The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) and the One-Sided Perception of Palestinians

It is generally known that the creators of this definition of antisemitism called “The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism” (JDA) are part of the global left and have friends and supporters in Germany, for example at the Center for Antisemitism Research in Berlin. Israeli researcher Gerald Steinberg as early as 2023 emphasized that the JDA absolves Nazi comparisons and anti-Zionism from antisemitism. This was easy to see when the President of the Technical University of Berlin liked a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with a swastika painted on it on X in 2024. This was followed by a conversation with the antisemitism officer at TU Berlin. What it was about remains unclear, but the liking cannot have been the topic, as the ZfA in Berlin is the main player in promoting JDA in Germany and does not shy away from putting polarizing and questionable narratives into the world, such as “A declared love of Israel often goes hand in hand with Islamophobia” or that “Free Palestine” depends on the context and can also be read as a free Palestine with equal rights for everyone between the river and the sea.

This is not only simply wrong, but also demonstrates very well how little knowledge of Palestinian history or exchange with critical Palestinians there is. Free Palestine is clearly the desire of the majority of Palestinians—from an Islamic as well as a pan-Arab perspective—for a Palestine in which a Jewish state does not exist, which is denied any right to exist or historical connection to the land.

The JDA cannot be viewed in isolation from other activist initiatives that have been promoted in recent years by Holocaust and genocide research, Jewish Studies or antisemitism research and that claim to argue from a pro-Palestinian perspective.

There is the “catechism debate,” also known as Historikerstreit 2.0, initiated by Australian genocide researcher A. Dirk Moses, who in his concept of “permanent security” (in short: an anti-Western concept that uses the instruments of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to guarantee security at the expense of the global South) invokes the protective assertions made in court by SS-Gruppenführer and commander of Einsatzgruppe D, Otto Ohlendorf. German courts already rejected this line of argumentation in the first Einsatzgruppen trial in Würzburg in 1950 (!) because it is what it is: a protective claim that distracts from enforcing a murderous ideology.

Then there was “Elephant in the Room,” published in the summer of 2023, which is well-intentioned and positive in terms of the idea, especially against the backdrop of a far-right government in Israel. However, here too the state of Israel is criticized unilaterally and seen as the reason why there is no peace between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, the so-called “We Want to Live” protests took place in Gaza, demonstrations against Hamas that, unlike this petition, received no media attention whatsoever.

And then, precisely from this circle of activist researchers who see themselves as critical, comes the prayerful repetition of opinions whose deeply anti-Israeli argumentative core briefly states (my summary) that the dominant memory of the Holocaust clouds the view of other mass crimes in history; antisemitism is a form of racism (it is not); the dominant memory of the Holocaust is “responsible” for the fact that colonial crimes, especially during the first German genocide in German South-West Africa (now Namibia), have no place in the German discourse of remembrance. The assumed solution is therefore a “multidirectional remembrance” (as suggested by scholar Michael Rothberg), which actually does what has already been part of everyday life at the grassroots level in memorial sites or memorial initiatives for many years, but has perhaps not yet reached parts of the ivory tower. Furthermore, the JDA ensures that Gaza can be compared to the Warsaw ghetto or a concentration camp, which is a blatant refusal to engage with Gaza, where a two-tier society exists in which membership with Hamas determines one’s social advancement and future opportunities. Moreover, it deeply ignores the fact that antisemitism was the root cause of the Holocaust.

“Pro-Palestinian” encampments at universities and colleges worldwide—often glorifications of terror—have been set up out of “concern” for Palestinians (Federal Press Conference in May 2024), although it has been clear for more than a year that these are also specifically funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran. And if it were not for the pervasiveness of collective guilt in Germany, Germans would also claim that the war with Gaza is a genocide. The fact that this is the first genocide in history in which the victims have the capacity to end the suffering at any time (release hostages, lay down arms and surrender unconditionally), does not interfere with this view. It is always inherent in this positioning to attack recognized scientific definitions, but not really to improve them. And it is actually the founding of the state of Israel that is the problem, because it led to the Nakba. This is why the “Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network” is a new activist network among academics that is promoting these empirically unsubstantiated positions and new definitions, including in a predominantly ahistorical step, defining the Nakba as a mass crime without taking into account the historical genesis of this term and its definition in Palestinian society. It is not difficult to recognize the signature of an Israeli, anti-Zionist perspective here, which prefers to see Israel dissolved as a Jewish state rather than Palestinians as subjects of history. In addition, this view also propagates the thesis of the “victims of the victims,” that simplicist historical perspective of the “decades-long shared history of violence between the two peoples.” The ethnic cleansing in Arab countries, where almost no Jews live today, in the course of the founding of the state of Israel is always ignored.

Inherent in all these “new” definitions, perspectives and explanations are two things. First, they are dependent on the Holocaust, because without it the theses and theories are not publicly effective. They downplay or redefine antisemitism.

Second, they do not perceive Palestinians as actors in history, but see them one-sidedly as helpless victims without agency. Meanwhile, it is the same circle of antisemitism, Holocaust and genocide researchers who speak of a genocide or a scholasticide in Gaza, but not only uncritically take any information published by Hamas, but also adopt a simplistic view of Palestinians that is not progressive, but has for decades unilaterally defined Palestinian terror as legitimate resistance and has zero criticism of Palestinian leadership, decisions, mistakes and political statements. This defines the state of Israel as the root of all evil in the Middle East, and also does not do justice to Palestinians. Even the massacres of Oct. 7, 2023 in southern Israel, which are almost identical to those perpetrated by the Islamic State, are reinterpreted, like so much that now calls itself “progressive”: In the words of Omer Bartov, “The despicable attack by Hamas must be seen as an attempt to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians.” Criticism of this view is defamed, ignored, blocked or deleted.

Since Oct. 7, however, Palestinian activists in the diaspora have also been speaking out. Despite the danger to life including that of their families, they are taking a third path beyond polarizing narratives instead of the “resistance narrative.” They speak about the torture, murders, abuse and oppression of civilians in Gaza by Hamas and its supporters, which are ignored by aforementioned academics who are progressive in their self-perception. These critical Palestinian positions, which are aimed at peace, are only slowly finding their way into the political discourse, as they contradict the common, one-sided narrative in the Middle East (“Israel is always to blame”).

Why are there such low to zero expectations of Palestinians? And why are Palestinians critical of Hamas not included in the pro-Palestinian discourse? In March 2025, Hamza Abu Howidy, peace activist from Gaza (fled in August 2023) was a guest in Berlin-Pankow, as always only possible under police protection. Together with Israeli Shay Dashevsky, he is fighting for new perspectives.

Why are there such low to zero expectations of Palestinians? And why are Palestinians critical of Hamas not included in the pro-Palestinian discourse?

Abu Howidy asked the understandable question of why he had to hide when hatred of Israel and glorification of terror are the order of the day on the streets outside. There was no answer. Another example is Ahmed Al Khatib from Gaza, who lives in the U.S. and founded “Realign for Palestine,” a forward-looking initiative, despite his own family losses in the war in Gaza. He belongs to a self-critical generation of Palestinians who want to take a new path. This generation questions a discourse that has dominated Palestinian society and the diaspora for decades, and whose rule is always: “Israel is always to blame.” Unlike the initiators of the JDA, they want to criticize Palestine and therefore do not have to defame or demonize the state of Israel. They also do not want to dissolve or destroy it, but are denigrated as “Zionists” precisely because of this. There are more of them. Another example is the medical doctor and political scientist Huthifa Al Mashhadani, director of the German-Arab School in Berlin and chairman of the German-Arab Council. He advocates peace with Israel and is threatened and vilified for this.

They are all breaking their silence in favor of a new discourse that does not manifest the Middle East conflict, but offers no solutions other than those that correspond to anti-Zionist Israelis, who are the only ones who are so readily heard in Germany because of their one-sided criticism of Israel. These anti-Zionist positions have so far refused to discuss or include critical Palestinian perspectives in the discourse.

This was shown by the recent example of the philosopher Omri Böhm. Israeli, Jewish anti-Zionists are welcome guests in Germany, as is the historian Amos Goldberg or the political scientist Bashir Bashir, as well as the dominant voice of Holocaust researcher Omer Bartov when it comes to the alleged genocide in Gaza.

The critical Palestinian-Arab and Arab voices clearly show that there is no need for a “Jerusalem Declaration” that supposedly wants to combat antisemitism (which only ever comes from the right, according to them) but at the same time opens the door to it. These critical Palestinian and Arab voices do not defame Palestinians one-sidedly, as is popular among some (Israeli) anti-Zionists with a connection to Israel. Rather, they criticize Israel without resorting to antisemitic slurs and stereotypes.

Aren’t they the real progressives, as they build bridges between decades of polarizing discourse?

Dr. Verena Buser is an associate researcher of the Holocaust Studies Program at Western Galilee College, Israel and lives in Berlin.