Ten Years On: The IHRA Definition

A common framework for a persistent disagreement

In somewhat reductive terms, the ambiguity of a highly complex legal and political situation was resolved by declaring: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” It further explained that “[r]hetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”¹ Importantly, it also addressed certain forms of Israel-related antisemitism through examples including “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” and “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.“² Very rapidly the IHRA definition acquired extraordinary adoption: As of January 1, 2026, a total of 1,334 entities worldwide have adopted the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, including 47 national governments (all of the European states except Ireland and Norway) and international institutions like the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, and the Parlamento Latinoamericano.³

This itself constitutes a remarkable achievement, one that could hardly have been expected at the time of its conceptualization. The loophole the IHRA definition attempted to address was itself striking: Despite the Holocaust, decades of postwar memory culture, and extensive anti-discrimination regimes, antisemitism long remained without a broadly operational institutional definition. By the 1990s and early 2000s European institutions increasingly felt the need for a shared framework through which antisemitism could be monitored, taught, remembered, and publicly addressed in the context of post–Cold War transformation and intensifying debates surrounding Israel and the Middle East.⁴ This context embedded a lasting tension into the definition itself: although initially intended for relatively limited educational and monitoring purposes, the IHRA definition was gradually asked to perform far broader political, institutional, and normative functions. 

As a result, the definition emerged without fully confronting many of the tensions that would later surround it — tensions that might have been approached differently had its future political and legal significance been anticipated.⁵  Moreover, given the distinctive and constantly evolving characteristics of antisemitism, the IHRA definition has undoubtedly performed substantial conceptual and political heavy-lifting in attempting to formulate an operational framework capable of addressing highly diverse manifestations of anti-Jewish hostility. 

Now that the IHRA definition is approaching its Bar Mitzvah, it is time to assess what precisely constitutes its success. But by what criteria should the success of one of the most controversial contemporary definitions be measured? Should the definition be judged according to its original institutional purposes — monitoring antisemitism, Holocaust remembrance, and educational guidance? Or has the definition’s global diffusion fundamentally transformed its function, requiring it to be assessed instead according to its broader political, legal, and cultural effects?

Although initially intended for relatively limited educational and monitoring purposes, the IHRA definition was gradually asked to perform far broader political, institutional, and normative functions.

As discussed in more detail below, the IHRA definition’s significance now extends far beyond the relatively modest framework initially envisioned by its drafters. But this expansion raises a deeper problem: Can a self-described non-binding definition simultaneously function as a quasi-legal norm? To what extent can an international definition of antisemitism operate effectively across radically different national, constitutional, and political contexts? And how can a single conceptual framework mediate the historically and politically charged relationship between antisemitism, Zionism, and the State of Israel without collapsing these categories into one another?

These unresolved tensions help explain why, alongside the growing international endorsement of the IHRA definition, alternative attempts to define antisemitism quickly emerged. Most prominent among them were the Nexus Document (2020) and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) (2021),⁶ both of which arose partly in response to concerns regarding the scope, implications, and possible uses of the IHRA definition, especially with respect to its potentially chilling effects on speech critical of Israel, including by Jews.⁷ 

After October 7, debates over the “right” definition only intensified, in the context of allegedly antisemitic speech and conduct related to Israel’s response. New pressures emerged—across political, scholarly, legal, and cultural contexts—to position oneself and others in relation to the IHRA definition, a process that almost inevitably implicates a relationship to the State of Israel. Individuals, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, increasingly seem pushed into an almost “coming out” moment: for Israel or against it. This demand for clear binaries, uncomplicated loyalties, and immediate certainty increasingly characterizes contemporary political culture more broadly. In debates surrounding Jews, antisemitism, and Israel, however, the loss of space for ambivalence, contradiction, and nuance can become especially charged and dangerous. Under these conditions, even people acting with the best intentions may find themselves reproducing simplistic, exclusionary, or antisemitic forms of thinking. 

The desire for a clear and workable definition of antisemitism is therefore understandable, even necessary, if antisemitism is to be publicly visible, taught, challenged, and legally addressed. Yet few forms of hatred have proven as historically adaptive and conceptually unstable as antisemitism. Often described as “the longest hatred,” it has historically adapted to radically different political, religious, racial, national, and ideological contexts. The risk of relying too rigidly on any single definition is therefore not merely that it may flatten the complexity of antisemitism, but that it may also reduce the diversity, contradictions, histories, and lived experiences of Jews into a singular and overly coherent figure. 

After October 7, debates over the “right” definition only intensified, in the context of allegedly antisemitic speech and conduct related to Israel’s response. New pressures emerged—across political, scholarly, legal, and cultural contexts—to position oneself and others in relation to the IHRA definition, a process that almost inevitably implicates a relationship to the State of Israel.

In light of the polarized debate surrounding the IHRA definition — particularly regarding its precision, usefulness, and political implications — it is time to examine its first decade of impact. This essay argues that the IHRA definition’s success lies less in having resolved the problem of defining antisemitism than in having become the most widely accepted framework through which that problem is publicly, politically, and increasingly legally negotiated. Its strength — institutional usability — is also the source of many of its weaknesses: ambiguity, overextension, and the constant risk of being asked to do more than any working definition can bear. Although the IHRA’s reach is international, particular attention is given to its significance in Germany and France, where the relationship between antisemitism, Holocaust memory, Israel, and legal regulation has become especially visible. By revisiting the broader difficulties involved in defining antisemitism and tracing the political and legal trajectory of the IHRA definition, this essay examines some of the tensions that have accompanied the definition during its first decade.

Defining the Undefinable?

Any attempt to define antisemitism also requires defining “the Jew” as the primary subject of antisemitic harm. How to define “the Jew” is itself an age-old, unresolved, and often dangerous question, with competing religious, racial, cultural, national, and political answers emerging both from within and outside Jewish communities. Any effort to define antisemitism confronts a central democratic challenge: how to acknowledge Jewish difference without weakening the promise of equal protection.

Although formally non-binding, definitions are often expected to produce binary judgments: antisemitic or not, acceptable or unacceptable, lawful or unlawful — even though antisemitism does not always fit neatly into fixed categories.⁸ Antisemitism therefore shares important features with racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of bias that result in discrimination. Like them, it constructs an identifiable “other” through binary narratives of difference, danger, and undesirability that can justify exclusion, marginalization, or violence. Yet these binaries are themselves often unstable, since they depend upon drawing boundaries between those considered “normal” and those marked as different.

At the same time, antisemitism has historically developed particularly resilient conspiratorial forms, frequently portraying Jews not merely as inferior or excluded, but simultaneously as threatening, manipulative, globally connected, or covertly powerful. Antisemitic imaginaries have therefore often positioned Jews not only at the margins of society, but also paradoxically behind structures of political, financial, cultural, or global power. Today, antisemitism can also function as a gateway into broader conspiratorial worldviews and as a form of ideological “glue” connecting otherwise disparate forms of hostility.⁹ It is this adaptive conspiratorial dimension—rather than any claim to absolute uniqueness—that has often complicated direct comparison with other forms of discrimination.

This also helps explain why antisemitism historically tends toward fantasies of totalization and elimination. If Jews are imagined not merely as inferior, but as the hidden source of power and corruption itself, antisemitic logic can evolve toward the belief that society may be redeemed only through the removal of Jewish influence altogether. Antisemitism therefore exceeds ordinary minority–majority dynamics because it constructs “the Jew” not simply as another vulnerable minority, but as a metaphysical, political, and conspiratorial threat to the social order itself.

Some of the deeper roots of this structure lie in the historical relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Judaism had to remain sufficiently visible to authenticate Christianity’s own origins, yet simultaneously be superseded so that Christianity could emerge as fulfilled and universal truth. Jews were therefore positioned in a paradoxical role: foundational yet obsolete, necessary yet threatening. These dynamics became newly entangled with Zionism, the establishment of Israel, and the geopolitical and religious centrality of the Middle East itself. 

The Jewish attempt to become “a nation among nations” possessing sovereignty and land — particularly in the Holy Land so central also to Christian and Muslim religious imaginations — has often been treated as uniquely suspect. The Vatican, for instance, established full diplomatic relations with Israel only in 1993, reflecting the extent to which Jewish sovereignty complicated longstanding assumptions within Christian theology, according to which Judaism was to survive as precursor and witness, but not as renewed sovereign presence in sacred history and space. Additionally, modern Middle Eastern geopolitics increasingly fused the Arab–Israeli conflict with broader religious, postcolonial, nationalist, and global political tensions. Within this context, modern Islamist antisemitism absorbed inherited anti-Jewish religious motifs together with European conspiratorial antisemitic narratives — including those shaped by Nazism — that spread globally during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹⁰ The aftermath of October 7 further revealed how deeply such narratives circulate across transnational political, religious, and digital spaces. Within contemporary political discourse, Israel can therefore function as a symbolic substitute for “the Jew” in broader antisemitic imaginaries and debates.

Although formally non-binding, definitions are often expected to produce binary judgments: antisemitic or not, acceptable or unacceptable, lawful or unlawful — even though antisemitism does not always fit neatly into fixed categories.

This does not mean that nationalism, including Jewish nationalism, is, or should be immune from criticism. Yet the symbolic intensity and exceptionalization attached specifically to Jewish sovereignty often exceed the ordinary patterns through which nationalism elsewhere is criticized and contested. Because antisemitism emerged across radically different historical, religious, racial, political, and geopolitical contexts, constructing a stable operational definition proved exceptionally difficult. It is precisely this complexity that intensified the institutional demand for a workable operational framework through which antisemitism could be identified, monitored, taught, and publicly addressed across rapidly changing political and legal contexts. And it is from this unstable terrain that the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism eventually emerged. Accordingly, the IHRA definition emerged less as a resolution of these tensions than as an attempt to manage them institutionally.

An Uneasy Origin

The IHRA definition of antisemitism was born in the late 1990s in Sweden, a country often described as combining comparatively low levels of traditional antisemitic attitudes with unusually strong institutional and public criticism of Israel. The then Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson, sought to address widespread gaps in Holocaust knowledge, particularly among younger generations.¹¹ He convened the heterogeneous institutional and intellectual milieu from which the later IHRA definition emerged, bringing together Holocaust scholars, Jewish communal organizations, European monitoring bodies, diplomats, educators, and antisemitism experts who approached the issue from different perspectives.¹² The resulting efforts, including the 2000 Stockholm International Forum and the accompanying Stockholm Declaration, framed Holocaust remembrance as a civic and pedagogical responsibility.¹³

This initiative must also be understood within the broader post–Cold War European context, in which many Central and Eastern European countries were beginning—often unevenly—to confront their own histories of antisemitism and complicity. At this stage, the concern was less about defining antisemitism or/the “the Jew” as such and more about European identity through a stronger commitment to historical awareness, democratic resilience and monitoring. Notably therefore the memory of antisemitism and the Holocaust functioned less as a direct commitment to the protection of Jews than as a constitutive narrative through which Europe defined the normative boundaries of its postwar self-understanding: liberal, democratic, tolerant, and ostensibly emancipated from its genocidal past.¹⁴ Confronting antisemitism, therefore, continued to be intertwined with the production of European legitimacy itself. Whether this institutional, legal, and pedagogical emphasis has actually made Jews safer remained a far more open and considerably less settled question.

The memory of antisemitism and the Holocaust functioned less as a direct commitment to the protection of Jews than as a constitutive narrative through which Europe defined the normative boundaries of its postwar self-understanding: liberal, democratic, tolerant, and ostensibly emancipated from its genocidal past.

New challenges soon emerged, most notably how to address forms of hostility increasingly articulated through discourse about Israel. The issue gained international prominence after the 1975 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 declaring “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” embedding disputes over Zionism and antisemitism within international political discourse. Although the resolution was revoked in 1991, similar tensions resurfaced during the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism, which many Jewish organizations and observers experienced as a turning point in the globalization of anti-Zionist and antisemitic discourse. 

By the time the IHRA definition was formally adopted in 2016, the political landscape had shifted dramatically. The aftereffects of the Second Intifada, the globalization of debates surrounding Israel and Zionism, the rise of populist nationalism across much of the world, the large-scale movement of people from the Middle East, and the increasingly polarized direction of global politics all contributed to giving the definition far greater geopolitical significance than its original architects had anticipated. Antisemitism had long been entangled with European memory and Jewish security, but now became linked also to migration, identity politics, Islamism, nationalism, and conflicts surrounding Israel and Palestine in new ways. The IHRA definition thus emerged precisely at the intersection of these overlapping frameworks. In many ways, the IHRA definition—however equipped or ill-equipped—represents an attempt to adapt, remain relevant, and ultimately survive changing political and institutional realities. What began primarily as an initiative concerned with Holocaust education, democratic resilience, historical memory, and monitoring gradually evolved into a globally influential political and quasi-legal framework. 

Its institutional longevity also matters. The IHRA definition was already there when demand for a workable definition grew: relatively simple, operational, officially non-legally binding, and backed by states and public institutions. Precisely because it appeared usable rather than threatening, it proved capable of surviving successive political and geopolitical upheavals, even as fundamental difficulties in defining antisemitism remained unresolved. It is this broader instability—and the particular challenges it creates for law—that is also of importance.

From Working Definition to Global Norm

In political and institutional terms, the IHRA definition has been extraordinarily successful, receiving widespread endorsement from governments, international institutions, universities, and NGOs worldwide. Politically, the definition has achieved remarkable distinguishability and institutional legitimacy, becoming a central reference point in public debates on antisemitism. In Germany, one could see it also through the so-called Staatsräson political doctrine—historically rooted in Cold War diplomacy, later elevated symbolically in Merkel’s 2008 Knesset Speech— that expresses a state commitment to Israel, but it does not rest on a settled constitutional foundation.¹⁵ The language of the IHRA has also significantly shaped the Bundestag’s 2019 anti-BDS resolution, in which parliament called on public institutions not to fund organizations or artists affiliated with the BDS movement or denying Israel’s right to exist, and likewise not to provide them with public venues or facilities.¹⁶ Despite this visibility-related success, however, the de facto impact of endorsing the IHRA definition remains comparatively limited. For many of its supporters, endorsing the IHRA has come to signify not only opposition to antisemitism, but also support for Israel itself. For better or worse, this reinforces the perceived inseparable link between antisemitism and the establishment and continued existence of Israel as a response to historically unresolved antisemitism in the diaspora.

The emergence of alternative definitions such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), explicitly formulated in contrast to the IHRA definition yet not necessarily superior to it conceptually or methodologically, has further complicated matters by deepening disagreement over how antisemitism should be defined and understood. The issue is not that the IHRA is debated or that alternative formulations exist. The concern, rather, is that the JDA does not provide a sufficiently clear or workable framework for addressing Israel-related antisemitism.¹⁷ The extent to which the rivalry between the IHRA and the JDA has become ideological rather than scholarly was illustrated by the German Left Party’s 2025 decision to adopt the JDA while rejecting the IHRA definition. This occurred in a broader context marked by repeated accusations of antisemitism within the party and its youth organization, ultimately contributing to internal tensions and the departure of some of the party’s most vocal critics of antisemitism.

One of the IHRA’s major achievements may lie precisely in the visibility it has given to antisemitism and Jewish concerns in public discourse.

Sustained debate and criticism of the IHRA definition nevertheless remain essential. They help keep antisemitism visible as a subject of public and scholarly concern, while compelling its proponents to engage critically both with potential weaknesses and with the need to address contemporary manifestations of antisemitism more adequately. Such debate may ultimately contribute to a more coherent and resilient framework. At the same time, debate over the “correct” definition risks generating confusion and uncertainty, particularly among those unfamiliar with the surrounding discourse. It may even reinforce the impression that antisemitism is too complex to be captured in any definition at all, bringing us back to the very starting point of these efforts. It is equally problematic, however, when institutions adopt the IHRA definition without reservation, treating it as the sole and nearly immutable definition of antisemitism. Genuine critical debate becomes difficult when endorsement of the IHRA by institutions or individuals comes to signify far more than the definition itself was originally intended to capture.

Still, one of the IHRA’s major achievements may lie precisely in the visibility it has given to antisemitism and Jewish concerns in public discourse. Today, whenever the question arises whether a statement or action is antisemitic, the IHRA definition is frequently invoked by at least one side of the debate. Whether this ultimately proves persuasive or effective is another matter. Yet the very existence of the definition generates discussion and awareness, especially around evolving and non-conventional forms of antisemitism such as anti-Zionism and hostility toward Israel.

From Political Recognition to Legal Equality?

Despite the IHRA’s success politically, legally its role remains far less settled. The IHRA constantly moves between the political and legal spheres: invoked as a symbolic statement of solidarity, used as a framework for public policy, and increasingly referenced in legal discourse and judicial reasoning.

This movement from political endorsement to legal incorporation is neither linear nor uncontested. Supporters regard the growing legal relevance of the IHRA as a necessary response to contemporary antisemitism, particularly its Israel-related forms. Critics, by contrast, warn that translating a politically endorsed definition into legal practice risks tensions with fundamental rights such as freedom of expression. More fundamentally, what exactly is expected from the IHRA in legal practice? By what standard could one say that the definition has succeeded from a legal standpoint?

The practical significance of these tensions becomes clearest not at the level of international endorsement, but in domestic legal settings. Germany and France are especially instructive in this regard, not because they exhaust the European picture, but because they reveal two distinct ways in which the IHRA’s political authority encounters the constraints of legal doctrine, constitutional principle, and existing anti-discrimination law. In Germany, the Bundestag has recommended that courts and public authorities take the IHRA definition into account, while several federal states increasingly treat it as an authoritative reference point in public policy and regulation.¹⁸ Its legal influence appears mainly through open-ended legal concepts relating to antisemitism, which courts must interpret case by case. German courts are generally confident in addressing “classical” antisemitism, such as Holocaust denial or Nazi ideology,¹⁹ but remain more cautious regarding Israel-related antisemitism, often referring to the IHRA without explicitly classifying conduct as antisemitic.²⁰

This tension is illustrated by the recent Shapira case in Berlin, concerning the violent assault and severe bodily harm of an Israeli student by a Palestinian fellow student during the early post–October 7 demonstrations. While the first-instance court recognised an antisemitic motive, the appellate court rejected such a finding despite extensive discussion of the issue. Felix Klein, the German antisemitism commissioner, nevertheless welcomed the judgment on the grounds that antisemitism had at least been addressed in court. The victim’s mother publicly disagreed, insisting that this prominence alone was insufficient without formal legal recognition of the antisemitic motive. The result is a paradox in which the public image of antisemitism is acknowledged, while equal legal protection against it remains far less certain. Decisions that shy away from explicitly naming antisemitism are particularly frustrating because, following the 2021 reform of Germany’s sentencing provisions in the Criminal Code — whose legislative rationale explicitly refers to the IHRA definition²¹ — antisemitism was expressly recognized and listed as an aggravating motive in criminal sentencing.

The French criminal law, by contrast, already expressly recognised antisemitic motives as aggravating circumstances under the Code pénal regardless of the French Parliament’s political endorsement of the IHRA definition in 2019. French courts have therefore been able to recognise antisemitic motives without formally relying on the IHRA definition itself. In the 2021 judgment concerning the murder of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll, the Paris Cour d’assises recognised the antisemitic motive of the crime using conventional criminal law categories already embedded in the Code pénal, without expressly invoking the IHRA definition.

Precisely because French law already contains established mechanisms for addressing antisemitic motives, recent attempts to integrate the logic of the IHRA more directly into criminal law revealed the tensions surrounding such incorporation, particularly through the controversial 2026 “Loi Yadan” proposal. The bill sought to strengthen criminal law against the “new forms of antisemitism” by indirectly incorporating elements associated with the IHRA definition, especially regarding anti-Zionist and Israel-related speech, but was ultimately withdrawn following fierce criticism that it risked criminalising legitimate political expression concerning Israel and Palestine.

The IHRA definition now finds itself caught between opposing expectations: criticised by some as too rigid and politically restrictive, while regarded by others as legally insufficient or merely symbolic.

These examples reveal that the broader tensions surrounding the IHRA are also reflected within the justice system and show precisely why consistent legal implementation beyond symbolic recognition matters. Far from remaining a legal panacea, courts still struggle to apply it to newer and more complex forms of antisemitism. The binary logic of the legal system, which ultimately distinguishes only between lawful and unlawful conduct, sits uneasily with the reality that antisemitism may be deeply discriminatory and harmful even where it falls below the threshold of criminal liability. Moreover, the IHRA’s function in a legal sense is largely retrospective because it tends to structure the classification and attribution of antisemitism after alleged incidents have occurred, rather than guide conduct in advance. Individuals rarely refrain from particular conduct because they consciously fear that it may later be classified as antisemitic under the IHRA definition. 

The experiences of Germany and France illustrate the broader tensions inherent in translating a politically influential and symbolically charged definition into a workable legal instrument. The IHRA’s political success—its visibility, legitimacy, and symbolic authority—does not automatically translate into equal legal protection for Jews. Courts continue to struggle particularly with newer and Israel-related forms of antisemitism. In this sense, the IHRA may function best not as a fixed doctrinal formula, but as a point of orientation within an ongoing political and legal struggle over how antisemitism is recognised and addressed in democratic societies.

In brief, rather than applying the definition mechanically, courts should engage seriously and carefully with possible antisemitic motives. In this context, the IHRA definition may serve as a point of orientation within legal reasoning without requiring schematic or premature classifications. At the same time, greater training and education for judges and prosecutors remain necessary, particularly regarding contemporary, coded, indirect and Israel-related forms of antisemitism. Yet precisely because of this transformation, the IHRA definition now finds itself caught between opposing expectations: criticised by some as too rigid and politically restrictive, while regarded by others as legally insufficient or merely symbolic.

Ten years on, the IHRA definition has succeeded above all as a common political and institutional reference point. Its value lies in helping public bodies, courts, and universities recognise forms of antisemitism that might otherwise go unnamed. But it is not a self-executing legal standard and should not be burdened with questions it cannot resolve. Used well, it serves as a guide; used badly, it becomes a substitute for legal reasoning and political judgment. What began primarily as a tool for monitoring antisemitism has evolved into a political, symbolic, and legal reference point reflecting broader positions on Israel, Holocaust memory, and democratic identity. In a climate increasingly demanding clear political alignments, endorsement or rejection of the IHRA often functions less as a methodological disagreement than as a broader political statement concerning Israel itself. And yet, of all available definitions, the IHRA definition remains today the most substantiated and coherent framework for capturing the broadest possible range of forms in which antisemitism can manifest. Of course, this does not exempt it from the need for continuous self-reflection, ongoing evaluation, and critical examination. At the same time, it is important to remain aware of the inherent limits of the IHRA definition as a non-legally binding framework, which constrains its direct applicability within formal legal contexts and necessitates careful interpretation in practice.

1.  International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), Working Definition of Antisemitism (adopted May 26, 2016), https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism ↩︎
2. Ibid. ↩︎
3. For accounts emphasizing its broad uptake and policy relevance, see Porat et al. (2021), describing the IHRA definition as the “main document” used internationally; Anti-Defamation League, About the IHRA Working Definition; and reports documenting adoption by over 40 states and more than 1,000 institutions worldwide. ↩︎
4. Already in the immediate aftermath of German reunification, scholars warned of the renewed visibility of antisemitism, nationalism, and racial violence in Europe. See Yehuda Bauer and Wolfgang Benz, eds., The Danger of Antisemitism in Central and Eastern Europe in the Wake of 1989–1990 (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991). On the broader rediscovery of nationalism and racial anxieties in reunified Germany during the 1990s, see also studies collected in Philipp Ther and John Torpey, eds., Beyond the Nation? The Relational Basis of a Comparative History of Germany and Europe (New York: Berghahn, 2001). ↩︎
5. See Rebecca Ruth Gould, “Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2018); Kenneth S. Stern, The Conflict over the Conflict (2018); and discussions of institutional adoption and its effects on academic and cultural settings in European Commission, Handbook for the Practical Use of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism (2021). ↩︎
6. See Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (2021); Nexus Document (2021); Brian Klug, “Interrogating ‘New Antisemitism’,” Ethnic and Racial Studies (2003); Kenneth S. Stern, The Conflict over the Conflict (2018). ↩︎
7. See Rebecca Ruth Gould, “Legal Form and Legal Legitimacy: The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism as a Case Study in Censored Speech,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2018); Kenneth S. Stern, The Conflict over the Conflict (2018); and discussions of institutional adoption and its effects on academic and cultural settings in European Commission, Handbook for the Practical Use of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism (2021). ↩︎
8. See more in Nina Keller-Kemmerer and Christoph Schuch, “Antisemitismus als justizielle Herausforderung,” Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, October 2, 2024, https://www.bpb.de/themen/antisemitismus/dossier-antisemitismus/552691/antisemitismus-als-justizielle-herausforderung. ↩︎
9. See Jeffrey Kopstein, Dana Weinberg, and Daniel Schugurensky, “The Gateway and the Glue: Conspiracy, Antisemitism, and Hate among University Students.” ↩︎
10. For an argument emphasizing the role of European Nazi propaganda and ideology in shaping modern Islamist antisemitism, see Matthias Küntzel, Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II (London: Routledge, 2024). ↩︎
11. See Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism: Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2003), discussing Swedish government concerns in the 1990s regarding limited public knowledge of the Holocaust; see also Göran Persson, initiative “Living History” (Levande historia), launched in 1997 to address these gaps. ↩︎
12.  Among the figures and institutions most closely associated with the early drafting and circulation of what later became the IHRA Working Definition were Kenneth S. Stern of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who coordinated much of the drafting process; Dina Porat of Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute; Yehuda Bauer; Michael Whine of the Community Security Trust (CST); Andrew Baker of the AJC; Beate Winkler, then director of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC); and experts connected to OSCE/ODIHR monitoring initiatives. Kenneth S. Stern, The Conflict over the Conflict (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020); Dina Porat, “The Road to the Working Definition of Antisemitism,” in Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019); Jean-Yves Camus, “The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia and Antisemitism,” in Les Cahiers de la Shoah 8 (2005). ↩︎
13.  Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, Stockholm Declaration (2000); see also International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), background materials on the Forum and its emphasis on Holocaust education, remembrance, and civic responsibility. ↩︎
14.  Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006); Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005); Claus Leggewie, “The Holocaust and the Europeanization of Memory,” New German Critique 90 (2003): 87–96. ↩︎
15.  Angela Merkel, Rede vor der Knesset in Jerusalem (Berlin: Bundespresseamt, March 18, 2008).  ↩︎
16. Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 19/10191. ↩︎
17. See Tanja Kinzel, Daniel Poensgen: „Zur Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA): Eine Kritische Analyse“ for a critical examination of the JDA. ↩︎
18. BT-Drs. 20/14703, S. 5–6; BT-Drs. 20/13627 S. 3. ↩︎
19.   Doris Liebscher/Kristin Pietrzyk/Sergey Lagodinsky/Benjamin Steinitz, Antisemitismus im Spiegel des Rechts, in: NJOZ 2020, S. 897-902, 902; LG Regensburg, Endurteil vom 17.07.2018 – 62 O 1925/17 Rn. 52 ff. ↩︎
20.   for example: VGH München, Beschluss v. 13.02.2026 – 4 CS 26.288; Rand 29 ff. ↩︎
21. BT-Drs. 19/16399, p.11. ↩︎