How anti-Semitism smears impact Palestine activists | EI Podcast

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On episode 66, we speak with sociologist and activist Sheryl Nestel about the impact that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Anti-Semitism (IHRA) has had on Canadian activists, academics and students.

Promoted by Israel and its lobby, the IHRA definition conflates criticism of Israel, on the one hand, with anti-Jewish bigotry, on the other. It has become the Israel lobby’s key weapon in North America and Europe to enforce censorship about Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.

Nestel co-authored a new report, “Unveiling the Chilly Climate: The Suppression of Speech on Palestine in Canada,” for the group Independent Jewish Voices Canada.

The report documents the widespread use of the IHRA by lawmakers and Israel lobby groups to silence speech on campuses and repress Palestine solidarity activism around the country.

“What we started out to look at was how people are experiencing not [just] the IHRA being implemented, but the threat of it being implemented,” Nestel explains.

She says that merely the threat of the IHRA, particularly in academia, is resulting in self-censorship across Canada.

Professors, she says, told Nestel that they are cautious about teaching Palestine in their curricula over fears that they could be accused of anti-Jewish bigotry and their careers could be harmed.

“We wanted to know,” she adds, “are students not pursuing activism because they’re afraid of the IHRA and afraid of being censured or accused of anti-Semitism?”

From the interviews and data the report’s authors collected, Nestel says that “the attacks and the suppression and the harassment that is going on is part of a concerted project and effort” by well-financed Israel lobby groups.

“It’s always very dangerous to say this, but it’s funded – we know that it’s funded, we actually surveyed all the different organizations that were named by our respondents as being behind attacks that they suffered. And we know that there is an organized mechanism behind that,” she says.”

Nestel notes that working in coalitions against the IHRA has been successful, and points to a recent example of activists and scholars organizing with the Canadian Association of University Teachers to defeat the implementation of the definition in 2021.

“The success in academia is unprecedented,” she says. “Nowhere else has this happened. And I think it’s because it’s so clear to academics that this is a violation of academic freedom and freedom of speech.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐚𝐝𝐚

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