Dueling Definitions: Philo-Semitism vs. Anti-Semitism

Recently, there was a quiet but significant signing ceremony in our nation’s capital. But for continuing COVID-19 closures, that event would have taken place at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. For the first time, the United States recognized best practices in combating the oldest virus of hate: anti-Semitism. Representing the United States was Elan Carr, the State Department’s anti-Semitism Special Envoy. The other signatory wasn’t the UN, the EU, or a diplomat from Germany, France, or Scandinavia — all hotbeds of anti-Semitism in 2020.

It was a scholar and a member of royalty from Bahain: Dr. Shaikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, chairman of the board of trustees of the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence. In addition to recently making peace with Israel, Bahrain’s King Hamad is the author of the trailblazing Bahrain Declaration on Religious Tolerance, in which the Arab head of state declared that every person has the right to pray (or not pray) to G-d how he or she sees fit.

The Memorandum of Understanding refers explicitly to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which declares that demonizing the Jewish state falls under the category of anti-Semitism. Bahrain has now become the third Muslim country to recognize the IHRA definition, joining  Kosovo and Albania. Bahrain stands with  over 35 other nations and institutions that have adopted the definition as a benchmark for combating Jew-hatred.

But there are exceptions. As Arab nations from the Persian Gulf to Sudan begin to collaborate with the Jewish people to replace hate with hope and mutual respect, some occupants in academic ivory towers have no intention of legitimizing the Jewish state or demanding accountability from students or faculty who abuse Jewish students and other Zionists.

Some occupants in academic ivory towers have no intention of legitimizing the Jewish state.

Take the University of Southern California (USC), which recently stood by as Rose Ritch, vice president of USC’s Student Government, was coerced to resign by a social mob of Israel and Jew-haters. Two notable figures at USC — Jonathan Jacoby, the Nexus Task Force Director at the Knight Program of the Annenberg School, and Diane H. Winston, holder of the Knight Chair in Media and Religion — recently argued in an op-ed in The Forward that Ritch’s resignation was not an example of anti-Semitism.

They rejected as “too broad to be useful” a definition of anti-Semitism that includes applying “a different standard to Israel than to other countries” — a key component of IHRA! While rejecting this tool to identify and combat the cancer of anti-Semitism, Jacoby and Winston “dug deeper” and discovered that there is “a more reasonable explanation” for what happened to Rose Ritch. Anti-Semitism may not be involved when Israel is demonized because such demonization “could be purely subjective.”

What does that mean?

In the case of Rose Ritch, the authors assure us that the social media onslaught targeting her as a Jew and a Zionist should not be treated as a special case requiring a strong counter-response because prejudicial attacks are also directed at “Mormons, evangelicals and Hutterites — and Uighurs, Rohingyas, Native Americans, and Muslims.”

Sadly, USC has a history of denial and deflection when it comes to anti-Semitism. A protest against anti-Semitism was held at USC on Labor Day, which attracted more than 100 people. Compare this to the 1930s when, as USC history professor Steven J. Ross points out, some 1500 people gathered at Los Angeles’ Knickerbocker Hotel to protest USC President Rufus Von KleinSmid’s apologetics for Nazi Germany and his defense of Athletic Department head Dean Cromwell for banning American Jewish runners from competing in 1936’s Berlin Olympics. After the Olympics, Cromwell spoke at a Nazi-organized German Day celebration at La Crescenta’s Hindenburg Park, during which he quipped: “Oh boy, if I could only be that handsome boy Adolf [Hitler] in New York for an hour.” He also disparaged Black students. Cromwell’s name remains on USC’s storied athletic field.

Those who are ready to do anything to excuse anti-Semites targeting the world’s largest Jewish community — the Jewish state of Israel — are mimicking a quip told to me (Rabbi Cooper) on Yom Kippur in 1972 by a long-suffering Soviet Jew in Moscow. “Who is a philo-Semite?” he asked. “Someone who hates Jews only as much as is absolutely necessary.”

What has the world come to? Arabs and Jews are trying to drain the swamp of anti-Semitism, yet “activists” on campuses in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States continue to pump history’s oldest virus into Western society’s bloodstream?

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Historian Harold Brackman is a consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.