The 8-1 vote Tuesday came after more than four hours of public comment and an unusually heated debate over where condemnation of antisemitism ends and government judgment of political speech about Israel begins. The resolution is expressly nonbinding and says it cannot be used to infringe constitutional free-speech rights, but critics argue that formally instructing city departments, including the San Diego Police Department, to use the definition as an educational resource could nevertheless influence how controversial speech, protests and advocacy are perceived by city government.
The council voted March 17 to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Working Definition of Antisemitism, commonly known as the IHRA definition, along with all 11 of its accompanying contemporary examples. Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera cast the lone dissenting vote.
At its core, the IHRA defines antisemitism as "a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews," encompassing rhetorical and physical manifestations directed at Jewish people, their property and Jewish institutions. Few participants in Tuesday's debate disputed the need to combat antisemitism, particularly amid documented increases in threats and attacks against Jewish communities.
The dispute instead centers on what comes next. Seven of the IHRA definition's 11 illustrative examples concern Israel. Among them are denying the Jewish people a right to self-determination by describing the existence of Israel as a racist endeavor, applying a "double standard" to Israel that is not expected of other democratic nations and comparing contemporary Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany.
The IHRA document also contains an important qualification: "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." Supporters point to that language as evidence that the definition does not prohibit criticism of the Israeli government or its military actions.
The difficulty, critics argue, is determining who decides when criticism is sufficiently "similar" to criticism directed at another country, when scrutiny becomes a prohibited "double standard," or when a comparison crosses from provocative political rhetoric into antisemitism.
Those questions have become especially consequential as Israel faces intense international criticism over its military conduct in Gaza and its treatment of Palestinians. Human-rights organizations have accused Israeli authorities of unlawful and disproportionate attacks, mass displacement and severe restrictions on Palestinians, allegations Israel has repeatedly disputed while maintaining that its military operations are directed against Hamas and other armed groups rather than Palestinian civilians.
The question before San Diego was therefore not simply how to define hatred against Jewish people. It was whether a municipal government should formally adopt a framework that also categorizes certain statements about a foreign country's political legitimacy and military conduct as potential examples of antisemitism. That distinction drove the opposition of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, which urged councilmembers to reject the resolution.
"The First Amendment protects everyone, including those who criticize domestic or foreign governments," ACLU-SDIC Chief Program and Strategy Officer Christie Love Hill told the council. The organization argued that the IHRA definition risks treating protected political speech as discrimination and warned that even a formally nonbinding policy can discourage people from speaking at council meetings, seeking permits or participating in demonstrations concerning Israel and Palestine.
Supporters also point to a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and an increasingly fearful atmosphere for Jewish residents. Local advocates cited reports of people being attacked for speaking Hebrew, swastikas appearing on school campuses and Jewish institutions requiring continuing security, while supporters argued that government needs tools capable of recognizing modern antisemitism even when it is expressed indirectly through rhetoric concerning Israel.
Organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, StandWithUs and Jewish Federation of San Diego strongly supported adoption of the IHRA definition. ADL San Diego later celebrated the vote as giving the city a clearer framework for identifying and addressing antisemitism, noting that the definition has been adopted or endorsed by numerous countries, states and municipalities.
Supporters reject the claim that the definition makes criticism of Israel antisemitic. Their position is that criticism remains entirely permissible but can cross into antisemitism when Israel is targeted because it is understood as a Jewish collective, Jews are blamed for the actions of the Israeli government or traditional antisemitic tropes are transferred onto Israelis or the Jewish state.
But opposition to the IHRA framework does not come solely from Palestinian activists or organizations traditionally critical of Israel. Kenneth Stern, who helped develop the language that eventually became the IHRA definition, has repeatedly warned against using it as a government mechanism for policing speech. Stern has said the original framework was developed as a tool for identifying and tracking antisemitism, not as a speech code, and told ABC 10News that its subsequent implementation has been used to suppress pro-Palestinian expression.
That criticism presents a particularly unusual wrinkle: one of the people most closely associated with creating the definition now objects to the manner in which governments and institutions are deploying it. Elo-Rivera, who is Jewish, raised similar concerns before becoming the council's only dissenting vote.
He described the rise in antisemitism as real and frightening, but argued that several of the IHRA examples are so vague that they create questions with no objective answer. If a Jewish person feels a particular connection to Israel and therefore holds its government to a higher standard than countries with which that person has no connection, Elo-Rivera asked, does that constitute an antisemitic double standard? He also challenged the idea that comparing Israeli government conduct to Nazi policies should automatically fall within an official example of antisemitism regardless of context.
Elo-Rivera instead pointed to the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, an alternative framework developed by hundreds of scholars in antisemitism, Holocaust, Jewish, Israel, Palestine and Middle East studies specifically in response to concerns surrounding the IHRA definition. The differences are substantial.
The Jerusalem Declaration says evidence-based criticism of Israel, including criticism of its conduct in Gaza and the West Bank, is not in itself antisemitic. It also expressly states that opposing Zionism, advocating alternative political arrangements for Israelis and Palestinians, supporting boycotts, divestment and sanctions, pointing to systematic racial discrimination, or making contentious comparisons between Israel and other historical systems are not automatically antisemitic. It further rejects the premise that unusually harsh or disproportionate criticism necessarily becomes antisemitic merely because someone believes Israel is being subjected to a double standard.
"Political speech does not have to be measured, proportional, tempered, or reasonable" to remain protected, the Jerusalem Declaration states, drawing a distinction between speech that may be unfair, inflammatory or offensive and speech motivated by hatred of Jews.
That distinction lies at the center of the controversy San Diego has now formally entered. Antisemitism is hatred, discrimination or hostility directed toward Jewish people because they are Jewish. Anti-Zionism and condemnation of Israeli governmental policy can overlap with antisemitism in some circumstances - particularly where traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes, collective blame or hostility toward Jews are involved - but critics of the IHRA approach contend the concepts cannot simply be treated as interchangeable.
That concern carries additional weight because criticism of countries and governments sits close to the core of political expression protected by the First Amendment. Americans routinely condemn the governments of Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States and other nations in language that can be extreme, historically provocative or deeply offensive without a municipal government adopting criteria for determining when such criticism becomes discriminatory hatred.
The IHRA definition does not prohibit San Diegans from criticizing Israel, nor does Tuesday's resolution create a new criminal offense, civil penalty or direct restriction on speech. Characterizing the measure as making criticism of Israel illegal would therefore be inaccurate.
What San Diego has done is subtler: the city has officially adopted a definition under which certain forms of criticism of Israel can be classified as examples of antisemitism depending upon context, and it has requested that the framework be made available to municipal departments, including police, as an educational resource.
Whether that remains merely educational or eventually affects city decisions involving public meetings, protests, permits, funding or other interactions with government was one of the unanswered questions hanging over Tuesday's debate.
The ACLU warned that uncertainty itself can create a chilling effect. People need not actually be prosecuted or formally censored to moderate their speech if they believe a government agency may characterize their political viewpoint as discriminatory.
Supporters see precisely the opposite danger: that an unwillingness to recognize when anti-Israel rhetoric becomes a vehicle for hostility against Jews leaves Jewish San Diegans exposed to a form of prejudice that has evolved beyond traditional slurs and stereotypes.
Those competing concerns helped draw more than 200 people to City Hall, where public testimony lasted for hours and supporters and opponents filled the chambers wearing kippahs and keffiyehs, carrying Israeli flags, Palestinian symbols and signs offering sharply different views of Zionism, antisemitism and free expression.
The council ultimately sided overwhelmingly with supporters of the IHRA framework, voting 8-1 to adopt it while adding an amendment requesting that the Human Relations Commission similarly address and define other forms of racial discrimination and hate.
San Diego now joins numerous governments and institutions that have embraced the IHRA definition as an important tool for combating rising antisemitism. It also joins an unresolved national and international debate over whether a definition originally intended to help identify anti-Jewish hatred becomes something fundamentally different once government begins applying it to political speech about Israel and Palestine.
The answer may depend less on the resolution's promise that free speech will remain protected than on how San Diego ultimately chooses to use the definition it just adopted.
Originally published on March 17, 2026.
