7 Summer 2025 Testament. We are commanded to remember the past. But it is not enough to remember the past. We remember the past in order to be able to identify the threats of the present and to be able to prevent the recurrence of atrocities in the future. The focus singularly on what happened, without understanding the mechanism of how it happened − which brings me straight to the IHRA working definition of antisemitism − is a failure across the board that has enabled the narrative that says that the State of Israel exists because the Holocaust occurred. It is precisely the opposite. The Holocaust could not have occurred had the State of Israel existed. The State of Israel is not a 77-year young reparation prize for the murder of six million Jews. The moment that we enable that narrative to be told, we must look inward and ask ourselves about the concept of understanding what we tell our own children when they go to Poland, when they participate in the March of the Living, when they come to Israel. That is not why the State of Israel exists. The State of Israel, as I stated, is the nation state of the Jewish People, a prototypical indigenous people who returned after millennia of exile and persecution and committed to equality. That is the Declaration of Independence vision, mission, and values of the State of Israel. It is the Holocaust itself that has been appropriated in this Orwellian inverted moment. In order to be able to justify this strain of antisemitism that unleashed a tsunami of all strains of ever-mutating antisemitism, all eleven examples of the IHRA working definition constitute, from my perspective, the most prompting moment. My goal was to create a national strategy for combating antisemitism. My understanding that it is the Holocaust itself that has been appropriated and weaponized at this Orwellian moment to demonize, delegitimize, and apply double standards to the State of Israel brings me to the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. This definition, as opposed to all the other definitions that have been offered, and used by, for example, the White House National Strategy for Combating Antisemitism, that referred to the nexus definition, which actually negates that part of the IHRA working definition. Without the mechanism, without the how, without understanding the demonization, delegitimization and double standards, it is the mechanism that enables not “Never Again,” but again and again. It enabled the genocide in Rwanda − the Houthis and the Tutsis. That did not happen overnight. Demonization, delegitimization, and double standards is the dangerous mechanism that enables genocide. We saw it in a post-October 7 reality, not just in the demonization, delegitimization and double standards of the State of Israel. What allowed people to walk past the posters of Kfir Bibas and rip them down was that mechanism, so well infiltrated into university spaces, educational spaces, and online spaces. For those who demonize, delegitimize and apply double standards, that was not a human baby whose poster they were ripping down. In my first emergency trip to the United States, walking past the African American Museum, I thought of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old African American boy whose brutal murder in 1955 became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. I had this Emmett Till moment just as Israel was about to reveal what happened on October 7, including the rape and the sexual crimes that happened on that day. Emmett Till's mother makes the decision to bury Emmett in an open casket so that the community will look in, her children will look in, and the police will look in to see what it is that kills, what it was that murdered Emmett Till. I had this moment that made me sick to my stomach. If you understand the mechanism of demonization, or dehumanization when it is an individual, then you understand that as we were contemplating opening up the casket, if you will, and incurring additional trauma to ourselves, to our families, to our loved ones, I realized that it may very well be that people will look in the casket and say, “that's just a Jewish woman, she deserved it.” Or they won't look in at all, or they will not say that they “believe” you because you are a Jew. In fact, that is the result that we have seen in a postOctober 7 reality. The understanding, when I speak, especially with lawyers, that it is the law, its mechanisms and institutions mandated and entrusted to be upheld, promoted, and protected equally and consistently. Every lawyer here knows that selective application of any rule, of any law, of any principle renders the paper it is written on irrelevant, and the rule ceases to protect anyone; the understanding that the reclamation of law must begin with the law and with its institutions. I mentioned the ICC, the ICJ courts of last resort, and the implication of their weaponization. When I was a Knesset member, I was the first-time liaison to the issue of the ICC. At that point in time in 2020, Fatou Bensouda had already rendered her decision regarding the State of Israel, completely ignoring seven countries’ amicus briefs that stated clearly that there is no justiciability, that the issue of complementarity hadn't been met, and so on, with legal principles being completely ignored.
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