Facing Down Antisemitism

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel to kill and kidnap as many Israelis as it could, and to destroy the country if possible.

Immediately there were worldwide denunciations of Hamas and some sympathy for Israel–and denunciations of Israel and cheers for Hamas. October 8: Times Square, demonstrators glorify “Palestinian resistance;” Toronto, “stand with Gaza;” Chicago, Palestine “from the river to the sea;” Harvard, 33 student organizations blame the violence “entirely on Israel.” October 9: Sydney, a pro-Hamas demonstration; in the US, Students for Justice in Palestine call for a “national day of resistance” to support Hamas. October 12: UN “independent experts” condemn Israel’s response to the attacks. Supporters of Hamas likely didn’t know October 7 would be D-Day, but they surely expected it soon and were well-prepared.

Since October 7, attacks on Israel and Israelis have become ever more pervasive and virulent. There are boycotts against Israeli universities, scientists, writers, artists, entertainers, and sports teams; demands that corporations around the world boycott Israel; and murders of staff at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and their supporters worldwide want Israel destroyed–and leave little to the imagination as to the fate of its Jewish citizens. This is antisemitism.

And it’s not just Israel and Israelis being targeted. It’s Jews around the world–harassed on campuses, targeted in medicine, social work, K-12 education, law and other professions, hunted down by mobs on the streets of major cities, murdered on Jewish holidays, needing protection by armed guards at synagogues, Jewish community centers, preschools, and K-12 schools. Needless to say, this is antisemitism, too.

Why does antisemitism seem unstoppable? On the one hand, the forces of antisemitism have spent decades organizing, refining their tactics and rhetoric, and infiltrating every domain of social life. On the other, the forces fighting back, Jews in particular, have been divided and hesitant, unable to go on the offensive.
The decades of antisemitism– the Soviet Union first claimed that “Zionism is racism” in 1965 at the UN, and for 60 years, the Soviet Union/Russia, the Arab League, Iran, and other Third World nations have made the UN the world’s center for the propagation of antisemitism.

In early 1971, S.M. Lipset, one of the most prominent sociologists of his day, wrote in the New York Times that the political left in many countries was turning its hostility to Zionism into blatant antisemitism. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has been promoting antisemitism and calling for the destruction of Israel since 1993, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) since 1994, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement since 2005. Antisemitism has penetrated organizations historically not much concerned about Jews or Israel. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Doctors without Borders have made delegitimizing Israel part of their mission. Teachers unions around the US support BDS. Universities are hotbeds of antisemitism. Unions and professional associations are increasingly hostile to their Jewish members. And left-wing intellectuals have spent decades propagating an entire theoretical apparatus–revolving around concepts like “intersectionality” and “settler-colonialism”–blaming Israel and Jews for racism, poverty, inequality, oppression, and war.

Where’s the money coming from? From the Soviet Union/Russia, the countries of the Arab League, and Iran; Qatar alone has given billions of dollars to American universities to further its interests, including the promotion of antizionism. European governments and American foundations give money to anti-Israel NGOs. Some of the money donated to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other progressive organizations is being spent on anti-Israel campaigns, whether the donors know it or not. Antisemitic organizations hide their sources of funds as best they can, but it’s clear that vast sums are involved.

A key to the rise in antisemitism is the extraordinary effectiveness of antisemitic rhetoric. Absurd statements– “Zionism is racism,” “Israel is a settler-colonial state”–have won widespread acceptance; so have slogans calling for destroying Israel and killing Jews– “from the river to the sea,” “globalize the intifada,” “free free Palestine.” “Progressive” has come to mean “hostile to Israel.”

The forces promoting antisemitism are very powerful. But what about the forces resisting it? They have an uphill battle–for one thing, there are far more antisemites than Jews–but some Jewish organizations are trying to stem the tide. Donations to the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League are up. New and new-ish organizations are standing up for Jews in educational institutions (e.g., StandWithUs) professional settings (the American Jewish Medical Association, Jews at Microsoft), legal forums (Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law), and elsewhere. Research on antisemitism is increasing (Indiana University Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism; Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy); so is the number of publications reporting on it.
Nevertheless, there’s a major impediment to resisting antisemitism that is especially difficult to overcome: Jews themselves. Some have become antisemites; many more agree with antisemites’ claims about Jews. And Jewish organizations have been slow to innovate and reluctant to go on the offensive against antisemitism.

The best-known Jewish “antizionist”–that is, antisemitic–organization in the US is Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which campaigns for Israel’s destruction. Yet it is far from alone. Indeed, it’s hard not to notice how many antizionist Jews there are. Jewish Federations find themselves unable to strongly support Israel because so many staff members and donors oppose doing so; synagogues become founts of anti-Israel agitation; families are split between supporters of Israel and those who say it has no right to exist.

Then there are the Jews who are not antisemites, but merely agree with them.
Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were regularly accused of killing Christian babies and using their blood to make matzah. Now Jews are being accused of committing genocide in Gaza. The two accusations are the same; both identify the most terrible crime imaginable in a particular time and place, and accuse the Jews of it. We might expect Jews asked to agree that Jews perpetrate heinous crimes would respond with shock and horror. But the response to the accusation of genocide is often different. A recent Washington Post poll asked American Jews whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza; 39 percent agreed.

How are the best-known Jewish organizations responding to what’s happening all around us? As of late December 2025, the home page of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), one of the oldest and largest Jewish self-defense organizations, urges supporters to contact political leaders, especially members of Congress, and urge them to “counter the surge of anti-Jewish hate in the US.” “We set,” they say, “the Standards for How to Address Antisemitism. Impact requires education, strategic action, and tangible metrics.” They could have said this in 2005. Search “Anti-Defamation League,” the other major Jewish self-defense organization, and the first website to appear, as of late December asks for donations without saying anything about what it’s doing to fight antisemitism. The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA)http://www.jewishfederations.org invite us to “relive this year’s [November 2025] General Assembly, where over 2,000 Jewish leaders… engaged with the most pressing issues facing our community.” Clicking on “search the highlights” leads to photos of participants but as to pressing issues–nothing.
So what’s needed? Jews must learn to stand up for themselves much more effectively. They need to learn how the forces of antisemitism are organized, and go on the attack against them; they must develop metrics for gauging the rise of antisemitism and the effectiveness of strategies adopted to oppose it; they need more funding and better leadership; they need to better educate themselves; they need to go on the offensive; and, perhaps most important of all, they must confront the forces that allow Jews to agree with antisemites and prevent them from standing up for themselves.

It should go without saying that if we are to halt (or even reverse) the forces promoting antisemitism, we have to understand them–how antisemitic organizations coordinate their activities, strategize, raise funds, collect allies, and refine their tactics. But we don’t. We know a fair amount about some organizations (e.g., Students for Justice in Palestine), but not about the big picture. Until there’s a collective effort–with lawyers investigating the structure of antisemitic organizations, accountants studying their finances, organizational analysts examining how they operate, sociologists tracing how they are interconnected, psychologists to understand their appeal, and so on–we will be operating half blind. What’s more, if the struggle against antisemitism is to be effective, we have to determine which strategies and tactics are successful and which are not. Right now, there don’t seem to be any serious efforts to do so.

Times like these demand leadership, and not just from Jewish organizations. It would matter tremendously if prominent Jews from all walks of life were to organize, show that they understand the threat from antisemitism, and pledge to stand up for the Jewish people. Where are they? Where are the leaders in tech, the university presidents, the CEOs in private equity, the Nobel prize winners, the famous entertainers, standing up not just as individuals, but collectively? Nowhere to be found. Not only that–so little is expected of prominent Jews that almost no one remarks on their absence.

It is often said that Jewish students heading off to college need to be taught about antisemitism, so they can defend themselves against it. But who will do the educating? Most Jews have never heard of BDS or Students for Justice in Palestine; they have no idea that Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and their supporters reject a two-state solution; they don’t realize how pervasive antisemitic tropes are in mass media and social media, or the extent to which they have absorbed them. It’s not just students who need to be educated.

Most of the Jewish response to antisemitism remains defensive–a government agency promotes antisemitism, and Jews protest; there’s an effort to inject anti-Israel propaganda into K-12 schooling, and Jews protest. Protesting after the fact is fine, but it means that antisemites are always one step ahead. How about going on the offensive? This is a question so seldom asked that it’s inevitably met with surprise. “What do you mean?”

But there must be ways to do so. Many antisemitic organizations hate America and love terrorism; we need to make sure the public understands this. The mainstream media supporters of Hamas–the New York Times, the AP, the BBC, and the like–must be called out. The slogan “globalize the intifada!” must come to be seen as support for violence everywhere. Terms like “settler-colonialism” should be mocked. It must be possible to alter public discourse so that Jews can be seen (and even admired) for who they are, and antisemites reviled.

Finally, Jews must confront a longstanding problem at the heart of Jewish life brought to the fore in the aftermath of October 7–the inability of many Jews to see Jewish life as both worthwhile and worth defending. Jewish antisemites find nothing of merit in Jewish life. Jews who accept antisemitic stereotypes are unable to be fully part of the Jewish people. Jews who see themselves as committed to Jewish life but are too timid to defend it have to ask themselves what their commitment means. Jews devoted to Jewish life but unable to go on the offensive against antisemitism must consider whether it might be possible to take on centuries of (perfectly understandable) fear, and instead imagine standing up for themselves in a new way–with the boldness of Zionists but in the Diaspora.

These are terrible times for Jews. But it could also be a time of opportunity–a time in which Jews find creative ways to strengthen Jewish life and build the self-confidence needed to face down those who wish to see them diminished.