Friday’s findings of the International Court of Justice on Israel’s conduct must be at the forefront of our legislator’s minds when they are pushed by the Israel lobby to enact the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

The attempt by Zionist lobbyists to silence criticism of Israel is running in top gear to try to counter the swell of public opinion against Israel flowing from the exposure in real time of the barbarity of its actions in Gaza.

The attempted suppression is widespread in the United States where pressure has been put on Congress and many universities to adopt and implement the definition, and the lobby has been equally diligent in its efforts in England and Europe.

It is also openly trying to achieve a similar outcome through similar processes in Australia, as witness the Israeli lobby’s push to have universities formally adopt their desired definition of antisemitism and the AHRC complaint filed against Mary Kostakidis, the real objective of those efforts being to have the Australian government give that definition legislative force and give the lobby a more solid footing for their attempts to muzzle actual critics and ‘chill’ potential critics from expressing rational, factually based criticisms of the actions of the State of Israel and the actors behind them.

In the US, the Zionist lobby has had some success in having its wider definition implemented, probably substantially due to the ignorance of legislators, wrote Elliott Colla. There the Lobby is not only co-opting politicians and pushing hard on universities: Why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, it is also targeting writers. “Defenders of PEN America, the US literary and free speech organization that has been facing ongoing outcry for their relative silence on Gaza, have used the specter of antisemitism to avoid........

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