The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, in plenary session in Bucharest in May 2016, adopted a definition of anti-Semitism, which many countries and organisations have adopted. The cause of dissension about the definition is in respect of one or more of the examples of anti-Semitism attached to the definition, such as:

Applying double standards by requiring of it (Israel) behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, and

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.

The trouble is that, following the expulsion of the Jews from Israel, by the Roman Empire, 2000 years ago, the territory did not remain empty. Even before the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, there were Jews living there, but the majority of the population were Arabs, who called the territory Palestine and considered themselves Palestinians.

The Palestinians were not consulted over the British government’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, which called for a “national home” for Jews to be established in Palestine. The Jewish Home was not to take up the whole of Palestine, because it was recognised that Jews made up only 3 to 5 per cent of the population, the rest being Arabs.

The Declaration did not specify the boundaries of the Jewish Home, but did call for the safeguarding of the civil, religious and political rights of the Palestinian Arabs.

While I do not consider the mere existence of the State of Israel to be “a racist endeavour”, I do consider the treatment of the Arabs within Israel to be tantamount to apartheid as practiced in South Africa between 1948 and 1990.

This sentence in bold italics would be enough to damn me as anti-Semitic in terms of the IHRA definition. So be it; I speak the truth and stand by it.