State of Kansas adopts the International Definition of Antisemitism
The Kansas state Legislature has reportedly adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism.
Bill HCR 5030, the short title of the bill named “Recognising the growing problem of antisemitism in the United States”, was adopted unanimously in the Kansas Senate with 38 “Yea” votes.
Gavriela Geller, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau, American Jewish Committee in Kansas is reported to have said: “We can’t fight what we can’t define. The adoption of the definition is a crucial step towards combating rising Jew-hatred.”
The 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Survey showed that less than one percent of Kansas adults identified as Jewish. In 2017, the Jewish population of Kansas was reported to be 17,300. This has not meant, however, that the midwestern state has been free of antisemitic incidents.
In April 2014, 73-year-old Frazier Glenn Miller Jr, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and known neo-Nazi, was convicted of murder after killing three people in a shooting spree at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Kansas City and the Jewish retirement community Village Shalom, both in Overland Park, Kansas. Mr Miller was sentenced to death, but died in prison in 2021 while awaiting execution.
Britain was the first country in the world to adopt the International Definition, something for which Campaign Against Antisemitism and Lord Pickles worked hard over many meetings with officials at Downing Street. Since then, numerous local councils, universities and sport associations in the United Kingdom have adopted the Definition, as have several national governments and myriad municipalities and associations around the world.
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