The New Antisemitism

antisemitism is the early-stage symptom of a society coming apart

Antisemitism has always been the canary in the coal mine. When Jews are targeted, it signals a breakdown in a society’s political immune system—followed soon after by the collapse of its social one. We are in that stage right now, globally.

“Antisemitism tells you nothing about Jews and everything about those who hate them.”—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

The Problem With How We’ve Framed Antisemitism

Most people associate antisemitism solely with the Holocaust. Understandable: the industrialized murder of six million Jews is the most documented genocide in human history. We have the testimonies—including my partner Gidon’s. We have the photos. We have the archives, museums, curricula.

But antisemitism neither started nor ended with the Holocaust. It simply changed form.

Today it also changed vocabulary. Antisemitism now sounds like antizionism.

Antizionism Is Not “Critique of Israel”

Critiquing Israeli policy is normal. People critique policies every day without turning it into a hate movement. That is not what we are dealing with.

What we are seeing now is an obsessive, moralized fixation on Israel and Israelis, one that treats the Jewish state as the root cause of all global wrongs. This is the hallmark of the modern antisemitic pattern.

Samuel J. Hyde explains it perfectly:

“Israel has become the stage on which the West performs its guilt. Colonialism? Blame Israel. Racism? Israel. Whiteness, capitalism, militarism, repression—Israel is the catch-all symbol onto which people dump their unresolved historical anxieties. It is the old theological resentment, repackaged as moral clarity.”

This is how inherited anti-Jewish resentment gets laundered into something people can congratulate themselves for.

How Antizionism Became the New Antisemitism

Like Nazism, antizionism didn’t appear overnight. It followed a now-familiar pattern:

1. Normalization

2. Justification

3. Moral fervor masquerading as justice

Only this time, the packaging is different. It doesn't look like Goebbels; it looks like “social justice.” It's hatred rebranded as activism. And people are buying it.

A Case Study: Antisemitism on Social Media

If you want to see this hatred in real time, spend an hour on social media as a Jew. Better yet, try being an elderly Holocaust survivor attempting to tell the truth about his childhood.

As I wrote in another post, the so-called “Watermelon Mafia” ran a coordinated harassment campaign that eventually pushed Gidon off social media entirely.

One of Gidon’s earliest memories: being in a Prague park, running toward a swing he loved, when his grandfather stopped him—nein, nein, nein—and pointed to a sign Gidon couldn’t yet read:

Juden verboten

Today the sign isn’t wooden; it’s digital. But the message is identical:

No Jews allowed

This is what a society on the brink does: it tolerates whispered hate until it becomes shouted hate. Then it rationalizes it as fringe, harmless, or even declassé. Then everyone joins in because it’s fashionable, safer - or even emotionally gratifying.

Europe, Again, and the Rise of the New Antisemitic Language

Look around Europe: the protests, the demonization of Israel, Israelis, and Jews writ large. Writers like Benjamin Bierly have documented the unhinged antizionism erupting in Italy.

Similar phenomena are happening across Western capitals.

A new vocabulary has emerged—one cloaked in moral righteousness:

• “settler-colonialism”

• “apartheid”

• “genocide”

• “decolonization”

  
  

The language evolves faster than it can be countered.The underlying sentiment is ancient.

Performative Activism Isn’t Liberation

Watch these “Free Palestine” protesters disrupting a Christmas festival in Brussels. It’s a performative spectacle of purity, disruption, and moral outrage, not justice, not liberation, and certainly not peace.

Everyone wants to know who’s behind the newest antisemitism this time:

• Qatar?

• The Muslim Brotherhood?

• Academia?

• Western far-left intellectual circles?

Origins matter. But for people in my lane - writers, educators, content creators - the more urgent problem is that non-Jews and even some Jews are falling for the masquerade.

Holocaust Education Didn’t Inoculate the World

The new antisemitism has been incubating for years. A decade ago, at a UNESCO event in Riga where I was representing Israel, a colleague casually informed me that Israel was committing genocide.

We over-relied on Holocaust education. We assumed that because the Holocaust was the apex of antisemitism, the world had learned the lesson. We were wrong.

Education alone cannot inoculate a society against the deeper human need to find a scapegoat.

Where Do We Go From Here?

If antisemitism is the early-stage symptom of societal dysfunction, then the real question is:

How do Jews—and our allies—respond to this new, globalized form of antisemitism?

That is the work ahead. And it will take far more than museums and memorials.