I ONCE heard Tony Benn giving a speech at Conway Hall in which he revealed the “most dangerous word in the English language.”
Only three letters long, but it had the power to elevate one perspective, and dismiss, reject, and encourage vilification of all others on the subject being discussed.
The word was “THE.”
Nowhere, in recent years, has Benn’s claim been so powerfully illustrated than in the controversies surrounding definitions of anti-semitism.
A poorly worded “working definition” of anti-semitism, plus examples of what 21st-century anti-semitism might look like, were first developed for the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in 2005, by the American Jewish Committee’s researcher, Kenneth Stern.