A few months ago, I debated Antony Lerman, the Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, on the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Today, Lerman has a piece in Ha’aretz on a similar theme. He complains that scholarly discussion of antisemitism has been corrupted by an excessive focus on anti-Zionism.

Lerman’s main target is the Working Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the European Union Monitoring Centre (EUMC - now known as the Fundamental Rights Agency, or FRA.) This document, he says, is the culprit which has derailed a common understanding of what antisemitism is. And, he continues, it’s contributing to an atmosphere in which Jewish critics of Zionism are vilified.

Let’s turn to that last point first. Lerman writes gravely about “vitriolic, ad hominem” attacks on Jewish anti-Zionists (he doesn’t mention the ad hominem attacks which Jewish academics opposing the boycott of Israel have been subjected to, nor the various attempts to silence them.) “Can it really help the fight against anti-Semitism to place the fantasy of the anti-Semitic Jew at its center?” he asks. Snootily, he continues: “Practically the entire business of studying and analyzing current anti-Semitism has been hijacked and debased by people lacking any serious expertise in the subject, whose principal aim is to excoriate Jewish critics of Israel and to promote the ‘anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism’ equation.”

Of course, nothing as trifling as actual evidence is introduced to support any of this. But when you examine the evidence, you find that the phenomenon of Jewish anti-Zionism, while important, is not at the center of anyone’s analysis. Lerman’s belief that this is all about Jewish anti-Zionists (and he is one) is indicative of the narcissism which, as Anthony Julius has observed, lies at the heart of much Jewish anti-Zionist writing.

As to his remark about the study of antisemitism being hijacked by people with no serious expertise, that is beneath contempt. Indeed, one could describe this as an ad hominem attack, were it not for the fact that Lerman shies away from naming anyone.

Most glaring is Lerman’s assault on the Working Definition. He refers to its “examples of five ways in which anti-Israel or anti-Zionist rhetoric is anti-Semitic,” but doesn’t specify these. What he does do is argue that the definition unfairly stigmatizes those who, for example, advocate in favor of a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well, in the abstract, that’s not necessarily an antisemitic position. However, when you recall that its main advocates are Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian regime, and that in present circumstances it could be implemented only by inflicting mass expulsion, even slaughter, on Israel’s Jewish population, then it does make a degree of sense to introduce a discussion of antisemitism, especially as protecting Jews from these sorts of horrors is one Zionism’s core principles.

Just as reality doesn’t intrude here for Lerman, neither does it do so anywhere else. Among those five examples which he mentions, but doesn’t cite, is the assertion that holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel can be regarded as antisemitic. That is both uncontroversial and true. Shooting up a Jewish restaurant in Paris in retaliation for Israeli actions in the West Bank is, clearly, an antisemitic act.

Similarly, smearing Israel with Nazi comparisons, describing Israel as a racist undertaking, holding Israel to exclusive standards, denying that Jews constitute a distinctive group with the right of self-determination (as the 1968 Palestinian National Covenant put it, “the Jews are not one people with an independent personality. They are rather citizens of the states to which they belong”) - all these claims, which set off alarm bells for most Jews, justify a discussion as to whether they stimulate, reflect or enable antisemitic themes.

Lerman, though, wants to close down the discussion before it begins. He is content merely to caricature the definition, even going so far as to falsely argue that it includes “criticism of the policies of the current Israeli government.” Quite to the contrary, the definition goes out of its way to state, “…criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic!”

None of this has anything to do with reconstituting a serious discussion of what antisemitism means, or how to combat it effectively. Lerman is doing exactly what he accuses his adversaries of doing: arriving at the table armed with ideologically-charged principles, which range from protecting the reputations of Jewish anti-Zionists to a research agenda focused on whether Israel’s actions are a cause of antisemitism. He’d like everyone to think that he’s the expert and that the rest of us are useful idiots in thrall to the State of Israel. I’d like to think that most people are too intelligent to be suckered by that.