The city council of Mercer Island, Wash., approved by a vote of 6-1 a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.
“This puts us in line with over 30 states, 1,200 cities, three different U.S. administrations,” Deputy Mayor David Rosenbaum said at the July 16 meeting where the vote was taken.
Referencing those who had spoken out against the measure, Rosenbaum called himself “very concerned about and cognizant of what folks have said tonight.”
He said “this is obviously an ongoing conversation, and we’re not gonna solve anything here tonight, but I do think that this is a step forward, and I encourage my colleagues to support it.”
One advocate of the definition at the meeting, Deanne Etsekson, called the IHRA “the globally recognized, unambiguous gold-standard definition of antisemitism, supported by the effective entirety of the global organized Jewish community.”