You Say You Want a Resolution

The WA Human Rights Commission would like to tell you what anti-Semitism is.

The Washington State Human Rights Commission adopted a “resolution condemning antisemitism” last month.

If only it were just too little, too late. The resolution, released on April 17 and written by “Washington Jewish Scholars and Community Leaders” could leave someone thinking that the biggest problem facing Washington’s Jewish communities is discrimination against Palestinians.

After acknowledging that anti-Semitism has been elevated for the past 18 months, without saying what might possibly be going on to cause that, the resolution hopscotches into ideologically motivated squares that serve to excuse all the actual anti-Semitism we have seen here since October 7th. It concludes “that the Washington Human Rights Commission affirms that criticism of Israeli policies, opposition to Zionism, or advocacy for Palestinian rights do not inherently constitute antisemitism.”

By now, we know where the “scholars” stand on things, and I have a few guesses about who the “community leaders” might be. The resolution cites only two sources, and one is Diaspora Alliance, an organization that appears to align with diasporist, anti-Zionist Judaism.

And so, I suspect the purpose of this random late-game resolution is to counter the popularity of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which is considered more pro-Israel and is being adopted in resolutions by cities around the country, including Bellevue. According to the Diaspora Alliance:

The campaign to adopt and implement the IHRA definition is ultimately bad for Jews and Palestinians, and for human and civil rights. Moreover, the IHRA definition is prone to being adopted by institutions and governments as a “quick fix” to antisemitism, precluding the more complex and long-term project of identifying the root causes of anti-Jewish bigotry and working to dismantle them.

Root causes? Like conspiracy theories from the Soviet Union and historical Christianity that have found fertile soil in the Arab world and drive the global campaign to disgorge Jews from their land? Please, explain it to me like I’m five.

I always try to find the most charitable explanation, so here goes:

The activists behind resolutions like this one are big-hearted people who see anti-Semitism as part of the global struggle for a loosely defined liberation in pursuit of world peace — what that looks like is TBD and will take creativity and strong leadership, but don’t lose hope, everything is possible if we choose love and listening. They see Israel’s forceful nature as an affront to their identity and values and consider it the cause of anti-Semitism, not a reaction to the force Jews have been up against for millennia. They believe that anti-Semitism is being weaponized to bludgeon Jews into submission to Zionism, and this drives a wedge between the real world building that Jews and Palestinians are meant to do.

Unfortunately, they often weaponize their Judaism to dismiss virulent anti-Semitism and undermine actual Jewish survival.

Compare this resolution to the “WA Human Rights Commission Resolution in Solidarity with Palestinians, Arab-American, and Muslim Communities, Honoring Washington Human Rights Advocates” from September of 2024. After listing several notable, horrific attacks on Arab Americans and acknowledging the deaths of Rachel Corrie and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi at the hands of the IDF it concludes:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Washington Human Rights Commission urges the U.S. government to cease supplying military aid to Israel, a nation that has repeatedly violated international and U.S. laws

and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, the Washington Human Rights Commission supports initiatives aimed at fostering dialogue and understanding between diverse communities to combat Islamophobia, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian sentiment.

It’s a surprise to no one by now that organizations with “human rights” in their titles frequently miss the entire point of human rights. The anti-Semitism resolution could have mentioned the American hostages held in Gaza, the college campus takeovers, the protests that have erupted in violence, the death of Paul Kessler, or even just the incidents from the University of Washington campus anti-Semitism report. But no, these experiences need to go through an ideological spin cycle before being hung out to dry.

It’s ironic how one group’s experiences are validated as discriminatory violence, while another’s are considered excusable or even their own fault.

Here’s an idea. What if we just stopped making this about anti-Semitism? What if we put this to a moral test rather than an identity test? This case is compellingly made by Harvard senior and former Hillel president Jacob M. Miller.

In commenting on his own university’s long-awaited report on anti-Semitism, Miller argues in the Harvard Crimson:

Across over 300 pages, the authors treat the much-sensationalized issue of antisemitism with the scholarly nuance it deserves. But the report misses a much more fundamental point — the whole debate about antisemitism within Harvard’s pro-Palestine movement fixates on how exactly to define it. This excessive focus on semantics is symptomatic of a larger problem with our politics: We reflexively condemn reprehensible ideologies only insofar as they are racist or hateful — rather than because they’re plain wrong.

The truth is, a lot of anti-Zionist activities are not directly anti-Semitic. But we don’t need to run every experience through an identity definition decoder to arrive at the conclusion that it is morally problematic.

It’s not that all pro-Palestine activists are anti-Semitic, but rather that their positions and actions, like calling to globalize the intifada, are just not good. (Though if you sit me down and ask, I will explain in great detail how most of their views share DNA with anti-Semitism.)

Look. The UW students who say they experienced anti-Semitism on campus could be told that they were just experiencing discomfort. Maybe what they saw as anti-Semitism was something else. Did graffiti saying “Kill your local colonizer/free Gaza” on campus really hurt anyone? Did it say anything explicitly about Jews? Well, no.

Does that make it OK? No. Unless you are the author of a Human Rights Commission resolution who seeks to justify this kind of behavior in the name of helping Jews. And by Jews, we mean Arabs.

The WA Human Rights Commission Resolution Condemning Antisemitism is heading to Gov. Ferguson’s desk. Resolutions have little real impact. But they have symbolic impact. And what the governor decides to do will have real impact on his character.

Cover photo: Washington State Capitol Building, Wikimedia Commons

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