There's an interesting debate going on just now about the definition of antisemitism. You can read The Conversation's piece HERE. And, being me, of course I have an opinion about this. 

Actually, I don't. Both definitions seem fine to me. We ALL know what antisemitism is. We know it in our bones; you can hardly grow up in our times without knowing this, in the developed countries, anyway. But I don't think what it is is really the important issue at the moment. I think we should rather be focussing on what it it not.

We all learned in primary school the difference between the definition of a square and that of a rectangle, didn't we? For the sake of argument I'm going to assume we did. Maybe some of you were gazing out the window that day, thinking about your new puppy. Whatever. You can look it up if you really aren't aware of it. But the important thing is that although all squares are necessarily rectangles, not all rectangles are necessarily squares. And, just as the larger set includes, but is not limited to, the smaller, so the set of Israelis is not coextensive with the set of Jews.

I'm willing to concede for the sake of argument that every Israeli is Jewish, although really I very much doubt this is the case. It would be a rare country indeed that had a truly homogenous population in any demographic. But I'm willing to grant that we may consider Israelis as all Jewish, if we find that helpful, although personally, I don't think it is really relevant to anything in the news just now. But it is far from being the case that all Jews are Israelis. Good heavens, Jews are everywhere. We have Australian Jews, and those people are Australians, just as the English ones are English, the French ones are French, azo azif. Jews are not all Israeli, any more than every dark skinned person is African. It is a nonsense.

Having got that out of the way, I'd like to direct your attention to the definition endorsed by 39 Australian universities. It's quoted in the link I gave you above, but the thing I want to focus on is that it explicitly includes Holocaust denial as an antisemitic act. 

I don't have any quarrel with this. The Holocaust was arguably the most terrible and shameful event in human history, and it continues to cause intergenerational trauma today. Even those of us who were not born at the time of it still feel its horrible effects. The cold, sick feeling you get at the sight of a swastika. The shyness and almost embarrassment you feel visiting a synagogue, if you're not Jewish yourself. Our acceptance that although our church invited everyone from the synagogue up the road to our service, not a single person from that congregation came, even though lots of us had been to their events and met people there, even though their rabbi was being our guest preacher that day. No one was surprised, although we were a bit sad. 

So yes, denying the Holocaust is antisemitic. I feel it in my bones. 

Given that, though, there have been claims that criticism of the Israeli state's actions in Gaza are also antisemitic. Many claims. And this strikes me as somewhat hypocritical. We are all encouraged to remember, and to condemn, the Holocaust. But our reason for condemning it is not because Jews were the victims of it. It is even bigger than that. We condemn and regret the Holocaust because it was wrong, evil. And if Israel's actions in Gaza are also wrong, they are just as deserving of condemnation, and it doesn't make any difference whether the perpetrators are Jewish, or Americans, or little green men from outer space. If it's wrong, it's wrong. And condemning evil qua evil cannot be antisemitic. To argue that it could, would be to argue that Jews were evil, which in itself would be practically a poster child for antisemitism. 

So let's all take a deep breath and reach for whatever tiny rudiments of logic we managed to take away from primary school.