How Antisemitism Has Been Hijacked
This is the first of a two-part series on antisemitism. Part two will address antisemitism at U.S. colleges and universities.
Overview
I undertook this research as a Jewish American psychologist, to expose the hijacking of antisemitism.
Antisemitism is a core moral category for Jews worldwide. It denotes bigotry and exclusion based on ethnic identity or religious belief. It was originally coined by Wilhelm Marr, a journalist, who founded the League of Antisemites in 1879. Mr. Marr advocated for the expulsion of Jews from Germany. According to the League, Germans had to choose between the survival of Germany or the Jews. They couldn’t have both. Marr’s antisemitism grew out of his own failures. After he attacked a Jewish member of the Hamburg Parliament in 1862, public protest cost him his seat. He married four times; three of his wives were Jewish or of Jewish descent. He laid the populist groundwork for Hitler.
That history of antisemitism has been hijacked. It is being used now to vilify individuals and groups that criticize Israel and support Palestinians. As a narrative, it justifies support for armament sales banned by international law. Jewish individuals, groups and organizations use antisemitism as a rallying cry to stifle political expression and appear superior in their charges.
Israel, in my opinion, is an external threat to American democracy. Over the last three years it has used ‘antisemitism’ as a rally cry to spend $1 billion on social media, make direct payments to influencers and lobbyists, and fly evangelical Christians to Israel in exchange for political support.
The Jewish American political lobby, AIPAC, is heavily financed by Republican mega-donors. It signed a letter to Congress along with the ADL and a dozen other organizations in 2024, urging lawmakers to adopt the definition of antisemitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This lists the claim, among others, that Israel’s existence is “a racist endeavor,” as antisemitic.
The definition of racist endeavor is so broad that any person who expresses a negative opinion about Israel is considered antisemitic. Prominent Jews such as Einstein, Freud, Hannah Arendt, and Erich Fromm, among others, were all anti-Zionist and opposed to a Jewish state. According to AIPAC’s definition, they are all antisemitic.
AIPAC spent $104.3 million through August of the 2026 cycle alone to help elect pro-Israel candidates. The Michigan Senate primary shows what that buys. AIPAC and its super PAC spent $30.6 million to try to defeat Abdul El-Sayed. That is the most the organization has ever committed to a single race. Groups backing El-Sayed spent about $3.5 million. That is roughly a nine-to-one advantage in one Democratic primary. Across the 2024 cycle, AIPAC’s total outlay ran near $100 million. The Associated Press, working from federal election records, put its four-year total above $221 million.
In the 2024 cycle, AIPAC put money into 389 congressional races: 363 in the House and 26 in the Senate. More than 318 of the candidates it backed won. The organization funds Republicans and Democrats alike, which is the point. By paying into both parties, it ensures that legislation concerning Israel arrives on the floor with support already secured on both sides. For years, according to Track AIPAC, it has avoided transparency by failing to register with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It acts above the law with impunity.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Leader, who seldom says no to money for influence, received over $760,000 from AIPAC in a recent election cycle. Jeffries supports weapons sales to Israel.
Chuck Schumer, Senator from New York, another example of politicians on the payroll, has received over $1,700,000 from AIPAC and other pro-Israel donors over his various campaigns. Mr. Schumer is a diehard advocate for Israel.
StopAntisemitism, an organization started by Liora Reznichenko in 2018, targets individuals online who criticize Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights. She then urges people in her network and the Jewish News Syndicate to call the targeted person’s employer and complain that they are antisemitic, against Israel and Jews. Reznichenko told the Jewish News Syndicate that the organization had profiled more than 1,000 people and that over 400 of them had been fired, teachers among them. The charges are baseless. She tried, but failed, to get Ms. Rachel, a children’s TV host, fired for her so-called pro-Palestinian comments. She has an estimated 47,000 followers on her Instagram account alone.
The Merona Leadership Foundation, of which Adam Milstein is president, paid her $142,722 in 2023 to blacklist people. The Milstein Family Foundation, which he runs with his wife Gila, funds AIPAC and its offshoot, Democratic Majority for Israel. Mr. Milstein, a real estate investor, pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2009.
The king of antisemitic claims
Israel has a population of approximately 10 million, 25 percent of whom are not Jewish in origin or identification. Less than 50 percent of Jews worldwide live in Israel, yet Israel attempts to speak for all Jews. It conflates national identity with religious or cultural identity. I am a secular Jewish person for whom Israel does not speak and I resent their generalizations. I’m one of 31% to 45% of American secular Jews in national surveys who do not identify with Israel, an opinion that is rapidly growing to 75%, among young persons aged 18 to 29. Israel has lost support among this young generation of voters.
Israel uses accusations of antisemitism to block political and cultural criticism as well as rationalize brutality against Palestinians and its neighbors. From 2015 to 2024 the UN General Assembly, for example, passed 173 resolutions against Israel, more than all 182 nations combined at 80 resolutions. Mr. Netanyahu has called the UN “a deeply antisemitic organization”; the International Criminal Court, which has charged Mr. Netanyahu and former members of the Israeli government with crimes against humanity, is also referred to as “antisemitic”; 68 additional UN nations, including South Africa, have called Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem an illegal apartheid. Protesters on college campuses who are pro-Palestinian or protest Israel’s treatment of Palestinians are labeled “antisemitic” and “should be locked up.”
NAZA, an award-winning Israeli documentary film, uses interviews with Israeli soldiers to show how they calculate the killing of civilians as a normal part of their bombing campaigns. It has drawn a firestorm of attacks from Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli government, who call the film a pack of lies that “feeds antisemitism” worldwide and have threatened to revoke the filmmakers’ citizenship.
Why would Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli government characterize all countries, institutions, and cultural developments that criticize or sanction Israel as antisemitic? Israel, after all, signed UN obligations of conduct after World War II to become a member of the world community.
War economy
The key reason, outside of whitewashing settler colonial violence, I suspect, is money. Israel’s economy is increasingly dependent on armament sales to the U.S. and EU. While overall exports of goods, including agriculture, fell by $4.5 billion from 2022 to 2024, for instance, exports of weapons increased by $2.3 billion, offsetting 52% of the loss. Israel exported $19.2 billion of defense goods in 2025.
Armament sales are infinitely easier if Israel is perceived as a victim of antisemitism, and not a perpetrator of crimes against humanity or genocide. Germany, for example, lifted a partial ban on weapon sales after Israel announced a cease fire in Gaza. Arms sales went from $260 million in 2025 to over $900 million in the first six months of 2026; growth of arms exports is on track to increase fivefold by year-end 2026. Israel, in practice, has never honored a cease fire.
The numbers above do not include dividends or corporate taxes paid by defense companies internally to the state of Israel, which totaled approximately $4 billion in 2024-2025. Israel has become what Mr. Netanyahu has actively proposed: the Sparta of the Middle East.
Politics of religious donations
The U.S. government gives millions of dollars to religious organizations annually through grants, contracts, and vouchers. Over the course of nine years from 2017 through 2025, $492.1 million was awarded to Jewish institutions, and $32.2 million went to Muslim institutions. Population alone doesn’t explain this discrepancy. There are 6 to 7 million Jews reported living in the U.S. vs 4 to 5 million Muslims.
Deeper research revealed the following: The Middle East Forum, a hyper-conservative think tank, which advises President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claimed that Muslim and Islamist nonprofits that were applying for government funds had ties to extremist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. DHS, almost immediately, terminated $8 million in federal grants. The Muslim Public Affairs Council reports that even members of Congress have been unable to verify DHS’s claims about the defunded organizations. No public evidence has been produced.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) was founded by Daniel Pipes, a counter-jihad activist who once accused President Obama of being a Muslim and made claims about “no go zones” in Europe overrun by Sharia law. The Executive Director of daily operations, Gregg Roman, previously worked for the Israeli Minister of Defense and was an advisor to Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister. The organization discloses a $4.8 million budget drawn from multiple sources, which are mostly labeled “donor advised funds”. The only donor that I was able to unearth was Koch-affiliated funds.
MEF has recently campaigned against Iran’s antisemitism and the spread of a false “genocide libel” against Jews and critics of Israel. They have accused the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, of spreading a genocide libel that threatens all Jews in the Diaspora. These ‘genocide libels’ are presented on par with or worse than antisemitism. Dearborn, according to MEF, is chock-full of support for Hamas and Hezbollah. No data is offered to support these unsubstantiated claims.
Fanning flames of antisemitism
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish community’s watchdog of antisemitism took in $163 million in the fiscal year beginning October 2023, up from roughly $105 million before the war — a jump of more than fifty percent in twelve months, almost entirely from donations. It has kept antisemitism alive in the minds of Americans through the use of empirical data and hyperbole.
The ADL uses attacks on synagogues as dramatic evidence that a “documented pattern of violent antisemitism with profound implications for the Jewish community” exists, a rampant problem that should alarm all Jews and alert Americans. A more reasonable interpretation of their data suggests something quite different:
- Globally, there are an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 synagogues, depending on reports. In 2024 there were 1702 reported synagogue attacks; 2025, 1129; and for six months 2026, a “few dozen” attacks were reported. Attacks can be any act from defacing property to vehicle rammings.
- The trend in attacks dropped by over 95% from its high. Think about the actual implications of 24 attacks on synagogues out of 15,000, which is roughly 0.16%.
- In the U.S. there are 2,500 to 3,700 synagogues of which 7 were attacked in the first half of 2026. Violent attacks, using the lower number of synagogues, represent 0.28%.
- The ADL has indicated that over the last ten years there have been 24 physical attacks on synagogues in the U.S., or roughly a little over two per year; with 80 incidents worldwide. Churches and Mosques show higher rates of attack.
Antisemitism against synagogues is treated as a spectacle. Consider, for example: if one person in San Diego out of a population of 1.4 million drives a car into a local synagogue it becomes an ADL feature and 24-hour news story. Upon closer scrutiny, however, the attack may have had more to do with individual expression against Israel’s war against Palestinians in Gaza than antisemitism per se. Random acts against synagogues, based on interviews, were attributed to Israel in 15% of cases prior to 2023 evolving to 50% in 2025. Additional research is warranted, not hyperbole.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of ADL, along with mainstream Jewish organizations, is advocating for bipartisan political support for the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA). This includes senators like Jacky Rosen, Jewish Democrat from Nevada, former synagogue president, and recipient of $1.2 million directly from AIPAC and $500,000 from other pro-Israel groups. She claims that “antisemitism is an alarming trend of vile hatred.” James Lankford, Republican from Oklahoma, who received $365,560 from AIPAC, chimes in, “there is an unprecedented surge in antisemitism.” While their political donations skyrocketed, and fanfare generated news time and images, real data was lacking.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act is based on guidelines set forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and would be administered through the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. It would treat criticism of Israel in the form of anti-war and cease fire rallies, and anti-Zionism as evidence of antisemitism. It also requires social media platforms to provide more details about how they handle antisemitism.
The AAA considers it antisemitic to:
- Draw comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of Nazis
- Require of Israel behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation
- Deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.
The problem isn’t antisemitism, it’s Israel. Israel’s state policy and IDF conduct have systematically killed over 73,914 Palestinians, 21,600 children, wounded 174,000, including 3,000 to 4,000 child amputees, and destroyed over 90 percent of infrastructure in Gaza using methods adopted from or similar to the Nazis, including bulldozing houses, stamping serial numbers on Palestinian prisoners’ foreheads, and torturing prisoners. Nazi-like tactics and outcomes are well documented by The Lancet, Doctors Against Genocide, UNRWA, dozens of NGOs and UN researchers.
Israel is a racist state. Arab citizens are treated as second class. Palestinians in the occupied territories are tried in military courts rather than civil ones. Settlers take their land under army protection and destroy their property. They are denied the ability to farm, fish, or water their crops. Rapes of Palestinian women and the point-blank killing of Palestinian children have been documented, and almost no one has been held to account.
All that’s required is that Israel respect international law: stop killing Palestinians, destroying their homes and livelihood, stealing their land, eliminating legal due process, barring their civil rights, killing doctors, destroying hospitals and medical supplies, killing journalists, censoring what’s happening in Gaza, barring the International Red Cross from inspecting jails and prisons, and provide explanations to Palestinian families for how their loved ones die in imprisoned.
Growth of Antisemitism
Claims of antisemitism will significantly increase in the near future, in my opinion, to compensate for Israel’s collapse of popular support in the U.S. A July 2025 Gallup poll indicated that over 60% of Americans disapprove of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip; and Pew Research Center in 2026 found that support for Israel has plummeted even further as it has expanded war to Lebanon and Iran. A February 2026 Gallup poll shows that 53% of adults 18 to 34 sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis and 75% of adults 18 to 29 hold unfavorable views of Israel.
Israel is the most boycotted nation in the world, echoing U.S. trends. Israel claims, of course, that boycotts are “antisemitism at work.”
What you can do:
Call and write your representatives; they tabulate phone calls:
- Tell them to vote no on the Antisemitism Awareness Act
- Tell them to stop AIPAC from paying off U.S. politicians
- Tell them to stop supplying Israel with weapons
Support organizations that are actually making a difference against antisemitism:
- Jewish Voice for Peace is exceptional
- Support the news service +972 out of Israel
Sign up for AIPAC Tracker to see who’s on the payroll: https://www.trackaipac.com/
Join a street protest, social group and/or donate online to groups that aid Palestinians:
- UNRWA does an exceptional job of helping (Israel threw them out of Gaza and Jerusalem, and bulldozed their headquarters)
- World Central Kitchen (Gaza)
- Doctors Against Genocide—meets online every Sunday and offers live updates from Gaza and West Bank, and other troubled areas and invites donations
- Standing Together: Palestinians and Israelis working together to stop apartheid
- Combatants for Peace—Palestinians and Israelis working together to build a viable future. Members of this community fought each other at one moment in time.