[1][2] The drafting of the declaration was initiated in June 2020 under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem by eight coordinators, most of whom were university professors.

[3][4] The declaration was positively received by a cohort of Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who urged the U.S. State Department to use it alongside the IHRA definition.

[7] The declaration has been criticized on multiple grounds: A common refrain is that by seeking to rebut the IHRA definition, the JDA undermines consensus and sets back the fight against antisemitism.

Section A deals with general manifestations of antisemitism and provides examples like Holocaust denial and the Rothschild conspiracy theory.

[14][15][3] The declaration does not take explicit stances for or against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement or the one-state solution, but rules they are not antisemitic "on the face of it".

[7] In an April 2021 opinion article in Al Jazeera, Mark Muhannad Ayyash, an associate professor at Mount Royal University criticized the Jerusalem Declaration, saying it was "an orientalist text that fails to produce true opposition to the core problem of the IHRA definition: the silencing and erasure of Palestine and Palestinians".

[17] In an April 2021 article in The National Interest, Gerald Steinberg and Asaf Romirowsky said that the Jerusalem Declaration legitimizes increasing violence against Jews and their institutions by politicizing and attempting to undermine efforts to reach a consensus on antisemitism.

The authors also claimed the Jerusalem Declaration "marginalizes the core issues of antisemitism" by subordinating it to the fight against all other forms of discrimination.

[18] In an April 2021 essay in Fathom Journal, Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, criticized the Jerusalem Declaration on the basis that it seeks to accommodate manifestations of "new antisemitism" rather than challenge them.

Nelson said the declaration's preamble is dismissive of the ways that antisemitism has stood apart from other forms of racism historically and how that history has shaped Jewish identity.