David Schraub on Trump's Executive Order re. Anti Semitism

President Trump's executive order on anti-semitism has, predictably, not been welcomed by Liberals.

David Schraub, a Law Professor, writes in the Atlantic-

What are Jews? Members of a religious group? A race or an ethnicity? A nation? Some mixture of them all, or something else entirely?

The law is not concerned with self-definitions which are imperative, not extensional or protocol bound. Christians may well debate who is or isn't a true Christian. Some zealots may say that the Pope has ceased to be Catholic. However, the Law uses Kripkean 'buck stopped' rigid designators which are objective and protocol bound.

Consider the recent 'Kosher supermarket shooting'. It appears that the perpetrators belonged to the Black Hebrew Israelite Movement, which is characterized by a belief that blacks “are the true descendants of biblical Jews,” with some even considering mainstream Judaism an “imposter religion.” These two nutters may have identified as Jews. From the legal point of view, they weren't Jews but Jew haters.

As a debate among the Jews, this question may be academically interesting or, depending on your point of view, incredibly tedious. But as a legal question, it matters a great deal.

Nonsense. The thing is easily done. There may be 'hard cases' but that doesn't mean there will be bad law.

American antidiscrimination law covers certain protected categories. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in programs receiving federal support on the basis of “race, color, or national origin,” but—unlike many other antidiscrimination provisions—not religion.

Religion is a matter of self-definition. I myself am Chief Rabbi of my own sect of Judaism. We trace our origin to Schlemiel who accidentally jizzed on a passing Maharishi on his way back to Annamalai University after completing a scholar exchange program with Technion.

So if Jews are deemed “just” a religious group, then they are not covered by Title VI. Publicly funded programs, under this view, could discriminate against Jews with impunity.
But the federal government—starting in the George W. Bush administration, and more formally during the Obama administration—began to settle on a more tailored answer. Title VI does not cover religion-based discrimination. But when discrimination against Jews—or Muslims or Sikhs, for that matter—is based on “the group’s actual or perceived ancestry or ethnic characteristics,” or “actual or perceived citizenship or residency in a country whose residents share a dominant religion or a distinct religious identity,” the government found, then that discrimination falls under Title VI’s purview. Anti-Semitic discrimination is unlawful under Title VI to the extent that it targets Jews as a racial or national group.

This seemed appropriate. After all, anti-Semites very often envision and target Jews as a racial or national group. Secular Jews are by no means immunized from anti-Semitic attacks. And Jews have vigorously resisted the Protestant-oriented insistence that Jewishness is reducible to a religious identity. An antidiscrimination regime that is blind to this aspect of Jewish identity and to this manifestation of anti-Semitic hatred would be wholly unequipped to protect Jews.

This week, the Trump administration announced a new executive order that, more or less, entrenches the rule already adopted by the Obama and Bush administrations. It also breaks new ground by officially instructing all government agencies tasked with enforcing antidiscrimination law to “consider” the nonbinding International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism, including its illustrative examples.

So, Trump is merely formalizing something which already exists.

The announcement set off a firestorm of criticism in the

virtue signalling shithead portion of the

Jewish community,most of which focused on attacking the idea that Jews could be included as a “nationality” (thus receiving national-origin-based protections). These critics perceived the order as implicitly denying the Americanness of American Jews: What would it mean for the federal government—led by Donald Trump, no less—to separate Jews into their own nation?

Nothing at all. These fuckers were getting their panties in a twist for no good reason.

But the emphatic denials by some Jewish commentators that Jews should ever be conceived as a national grouping risk unraveling the entire basis for affording Jews Title VI protection in the first place—not just under the Trump administration’s view, but in the view of every recent administration. Only some notion of legally cognizable Jewish nationhood (or race) brings Jews under Title VI’s ambit. And if any use of national-origin-based protections implies that the covered group is not truly “American,” then huge swaths of antidiscrimination law should be repealed—at great danger to the increasing number of Americans who still face discrimination based on their national ancestry.

In other words, if we want to appease these virtue signallers we would, sooner or later, be obliged to cut off our own heads and shove it up our poopers.

The furious responses from many Jews reflected, in part, simmering anger at a particular form of anti-Semitism characteristic of the Trump administration and elements of the broader conservative movement. President Trump has regularly and repeatedly suggested that America is not the country of American Jews. Israel is “your country,” he says, and Netanyahu is “your prime minister.”

America permits dual citizenship. All Trump is saying is 'support Israel, support Netanyahu'. Since America supports both, there is nothing wrong at all in Trump saying this. He may similarly say to Pakistani-Americans, 'support Imran Khan. Send money to bail out that country.' By contrast, India does not permit dual citizenship. An Indian origin American can have no dual loyalty on taking American citizenship. She can't vote for Modi even if Trump tells her to.

The impeachment investigation has likewise seen several prominent Jewish figures have not just their patriotism but their very loyalty to America questioned—most notably Alexander Vindman.

The context is the dirty fighting involved in an impeachment hearing. Vindman's testimony is damaging to the President. Thus, his allies try to paint him as serving some sinister foreign power. But this backfired immediately.

Just a few days ago, Trump proffered a cavalcade of anti-Semitic stereotypes in a speech before the Israeli American Council, lambasting American Jews for their insufficient love of both him and Israel, calling Jews “not nice people” who would nonetheless be compelled to vote Republican in order to protect their wealth.

This is wholly misleading. He was talking to a bunch of property developers- like himself. These guys boast of their own ruthlessness. To say 'you are an evil bastard who will skin your own grandmother to earn a couple of bucks' is to pay your interlocutor the highest praise. It is a different matter that once one is rich one has to pretend to be Liberal and to care deeply about the poor Palestinians and so forth. However, this is hypocrisy merely. Trump is saying 'I trust you guys because you are ruthless bastards. Posture all you like, I know you'll back my party. That's why I'm not going to try to punish you. Now I've laid my cards on the table, you too can trust me the way I trust you.'

With nerves already rubbed raw, a news report about an executive order that even hinted at dividing “Jewish” from “American” was the last straw. It was perceived as a doubling-down, another way of telling American Jews, “This is not your country.”

This is crazy shit. Jews don't really believe Trump is telling his son-in-law to fuck off to Jerusalem. What he is saying is that Jewish Americans should identify with Israel in the manner that Trump's America identifies with and supports Netanyahu's vision of Israel.

In part, the frenzied reaction can be laid at the feet of The New York Times—its initial article badly misrepresented the content of the prospective executive order and the context of Title VI. And in part, the hostile reaction of the Jewish public is reflective of a separate conversation occurring in the American Jewish community. Many Jews have grown frustrated at what they perceive as weak or uneven policing of Trumpist anti-Semitism—anti-Semitism that frequently seems to question whether Jews are patriotic or loyal Americans—even as most Jews have firmly laid the blame for rising anti-Semitism at the Republican Party’s doorstep. That they had just witnessed yet another round of tepid “critiques” of Trump’s anti-Semitic remarks before the IAC had Jews particularly attuned to this problem.

The real problem is that Liberal Jews are witnessing the hijacking of the Democratic party grassroots by militant anti-Semites. They may call themselves anti-Zionists but it is Jews that they hate. This is not 'the Socialism of Fools', it is the Liberalism of hate-mongers.

The Liberal Jews tried to direct their cognitive dissonance into an anti Trumpian channel by pretending to be outraged by his remarks- like the guy chooses his words carefully or bothers to cloak his meaning in obfuscating language. But this strategy backfired. Trump is going the extra mile to show he is genuinely both pro-Zionist and a defender of American Jews who must no longer be subjected to harassment and hate speech by people who do disguise their true beliefs by pretending to care for the Palestinians as opposed to merely wishing to see Jews wiped off the face of the earth.

So that’s part of the story, and in some ways the literal content of the executive order is irrelevant to it. But some deeper and more substantive anxieties are at work here.
One is the very old worry that promoting any sort of “hyphenated identity” ultimately gives succor to racists and bigots of all stripes.

This worry is so very old that it died in its sleep in the Sixties. The Godfather movies aggressively promoted 'hyphenated identity'. So does rap and hip-hop and so forth. There is nothing more American than being 'hyphenated'. Which American President does not play up his Irish roots- if he has any?

To be accepted as American, Jews and other minority groups must simply be American—no ifs, ands, or buts.

Because Obama wasn't elected President just coz his granny was Kenyan. The truth of the matter is that to be an American today is to gleefully appropriate Yiddish and Italian phrases while also, more cautiously, seeking to encroach on African American linguistic territory.

The fear is that the executive order, insofar as it encodes Jewish difference into American law, may enable anti-Semitic hatred.

How? The fact is anti-Semitic hatred we will always have with us because Jews are numerically over-represented in every useful and admirable type of vocation or profession. I fucking hate Jews only slightly less than I hate Iyengars.

It is not that this risk is illusory. It is true, as Ian F. Haney Lopez wrote years ago, that “to acknowledge race is to leave open the possibility—indeed the certainty—that this acknowledgment will at times be turned to racism’s service,” and that applies with equal force to the acknowledgment that Jews view themselves and are viewed by others as having a distinct national origin.

Lord Jesus Christ certainly had a 'distinct national origin'. By contrast, Jewish Americans, unlike WASPs, come from different countries in Europe and elsewhere.

But Jews are being baited into taking a very dangerous position here—insisting that we must withdraw from the protection of antidiscrimination law, because it might obliquely confirm the anti-Semite’s suspicion that the Jew is different.

Who is doing the baiting? Is it the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? No. Of course not! Don't be silly. It is merely the 'circular firing squad' of the Left-Liberals up to its usual time-wasting antics.

This outlook is a position Jews—and progressives generally—should be very wary of endorsing. It is the kissing cousin of conservative color blindness, which insists that any and all public usages of race—even those that are tailored to undermining discrimination and ingrained inequality—actually function solely to entrench racism. It is the illusory promise of assimilation, the vain belief that if we duck our heads low enough, anti-Semites will forget who we are. It is a viewpoint that ultimately threatens the entire project of antidiscrimination law—a project that cannot function without some notion of who it is protecting and why.

Nonsense. This is not a viewpoint and it does not threaten anything. It is a nuisance simply.

Antidiscrimination law has to name categories, and in doing so it acknowledges certain identities as demarcating social differences. Some on the right have sought to use this unavoidable feature of antidiscrimination law as means of declaring war on the entire apparatus—anti-racism rendered as racism. But acknowledging diverse identities does not justify inequality or subordination, and recognizing American diversity need not entail denigrating American minorities.

It is preferable to recognize nothing save that pseudo intellectual shitheads causing a public nuisance must be compelled to pick up their own feces and dispose of it in a hygenic manner.

Right now, amid the resurgence of neo-Nazis and the rise of the alt-right,

and the Zombie Apocalypse and the Spanish Inquisition

serious antidiscrimination protections are particularly necessary.

We are speaking of a nuisance which must be curbed. Why pretend that one is battling to prevent Nazi Vampires from Outer Space taking over the Republic?

The response of the law cannot be to carve out an exemption for anti-Semitic discrimination so long as it takes on a racialized or nationalist character. Indeed, several groups—perhaps most notably Mexican Americans—have seen their Americanness challenged in an even more direct and vicious fashion by the Trump administration than have the Jews.

Wow! Families being split up and deported face challenges similar, if somewhat more difficult, from Jews who are perfectly safe! Why not say that Melania Trump's right of abode in America has been undermined by her husband's cruel policies? Barron Trump may be separated from his family at any moment. Will the poor lad survive in an ICE detention camp?

Yet to respond to that challenge by withdrawing the national-origin-based protections Mexican Americans are entitled to under the law, on the spurious hope that doing so would dissipate the racist belief that they aren’t real Americans, would be a catastrophically shortsighted response. Heightened discriminatory hatred requires more robust antidiscrimination law, not less.

This is silly. Some Mexican Americans have been illegally deported. This wasn't because anti-discrimination law wasn't robust enough. It was because they were poor and their due process rights were denied by a shambolic INS apparatus.

But another concern is at play in the response to the executive order: the worry that the Trump administration will take real fears of anti-Semitism and weaponize them by leveling bad-faith allegations to silence or suppress speech—particularly speech centered on Israel.

The vast majority of speech centered on Israel is 'bad faith'. Moreover, the thing is a nuisance. Curb it by all means. We do not speak of laws against dogs fouling the pavement as 'weaponizing' anything. Scoop up your dog's poop. Don't talk worthless shite about Israel. This makes everybody better off.

Jews may need more robust antidiscrimination protections, but the Trump administration can hardly be trusted to implement them.

Jews don't need anything they can't supply for themselves. That is why Jews still exist. Where Jews have relied on Tzars or Commissars, they have been decimated.

This issue largely concerns the more legitimately controversial aspect of the executive order: its misappropriation of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism for use in assigning civil liability. The definition was not designed to fulfill this role, and indeed its own drafters have been vocal in opposing its use for this purpose.

The intention of the drafter of a statement which is used for some other purpose by a third party are wholly irrelevant. What is at issue is whether public funds can be given to an entity where anti-Zionist propaganda is carried out. The answer is- no. We have an Executive order. This may be challenged in the Courts but it may well be a matter of 'political question'. Peter Beinart writes 'So according to Trump, ‘denying the Jewish people self-determination’ is now bigotry, which loses a college government funds. Denying Palestinians the right to self-determination, by contrast, is US + Israeli policy.” This is perfectly fair. It is US- and Egyptian and Israeli policy to deny 'self-determination' to the Palestinians because, left to their own devices, they will fuck up even more massively than they already have. Stupid kids on campuses may think that Palestine could be a wonderful knowledge-economy like Israel if only the Israeli Army left the Arabs alone. The facts are quite different. There is no point in pretending that the Palestinians- like other peoples in the region- are not the authors of their own misfortunes. 'Grievance Studies' may experience a chilling effect but the best thing for the students defrauded by its Credentialized Ponzi Scheme would be for the thing to be frozen off like a wart.

While the order does not explicitly mention either Israel or the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, there is again ample reason for concern here.

Ample? How so? Will Nazi Vampires from Outer Space launch an invasion if this Order explicitly mentioned Israel. The plain fact is, BDS failed. Israel's GDP has doubled and its FDI has tripled since the inception of the Sanctions movement. The thing is a nuisance simply. Israeli academics, unlike Arab or Indian academics, are good at what they do. We need access to their research. By contrast, if Grievance Studies disappeared nothing but a wart on the lovely face of Sophia will have been eradicated.

Trump’s repeated indulgences in anti-Semitic themes—from dual-loyalty charges to Soros-based conspiracy mongering—give lie to any serious belief that his administration can be trusted to keep Jews safe.

And yet Jews are safe. That is the truth. One may lie about Trump being secretly a Nazi, but that lie does not give the lie to anything because it is itself untrue. Administrations don't keep Jews safe. Jews do. Sadly, a lot of them talk worthless virtue signalling shite but the Jews will pull together if an actual threat materializes.

That the same administration that has cried about “free speech on campus” when it comes to protecting the rights of racist provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos is suddenly a lot more invested in student safety when it might help suppress pro-Palestinian protests provokes fears that it primarily sees the charge of anti-Semitism as a tool to bludgeon wayward Democrats.

What is wrong with that? Wayward Democrats are the guys whose 'circular firing squad' is making them unelectable.  Curb the nuisance and the Democrats can go back to defending the working population instead of virtue signalling in a futile manner.

Look at what has happened to Corbyn. He has been crushed in the recent election. One of his own MPs roundly denounced his nasty, racist, policies as being one of the factors behind the collapse of Labour's 'Red Wall'- i.e. the loss of its safe seats. British voters have shown that ordinary people understand that 'Anti-Zionism' is 'Anti-Semitism' and 'Anti-Semitism' has always been the thin edge of the wedge of the Totalitarian incompetence of both the far Left and the far Right.

There is one mystery in all this that I haven’t wrapped my head around: Whether or not Jewish is a national identity, Israeli obviously is. So if the goal is to target BDS, to the extent that BDS activism obstructs Israeli or Israeli American students’ equal access to educational opportunities in the U.S. on account of their national origin, wouldn’t that invite a perfectly straightforward Title VI application without the need to bank-shot it through Jews-as-a-nation?

There is no mystery here. American Christians must still be allowed to trash-talk Hindus and Buddhists and Confucians and so forth. The presence of Russian or Russian American students on US campuses must not come in the way of good old Kremlin bashing.

At any event, neither fights over free speech nor the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tend to bring out anyone’s better angels. Hypocrisy abounds. Many averred free-speech warriors have been quite willing to sanction explicit and de jure censorship on campus aimed at suppressing pro-Palestinian speech; many of those indulging in naked harassment or discrimination of Jewish students have learned to yell “Free speech!” as if it provides a catchall dispensation—especially if they drape their conduct in the cloak of “criticism of Israel.”

What is being described is a nuisance which ought to be curbed. It is foolish to pretend that students benefit from having their attention drawn to this topic. Far better that they learn how to rede and rite gud same as wot I kan.

Ideally, the uncontroversial truth would be that anti-Israel conduct is neither necessarily anti-Semitic nor necessarily not anti-Semitic—it depends on the details of the case.

But it is still a nuisance. If I shit on the sidewalk, it may be that I am genuinely protesting the persecution of Iyers by Iyengars rather than hoping to cause you to slip upon my excreta and thus fracture your own stink-bone. What is important is not my intention but that the nuisance of turds on the pavement by effectually curbed.

To declare all anti-Israel sentiment intrinsically anti-Semitic would be as absurd as to insist that none of it is, or to proclaim that otherwise anti-Semitic conduct is cleansed of its character because it styles itself as “anti-Israel.”

But the thing is still a nuisance.

It is also the case that the First Amendment protects anti-Semitic speech—whether in an “anti-Israel” guise or not. In a sense, the IHRA definition shouldn’t matter to the free-speech debate, because if we’re talking about speech qua speech, both anti-Semitic speech and non-anti-Semitic speech are equally entitled to constitutional protection. “I hate Jews” is as protected as “I hate Zionists” is as protected as “I hate Dodgers fans.”

But you should not get the tax payers money for preaching hatred.

The legal question is when conduct—anything from vandalizing a Hillel to assaulting a student to refusing to write a letter of recommendation—ought to be attributed to an anti-Semitic motive. If a man on campus assaults me on the street, he’s a criminal. Is he an anti-Semitic criminal? If he takes a swing while yelling “I hate Dodgers fans,” then he probably isn’t. If he does it while yelling “I hate Jews,” then he definitely is. What if he punches me while screaming “I hate Zionists”? This is the core of the dilemma.

Where is the dilemma? This is purely a legal matter. The prosecutor demonstrates that the man was anti-Semitic because he believed Dodgers fans were disproportionately Jewish. Alternatively, the Defense proves that the man was not anti Semitic because he was a Rabbi associated with Neturei Karta who believes that Jews should not return to the Holy Land till the Messiah appears.

But resolving it doesn’t change the fact that all three statements—were they simply uttered in the town square or written in a blog post—are equally protected speech.

In America, yes. They are of the nature of a nuisance which it has not been thought worthwhile to curb- just as, till recently, dogs were allowed to shit on the pavement.

The trouble with the IHRA definition is that, while it nominally respects these distinctions, it is far too flimsy to work as a tool of law enforcement. Originally designed for monitoring and data-collection purposes, the IHRA definition is a political document in the truest sense: vague to the point of incoherency, and riddled with so much imprecision and hedging that it could justify labeling anything or nothing anti-Semitic.

This is certainly a matter which the Courts can clarify. On the other hand, it may be decided that executive privilege obtains and the doctrine of political question applies. The fact is, if the Order is acted upon then there will be increasing certainty in this regard. If it isn't, why bother with it?

The definition itself sets a cloudy tone right at the outset, stating that “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” “A certain perception”—well, what perception is that?

The perception that it is right to be against Jews. What is cloudy about that?

It “may” take the form of “hatred toward Jews”—what other forms “may” it take?

Disapproval. Resentment. The determination to have nothing to do with them. I don't hate people who pick their nose and then eat their own boogers. But I give them a wide berth.

Later, the document gives a set of contemporary “examples” of anti-Semitism—including things like dual-loyalty accusations or Holocaust denial—but clarifies that these examples only “could, taking into account the overall context,” possibly be thought of as anti-Semitism—offering no guidance as to when they “could” or “could not” be deemed anti-Semitic.

No such guidance is required. In some countries Holocaust denial is illegal. In others the thing may be little known. A citizen of India or China has little knowledge or interest in European history. An Indian may say 'I can't believe any such thing happened'. That would not be 'anti-Semitic'. It wouldn't even be particularly ignorant. The fact is, most Indians have no reason to be aware of this particular atrocity.

America permits dual-citizenship and 'dual loyalty' is not a problem if it is to an ally. The President is himself saying that the good American supports Israel and the good American Jew should do so all the more. On the other hand, there are anti-Semites (who proudly identify themselves as such if they feel it safe to do so) who rant and rave about ZOG- the Zionist Occupying Government- and an accusation of dual-loyalty by one such is evidence of a hate crime. By contrast, saying 'So and so is putting Israel's interests above the American National Interest' is not anti-Semitic because, more often than not, the person he is speaking of is a Gentile.

And while some of the examples seem to cover extreme forms of vitriolic criticism of Israel (such as comparing Israel to Nazi Germany), the definition confirms that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

In other words, it is perfectly reasonable.

If the IHRA were to be operationalized as a legal tool, at the very least it would require nuance, sensitivity, and care to put into practice.

This is true of any policy proposal couched in ordinary language. Every legal tool must be used with nuance, sensitivity and care. My writ of habeas corpus demanding the corpse of Margaret Thatcher for necrophiliac purposes was not sound in law.

The Trump administration has not, to put it mildly, earned the benefit of the doubt in performing such a delicate task.

It won't be performing a delicate task. University authorities will curb a nuisance on campus. Some virtue signalling shitheads will challenge this in court. It is the Judiciary which will perform the delicate task or else declare it unconstitutional.

It has no principled interest in academic freedom; it is still seeking to meddle in academic programming with an ill-conceived investigation into what it terms the “balance” of Middle Eastern–studies programming at Duke and the University of North Carolina—as if federal bureaucrats have any business micromanaging the curricular offerings of American universities.

Federal bureaucrats have no business micromanaging anything save Public Sector projects and what happens to tax dollars awarded to non Public Sector organization under the provisions of particular Statutes. In the case of the Duke-North Carolina Mid East studies program, federal money was being wasted on things not covered under Title VI. A Palestinian activist complained this was 'micro-management'. She was lying. If I refuse to pay for something under a contract because of a material breach, I am not 'micro-managing' the supply of the thing in question. It is up to the other contracting party to either correct the breach of find some other sucker.

The plain fact of the matter is that you could get a PhD from that program without knowing a word of Arabic. This made you unemployable though, no doubt, you could explain LGBTQ subtexts in the Egyptian Cinema of the Sixties to your clients in between refilling their coffee cups and taking their orders.

Title VI money isn't that substantial. Harvard's MidEast Department found Obama's Title VI provisions too strict and opted out of the program. Thus, there is little real threat to 'intellectual freedom' on- at least- wealthier Campuses.

Even if the IHRA guidelines do not on their face bar lawful and protected anti-Israel activity (and—for what it’s worth—I don’t think they do), they are written in language that is so broad and so vague that relying on them for use in legal-enforcement actions is almost guaranteed to have a chilling effect.

Or the opposite. Anti-Zionism is very well funded and virtue signallers abound in the legal community.

If a student posts a graphic image of a Palestinian child killed by Israel Defense Forces fire, is that tantamount to invoking a blood libel?

No. It is an indictment of the Palestinian authorities who turn their own kids into cannon fodder so as to enrich themselves from foreign donations.

If a campus organization is primarily focused on Palestinian rights, does that demonstrate a double standard against Israel?

Yes. Such organizations are not concerned with getting Palestinians to play nice with each other. They merely seek to demonize Israel.

The simple fear that the government might decide that it is or that it does is enough to produce a chilling effect, even if the new guidelines spark no new enforcement actions.

Since the 'simple fear' of harming the life-chances of Palestinian kids did not factor, why should we worry about any chilling or heating effect? I don't go into a pub full of beefy Rugby players and tell them their sport is like totally gay. Why? The likelihood of getting my head kicked in has a chilling effect. That is a good thing. Rugby players really are all gay and, after they had finished with me, I would be too. This would entail getting a new wardrobe and hiring an interior decorator and so forth. At this point in my life, I simply can't afford the expense.

This is all good reason to follow the advice of the IHRA’s own drafters and not enlist the IHRA definition for a task it cannot hope to fulfill.

The IHRA's drafters wanted to minimize criticism that they would themselves receive. That's why they wanted to pass the buck to someone else to do the hard work. Yet, their definition- though appearing novel when it first came out- has stood the test of time.

Anti-Zionist virtue signalling is a public nuisance. It is a factor in Labour's worst election result since 1935 in the UK. It does not help Muslims or Palestinians. It harms them.

Ziad Mughal, a British Muslim, who has fought both Islamo-phobia as well as Radicalization, said 'I cannot stand back and keep quiet when Corbyn turns up to divisive groups who risk increasing hostility between British Muslims and Jews and who build and enhance grievances. As someone who has worked on countering extremism for over two decades, I have seen where unchecked grievances lead to.'

But qualms about the utility of the IHRA are only part of the picture. The bigger fear is that the Trump administration will abuse anti-Semitism claims to suppress free speech whether the IHRA definition sanctions it or not.

Why stop there? Why not speak of the even bigger fear that Trump will use his small hands to interfere with your pussy cat? That thing sitting on his hat is probably a ginger cat. How long before Moggy turns into your own toupee and gets its claws into your brain? I already find myself trying to lick my unmentionables. Is there a cat sitting on my head? If so, it can only be Trump's fault. I don't blame the Jews in the slightest- though the Protocols of the Elders of Zion explicitly reference the subversion of my neighbor's cat for some malign purpose.

On that score, the uncomfortable truth is this: Giving more robust antidiscrimination protections means giving Trump more robust tools he can abuse.

Very true. Look how Trump is abusing Civil Rights legislation to install cats upon the balding heads of people my age! Increasing the amount of any type of anti-discrimination is just playing into the paws of my neighbor's cat.

Withdrawing those tools from the Trump administration to prevent their abuse means withdrawing those tools from even where they could be used to combat genuine anti-Semitism. Reducing the number of false positives means accepting more false negatives.

Why stop there? Why not withdraw all legislation for the duration of Trump's administration or, indeed, the administration of anybody we don't like?

For Jews who are genuinely fearful of rising anti-Semitism but have felt burned by the way this administration has manipulated the concept for nakedly political and partisan ends, there is no easy resolution to this tension.

Why? Because they are meshugannah.  However, anti-psychotic medication provides an easy resolution to their tension.

The difficult challenge they now face is to communicate these concerns and express their anger in a way that doesn’t risk inadvertently overthrowing decades of hard-won civil-rights progress.

This is not a difficult challenge at all. All they have to do is to strip naked and run naked through the streets shouting 'Nazi Vampires from Outer Space are trying to affix cats to our skulls so as to take over our bodies!' Speaking personally, I have found this a healthful recreation. Also it gets me off Jury duty.

Jews have every reason to be suspicious of the way in which the Trump administration will use a putative fight against anti-Semitism to squelch liberal speech on campus and drive further wedges between Jews and other minority groups (who certainly aren’t the beneficiaries of the Trump administration’s sudden affinity for academic safe spaces).

Indeed. Jews have every reason- including all the ones that motivate me- for running naked through the streets screaming incoherently. So do we all.

But it’s necessary to contest such abuses without adopting the uncompromising position that any form of anti-Semitic conduct, so long as it styles itself as “anti-Israel” in character, is outside the ambit of antidiscrimination law.

Most forms of anti-Semitic conduct- quite rightly- are outside the ambit of anti-discrimination law. Sodomizing a Netanyahu blow up doll you bought on Ebay is not covered.

Jewish students should not have to accept being barred from academic spaces or excluded from academic opportunities because of the assumption that their Jewishness converts them into agents of the Israeli government. Nor should Jews be forced to issue humiliating disclaimers disavowing the conduct of the Israeli government every time they want to act publicly under a Jewish banner.

The same applies to non-Jews- like Chelsea Clinton at a Christchurch shooting vigil- being harassed by Campus Lefties.

At root, the problem is that the Trump administration cannot be trusted to judge what is anti-Semitic and what is not.

But it can be trusted with the Nuclear button. Wow! Anti-Semitism is not a big problem for the USA because American Jews aren't weak or cowardly. If some crazy militia targets them, Mossad will kill the nutters if the FBI proves helpless.

But the fight against anti-Semitism requires judgment—there is no way to avoid it.

Nonsense! Fighting Hitler did not require judgment. It required killing as many of his minions as you could.

Jews can be mistrustful of what the Trump administration has in store for us,

Gas Chambers? No. The Trump administration is planning something far worse- viz. Trump taking the lead role in a Broadway revival of Yentl.

or suspect that Trump does not have our best interests at heart when he purports to fight anti-Semitism for us.

The fucker is gonna force you to watch him sing 'Papa can you hear me?'. That's in no one's best interest.

But we must nonetheless preserve a real and serious corpus of law protecting Jews from anti-Semitic discrimination, even if the Trump administration tries to use these tools for its own illiberal agenda.

No. Everybody- Jewish or Gentile, deserves to be protected from the fucking nuisance that is Campus or Workplace anti-Zionism.  However, we must a preserve a real and serious corpus of law granting an exemption to me personally getting busy with my Benjamin Netanyahu blow up doll while singing 'Papa can you hear me.'.