Definition of antisemitism passes SD Senate but kicks back to House due to amendment

PIERRE — A bill to define antisemitism into state law has passed the Senate and will briefly return to the House floor because of an amendment put in place during committee.

The amendment, added during a Senate judiciary hearing Feb. 15, stripped the portion of HB 1076 that defined antisemitism as meaning “a certain perception of Jews that may be expressed as hatred toward Jews, including rhetorical and physical acts of antisemitism directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals or their property, or toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Instead, the new version of the bill, passed by the Senate on Wednesday, 31-3, refers to antisemitism “as the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on May 26, 2016, including the contemporary examples of antisemitism identified therein.”

The bill is meant to help investigators within the state’s Human Rights Commission investigate instances of antisemitic discrimination.

Jake Bennett, the director of legislative affairs for the Israeli-American Coalition for Action, a non-profit group that advocates for Israel, explained that by putting the IHRA working definition into law, it would protect the bill in the future.

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“We’re not trying to hide the football, anyone can look it up online, we just want to protect it from getting amended and the football deflated,” Bennett said.

The IHRA has 11 examples of antisemitism on their website. At least 34 states have adopted the IHRA definition.

But the fact that the IHRA is explicitly mentioned in the bill and that the specific examples of antisemitism aren’t laid out is why Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, R-Watertown, voted against the bill Wednesday.

The President Pro Tempore told the Argus Leader he would rather have seen the full examples of antisemitic conduct codified into law to make it easier for people to reference.

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Wednesday’s vote was a way for South Dakota to make a statement that antisemitism has no place in the state, Sen. Jim Melhalff, R-Pierre, said in his floor comments.

“We’ve seen a rise in antisemitism here in our own state, even though it’s been very isolated cases of it,” Melhalff said, referencing the Oct. 3 attack on Israel by Hamas, a terrorist group. “It has happened and it’s just something that starts and it gets out of hand.”

If the House approves of the new amendment, the bill will be sent to Gov. Kristi Noem’s desk for her signature. Passing the bill was one of her legislative policy goals.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Amended antisemitism bill heads back to House after Senate vote in South Dakota