The Bundestag is set to vote on a highly controversial resolution to combat anti-Semitism in Germany on Thursday – despite vehement opposition to parts of the resolution from legal experts, civil society groups and prominent Jewish intellectuals. The cross-party resolution is the result of months of closed-door negotiations between the ruling center-left coalition government and the center-right opposition.

First proposed following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and a subsequent increase in reported anti-Semitic incidents in Germany, the controversy over the resolution largely centers on the intention to make public subsidies for dependent cultural and scientific projects of joining the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working definition of anti-Semitism:

“The Bundestag reaffirms its decision to ensure that no organizations or projects that spread anti-Semitism, question Israel’s right to exist, call for a boycott of Israel or actively support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement receive financial support” .

Amnesty International Germany said that while it welcomed the aim of introducing measures to combat anti-Semitism and racism and to protect Jewish life, in its view the resolution “not only fails to achieve this objective, but also raises fears of serious violations of fundamental human rights and legal uncertainty”.

“Many actors in human rights organizations, arts, culture and academia are already uneasy and reluctant to speak out about human rights violations in the Middle East conflict, to speak publicly on anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim racism, Israel and Palestine. or take to the streets, partly out of fear of repression – such a resolution will further strengthen this trend of self-censorship, mistrust and division,” the organization told DW.

Der Spiegel reported that nine federal Green Party working groups have already rejected the draft resolution in a joint letter to the party executive, citing the resolution’s adoption of the IHRA, which the authors claim has been repeatedly used “to smear legitimate criticism to the policies of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic. “

MP Nina Scheer of the ruling centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) also spoke out against the resolution, saying it “prevents the naming and addressing of possible violations of international law and therefore violates constitutional law”.

The Central Council of German Jews, a state-funded body established after the Holocaust both as a representative organization for many Jewish congregations in Germany and as an intermediary between German Jews and the government, expressed support for the resolution. “The bases for the effective protection of Jewish life have now been defined. However, the planned measures must still be implemented effectively and quickly,” its president Josef Schuster said last week.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Green Party members released a statement saying they were “shocked and deeply concerned by the campaigns currently taking place” against the cross-party resolution.

The German-Israeli Society, a lobby organization that promotes relations between the two countries, also endorses the resolution.

Legal experts say resolution is impossible

“From a legal perspective, the resolution is a big disappointment. Previous drafts were severely criticized by lawyers as most likely unconstitutional. Given these criticisms, it is puzzling to see that the final version of the text is largely unchanged,” says Ralf . Michaels, director of the Max Planck Institute for Private International and Comparative Law in Hamburg. Michaels is one of several experts who have offered an alternative proposal.

Besides the “practical impossibility” of administrators to pre-evaluate all such projects, amounting to prior restraint, such a rule would most likely amount to a violation of freedom of art and freedom of expression, according to Michaels. “These rights can be restricted by human dignity as protected in the constitution, but certainly not by the contested IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism that the Bundestag wants to make decisive,” he told DW.

Another problem with the current resolution, Michaels says, is that it supports a 2019 resolution passed by the Bundestag that describes the BDS movement as anti-Semitic — despite the Bundestag Research Service finding the content of the 2019 resolution unconstitutional and several courts they rejected administrative decisions based on these findings.

“The resolution itself is not binding, although experience from the 2019 resolution suggests that it will still be effective, both as administrative guidance and as a basis for self-censorship. On the other hand, it seems quite unlikely that the promised legislation will ever happen. adopted with legal and practical restrictions in mind,” he explained. Police and immigration authorities have also relied on this resolution in enforcing enforcement measures.

Why is the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism controversial?

The IHRA working definition has been adopted or endorsed by 43 countries, including Germany, and supported by some international bodies. However, was widely criticized for conflating criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism. He lists examples of manifestations of anti-Semitism such as “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example, by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “applying double standards by demanding (of Israel) unexpected behavior or required of any other democratic nation’ and ‘making comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis’.

The IHRA definition was originally intended to be a “big network” to support research on antisemitism and genocide, explains Joshua Shanes, associate professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, South Carolina.

Contrary to the author’s original intent, Shanes says the IHRA definition has been “hijacked” by forces aligned with Israel to prevent criticism and protect Jewish hegemony in Israel. “You are only allowed to criticize Israel if you do it in a way that affirms Jewish power and Jewish supremacy, and not equality, and if you want to call anything that calls for equality anti-Semitic, you need the IHRA, the IHRA will get you. there,” he told DW.

While anti-Semitism can in some cases be masked, according to Shanes, as anti-Zionism, language that would be anti-Semitic if applied to “Jews” becomes normal language when applied to a state.

“I think the term apartheid clearly applies to the West Bank, but even if you think it’s wrong, it can’t be anti-Semitic to be wrong. All of this is lost with the IHRA push – all of it. That’s why all this. lawyers insist on it so much because it shuts down any ability to advocate for Palestinian equality.”

Debate on the limits of freedom of expression

The proposed resolution added fuel to an already explosive debate in Germany about the limits of free speech in relation to Jewish life in general, as well as the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.

In August, a group of about 150 Jewish artists, writers and researchers living in Germany wrote an open letter expressing their “deep concern” about the planned resolution, saying that despite claiming that it “protects life Jews in Germany,” the resolution “promises to instead endanger it” by “associating all Jews with the actions of the Israeli government, a notoriously anti-Semitic trope.”

The signatories, including artist Candice Breitz, Barenboim-Said Akademie professor and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra concertmaster Michael Barenboim, unorthodox and Judenfetisch author Deborah Feldman and musician Peaches Nisker, wrote that while the overwhelming majority of anti-Semitic crimes stem from the German extreme right. , the threat is “barely mentioned in the resolution, which focuses instead on foreigners and minorities, a shameful distraction from the greatest danger to German Jews. It is proof that Germany has not yet overcome its past.”

“The protection of Jews is not the objective of this resolution”

The resolution explicitly states that “it has become clear the alarming extent of immigration-based anti-Semitism from countries in North Africa and the Middle East, where anti-Semitism and hostility toward Israel are widespread, in part due to Islamist and anti-Israeli state indoctrination” and that “the national strategy against antisemitism applies to “criminal law as well as legislation on residence, asylum and citizenship”.

“The protection of Jews is not the goal of this resolution,” Barenboim told DW. “The resolution constantly refers to Israel, which in my view serves two purposes. First, it seeks to hold the Palestinians and their supporters responsible for anti-Semitism in Germany and threatens to extend the silencing of this group through cancellations, censorship, police repression. and the like, secondly, it seeks to justify German complicity in Israel’s atrocity crimes, a result of the dehumanization of the Palestinians.”

In a statement to DW, Candice Breitz described the resolution as “a piece of simplistic dogma that is designed to protect and defend Zionist thinkers, not the Jewish people,” suggesting that its wording, like that of the anti-BDS resolution of 2019, “perpetuates the dangerous notion that Jewish identity is inextricably linked to Israel’s ethno-nationalist priorities.”

“It fundamentally undermines basic constitutional rights such as free speech, artistic expression, academic freedom, and freedom of assembly by essentially forcing a pledge of allegiance to the ideology of the state (in the vague form of Staatsräson) as a basis for being able to study in Germany, receive state funding or, on a more existential level, as a condition for granting asylum or citizenship. It plays right into the hands of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and other far-right movements at a time when ethno-nationalist ideology is gaining popularity among German voters,” Breitz’s statement said.

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