When Antisemitism Becomes Trendy

There was a time — not long ago — when human rights activism meant standing shoulder to shoulder with the vulnerable, raising one’s voice against terror and tyranny, and committing to justice without exception. Today, I find myself watching in disbelief as parts of the militant left have abandoned these principles, replacing them with a single-minded, obsessive allegiance to a cause that has become unrecognizable: one that purports to support Palestinians but in reality emboldens Hamas, legitimizes terror, and fuels antisemitism.

In recent months, I have witnessed the normalization — almost the trendiness — of antisemitism in progressive spaces. It has become fashionable to villainize Israel in absolute terms, to erase the lived experience of Jews, and to romanticize groups that openly seek our destruction. The ease with which “from the river to the sea” or “globalize the intifada “are chanted in city squares, universities, and across social media reveals a chilling hypocrisy: Jews are the only people for whom self-determination has become a moral crime.

Let me be clear: the suffering of Palestinians is real. Their humanity matters. But the refusal to hold Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and their backers in Iran accountable for weaponizing that suffering — for turning civilian neighborhoods into military outposts, for using children as shields and hospitals as bases — is not solidarity. It is complicity. It is a betrayal of any honest struggle for Palestinian freedom. And it has nothing to do with peace.

Worse still is the near-total silence surrounding the more than 50 hostages who remain in Gaza — only 24 confirmed to be alive — 21 months after the atrocities of October 7. No children remain among them; the Bibas children and their mother having been slaughtered in captivity. These are civilians — women, elderly people, and men — some wounded, all held by a terror group that rapes, tortures, and murders. Their captivity is an ongoing war crime. And yet too many of those who claim to champion human rights offer no protest, no urgency, no outrage. Their suffering is not useful to the narrative, so it is erased.

In Quebec, in the rest of Canada and across North America, Jewish students are increasingly being excluded from campus life under the guise of activism and free speech. At several universities, buildings have been barricaded, classes disrupted, and school property vandalized daily with messages that erase or vilify Jewish identity. 

Posters of kidnapped civilians are torn down. Student governments are hijacked to pass motion after motion supporting antisemitic boycotts or promoting messages of hate and incitement. Jewish students are told that unless they denounce Israel, their presence is unwelcome. 

University administrations respond with vague calls for dialogue, asserting that antisemitism has no place — yet they fail to name it even when it is brazen and public. Reports of intimidation are dismissed; pleas for safety are met with silence or deflection. This is not a debate — it’s double standard. And it leaves Jewish students feeling invisible, abandoned, and fundamentally unwelcome in institutions that claim to be inclusive for all. 

This is not new, we are now watching it play out in real time and with growing boldness.

Jews have been targeted around the world: a rabbi assaulted near Paris some days ago, a synagogue firebombed in Melbourne, a young Jewish couple in Washington, DC murdered by an assailant shouting “Free Palestine”, and a holocaust survivor burned at an event raising awareness for the hostages in Boulder, Colorado.  

Here in Canada, Molotov cocktails have been thrown at Jewish buildings, and chants glorifying terror echo through our streets. The number of people turning out to pro-Hamas protests may have decreased — but the violence, the threats, and the hatred have not. The goal remains the same: to normalize antisemitism and undermine the values that hold our democratic society together. 

Perhaps no betrayal has been more glaring than the silence of feminist and human rights organizations in the face of sexual violence on October 7. The mass rapes and mutilations of Israeli women by Hamas terrorists have been documented, filmed, and confirmed. Survivors have spoken. Bodies have been exhumed. And still, the response from many in the #MeToo movement, from organizations that claim to stand for the dignity of all women, or from personalities like Francesca Albanese, the infamous UN official, has ranged from callous indifference to outright denial.

It has taken brave grassroots initiatives — like the Dinah Project and its report out for some days — to give voice to these women, to force the world to confront the double standard: that when the perpetrators are terrorists and the victims are Israeli women, their pain somehow doesn’t count.  

Their trauma doesn’t trend.

In this broader moral collapse, Jewish grief is erased. Our fear is mocked. Our presence in progressive spaces is tolerated only if we are willing to disavow our history, our people, and our right to exist.

This is not a principled protest. It is the weaponization of human rights—selectively applied, cynically distorted. It reveals something even more insidious: a hierarchy of human suffering, where only certain victims are deemed worthy of empathy. Where are the marches for the women of Iran? For the Uyghurs in Chinese camps? For the children starving in Sudan?

The truth is: human rights are either universal or meaningless. And when movements or activists that once claimed the mantle of justice now find themselves aligning with those who glorify rape, massacre, and tyranny, it is not the oppressed they are lifting — it is the values they are destroying.

Antisemitism may be having a cultural moment. But we will not go quietly into the night. We will not apologize for surviving. We will not let the world forget the hostages. We will not let the chant for our erasure echo unanswered.  

And we will not let those who glorify terror pretend they are speaking for justice.