Weaponizing Antisemitism 101: A Back-to-School Special

It is irony at its most bitter. Not so very long ago, hundreds of white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. With tiki-torches held high, they chanted “Jews will not replace us!” And yet here we are, seven years later, and apparently these fanatical card-carrying antisemites have indeed been “replaced” in the minds of many Americans. Why? Because a deceitful campaign now portrays anti-genocide college students (including many Jews) as the leading purveyors of “the world’s oldest hatred.” But for anyone — including a Jew like myself — who hasn’t stubbornly closed their eyes and covered their ears over the past eleven months, one thing should be obvious: it’s simply absurd to label outrage, protest, and despair over the plight of Palestinians in Gaza as “antisemitism.” Period.

Last October 7th, Hamas and other armed groups unleashed a brutal attack in Israel. Several hundred civilians were killed, over 200 were taken hostage, and the fear, agony, and trauma experienced by the distraught and the grief-stricken are profound and unrelenting. But these horrors — amplified and distorted by vengeance-stoking misrepresentations from Israeli officials — can never justify the response that followed.

Ever since that dreadful day (and after the immiseration of a decades-long occupation), an unfathomable humanitarian catastrophe has been unfolding in Gaza. Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians — most of them women and children— and more than twice as many have been injured. Gaza’s health care, education, and vital water systems have been systematically destroyed. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced once or more. Starvation is increasingly widespread. Paralytic polio has now emerged. And all of this has been made possible by the United States’ ongoing provision of political cover and lethal munitions to the Israel Defense Forces.

Acknowledging the genocidal dimensions of this assault stirs controversy — even though Israel’s leaders were quick to make their intentions known from the very outset. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has insisted that he speaks as “a representative of the entire Jewish people” — vowed “mighty vengeance” and described the conflict as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” President Isaac Herzog warned, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari explained that the focus would be “maximum damage.” And Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”

Last November, distinguished Israeli historian and genocide scholar Omer Bartov wrote in the New York Times, “there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza.” But in an essay published in The Guardian last month, Bartov abandoned his optimistic view:

I no longer believe that. By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that at least since the attack by the IDF on Rafah on 6 May 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions. It was not just that this attack against the last concentration of Gazans – most of them displaced already several times by the IDF, which now once again pushed them to a so-called safe zone – demonstrated a total disregard of any humanitarian standards. It also clearly indicated that the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory.

The overwhelming evidence of profound and recurring violations of international law in Gaza has seemingly left inveterate defenders of Israel —including most politicians in Washington, DC — with only one card left to play (over and over again). Unwilling or unable to present a convincing defense of Israel’s policies, they indiscriminately and unfairly target critics with accusations of antisemitism. As we’ve seen, Israeli government officials and their apologists have repeatedly sought to discredit, demonize, and silence anyone — non-Jew and Jew alike — who speaks out against the country’s abhorrent actions or in support of Palestinian rights, a humanitarian ceasefire, or an arms embargo to end the killing. The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) provided a memorable example of this demagoguery when he described progressive Jewish organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now as “hate groups, the photo inverse of white supremacists.”

There’s no question that antisemitism — when reasonably defined as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)” — is a very serious and growing threat. Recent research shows that such antisemitic attitudes become increasingly more pronounced as one moves ideologically from the left to the right, especially among young people. But when antisemitism is intentionally conflated with legitimate criticism of Israel, we can lose sight of the fact that the primary danger to Jews (and other at-risk groups around the world) is found among the fascists and white nationalists on the right, not among the left-leaning, pro-Palestinian activists — of all faiths — on college campuses today. Indeed, oversized attention to the latter draws much-needed scrutiny away from the former—and from the virulent antisemitic acts that demand a dedicated and comprehensive response.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t opportunistic agitators taking advantage of the horrors in Gaza to foment hatred of Jews more generally. Indeed, white nationalist organizations actively promote recruitment to their own ranks by piggybacking onto and hijacking the efforts of others engaged in urgent and non-violent human rights advocacy. Last October, for example, a leader of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville told a crowd gathered in front of the White House, “We Americans have been snookered into supporting [Israel] by Jewish control of our banks, our media, and our politicians.” Now that is antisemitism, nurtured by a range of conspiracy theories that encourage violence against Jews, Muslims, Blacks, and immigrants (among others) in order to prevent the “replacement” of White Americans.

The utter magnitude of death and destruction in Gaza makes it especially important to recognize the crucial distinction between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies. Unfortunately, however, “pro-Israel” organizations in the U.S., such as the ADL, instead blur this difference. In part, they do so by relying upon and actively promoting the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition” of antisemitism, which encourages the view that criticism of Israel is intrinsically antisemitic (seven of the IHRA’s eleven examples of antisemitism reference Israel).

A range of scholars have criticized the IHRA’s approach to defining antisemitism for its misplaced focus on Israel rather than on Jews as Jews. Moreover, the lead drafter of the IHRA working definition warned several years ago of efforts to weaponize it in order to attack “academic freedom and free speech” and to pursue legal sanctions against those who engage in political speech critical of Israel and in support of Palestinian rights. And this past May, over 1,300 Jewish faculty published an open letter that called upon elected leaders not to codify the IHRA definition into U.S. federal law. That letter includes this: “By stifling criticism of Israel, the IHRA definition hardens the dangerous notion that Jewish identity is inextricably linked to every decision of Israel’s government. Far from combating antisemitism, this dynamic promises to amplify the real threats Jewish Americans already face.”

Nevertheless, the ADL routinely presents “anti-Israel” sentiment as indicative of broader “anti-Jewish” prejudices. For example, consider the organization’s “Antisemitic Attitudes in America 2024” report, based on a survey of a representative sample of Americans this past January. Three items that were included to measure “anti-Israel” sentiment focused specifically on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians: “Israelis are indifferent to Palestinian suffering,” “Israelis intend to cause as much suffering to Palestinians as possible,” and “If Israelis had their way, they would live in a world where all Palestinians were killed.” The percent of respondents who said they “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with each statement were 43%, 42%, and 36% respectively.

How should we appropriately interpret these findings? Do they actually demonstrate “anti-Israel” bias as the ADL claims, or are they better understood as reflecting a reasonably accurate appraisal of reality? Two results from Pew Research Center polling of Israelis this past spring shed light on this crucial question, albeit imperfectly. First, when asked whether Israel’s military response against Hamas in Gaza has gone too far, only 4% of Israeli Jews agreed (in sharp contrast to 74% of Arab Israelis). Second, when asked whether social media posts expressing sympathy for civilians in Gaza should be prohibited, 70% of Israeli Jews agreed (compared to only 18% of Arab Israelis). These are striking figures. Whether they originate from fears of the future, traumas of the past, or denials of the present, how can we doubt that most Israeli Jews are, at best, seemingly indifferent to the horrors in Gaza? And on what basis, then, is recognizing this an expression of antisemitism?

As the new academic year begins here in the U.S., college administrators around the country have already adopted draconian measures to further crack down on anti-genocide actions and even speech itself. The context in which this is all unfolding is monstrous: education has been obliterated in Gaza — a clear case of scholasticide — with universities now buried under rubble. And yet false accounts accusing pro-Palestinian advocates of abusive language and violent disruptions on campus — spread by “pro-Israel” groups, by ambitious, anti-diversity-equity-inclusion politicians, and by wealthy, arrogant donors — have instead helped to turn the focus to the emotional distress experienced by Jewish students.

Can actual data overcome this manufactured hysteria? I do not know. But toward that end, consider some findings of a recent report from the Jim Joseph Foundation, which describes itself as “devoted exclusively to supporting Jewish education of youth and young adults in the United States.” Published just this month and titled “A Year of Campus Conflict and Growth: An Over-Time Study of the Impact of the Israel-Hamas War on U.S. College Students,” the report examines focus groups and survey data collected from a broad swath of Jewish and non-Jewish students between 2022 and 2024.

One survey question directly asked Jewish students whether and where they had been “personally targeted by antisemitic comments, slurs, or threats” since last October 7th. (It appears that no definition of antisemitism was provided.) The percents of affirmative responses were as follows: 15% on social media, 16% within the campus social environment, and 10% in classrooms. Undoubtedly, some of these adverse experiences were tied to calls for the freeing of Palestine (e.g., “from the river to the sea”), which have a range of divergent meanings, some much more threatening than others.

Regardless, while these self-reported figures are not negligible, they certainly don’t reach levels one might have imagined from stories of universities being inundated with antisemites. Indeed, two summaries from the report’s focus groups are instructive here:

Even though some students point to physical violence or antisemitic actions, Jewish students noted that their campus environment was tamer than media portrayals of campus unrest. Some students had to reassure their family members that they were not feeling physically threatened on campus and that they were safe, in contradiction to alarming media portrayals.

Students overwhelmingly reported that the campus protests they saw this year were peaceful. Most Jewish students, but not all, said they did not feel physically unsafe. In general, Jewish students articulated a view that even though most protesters probably did not harbor antisemitic attitudes, there are some who clearly did.

Another widely promoted claim is that Jewish students are being psychologically traumatized in large numbers by their experiences on campus. But here too the recent Jim Joseph Foundation survey suggests otherwise. It found that 13% of Jewish students described their own mental health or emotional well-being as “poor” this past spring (10% of non-Jewish students did the same). Not only is this figure much lower than various anecdotal accounts suggest, it’s not any higher than the findings from other past surveys of college students conducted prior to last October 7th. In 2022, 22% of students described their mental health as poor, and 16% did so in 2023.

To be clear, the mental health struggles of individual college students are no small or inconsequential matter. Familiar stresses include academic performance pressures, interpersonal relationship struggles, and challenges in balancing school with other obligations. And it is surely true that experiences with antisemitism can add to this toll. But sensationalizing campuses as sites of Jewish trauma is unwarranted. Those who nonetheless encourage this inaccurate and overblown perspective are as likely to be pursuing a narrow political agenda aimed at suppressing academic freedom and critical discourse as they are to be concerned about Jewish students’ emotional well-being.

At the same time, far less attention and support have been devoted to the welfare of other university constituents. These include Palestinian and Muslim students who may have lost family members in Gaza and have been subjected to attacks, threats, and religious discrimination on campus; students who’ve faced suspensions, expulsions, arrests, and lost job opportunities over their participation in protests and encampments; Jewish students who’ve participated in anti-genocide actions (and may themselves be traumatized by what Israel is doing); and faculty who’ve been suspended or fired over their support for these students.

Ultimately, as a distraction if nothing else, false charges of antisemitism may become even louder in the weeks immediately ahead. These fraudulent accusations are seemingly the only arrows left in the quivers of those struggling to counter the growing international condemnation of Israel for its abominable actions in Gaza. As the mournful first anniversary of October 7th approaches, this is assuredly a time for care and compassion across divides — for all who’ve suffered from the past year’s violence. But it is not a time for silence. For everyone’s benefit, the weaponization of antisemitism must be challenged whenever and wherever it arises. We owe it to the many voices that can no longer be heard.

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