"Speaking as a Jew...."

 Speaking as a Jew, I never start a sentence with “Speaking as a Jew.”

Well, maybe this once.

Here’s why. Any wisdom I presume to impart should derive out of my knowledge, experience and values as a human being. It may or may not be informed by my Jewishness. But it should stand solid without depending upon that credential. If my argument needs that identification then it is not as strong as it should be. If it needs that identity crutch it is suspect.

Of course, you don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate rye bread. Or wry humour. Nor need you be Jewish to appreciate the wisdom and balance of the IHRA definition of the current dominant form of that historic pathology, antisemitism.

To refresh your memory: Criticizing Israeli government policy is not in itself antisemitism. But it is antisemitic to hold the Jewish state to standards not applied to all other states, denying Israel’s legitimacy and the right to defend herself, blaming world Jewry for Israeli government policy, etc. That makes sense with or without the IHRA validation.

For what other state under attack has ever been required to feed and protect its genocidal enemy at the mortal risk of its own innocents?

Where/when else has the world supported the establishment of a new state explicitly dependent upon the annihilation of an existing one? That’s what “From the river to the sea” means. So, too, the Palestinians’ unilateral rejection of the two-state solution in 1948 and through six land-for-peace offers since.

What other North American community — eg British, French, Italian, Russian — faces abuse and existential threat because of its international association?

The persecution rests.

When an argument needs “Speaking as a Jew” I can draw only one conclusion. The speaker’s position cannot stand alone. It needs that special plea. It needs an extra authority. By implication, the speaker claims special rights to detach from that IHRA definition and its currency.

The obvious reason is what the sociologists have a name for — so it exists. “Group self-hate.” For whatever reason, whether shame, guilt, ambition, ignorance of history, the speaker seeks special exemption from that identification. It’s also a false claim of authority. As a Jew, the implicit statement goes, I reject what the IHRA has said and is being cited for here.

Jews have a nobler version: “tikkun olam.” The essential duty to improve the world. This probably propels most Jews’ attempts to detach from the defence of Israel against annihilation.

Hence the movement whose name assumes a rhetorical question on Palestinian statehood: “If not now, when?”

Speaking as a responsible human being, I would say there is an obvious answer: “When the Palestinians have demonstrated they have abandoned their explicit campaign to eliminate the Jews.”

I should not have to be a Jew to see and to say that. But Jews in the “If not now when?” movement are in effect if not in intention supporting the elimination of the Jews. Statehood now, ending the genocide of the Jews later. There lies our Prime Minister Carney’s (inter alia) unfortunate, naive recognition of Palestinian statehood, in the face of the October 7 atrocities and continuing Palestinian intransigence. That only encourages Hamas and its jihadist brethren..

Speaking as a relatively observant advocate of humanity, I see artists, galleries, major media museums, writers, editorialists, governments, universities, bodies from the UN down and beyond, Jewish individuals and groups, accepting antisemitism on a scale unseen since 1930s Germany. That nightmare now appears to have become a playbook. One should not have to be “speaking as a Jew” to see and to oppose that.

Nor should “speaking as a Jew” advance it.