Stop Defending. Keep Building.

I have been thinking a lot about the energy we spend defending Israel’s legitimacy, especially in online spaces that rarely reward understanding. There is a place for answering lies and calling out antisemitism, but those cannot become the center of the Jewish story. The more important work is building our future: communities, institutions, and a positive narrative about how Jewish self-determination has made our world a better place.

When it comes to social media debates, the algorithm rewards division, outrage, and hate. It rarely highlights consensus. Nobody logs on hoping to have their worldview changed by a Facebook comment thread. Still, the temptation is real. I see people I know sharing posts arguing that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, defending politicians who refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, or dismissing concerns about rising antisemitism as an overreaction. The instinct is to jump in, correct the record, explain the context, and believe that if I frame the response clearly enough, logic will matter.

Recently, I saw several Facebook connections from different chapters of my life defending politicians on both sides of the aisle whose rhetoric toward Jews, Zionism, or Israel crosses lines no decent person would excuse if directed at any other minority group. These were not strangers or trolls. They were people I knew, many of them Jewish, educated, thoughtful, and decent human beings. What struck me was not that they disagreed with me. It was that people who see themselves as advocates for tolerance and minority rights were still willing to apply standards to Jews and Israel that they would never apply anywhere else.

Instead of responding publicly, I followed my own advice and reached out privately. The conversations that followed stretched over several weeks. Every exchange was civil and respectful. Nobody yelled. Nobody called names. Nobody acted in bad faith. In many ways, that is exactly what made the experience so unsettling.

One person compared rising antisemitism to the rise in Islamophobia after 9/11. Another compared it to anti-Asian hate during the pandemic. The point was always the same: people become angry about world events and sometimes direct that anger at innocent people. What struck me was that the lesson seemed to change when Jews were involved. After 9/11, we did not explain hatred directed at Muslims by pointing to Islamist terrorism, and during COVID, we did not explain anti-Asian hate by pointing to China. We recognized those reactions as prejudice and rejected them outright.

When Jews become targets, something different happens. Antisemitism is treated as something that must first be contextualized, explained, or weighed against Israel’s conduct before it can be addressed on its own. That is not accountability. It is selective moral outrage. It also traps us inside accusation and defense, forcing us to spend our energy proving why Israel deserves to exist instead of showing what Jewish sovereignty actually makes possible.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that endlessly debating this selective moral outrage becomes a trap of its own. As Chief Marketing Officer of Jewish National Fund-USA, I spend my days helping tell stories about Israeli communities, schools, fire stations, agricultural innovation, leadership programs, and the future of the land and people of Israel. The endless debate reduces Israel to accusation and defense. My day job reminds me that Zionism is about building a future, not winning a comment thread.

The Jewish people have never secured their future by winning every debate. Every generation has faced critics. Every generation has faced selective moral outrage. Every generation has encountered people who misunderstood us or judged us by rules that applied to no one else. Yet we are still here, not because we won every debate, but because we built. We built families, communities, institutions, a homeland, and a future.

That does not mean ignoring Jew hatred. It does not mean remaining silent when lies are spread or failing to stand up for ourselves. But it does mean remembering that antisemitism cannot become the center of the Jewish story. For me, the better response is not surrender, silence, or endless debate. It is to build something stronger than the accusation, tell a better story than the lie, create something more meaningful than the outrage, invite people to participate in something positive, and keep moving forward, whether they accept the invitation or not.

The conversations I had did not change anyone’s mind, but they reminded me of something important: debate may occasionally win a news cycle, but building wins the future.

Stop defending. Keep building.