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Indiana lawmakers work to reach final version of bill that would define antisemitism

Lawmakers are finalizing details of a bill that handles the definition of antisemitism and what that looks like at Indiana’s public universities.

INDIANAPOLIS — Lawmakers are likely in the final days of the legislative session.

For the past few days, members of the House and Senate have been looking at bills where each chamber passed a different version.

Their work now is to try and come to some kind of agreement on those different versions.

One of those bills is House Bill 1002.

It deals with the definition of antisemitism and what that looks like at Indiana’s public universities.

The House passed one version; the Senate passed another.

“Very much still a work in progress as we work through a lot of different thoughts on the definition,” said the original bill’s author, Republican Rep. Chris Jeter, to the conference committee of Democrats and Republicans from both chambers.

Whatever they arrive at, the House and Senate will still have to vote to pass it before it can head to the governor’s desk.

On Thursday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisles said they didn’t expect that to happen much before Friday.

“I think this is far from done,” Democratic Sen. Minority Leader Greg Taylor said.

“This will probably be a pretty frantic 48 hours,” said Republican Sen. Aaron Freeman, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate.

RELATED: Lawmakers in the Senate pass 19 bills Tuesday dealing with antisemitism, contraception and child labor

At issue in the different versions of House Bill 1002 is a reference to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, its definition of antisemitism, plus several examples of it.

The original House version of the bill had all of that in it. The Senate version took all of that out, defining antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.”

Critics of the House version say it will limit free speech and any criticism of actions by the State of Israel.

Many in the Jewish community say the House version is the one that needs to become law because of its IHRA reference, its definition, including examples.

Jeter said the version he’s most in favor of references IHRA and its definition but doesn’t recite it or include any examples of antisemitism.

Jeter said his preferred version also references antisemitism as a form of discrimination based on race, creed, religion and national origin, which became another point of debate for some.

“I have yet to understand how Judaism could be a race,” Taylor said.

“When Adolf Hitler was killing 6 million Jews, he was wiping a race off the planet,” Freeman said.

Democratic Rep. Ed DeLaney said he supported the original House version and hoped to get his caucus to agree.

“I haven’t heard what the Senate Republicans are thinking. They’re the ones that sent the gutted, emptied out bill back to us,” DeLaney said.

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