How to Spot Antisemitism

We have a lot of antisemitism going around. For many Jews, it’s fairly easy to see. For those who hate Jews and Israel, it is easy to ignore. But for most people, it’s genuinely puzzling. What exactly is antisemitism, and how do you know if you’ve encountered it? There is a lot of in-depth analysis on this topic, and I’ve written some of that. But the learning curve is high. Many people who are moderate on the Israel-Palestine issue respect their Jewish friends enough to refrain from calling them paranoid for calling antisemitism, but also respect their pro-Palestinian friends enough to be hesitant to call them antisemitic. What should they do?

First of all, they should start by shifting the topic from antisemitic people to antisemitic texts. Like racism, misogyny, and other forms of bias, it’s fairly useless to go around identifying antisemitic people. There are, of course, those who genuinely hate Black people, women, and Jews, but they are not the biggest problem. The bigger problem is not people, but in society. It’s not in people’s souls, but it’s in the texts that they produce. This is mainly because texts have more power than people, because they control the whole society, and not just one person’s actions.

Here are some quick and easy ways to spot an antisemitic text, whether that’s a social media post, a news story, or any other narrative that goes around:

1. A one-sided account of history. Any narrative of the Palestine-Israel conflict over the past 100 years that references only Israeli aggression is antisemitic. No matter who you think is right or wrong, the conflict has been going both ways for decades. Buses have been bombed. Villages have been attacked. Babies have been killed. As an analogy, let’s imagine you are a witness to a boxing match. Your friend asks you what happened. If your narrative includes only punches that one boxer threw at his opponent, and leaves out any blows going the other way, then your friend is going to think what you saw was a criminal assault. That would be false, and it ties to the old antisemitic idea that Jews are mean people.
2. A one-sided account of the land. Jews are native to Israel. And Palestinians are native to the same area. There is no real difference between the two claims. Conflicts over land happen all over the world, and there is rarely a “bad guy” and a “good guy” when it comes to who belongs on the land. In fact the only cases where there really is a clear-cut case of colonialism, such as Australia or the American West, the news media doesn’t seem to care very much. Any notion that the conflict in Israel and Palestine is a simple case of stolen land is antisemitic, and it ties to the idea that Jews are tricky and steal things.
3. References to Jews killing innocent people for personal satisfaction or out of carelessness. Tragically, conflicts all around the world cause the death of young people, old people and non-combatants. That is not ok, but it is real. We should all strive to build a world without war, but we need to be careful about how we focus on things, and how we tell stories. Israel is obviously justified in targeting Hamas militants with missiles and sniper fire. Ideally, such fire should be as precise as possible. However, the US military has killed entire families in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, as has the UK, France, and every other country that fights wars. Ratios matter. If Israel has been less precise than other countries who have taken on similar operations, then it should be blamed, but in fact, the opposite is true. Due to better intelligence, sharper international scrutiny and higher skills, Israel has achieved lower ratios of civilian death relative to legitimate targets, despite the fact that Hamas hides in schools, shelters, and hospitals. Any text that connects Israel to a broader intent to kill children is antisemitic, and it ties to the “Blood Libel”, which is the ancient idea that Jews kill innocent children.

These are some simple and accurate ways to assess whether a particular communication has an antisemitic bias. If such a bias is found, the next step is look at the general context that produced it and to ask why people found it acceptable.