The Labour party is not rife with antisemitism. Judging by the headlines, however, the party seems consumed by little else. The reason is that it emerged this month that the Labour party would accept the 38-word International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism but not all the accompanying guidelines suggesting how it ought to be interpreted. The Labour party, under Jeremy Corbyn, has every right to choose how it wants to define racism within its code of conduct. The IHRA definition has been criticised as being “imprecise” and “unclear”, and there is a widespread acceptance that it is not perfect. But the party was wrong in not consulting widely enough, especially with Jews, about the choice of words it wishes to use. And that has led to the current impasse.

It is astonishing that the issue of bigotry has split the Labour party, which for decades has championed anti-racist policies. Mr Corbyn was called a “racist and antisemite” to his face by a senior Jewish backbench MP, Margaret Hodge. Mrs Hodge was threatened with disciplinary action, to which she responded with a letter from her lawyers. Dozens of British rabbis wrote to the Guardian expressing dismay that the party leadership chose to “ignore those who understand antisemitism the best, the Jewish community”. In a snub to Mr Corbyn, Labour MPs want the party to adopt the full IHRA definition. The Jewish Chronicle called for the two dozen Jewish Labour MPs to break away and sit as an independent bloc. Labour’s national executive committee wisely decided not to hold a vote on the issue. The party says it will consult further on the code and review whether it is working later this year.

The crisis has not been averted, merely deferred. The dilemma for Labour is how to defend free speech while curbing antisemitic hate-speech. There are fuzzy but real borders between antisemitism, anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. This is not mere academic debate. As Sir Stephen Sedley, a former appeal court judge born into a Jewish family, wrote last year, where antisemitism “manifests itself in discriminatory acts or inflammatory speech it is generally illegal, lying beyond the bounds of freedom of speech … By contrast, criticism (and equally defence) of Israel or of Zionism is not only generally lawful: it is affirmatively protected by law.” It was this understanding that saw the home affairs select committee in 2016 suggest that the UK government, law enforcement agencies and political parties adopt clarifications to the IHRA guidelines to “ensure that freedom of speech is maintained in the context of discourse about Israel and Palestine, without allowing antisemitism to permeate any debate”.

The government, unlike Labour, ignored this advice and accepted the IHRA definition without caveats. At the time pro-Palestinian groups warned that such an act could chill debate on Israel. It’s too early to say definitively whether or not this is the case, but it is true that defenders of Israel have lobbied to stop the annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” on university campuses on the grounds that it breaches the IHRA definition. There is no doubt that a measured public discourse about Israel would help. Jews collectively are in no way responsible for the actions of Israel. And the legitimate censure of Israeli occupation policies is not a pretext for delegitimising Israel as a refuge for Jews.

Mr Corbyn bears some responsibility for losing the trust of the Jewish community. He was seen to be tardy in dealing with a former mayor of London’s crass Nazi comments. Successive internal inquiries have been mishandled. The Labour party has been slow in cracking down on appalling antisemitic online abuse. No one should become desensitised to the accusation of antisemitism. To do so would be to become insensitive to it. This is especially true for those on the left where there lingers a feeling that a virtuous politics can insulate oneself from prejudice; that one is not tainted by a society one seeks to transform. It is good that Mr Corbyn says he “will not tolerate antisemitism in any form anywhere”. But if words were enough, then the matter of whether or not Labour has an antisemitism problem would have been closed long ago.

• This article was amended on 25 July 2018 to include Sir Stephen Sedley’s honorific.

