At a time in which antisemitism is cascading across Europe and the United States, a debate in Italy over adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism should have been a foregone conclusion.
IHRA has been endorsed by some 40 countries and thousands of institutions precisely because it reflects a simple moral truth once attributed to Martin Luther King Jr.: “My brother, whoever hates Israel hates the Jews.” What King actually said was, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews; you are talking antisemitism!”
Yet a group of prominent Italian Jewish intellectuals has chosen this moment to oppose a bill advanced by Graziano Delrio of the center-left Democratic Party (PD) that aims to anchor the IHRA definition in Italian law. Their document, presented as a scholarly concern, echoes arguments that have become the refuge of those unwilling to confront how anti-Israel incitement fuels modern antisemitism.
Their claim is familiar: that IHRA might be misused to stifle criticism of Israel. But there is no evidence—none—that innocent critics have been silenced, banned, beaten or had their homes or graves defaced because they questioned a policy of the Israeli government.
Meanwhile, Jews worldwide live with threats, assaults, boycotts, vandalism and a relentless ideological campaign that labels Israel a genocidal or Nazi state. Without IHRA, such accusations are sanitized as “political opinion” or “democratic debate.”
This is not a critique; it is defamation. It is the criminalization of Jewish self-determination.
The Italian Jewish scholars opposing IHRA—Anna Foa, Roberto Della Seta, Carlo Ginzburg, Gad Lerner and Giovanni Levi—may present themselves as experts on Jewish history and antisemitism. Yet their stance ignores the most fundamental historical truth: the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel goes back three millennia.
Their description of Israel as a colonial state is not scholarship; it is a modern reiteration of the age-old effort to deny Jewish peoplehood.
Former President Bill Clinton understood this when then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat declared that Jerusalem had never been Jewish. Clinton threatened to walk out of the room at the Camp David Summit in July 2000 if Arafat continued uttering such false claims. He recognized the statement for what it was—the purest form of antisemitism.
What Clinton grasped instinctively, these intellectuals refuse to see: that the Jewish people and Israel are inseparable. To delegitimize Israel is to delegitimize Jews. That is why antisemites applaud efforts to weaken IHRA; it leaves them free to proclaim Israel a crime and Zionism a pathology.
Delrio’s initiative represents moral courage at a time when it is desperately needed. The Jewish scholars who oppose him, intentionally or not, provide cover for those who seek to dissolve the line between criticism and hatred, between debate and incitement.
These Jews do not understand that the Jewish people and Israel are the same. The stances expressed by King, Clinton, and now, Delrio are more Jewish than theirs.
History is watching. And today, as in the past, the refusal to name antisemitism is its most reliable accomplice.
