In September, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed, released a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. He noted with concern that claims that the objectives, activities, and effects of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which seeks to economically pressure the Jewish state alone out of all the nations of the world, are fundamentally anti-Semitic.

Shaheed urged the council to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s internationally accepted standard definition of anti-Semitism, which is used by various agencies of our federal government and the 33 governments that are members of the alliance. By that definition, “applying double standards [to the Jewish state] by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is an act of anti-Semitism.