“Later in his speech, Butker condemned the
Antisemitism Awareness Act, which recently passed in the House of Representatives and would establish the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Jewish hate speech as a federal standard. Critics on the left have also pushed back against the law, saying it would be used to crack down on
college protests against the
ongoing bombing and blockade of Gaza, where Israeli military forces have killed
more than 35,000 Palestinians since October last year. But Butker, echoing
Republican politicians, objected specifically on the grounds that the IHRA’s definition could, in some circumstances, prohibit the accusation that Jews murdered Jesus Christ, telling Benedictine graduates that “stating something as basic as the Biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.” (This concept of “Jewish deicide” has been rejected as a teaching by the Catholic Church
since the mid-1960s.)
carry on