic groups, bar federal funding to the organizations and encourage foreign governments to do the same.
This action would be based on the organizations’ criticism of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel’s settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention under international law and lead to violence and discrimination against Palestinians on their own land, including the destruction of Palestinian olive trees and livestock, and violence against Palestinians such as the settler arson attack and murder of the Dawabshe family in 2015.
Israel’s promotion of these illegal settlements is one reason Palestinians have called for people of conscience to utilize boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns to force Israel to respect Palestinian human rights under international law.
News reports cite the human rights organizations’ purported support for BDS as another reason for the proposed antisemitism label.
While the implications of such a move by the State Department are not fully known, it could ostracize and impede the work of human rights organizations that expose violations of international law around the world.
“It is a common tactic of repressive regimes to discredit and undermine the work of human rights groups that advocate for the rights of the oppressed,” said senior staff attorney Liz Jackson. “Israel itself has gone to great lengths to sabotage the work of human rights organizations based in Palestine/Israel, and the U.S. government is now following suit.”
Using ‘antisemitism’ as a sword and a shield
A memo from State Department special envoy Elan Carr’s office reportedly claims that “certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) regularly participate in and promote the Global BDS Campaign or engage in other activities that meet the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of anti-Semitism.”
The flawed IHRA definition deceptively labels common criticisms of Israel as discrimination against Jewish people. In the past few years, Israel advocates have escalated a campaign to push local, state, and national governments, as well as universities and more recently social media companies, to adopt this distorted definition of antisemitism.
As Palestine Legal has documented, the politically motivated redefinition effort has been widely used to silence advocacy for Palestinian freedom at a moment of growing grassroots support. Seven out of eleven examples of contemporary antisemitism included in the IHRA redefinition focus on criticism of Israel.
Florida’s antisemitism redefinition law, passed in 2019 and modeled on the IHRA definition, is the most repressive measure enacted so far in the U.S. It includes “focusing peace or human rights investigations only on Israel” as an example of antisemitism.
Efforts to codify the redefinition have failed to move forward twice in the U.S. Congress due to strong opposition and First Amendment concerns. Last December, Trump bypassed Congress by issuing an executive order requiring executive agencies to consider the definition when investigating discrimination complaints.
“The State Department’s plan is the logical extreme of moves by the Israel lobby to label any and all criticism of Israel ‘antisemitic’ – including human rights work,” said Liz Jackson. “This move is meant to weaponize anti-Jewish hate to silence advocacy for Palestinian freedom. It's a censorship tool, and it's wielded in the same way that false ‘support for terrorism’ accusations are used to smear and scare those who speak out for Palestinian rights.”
Civil society pushes back
Civil and human rights groups are taking action to resist these efforts to chill speech and human rights advocacy for Palestine.
Jewish Voice for Peace has initiated a petition for the State Department to drop this move, which they note engages in antisemitism by falsely conflating the Israeli state with Jewish people.
“Labeling these human rights organizations antisemitic is not about Jewish safety – it's a deeply harmful attempt to weaponize antisemitism for political gain and to silence and censor Palestinians and Palestinian rights activism,” the petition reads.\
TAKE ACTION: Sign JVP’s petition against the State Department designation.
For more information on the redefinition, see: