Antisemitism expert calls IHRA definition ‘essential’

Dr Dave Rich – a leading British academic and expert on antisemitism and director of policy at the Community Security Trust – provided in depth analysis via video link at the Royal Commission hearing on May 14 about the history of hatred against Jews, contemporary idealogical drivers and forms, and the serious threat posed not only to Jewish people, but to society as a whole.

The Associate Research Fellow at the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck (University of London), drew a direct parallel between the ancient yet still present blood libel that Jews murdered non-Jewish children for ritual purposes, and contemporary discourse.

He pointed to allegations that the Jewish State deliberately targets Palestinian children, and widely circulated cartoons depicting Israeli leaders drinking children’s blood.

He emphasised that conspiracy theory is the defining feature that distinguishes antisemitism – the idea that that Jews collectively conspire to control governments, economies, media, and culture for malign ends.

And he stressed that comparisons of Jews to Nazis, or Israel’s actions as replications of the crimes of Nazi Germany, are adaptations of antisemitism to a post-Holocaust world, and are deeply harmful on multiple levels, taking “the most painful Jewish sensitivities of all” and “weaponising” them.

The IHRA Definition as a practical and necessary tool

Dr Rich strongly endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been widely adopted, including by 46 UN member states, the European Union, the Organisation of American States, and in the United Kingdom by about 240 higher education providers, local authorities, and sporting bodies.

He described the definition as an essential practical tool for identifying antisemitism in all its forms — including the coded, indirect, or historically layered ways in which it often presents.

And he emphasised the definition’s deliberate conditionality — its repeated insistence on context — as a strength, not a weakness.

On the claim that the IHRA definition is weaponised to silence criticism of Israel, Dr Rich said the definition explicitly states that “criticism of Israel, similar to that levelled against any other country, cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” And he lamented how people, who should know better, “ignore that sentence completely”.

Dr Rich firmly rejected the proposition that Israel is “uniquely evil” and therefore exempt from normal comparative standards, adding that notion echoes a very old antisemitic idea.

He described the view that Jews are collectively responsible for the actions of Israel “a fundamentally racist idea”, and “is the mentality that leads to, or is the justification provided by, terrorists who murder Jews around the world.”

Islamist Antisemitism and Hamas

Dr Rich described Islamist antisemitism as a modern ideological fusion: negative religious commentary about Jews drawn selectively from Islamic texts, blended with 20th-century European antisemitism — including direct Nazi and Soviet influences — to produce a virulent conspiratorial worldview.

He highlighted the founding Charter of Hamas as a paradigmatic example, claiming it frames the Palestinian struggle as a religious jihad, describes a global Zionist conspiracy threatening the entire world, and even cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, directly.

Far-Left Antisemitism

Dr Rich traced antisemitism from parts of far-left thought from early socialist debates about “the Jewish question” in 19th-century Europe, through to the Soviet Union’s systematic export of antisemitic propaganda dressed as antizionism.

He argued that today, far-left and Islamist antisemitism, converge around an extreme hatred of Israel conceived as a demonic force, and also a conspiratorial view of Israel and Zionism as instruments of Jewish control over Western governments and global affairs.

Dr Rich identified the framing of Zionism as a form of European settler colonialism as “both historically wrong, and quite dangerous”.

The danger, he said, lies in what the narrative logically produces.

In contemporary radical left anti-colonial theory, colonisers “can never acquire rights — nor can their descendants”, he said, and under this framework, all of Israel is illegally occupied, and Palestinians are therefore justified in using armed force against any Israeli, anywhere.

Dr Rich noted that the communities attacked by Hamas on October 7, were all inside sovereign Israel, not disputed territory. Yet proponents of the settler-colonial narrative, including tenured academics, had responded by saying, in effect, “What did they expect?”

This narrative, he said, “prohibits compromise, militates against working for peace, and justifies violence against Israeli civilians.”

Its ripple effect is to brand all Zionists — and by extension most Jewish people — as racist colonisers who may be excluded, attacked, and demonised.

Dr Rich concluded that the growth of antisemitism from the fringes to the mainstream, “should be a huge alarm call for everybody who cares about liberal democracy, about truth, about the rule of law, about trusted institutions, and about social cohesion.”