The Limits of Certainty. A Review of a Thoughtful European Perspective.

The recent K* . article, “Ten Years On: The IHRA Definition Between Celebration and Questioning” by Reut Yael Paz and Niklas Pretsch, is a thoughtful and intellectually serious defence of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of 2016, abbreviated here as IHRA) . Unlike other other articles and frequent polemics, it openly acknowledges both the political controversies surrounding the definition and the risks associated with its application. Indeed, one of its strengths is that it recognises that debates over IHRA and have become deeply entangled with broader conflicts concerning Israel, Zionism, Jewish identity, historical memory and the meaning of antisemitism itself.

This essay has two parts. The first concerns the article itself, and the other concerns the tension between particularist approaches to antisemitism rather than considering it as a problem akin to other racisms. This has been a point of contention in Australia.

I A Distinctive Approach to IHRA. A Critique.

Given that IHRA now occupies a central place in discussions surrounding the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, it is useful to consider the broader perspective offered by this article rather than the debates over Palestine that often surround the definition.

Before turning to criticism, however, it is important to acknowledge what makes this article distinctive. Much contemporary criticism of IHRA comes from pro-Palestinian activists, civil liberties advocates, free speech organisations, post-colonial scholars, or critics of Israeli government policy. This article emerges from a very different intellectual tradition. It forms part of a longer conversation within European intellectual circles—including the Jewish intellectual traditions represented in K. Larevue itself—about the changing nature of antisemitism, the legacy of the Holocaust, and the challenge of sustaining awareness of antisemitism as direct memory of the Holocaust gradually recedes.

Thus, the authors do not attempt to weaponise accusations of antisemitism against IHRA opponents. Instead, they grapple with a genuine dilemma that has occupied European thinkers for decades: how does one recognise and respond to evolving forms of antisemitism when the social and political conditions that produced classical antisemitism have changed? How does one preserve awareness of antisemitism among younger generations for whom the Holocaust is increasingly a historical rather than lived experience? And how does one maintain the specificity of antisemitism without isolating it from broader discussions of racism, colonialism, nationalism and mass violence?

These concerns are particularly acute in Germany, where the authors work as academic legal scholars and where debates concerning antisemitism inevitably intersect with questions of law, historical responsibility and public memory. Contemporary German intellectual life continues to wrestle with the uniqueness of the Holocaust, the place of colonial violence in European history, and the relationship between Jewish memory and other histories of suffering. The article should therefore be understood not merely as a contribution to debates about Israel and Palestine, but as part of a broader European effort to understand how antisemitism ought to be conceptualised and addressed in a society whose political culture remains profoundly shaped by the legacy of the Holocaust.

The authors are acutely aware of the IHRA framework’s limitations. They openly acknowledge its politicisation, recognise the dangers of binary political thinking, and accept that endorsement or rejection of IHRA increasingly functions as a broader political statement concerning Israel itself. It is precisely because the article is so honest on this issue, that its gaps and silences become significant.

Furthermore, the emergence of alternative frameworks such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and the Nexus Document is itself a response to such problems with IHRA. These initiatives did not arise because their authors were indifferent to antisemitism. They emerged from recognition that changing political realities surrounding Israel, Palestine and Zionism had exposed tensions within existing approaches such as IHRA. Their aim was to distinguish more clearly between antisemitic hostility toward Jews and legitimate, even severe, criticism of Israel and Zionism.

Significantly, Paz and Pretsch are not dismissive of these alternatives, though they don’t see them as perfect either. This distinguishes their position from that of some communal leaders and advocacy organisations, particularly in Australia, where the Jerusalem Declaration and Nexus have often been treated with suspicion. Yet the existence of disagreement does not necessarily indicate analytical failure. It may instead reflect the genuine complexity of the phenomenon under examination.

This point becomes particularly important when the article discusses “contemporary, coded, indirect and Israel-related forms of antisemitism.” The recognition that antisemitism can be indirect or coded is entirely reasonable. Historically, antisemitism has often operated through euphemism, insinuation and symbolic language. The difficulty arises when these concepts are extended into the highly contested domain of Israel-related political discourse.

Once certain forms of anti-Israel or anti-Zionist discourse are assumed to be and described as “coded antisemitism”, the classification risks preceding the analysis. Instead of examining context, rhetoric, intent and audience reception before reaching a conclusion, the category itself begins to imply one. Ambiguity can become evidence of concealment.

Research I undertook for a submission to the Royal Commission by the Australian Jewish Democratically Society repeatedly identified problems of category inflation, definitional drift and conceptual boundary instability once Israel- and Zionism-related incidents were incorporated into broader antisemitism datasets. The issue was not whether antisemitism existed, but whether heterogeneous phenomena were being aggregated into apparently coherent categories without sufficient attention to underlying differences.

One of the article’s most revealing observations — and remember, the authors are supporters — is that endorsement or rejection of IHRA increasingly functions less as a methodological disagreement than as a broader political statement concerning Israel itself. The authors further observe that, for many people, endorsing IHRA has come to signify not only opposition to antisemitism but also support for Israel.

This is an extraordinarily important admission. It recognises that IHRA no longer functions merely as a technical definition. It has become a symbolic object carrying broader meanings concerning Jewish security, historical memory, Zionism and political Israel.

If support for IHRA increasingly functions as support for Israel, then criticism of IHRA should not in fact automatically be interpreted as indifference to antisemitism. Being anti-Zionist must not automatically be interpreted as hostility toward Jews. The political field is more complex than such binary oppositions allow.

The Australian experience is particularly instructive in this regard. While the Paz and Pretsch article presents a nuanced understanding of both the strengths and limitations of IHRA, much of the advocacy surrounding the definition in Australia has often been considerably less nuanced. Major Zionist organisations have tended to approach IHRA primarily through the lens of contemporary disputes over local protest rather than through the broader concerns about antisemitism that originally informed the definition’s development.

IHRA emerged in a period when concern focused heavily on Holocaust denial, neo-Nazi movements, classical antisemitic conspiracy theories and the resurgence of far-right nationalism. Its Israel-related examples were intended as contextual illustrations rather than as a comprehensive framework for regulating political discourse. The original working definition was conceived primarily as a practical aid for recognising and understanding antisemitism rather than as what becomes for all intents and purposes, a legally enforceable benchmark.

In Australia, however, the political trajectory of IHRA has increasingly moved beyond these original intentions. Debates over IHRA have become intertwined with broader conflicts concerning universities, public institutions, media organisations and the boundaries of acceptable discourse regarding Israel.

This raises an important question. If sophisticated defenders of IHRA increasingly acknowledge its limitations, ambiguities and need for ongoing revision, why is there often such resistance to similar acknowledgements within public and institutional debates?

The answer may lie less in the intellectual merits of the debate than in the political functions that IHRA has come to perform. Within scholarly discussions it is commonplace to recognise that the definition has limitations and requires contextual interpretation. Yet once IHRA enters the realm of institutional politics, different pressures emerge. It becomes a symbolic resource within broader struggles over legitimacy, representation, communal authority and public policy.

The contrast becomes clearer when compared with the essay of Philip Mendes, writing for the conservative Centre for Independent Studies. Mendes and Paz and Pretsch are responding to a similar phenomenon: the emergence of forms of hostility toward Jews, Zionism and Jewish identity that cannot easily be understood through older models focused exclusively on the far right.

Yet the two approaches differ significantly. Mendes is primarily concerned with demonstrating that significant sections of progressive activism, academic culture and institutional politics have become increasingly hostile to Zionism and to Jews who identify with Israel. Paz and Pretsch are less concerned with establishing the existence of the problem than with interrogating the categories through which the problem is understood.

Some of Mendes’s conclusions depend heavily on particular readings of material and events that remain open to alternative interpretations. This is especially relevant in relation to community monitoring reports and incident datasets, where significant questions already exist concerning the relationship between anti-Israel activity, anti-Zionist activism and antisemitism. As a result, conclusions that may depend upon particular classification assumptions can sometimes appear as settled empirical findings.

These observations do not entirely invalidate Mendes’s concerns. Rather, they highlight a methodological issue that runs throughout contemporary debates about antisemitism. Identifying a phenomenon and classifying it are not the same thing.

Although commonly discussed in terms of its formal adoption in 2016, the intellectual architecture underpinning IHRA emerged from debates and formulations that go back to the 1990s. Since that period, the political and military realities surrounding Israel and Palestine have worsened dramatically. Repeated wars in Gaza, the October 7, 2023, settlement expansion, increasingly explicit and violent forms of Israeli ethnonationalism, and growing international debate concerning allegations of apartheid, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide have transformed the political environment in which discussions of Israel take place, and that discussion even occurs within Israel itself, even questioning its future as a Jewish state.

Crucially, these critiques can no longer simply be dismissed as fringe rhetoric, sloganeering, or antisemitic blood libel. Whether one agrees with them or not, such criticisms are increasingly advanced by mainstream legal scholars, human rights organisations, genocide researchers, and have become the subject of proceedings before international judicial bodies including the International Court of Justice.

The deeper question is whether a framework developed before the current state of the Israel–Palestine conflict can adequately distinguish between antisemitic demonisation and severe political criticism.

Paz and Pretsch appear reluctant to pursue this possibility to its conclusion. One senses not ignorance of the problem but hesitation. The authors repeatedly acknowledge the politicisation of IHRA, the symbolic role it now plays, the dangers of binary political alignments, and the need for ongoing revision and self-reflection. Yet they ultimately reaffirm IHRA as the most coherent framework available, on the grounds that it has been widely adopted but that should not mean it is immutable, given ongoing controversy about its misapplication.

In fact, the deeper challenge identified by Paz and Pretsch concerns not merely Israel or IHRA, but the future of antisemitism awareness itself. As Holocaust memory becomes increasingly mediated through institutions, education and historical narrative rather than direct personal experience, societies must find new ways of recognising antisemitism without reducing it to rigid formulas or symbolic tests of political empathy for a particular state.

The question is not whether antisemitism remains a serious problem. It plainly does. The question is how best to understand it under conditions very different from those that shaped the post-war generation, and particularly in the context of Australia, where other communities are on the receiving end of racist activity, whether violent or otherwise, as well as.

The irony is that the article’s own analysis may point towards the fact that IHRA is outmoded. If IHRA now functions simultaneously as a definition, a symbol of Jewish security, a marker of support for a particular state, a test of institutional legitimacy and a framework for classifying contested political speech, then it is being asked to perform tasks far beyond those for which it was originally designed. The more symbolic and political work the definition is required to do, the less stable it becomes as an analytical instrument.

Paz and Pretsch article sees this dilemma clearly. What it does not fully confront is the possibility that the resulting tensions are not merely problems of application, but evidence that IHRA itself can cause more problems than many of its defenders have yet been willing to contemplate.

II Particularism or Universalism?

A further reflection is that the debate over whether antisemitism should be treated as a unique phenomenon or as one manifestation of a broader spectrum of racisms is not simply a political disagreement; it reflects two different intellectual traditions in the study of prejudice, as well as thinking within the Jewish community itself.

One tradition emphasises the specificity of antisemitism. From this perspective, antisemitism possesses characteristics that distinguish it from many other forms of racism. Jews have historically been represented not as an inferior group but paradoxically as a powerful, hidden, manipulative, or conspiratorial group. Antisemitic narratives often focus on alleged control of finance, media, governments, culture, or international affairs. This differs from many forms of racial prejudice that operate through assumptions of inferiority, exclusion, or biological hierarchy. For advocates of this position, the distinct historical trajectory of antisemitism—from medieval religious hostility to modern racial antisemitism, the Holocaust, and contemporary conspiracy theories—justifies specialised institutional attention and dedicated policy responses.

A second tradition emphasises commonality rather than uniqueness. From this perspective, antisemitism is best understood as one form of a broader family of racisms, prejudices, and exclusionary ideologies. While acknowledging particular historical features, this approach highlights common mechanisms that operate across many minority experiences: stereotyping, dehumanisation, scapegoating, conspiracy narratives, collective blame, exclusion from full belonging, and vulnerability during periods of social stress. Whatever the reason, those working within this more universalist approach argue that policy responses become stronger when they are integrated into broader anti-racism strategies rather than isolated into separate silos. It is also a position adopted by many critics of the terms of reference of the Royal Commission, and one also supported by the perspective of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Critics of the Commission have argued that a national inquiry into antisemitism alone risks implying a hierarchy of racisms or creating the perception that antisemitism receives a level of governmental attention unavailable to other communities facing racism. Some have questioned why there was not a broader Royal Commission into racism, social cohesion, or hate directed at multiple communities. These concerns are not necessarily dismissals of antisemitism itself; rather, they often reflect concerns about institutional equity and consistency.

At the same time, supporters of the Commission have argued that specific inquiries are frequently established when a particular social problem reaches a level of public concern, visibility, or perceived urgency requiring dedicated examination. This is certainly the viewpoint of major Jewish organisations in Australia. In fact, Australian public policy has repeatedly used specialised inquiries to investigate particular harms without implying that other harms are unimportant. Recognising the specificity of antisemitism does not require denying the reality or seriousness of Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, or other forms of prejudice.

Methodologically, there is also an important consideration. A highly specialised inquiry may generate a deep and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism but can sometimes lose comparative perspective. Conversely, a broad anti-racism inquiry may reveal common mechanisms across different forms of prejudice but may overlook features that are historically or culturally distinctive. Both approaches therefore involve trade-offs between depth and comparability.

The evidence presented to the Commission itself certainly reflects this problem. Most witnesses describe antisemitism as possessing unique characteristics linked to Jewish history, the Holocaust, Zionism, and contemporary conspiracy narratives. Yet many of the underlying themes emerging from the testimony—minority vulnerability, perceptions of social exclusion, collective trauma, fear of violence, concerns about belonging, distrust of institutions, and experiences of discrimination—are themes familiar from research on many other minority communities.  Nor are they problems that can be causally attributed to the effects of Zionism or Israel politics. It is something deeper.

 In this sense, the Commission’s evidence can simultaneously support claims of uniqueness and claims of commonality.  But at the same time, there has been almost no exploration as to whether witnesses are conscious of the effects of their strongly held view that the State of Israel is not only the central expression of Jewish peoplehood in our time,  and that this political entity it is the only legitimate expression of Jewish peoplehood. It is this blindness to the effects of such political, cultural and religious mix  and its effects on Palestinians that has infuriated many people.  I have written about this problem, and the fog surrounding how the Royal Commission intends to explore the problem.  I said that the Royal Commission:

"has given no direct indication that the [Royal Commission] will take into account the views of both Jews and supporters of Palestine who put a different interpretation on a number of events. If in fact the RC feels that it has or will take those views into account, then there has been very little transparency and the matter is lost in a legal fog.…This is driving the deep suspicion and outright accusations about the purpose and conduct of the [Royal Commission] ...that it is basically a tool to suppress Palestinian advocacy and free speech. "

Perhaps the most productive position is not to choose between competing perspectives but to hold them in tension. Antisemitism may possess distinctive historical and ideological features that warrant careful examination in their own right, even in Australia which has a different experience to that of Europe, while also sharing important structural similarities with other forms of racism. Recognising specificity need not imply exceptionalism, and recognising commonality need not imply that all racisms are identical.

There is also an important institutional question here concerning the proper role of the Royal Commission itself. The Commission is not tasked with adjudicating the merits of Zionism, determining the legitimacy of Israeli government policies, or resolving the profound political and moral disputes surrounding the Israel–Palestine conflict. Those debates will continue within democratic society and among people of good faith who hold sharply different views.

Rather, the Commission’s responsibility is to identify and respond to antisemitism in ways that are consistent with both the public interest and the principles of a liberal democracy. This requires careful attention to genuine hatred, discrimination, intimidation, incitement and violence directed at Jews as Jews. It also requires recognition that Australian law already places limits on genuinely threatening, harassing, discriminatory and inciteful conduct.

The challenge arises in the large space that exists between unlawful hate and legitimate democratic discourse. Within that space, citizens must remain free to express views about Israel, Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, war crimes, human rights, state violence, colonialism and genocide, however uncomfortable or controversial those views may be. The existence of strong disagreement, moral outrage or political offence cannot in itself become evidence of antisemitism, even though there are those who believe that IHRA should be used to police these things.

(*K. is an online magazine devoted to Jews, Europe, the 21st Century, looking at current affairs from a liberal Zionist and politically variable perspective. I’m not in agreement with a lot of what appears, and sometimes in strong disagreement, but sometimes there is very good material)