The charge of weaponization has itself been criticized as antisemitic or rooted in antisemitic tropes, and as a rhetorical device employed across the political spectrum to delegitimize concerns about antisemitism in anti-Zionist discourse.[7][8][9]
In 1943, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion called a British court antisemitic after it "had implicated Zionist leaders in arms-trafficking".[10] In 1965, Christopher Sykes wrote that the incident began "a new phase in Zionist propaganda" in which "to be anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic".[11]Propaganda theoristNoam Chomsky has written that, although Sykes traced the origins of weaponized antisemitism to this episode, it was not until "the post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible".[12] In 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban wrote: "One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism."[13] Of Eban's statement, Chomsky said: "That is a convenient stand. It cuts off a mere 100 percent of critical comment!"[14][15]
In 1980, Edward Said said that, since its inception, Zionist discourse had aimed "to lay claim to Palestine both as a backward, largely uninhabited territory" and as a place where Jews had "a unique historical privilege" to rebuild a homeland. As a result, he said, this meant anyone who opposed Zionism "immediately aligned oneself with anti-Semitism".[21] Said said this routine conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism functioned to suppress criticism of Israel and was reinforced by simplistic media narratives, the influence of pro-Israel pressure groups, and academics' and intellectuals' uncritical repetition of political clichés.[21]
In 1989, Cheryl Rubenberg wrote that it was "a common practice among Israel's advocates" to label opponents of "the [Israel] lobby's positions" or supporters of a Palestinian homeland as antisemitic, referring to incidents involving U.S. politicians Charles Mathias, Pete McCloskey, and Jesse Jackson.[22] In 1990, the Argentine newspaper Buenos Aires Herald defended the Peronist President of Argentina Carlos Menem against charges of antisemitism, writing that the allegations "may have been prompted by President Menem's good relations with Jews which constitutes 'a perceived threat to the [opposing] Radical Party's traditional Jewish constituency'".[23]
In a 2005 interview with Campus Watch, Norman Finkelstein said, "Whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.'"[24]Jonathan Judaken said Finkelstein's dismissal of new antisemitism was "the mirror-image of the alarmists he seeks to denounce".[25]
Examples
In the early 1950s, U.S. journalist Dorothy Thompson, a former advocate of the movement, was publicly called antisemitic when she began to criticize Zionism after a visit to Palestine in 1945.[26][27][28][29][30] Thompson felt the accusations, which persisted throughout her career, amounted to a "type of blackmail" or character assassination.[31] Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge wrote, "today, many see the silencing of a bold humanitarian advocate in her story, and it is not difficult to understand why", but also that "there can be no doubt that anti-Semitism was a theme in Thompson's later writing."[32]
American child educator Ms. Rachel (Rachel Accurso) has faced allegations of antisemitism after advocating for children experiencing trauma and starvation in Gaza.[33][34][35][36] In November 2025, the pro-Israel advocacy group StopAntisemitism accused her of spreading Hamas propaganda and named her a finalist for its "Antisemite of the Year".[37][33][38] The left-wing group Jews for Racial & Economic Justice defended Ms. Rachel, saying that StopAntisemitism "solely exists to punish and harass private and public individuals who criticize the actions of the State of Israel or simply express sympathy for and solidarity with Palestinians."[33][39]
Disputed cases
In his 1956 memoir, British military officer John Bagot Glubb denied accusations of antisemitism for his criticism of Israel, writing: "It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism."[40][41] Israeli historian Benny Morris linked such allegations against Glubb to a "tendency among Israelis and Jews abroad to identify strong criticism of Israel as tantamount to, or as at least stemming from, anti-Semitism", although Morris also said Glubb's anti-Zionism was "tinged by a degree of anti-Semitism" and his "outlook on the history of the Jews ... is jaundiced, inaccurate, and, at times, blatantly anti-Semitic".[41]
Critics such as the Israel-Palestine researcher Suraya Dadoo, journalist Ben White, and British scholar Matthew Abraham have suggested that international Israeli advocacy groups have charged prominent people who express pro-Palestinian sentiment, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, with antisemitism. Abraham says this is a form of "political correctness" that undermines "greater understanding about the conditions producing conflict in the Israel-Palestine conflict".[42][43][44] Tutu said in 2002 that "to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if the Palestinians were not Semitic ... People are scared in this country [the US] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful."[45] South African Muslim scholar Farid Esack wrote that it was unfortunate that Tutu's statement "verged into antisemitic tropes", but "this misspoken moment unfolded because of his prophetic support of Palestinians".[46]
Analysis
The charge of weaponization has been raised across the political spectrum, especially in anti-Zionist discourse on the left and right.[47][48][49] The culture of anti-antisemitism in Germany has been criticized as weaponizing antisemitism and compared to McCarthyism.[50] Similar concerns have been made about Austrian politics and academia.[51]
Scholars such as John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and Matthew Abraham have suggested that the charge of antisemitism is becoming less effective when applied to criticisms of Israel.[52][53] While warning in 2010 against denying or minimizing antisemitism, American attorney and academic Kenneth L. Marcus also cautioned against overuse of the "anti-Semitism card", paralleling concerns raised by Richard Thompson Ford with the broader misuse of "the race card": that it can be dishonest and mean-spirited, risks weakening legitimate accusations of bigotry, risks distracting socially concerned organizations from other social injustices, and hurts outreach efforts between Jewish and Arab or Muslim groups.[54]
In 2021, religion scholar Atalia Omer of the University of Notre Dame said that weaponization of antisemitism is bad for all involved, including Israel and the broader Jewish community.[55] In 2022, Nick Riemer, a Palestine solidarity activist and linguist at the University of Sydney, said that antisemitism "provides the excuse for a heavy-handed and highly irrational assault on fundamental democratic liberties", comparing it to how "Islamophobia has been politically instrumentalized in the service of neocolonial control of Muslim populations".[56]
Tamar Meisels has written that, though she suspects "that some fierce anti-Zionism is tainted with old-fashioned anti-Semitism ... being an anti-Semite does not actually disqualify someone from also making rational criticisms of Israel and the US ... even a stopped clock is right twice a day".[57]
In his 1992 book The Passionate Attachment: America's involvement with Israel, the American diplomat emeritus George Ball wrote that AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups "employ the charge of 'anti-Semitism' so carelessly as to trivialize it", suggesting that this was due to the lack of any "rational argument" with which to defend the state's actions.[66] In 2008, Norman Finkelstein said that organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had advanced charges of new antisemitism since the 1970s "to exploit the historical suffering of Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism".[67] Others have also accused the ADL of advancing false claims of antisemitism against anti-Zionists.[68][69][59] In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2008), John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt write that Israel's supporters have sought to shield it from criticism and pressure using fears of a "new antisemitism", naming as examples Anti-Defamation League publications raising concerns of antisemitism at moments of particular political pressure against Israel.[70] ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has said, "anti-Zionism is antisemitism."[71][58]
Various writers have suggested that charges of antisemitism in discussions of Israel can have a chilling effect, deterring criticism of Israel due to fear of being associated with beliefs linked to antisemitic crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust.[72][73][74] Finkelstein has said that use of "the anti-Semitism card" attempts to displace "fundamental responsibility for causing the conflict from Israel to the Arabs, the issue no longer being Jewish dispossession of Palestinians but Arab 'opposition' to Jews".[64][75] In 2008, he wrote that some of what "the Israel lobby" suggests is antisemitism is in fact "exaggeration and fabrication", "mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy", and "the unjustified yet predictable 'spillover' from criticism of Israel to Jews generally".[76]
In 2008, Mearsheimer and Walt wrote that the charge of antisemitism can discourage others from defending in public those against whom the charge has been made.[77] They said that rhetorical accusations of antisemitism put a burden of proof on the accused person, putting them in the "difficult" position of having to prove a negative.[78] They wrote, "we should all be disturbed by the presence of genuine anti-Semitism", but suggested that "playing the anti-Semitism card stifles discussion" and "allows myths about Israel to survive unchallenged".[79] In 2010, Kenneth L. Marcus wrote that although Mearsheimer and Walt called such accusations "the Great Silencer", they had not themselves been silenced, having received a wide audience for their book and appearances. Marcus also wrote that many pro-Israel commentators had also taken pains to say that not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic.[80]
In 2019, Joshua Leifer, an editor of Dissent magazine, wrote that campaigns that consider anti-Zionism antisemitic aim to shift criticisms of the Israeli government "beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability".[81] In December 2023, antisemitism expert David Feldman said that, while "some anti-Zionism takes an antisemitic form", the context must be considered when differentiating antisemitism from legitimate discourse and that there is "a long history of Israel and its supporters portraying anti-Zionism and other criticisms of Israel as antisemitic" in order to delegitimize them.[82]
In 2004, Joel Beinin wrote that the "well-established ploy" of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism exposes Jews to attack by suggesting they are responsible for the Israeli government's actions.[83] Abraham wrote, "the traditional response to [anti-Zionist Jews who counter the notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitic] has been to label anti-Zionist Jews as 'self-hating Jews,' which requires a suspension of rationality and sound judgement." Chomsky wrote, "it is now necessary to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism—or in the case of Jews, as 'self-hatred,' so that all possible cases are covered".[6]Raz Segal writes that conflating the state of Israel with Jews is part of the weaponization of antisemitism discourse that protects Israel from criticism, especially in discussion of Israeli settler colonialism.[84]
In February 2022, when Amnesty International reported that Israel was committing apartheid in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel rejected the findings and denounced them as antisemitic.[85] Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard called the Israeli officials' responses "baseless attacks, barefaced lies, fabrications on the messenger".[86] Human rights advocates subsequently argued that the criticism of the report constituted weaponization of antisemitism.[87][88]
During the Gaza war, pro-Israel advocates, including speakers, writers, and politicians, have been accused of exploiting the accusation of antisemitism to silence valid criticism of Israel.[89] Political scientist Omar Shahabudin McDoom has written that accusations of antisemitism play two roles in what he calls Gaza genocide denial: claiming that Israel is unfairly targeted in an orchestrated campaign motivated by antisemitism, and attacking the motivations of critics of Israel's genocide.[90] McDoom wrote in 2024 that the identification of "critic[ism] of the conduct of the Israeli government" with antisemitism is not necessarily in bad faith but may be attributed to conscious or unconscious "prosemitic" bias: "Although it has long been argued the antisemite label has been used instrumentally to silence critics of Israel, it may not always be disingenuous behaviour."[91]Martin Shaw has written that Israel's supporters use the ideology of anti-antisemitism as institutionalized in the U.S., Germany, and other Western countries to block recognition of the genocide.[92]
Pro-Palestinian activism
Multiple scholars have said that allegations of antisemitism have been weaponized against pro-Palestinian protesters.[93][94][51] Scholar Raz Segal, former Hillel executive director for Harvard University Bernie Steinberg, and former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy have said that the weaponization of antisemitism claims has been used to silence pro-Palestinian voices, especially in regard to Israel's human rights abuses.[95][94]
According to Mitchel Plitnick and Sahar Aziz, a presumption that all Muslims are antisemitic has been "increasingly deployed by Zionist groups to eliminate critical debate inclusive of Palestinian experiences".[96] In 2018, Jewish Voice for Peace authored an open letter, signed by over 40 Jewish organizations on the political left, saying that pro-Palestinian organizations were the subject of "cynical and false accusations of antisemitism" to protect Israel.[97][61] In 2024, a group of Germanophone scholars said the weaponization of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian protesters, people of color, and post- and decolonial scholars by universities and the Austrian political right meant the "recent increase of antisemitic crimes and the structural antisemitism across Austrian society are thereby obscured".[51]
Scholars have said that claims of antisemitism have been particularly weaponized against pro-Palestinian university campus demonstrations and boycotts of Israel.[98][99][100]Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel said that Republicans and the Anti-Defamation League have attempted to portray pro-Palestinian student protesters as "terrorists".[100] Steinberg wrote that "fabricated and weaponized" charges against campus protesters must be "put aside" to deal with the "real and dangerous" antisemitism posed by "alt-right white-supremacist politics".[101]
In the U.S., Democrats and Republicans have characterized campus protests in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza as "rampant antisemitism", a characterization Israeli Holocaust historian Raz Segal has called "woefully misguided—and dangerous".[102] Of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, Segal wrote, "the blanket assertion [of 'rampant antisemitism' at the protests] by pro-Israel advocates is intended as a political cudgel: weaponizing antisemitism to shield Israel from criticism of its attack on Gaza".[103] Arielle Angel said the American right has weaponized claims of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian campus activism to ban boycotts of Israel and curtail the right to protest.[100]
Some Jewish and Palestinian faculty and students at Columbia University and Barnard College have called the response of politicians and the university's administration to the campus's pro-Palestinian student protests "weaponization of antisemitism".[104] Harvard appointed antisemitism scholar Derek Penslar to head a task force on the issue. Following criticism of Penslar, who had signed an open letter critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, Slate columnist Emily Tamkin said his critics were weaponizing antisemitism.[105]
Following restrictions on pro-Palestinian protests at universities, several Jewish organizations, activists, and scholars said the second Trump administration was using antisemitism as a pretext for anti-democratic and authoritarian actions.[106]Kenneth S. Stern said the Trump administration was "absolutely weaponizing antisemitism" to curtail "speech we don't like", in "a total assault on the university".[107] Representative Jerry Nadler said Trump was "weaponizing the real pain American Jews face to advance his desire to wield control". Nadler also criticized cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, which terminated nearly half its staff, as contradicting Trump's claim to combat antisemitism.[108][109]
Lara Deeba and Jessica Winegarb suggest antisemitism has been weaponized in the U.S. against pro-Palestinian students and university staff in an attempt to "silence pro-Palestinian speech, abolish anti-racist teaching and diversity initiatives, eliminate academic freedom, and question the value of higher education in general".[110] Rabbi Shaul Magid, a Jewish studies scholar, has suggested that Republicans used congressional hearings about antisemitism to attack universities' diversity, equity and inclusion policies rather than to address campus antisemitism.[111]
In September 2025 a federal judge ruled against Trump's funding freeze for Harvard University, finding that it was "difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Trump administration] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of [federal law]".[112]
In 2011, the UK's University and College Union Congress debated a motion to formally reject the IHRA's working definition of antisemitism.[115][pageneeded] Antisemitism scholar David Hirsh said the definition was "denounced as a bad-faith attempt to say that criticism of Israel was antisemitic".[116][pageneeded]
In 2019, 2024, and 2025, Kenneth S. Stern, the lead author of the original definition, said it had become weaponized by Donald Trump and right-wing Jewish groups in ways that threatened to suppress and limit free speech in the U.S. Stern said Trump's Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism, aimed at university campuses in particular, would "harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself".[117]
A 2023 report by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies analyzed 40 cases where UK university staff and/or students were accused of antisemitism on the basis of the IHRA definition between 2017 and 2022, and found that in 38 cases, the accusations were dismissed, with two yet to be resolved. According to the report, false accusations of antisemitism have caused staff and students severe stress.[118]
In 2023, Nathan J. Brown and Daniel Nerenberg said that the definition, though created in good faith, had been weaponized by groups including the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, and the Brandeis Center.[119] In 2024, Holocaust scholar Raz Segal wrote: "The weaponization of antisemitism by Israel and its allies, including the U.S. government, draws on the deeply problematic 'working definition of antisemitism' adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)."[103]Jonathan Hafetz and Sahar Aziz made a similar argument about the definition's use against critics of Israel's actions during its war on Gaza.[120]
Philosopher Eve Garrard countered the idea that the IHRA definition suppresses free speech critical of Israel, writing that the IHRA's definition and examples are "peppered with conditional verbs", which Garrard attributes to an adherence to necessary caution in discussions of racism. "The only view which this definition threatens", she wrote, "is the view that criticism of Israel can never, ever, in any circumstances, be antisemitic. But this is not a view which is even remotely plausible (although some critics of the IHRA definition do seem to find it attractive)."[121] Responding to widespread criticism that the definition classifies legitimate speech on Israel as antisemitic, Bernard Harrison and Lesley Klaff argued that such criticism was unfounded.[122][123][124]
In 2018, in light of accusations of antisemitism in the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Communities SecretarySajid Javid called a debate on antisemitism in Parliament. At the debate, Jewish Labour MPs Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth spoke of their experiences of being accused of weaponizing antisemitism.[125] Lesley Klaff says Berger experienced online antisemitic and misogynistic harassment by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn who saw her "as deliberately manufacturing a crisis within the Labour Party by making false accusations about antisemitism".[126]Anthony Lerman says that "many hyperbolic claims" were made against Corbyn himself and that such claims "politicized antisemitism" and emptied the word of utility.[127] A 2018 YouGov poll of paying Labour members found that 77% believed that the "extent [of the issue of antisemitism] is being deliberately exaggerated to damage Labour and Jeremy Corbyn or to stifle criticism of Israel".[128] Support for Labour among British Jews fell to 13% during the affair.[129]
In 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigated claims of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, concluding that investigators should treat complaints of antisemitism in good faith according to the Macpherson principle,[a] and that dismissing reports of antisemitism without investigation could itself be antisemitic.[131] It said party agents who suggested complaints of antisemitism were "fake or smears" could be guilty of "unlawful harassment". It also said that Jewish members, in particular, were accused of trying to "undermine the Labour Party" with reports of antisemitism, and that this "ignores legitimate and genuine complaints of antisemitism in the Party".[132] In response to the report, several formal complaints were filed against Labour MPs. The Jewish Labour Movement said, "We were told that this racism was imagined, fabricated for factional advantage or intended to silence debate. Today's report confirms that our voices were marginalised and our members victimised". Gideon Falter, leader of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said that the EHRC report "utterly vindicates Britain's Jews who were accused of lying and exaggerating, acting as agents of another country and using their religion to 'smear' the Labour party".[133] Similarly, the Antisemitism Policy Trust's 2020 report on antisemitism in the Labour Party said that some Labour activists had "dismissed [Anti-Jewish hatred] as a 'smear' or as being 'weaponised' by its victims for political ends", which they said was against the Macpherson principle and not supported by the evidence.[134] In 2022, Corbyn's successor as Labour leader, Keir Starmer, commissioned the Forde Report,[135] which said antisemitism had been used as a "factional weapon" between the party's anti-Corbyn and pro-Corbyn factions.[136][137][138]
International courts
When the International Criminal Court (ICC) was rumored to be preparing arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Aryeh Neier said that Netanyahu's assertion "that ICC indictments would be antisemitic is indicative of his promiscuous use of antisemitism allegations".[139][140] Shortly thereafter, on 20 May 2024, the ICC announced that it was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, and Netanyahu called chief prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan one of the "great antisemites in modern times", saying that Khan was "callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging across the world".[141]Kenneth Roth said Netanyahu's response was a "common last resort for defenders of Israel" that endangered Jews: "if people see the charge of antisemitism as a thin cover for Israeli war crimes, it will cheapen the concept at a time when a strong defense is needed."[142]
The German far-right has accused Jews of "using the Antisemitismuskeule" (lit.'antisemitism club/cudgel') in relation to new antisemitism, nationalism, and neo-Nazism.[48][145][146]German studies scholar Caroline Pearce describes the phrase as a "common far-right term" in contemporary German politics.[145] For example, Jörg Meuthen initially described criticism of Wolfgang Gedeon's writings—which have been widely described as antisemitic—as attempts by political opponents to wield the Antisemitismuskeule against the AfD. He later reversed his position, calling Gedeon's statements "crystal clearly anti-Semitic".[47]Gideon Botsch[de], a German political scientist specializing in the far right and antisemitism, has said that, in Germany, far-right claims of weaponization of antisemitism, especially in relation to criticism of Israel, are often overlooked because of a tendency to attribute anti-Israel antisemitism to the left and Islam, and to treat far-right antisemitism as a separate, historical phenomenon.[48]
In 1967, Jewish writer Moshe Menuhin wrote in the German far-right publication National-Zeitung that antisemitism charges were "becoming more and more a weapon of propaganda serving Zionist aims".[147] During the 1984–1985 trial of James Keegstra for promoting hatred against Jews, Keegstra told the court that antisemitism was, in the words of Alan T. Davies, "a smear word invented by Jews to obscure their conspiratorial activities" ans "divert public attention from the truth."[148][149]
Upon resigning from the far-right National Front party (now National Rally) in 2011, Jean-Marie Le Pen said, "Jews cry wolf, unduly claiming to be victims of anti-Semitism" and that a journalist who had claimed he was racially insulted and violently expelled from a party meeting "could say that it was because he was Jewish that he had been expelled... It could not be seen, neither on his card nor on his nose, if I dare say." The party's next leader, his daughter Marine Le Pen, said the claim of antisemitism was a lie.[150][151][152][153]
Opposition to immigration
Several commentators have suggested that political groups on the populist right and far-right weaponize antisemitism to demonize immigrants, especially Muslims, and obscure their own antisemitism.[154][155][156] Political scientist Jelena Subotić suggests that parties such as the AfD and Fidesz first declare support for Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, then portray their "hostility to Islam and Muslim immigration to Europe" as defending European Jews, as a "shield" from their own antisemitism. She describes this as part of a growing "pro-Israel antisemitism".[154]
Stanford University professor Cécile Alduy (fr) says the National Rally has "started to target the supposed entrenched antisemitism of immigrants of Muslim heritage" and pretends to "protect the Jewish community from them" as a way to obscure its own antisemitic past.[156]Rachel Shabi writes that "wrapped in the Israeli flag, far-right parties with fascist roots and current displays of antisemitism cast themselves as defenders of Jews against an antisemitism claimed to be coming from Muslims and migrants".[155]
Responses
Some scholars have said that charges of weaponized antisemitism often seek to delegitimize complaints of anti-Jewish sentiment, are antisemitic, or draw on antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and deception.[157] Scholars such as Matthias J. Becker, Mark Goldfeder, Robert Fine, and Kenneth Waltzer have said charges of weaponization are themselves antisemitic and rely on stereotypes of Jews that portray them as dishonest or greedy.[158][159] In an article in Fathom, John Hyman and Anthony Julius wrote in response to claims of false charges of antisemitism, "that Jews lie is an established antisemitic defamation" given "canonical form" by Martin Luther in On The Jews and Their Lies and Heinrich von Treitschke's view that "Jews stand for 'Lug und Trug'" (lit.'lying and cheating').[160]
Political scientist Lars Rensmann[de] has said that while complaints about "illegitimate racism charges" are generally unacceptable in society, accusations that Jews are weaponizing antisemitism are "almost ubiquitous" and nearly always lack evidence.[161]
Rensmann and German historian Julius H. Schoeps compare claims of a "general misuse of 'antisemitism'" to claims that racism more generally is "only a 'political weapon' of powerful groups to suppress 'the white people.'" They write that the notion of weaponization is often accompanied by ethnic stereotyping and the downplaying of antisemitism, and is common among the far left, the New Right, and "various European publics".[162] David Schraub says the charge of weaponization "presents marginalized persons as inherently untrustworthy, unbelievable, or lacking in the basic understandings regarding the true meaning of discrimination".[163]
Becker, a hate speech scholar, says the charge that Jews "instrumentalize antisemitism" for political or financial gain is connected to the claim they "instrumentalize the Holocaust", which he says can lead to Holocaust distortion and denial. Becker interprets this trope in post-WWII German and Austrian society (in German, die Antisemitismus- oder Auschwitz-Keule schwingen, lit.'wielding the antisemitism or Auschwitz club') as a "collective reflex" in the context of reckoning with Nazi history.[157] Similarly, Julius called the trope of weaponization of antisemitism a version of the "libel" that Jews are "liars and deceivers, hoodwinking others by making false claims about themselves", with the other version being Holocaust denial.[164]
In 2015, Marcus wrote that after antisemitic incidents occur, people invariably "argue about whether the incident was really anti-Semitic or whether the Jewish complainants are instead trying to smear and silence the innocent", which often means "the accuser is punished" for speaking up.[115][165]
Scholars such as Schraub, Dov Waxman, and Adam Hosein have said that accusations of bad faith are often made about those who raise charges of antisemitism—especially Jews—because "antisemitism today is not always easy to identify or even define".[2] They suggest that accusations of bad faith may be defused by clarifying which of the potential understandings of antisemitism is being invoked, and that "persons who encounter a Jewish claim of antisemitism [should] at least adopt a presumptive disposition towards taking that claim seriously and considering it with an open mind".[2]
In an independent study funded by the office of the Government's Independent Adviser on Antisemitism (Lord Mann), Daniel Allington and Tanvi Joshi found that alternative media outlets, including The Skwawkbox and The Canary on the left and Tommy Robinson's TR News on the right, often represent Jews and Zionists as raising antisemitism in bad faith.[166]
In the New Left
Rensmann has said that some Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers, such as Judith Butler, do not "recognize current antisemitism" but only the "chilling effect" of "bad-faith" charges of antisemitism.[167] Robert Fine has criticized progressive perspectives (such as those of Butler, Alain Badiou, Tony Judt, and Göran Therborn) on the charge of antisemitism as primarily weaponized, saying they abandon "inclusive universalism" to stigmatize others and treat "instrumentalizing the charge of antisemitism" as intrinsic to antisemitism itself.[168]
Sina Arnold and Blair Taylor say charges of weaponizing antisemitism are a common way of "shutting down" discussions of antisemitism in the contemporary American Left, along with changing the subject to Israel or right-wing antisemitism. Arnold and Taylor attribute this to "unexamined political assumptions" and ignorance about the nature of antisemitism rather than "conscious antisemitic intent".[169] Rifat N. Bali writes that the left's "sensitivity toward the phenomenon of antisemitism in Turkey tends to be quite low" due to the belief that Israel weaponizes the charge of antisemitism against criticism.[170]
Mikael Shainkman writes that the contemporary left openly condemns right-wing antisemitism but is unable to recognize antisemitism cloaked as criticism of Israel, instead calling those who raise the issue Zionists acting in bad faith.[171]Jovan Byford says there has been a "contamination" of antisemitic motifs in leftist politics due to the belief that antisemitism is less of a social problem than the accusation of antisemitism itself, "which 'the Lobby' uses to silence opponents and de-legitimize criticism of Israel".[172]
Arnold and Blumenfeld say the Formulation is a key characteristic of discourse related to antisemitism on the American Left.[179] Rensmann calls it a "discursive ideological strategy to immunize antisemitism from antisemitism charges".[180] Samuel Lebens writes that it amounts to epistemic injustice and gaslighting against Jews who complain of antisemitism, and says claims of antisemitism should be treated in good faith, like claims of sexual harassment or racism.[181]
Israel and anti-Zionism
Daniel Sugarman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews has said that while the left downplays antisemitism as criticism of Israel, the right often denies or downplays its antisemitism by citing its support for Israel.[174]
Scholars such as Ben Cohen, Shany Mor, Lars Rensmann, and Efraim Sicher say that anti-Zionist statements and criticism of Israel are sometimes framed as neutral while often relying on traditional antisemitic tropes.[161][182][pageneeded][8] Werner Bonefeld says this is more common among those who view antisemitism as "a phenomenon of the past".[9] David Schraub says that the statement "criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic", while true, falsely implies that "any non-trivial number of individuals" must believe the opposite, recentering discussions of antisemitism from Jewish victims to the way charges of antisemitism are "allegedly abused to victimise innocent bystanders".[183]
In 2016, Schraub wrote that the presumption "that most anti-Semitism claims related to Israel are leveled in bad faith" is "very common" and itself antisemitic, relying on the belief that Jews are largely either dishonest or delusional. Schraub writes that the ubiquity of this presumption among progressives contrasts with the general unacceptability of similar claims about complaints made by groups such as women and black people. He writes that "most Jews and Jewish organizations" are reluctant to raise claims of antisemitism, since the "default response" to even clear-cut cases of antisemitism "will be to fulminate about oversensitive Jews always playing the anti-Semitism card".[184] Shany Mor wrote of the frequent charge of weaponization in discussions of anti-Zionist antisemitism: "It is a weak defense to rely on the very antisemitism you are supposing try to abjure in order to exculpate oneself from the charge of antisemitism—so weak, in fact, that its repeated use is the best evidence that it represents a deeply held belief."[185] Derek Spitz, John Hyman, and Anthony Julius have called this a form of victim blaming that places a large burden of proof on Jews.[186][160] In 2025, Gabriel Sacks wrote, "There is no meaningful way to combat this claim [that Jews weaponize antisemitism to deflect criticism of Israel]: Jews could protest, or merely ignore and not even dare challenge the allegations. Either route has proven to be insufficient for centuries."[187]
According to Iraqi historian Omar Mohammed, attempts to discuss Islamic antisemitism with Muslims or Arabic speakers are frequently met with accusations of "being pro-Israel or attempting to whitewash Israel’s policies", sometimes in the form of the Livingstone Formulation, with those who raise the issue of antisemitism being accused of being "Westernized" and "attempting to impose a Western problem onto Muslim communities, which purportedly have no connection to hatred against Jews". Mohammed writes that this makes discussions of the matter of Islamic antisemitism in Muslim or Arabic-speaking social contexts difficult and potentially dangerous.[188] Esther Webman wrote in 2010 that Arab leaders have responded to increasing charges of antisemitism "mainly by denial and accusing Israel of using it as a ploy to mute criticism."[189]
Daniel Ian Rubin and Mara Grayson criticized the University of California, Santa Cruz Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department's statement following the October 7 attacks for not condemning the attacks but instead supposed "underhanded efforts" by Jewish nonprofits to "smear" the department's Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism as antisemitic. Rubin and Grayson analyzed the statement as preemptively deflecting accusations of antisemitism by "declaring that any such accusation is strategically designed and unscrupulously deployed to silence criticism of Israel", thus reinforcing antisemitic tropes about conspiracy and Jewish dishonesty.[190]
Psychologists Miri Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman say the propagation of the notion that "Jews weaponize antisemitism to stifle criticism of Israel" is an example of traumatic invalidation for Jews since the October 7 attacks.[176]
Fine and Philip Spencer say that while antisemitism may be weaponized to stifle criticism of Israel in some cases, "the reverse is more plausible: that there are many who cry 'Israel' in order to shut down debate on antisemitism".[191] Bernard Harrison says this "stock" rebuttal attempts to portray complaints of antisemitism as "putatively absurd".[192][pageneeded][186]
Under Communism in the Eastern Bloc
Hirsh highlights the 1952 "confession"—extracted under torture—by Rudolf Slánský, former general secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, of "shield[ing] Zionism" by accusing its critics of antisemitism as a deployment of the Livingstone Formulation characteristic of Soviet antisemitism.[178][pageneeded] Izabella Tabarovsky has compared contemporary left-wing antisemitism to Soviet antisemitic campaigns between 1967 and 1988 that said Zionists "complain about antisemitism in order to smear the left", rejecting allegations of antisemitism as "Zionist tricks" and "nefarious imperialist scheming".[193]
Aleksander Smolar wrote in 1987 that Communist Polish authorities wielded "real and imagined" charges of antisemitism against their opposition, particularly in the Catholic Church. He added that the Communists' image as the defenders of Jews might have inhibited the Church's willingness to defend Jews from pogroms, as Church authorities would not want to be interpreted as giving support to the Communists.[194]
András Kovács has written that antisemitic discourse after the replacement of the Communist Hungarian People's Republic held that, during the Communist era, powerful Jews used "the charge of antisemitism [to] de-legitimize [...] the anticommunist national forces and places them in a disadvantageous position both in politics and in public life", and that Communist Jews then allied with liberal Jews to retain political power after the establishment of the Republic of Hungary.[195][196][197]
Anna Zawadzka wrote that the formulation was already in use in Poland in 1968, such that Jews "could not articulate their experiences of antisemitism" without having their articulations "diagnosed as either cynical victim-playing or an emotional disorder." She interpreted this response as a form of "paternalistic violence", viewing the traumatized Polish Jews as deserving of sympathy, but not of trust in their view of antisemitism in the decades following the Holocaust. Zawadzka wrote that this paternalistic view has changed, with Jews now being taken as cynical and manipulative rather than as traumatized and paranoid in their articulations of antisemitism.[198]
In 1970, Ron I. Rubin wrote, "Nations raising charges of Soviet antisemitism [at the United Nations] are accused of attempting to subvert the Soviet Union by destroying its multinational character through the introduction of the poison of nationalism", and that Soviet denials of antisemitism are generally irrelevant to the accusation and contradicted by "certain official admissions".[199]
↑This is the British legal principle that all complaints of racism should be recorded and investigated as such when the complainant or someone else perceives them as acts of racism.[130]
Landy, Lentin & McCarthy 2020, p.15: "The weaponizing of antisemitism against US critics of Israel was evidenced in 2019 when Florida's upper legislative chamber unanimously passed a bill that classifies certain criticism of Israel as antisemitic"
Consonni, Manuela (1 March 2023). "Memory, Memorialization, and the Shoah After 'the End of History'". In Keren Eva Fraiman, Dean Phillip Bell (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21st Century. Taylor & Francis. p.170. ISBN9781000850321. The exploitation, the instrumentalization, the weaponization of antisemitism, a concomitant of its de-historicization and de-textualization, became a metonymy for speaking of the Jewish genocide and of anti-Zionism in a way that confined its history to the court's benches and research library and its memory to a reconstruction based mostly on criteria of memorial legitimacy for and against designated social groups.
Abraham 2014, p.171: "indeed, the charge of anti-Semitism, if it is to be taken seriously, must be leveled with precision and not as a scatter-shot propaganda device for scoring cheap political points."
White 2020: "Delegitimizing Solidarity: Israel Smears Palestine Advocacy as Anti-Semitic"
Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, pp.9–11: "because [former U.S. President Jimmy Carter] suggests that Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories resemble South Africa's apartheid regime and said publicly that pro-Israel groups make it hard for U.S. leaders to pressure Israel to make peace, a number of these same groups launched a vicious smear campaign against him."
Amor 2022: "...organizations challenging Israel's violations would be fully exposed to smear campaigns based on bad-faith allegations of antisemitism"
Steinberg 2023: "Smearing one's opponents is rarely a tactic employed by those confident that justice is on their side. If Israel's case requires branding its critics antisemites, it is already conceding defeat."
Bronfman, Roman (19 November 2003). "Fanning the Flames of Hatred". Haaretz. ...This time, too, the anti-Semitism card has been pulled from the sleeve of explanations by the Israeli government and its most faithful spokespeople have been sent to wave it.
Marcus 2010, pp.68–69: "Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that overplaying the 'anti-Semitism card' must be avoided for several reasons. These are, generally speaking, a subset of the risks of playing 'the race card' that Stanford Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford catalogued in his important recent book of that name."
Abraham 2014, pp.67–68: "The traditional response to this problem has been to label anti-Zionist Jews as 'self-hating Jews'"
Chomsky 1989, p.433: "It is now necessary to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism—or in the case of Jews, as 'self-hatred'..."
Goodman 2025: "Chomsky(1989) shows how Zionists have endeavoured 'to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism—or in the case of Jews, as "self-hatred"'"
Hirsh 2010, p.47: "While the issue of antisemitism is certainly sometimes raised in an unjustified way, and may even be raised in bad faith, the Livingstone Formulation [the defense that antisemitism is being used to deflect from one's criticism of Israel] may appear as a response to any discussion of contemporary antisemitism."
↑Sykes, Christopher (1965). Cross Roads to Israel. Mentor books. Collins. p.247. This provoked Ben-Gurion, understandably exasperated by the publicity organized by British information services, to a violent counterattack in which he asserted that the court had acted under anti-Semitic influence. In keeping with the new spirit of absolute uncompromise, he opened a new phase in Zionist propaganda which lasted to the end of the mandate: henceforth to be anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic; to disapprove of Jewish territorial nationalism was to be a Nazi.
↑Chomsky 1983, p.18: "The Perlmutters deride those who voice 'criticism of Israel while fantasizing countercharges of anti-Semitism,' but their comment is surely disingenuous. The tactic is standard. Christopher Sykes, in his excellent study of the pre-state period, traces the origins of this device ('a new phase in Zionist propaganda') to a 'violent counterattack' by David Ben-Gurion against a British court that had implicated Zionist leaders in arms-trafficking in 1943: 'henceforth to be anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic'. It is, however, primarily in the post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible."
↑Dencik, Lars. "13. Antisemitisms in the Twenty-First Century: Sweden and Denmark as Forerunners?" In Antisemitism in the North: History and State of Research, edited by Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß, 233-268. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634822-015. "Writing in 1973 in the publication of the American Jewish Congress, Congress Bi-Weekly, the Foreign Minister of Israel, Abba Eban [...]"
↑Quoted by Menachem Wecker, "In Defense of Self-Hating Jews", May 2007, Jewish Currents, online at Archived 2017-03-12 at the Wayback Machine
↑Quoted by Menachem Wecker, "In Defense of Self-Hating Jews", May 2007, Jewish Currents, online at Archived 2017-03-12 at the Wayback Machine .
↑Pappé, Ilan (2024). Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic. A Oneworld book. London: Oneworld. ISBN978-0-86154-403-5. After 1967, combating anti-Semitism against American Jews ceased to be its main task - now, cheered on by AIPAC, it sought to portray certain 'anti-Israel' actions as anti-Semitic. It propagandised against any attempt to pressure Israel into withdrawing from the occupied territories.
↑Berkman, Matthew (2022). "The Conflict on Campus". In A. Siniver (ed.). Routledge Companion to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Taylor & Francis. p.522. ISBN978-0-429-64861-8. Retrieved 21 May 2023. Attempts to rearticulate antisemitism to encompass opposition to Israel's 'right to exist' or its character as a Jewish state date back to the 1970s, when the Anti-Defamation League first popularized a discourse on 'the new antisemitism' (see Forster and Epstein 1974; on the subsequent development of that discourse see Judaken 2008). The identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism has long been de rigueur in Jewish communal and broader pro-Israel circles...
↑Levin, Geoffery P. (2021). "Before the New Antisemitism: Arab Critics of Zionism and American Jewish Politics, 1917-1974". American Jewish History. 105 (1–2): 103–126. doi:10.1353/ajh.2021.0005. ISSN1086-3141. Daniel Schroeter writes that in the aftermath of the 1967 war, advocates for Israel 'alarmed at what they saw as growing sympathy for the Arabs and Palestinians began to use the term "new anti-Semitism," which they understood as antisemitism either expressed or disguised as anti-Zionism.' ... The 1974 book The New Anti-Semitism by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) leaders Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein gave a name to the concept.
↑Zimmerman, Simone (August 2025). "Nakba denial and the future of American Judaism". Critical Research on Religion. 13 (2): 247–253. doi:10.1177/20503032251344335. ISSN2050-3032. The ADL says they're a neutral arbiter of antisemitism, no matter where it shows up, but that's not true. They have conflated the safety of Jews with support for the state of Israel. In so doing, they undermine their own stated mission of fighting antisemitism. How did this happen? Since the 1970s, the ADL has sought to popularize the concept of the 'new antisemitism,' the idea that Israel as 'the Jew on the world stage,' was being unfairly singled out for criticism in ways that echoed old school antisemitism (see Forster and Benjamin 1974).
12Said, Edward W. (1980). The question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books. pp.24, 50. ISBN978-0-8129-0832-9.
↑Rubenberg 1989, p.358: "The labeling of individuals who disagree with the lobby's positions as 'anti-Semitic' is a common practice among Israel's advocates...'""The tarring of Democratic contender the Reverend Jesse Jackson with the label 'anti-Semite' because of his advocacy of a Palestinian homeland demonstrated the lengths to which the pro-Israeli groups were willing to go to ensure that Israel's interests and the prevailing dogma remained intact."
↑Stonebridge 2017: "For Thompson, there was a clear moral and political continuity between her support of Jewish refugees in the late 1930s and her advocacy for the Palestinians in the early 1950s. [...] Her later anti-Zionism and pro-Arab stance, and the accusations of anti-Semitism that both attracted, have clouded the fact that her understanding of the politics of the refugee situation was remarkably consistent."Robins 2022: "Because of Thompson's previous renown as an advocate for Jews and Zionism, the question of what caused her shift took on outsized significance. [...] Scholars have likewise offered varying explanations, with most centered on Thompson's first substantial exposure to the Arab perspective during a 1945 trip to Palestine. [Footnote (#8): Both of Thompson's biographers emphasize the role of Thompson's 1945 trip and the backlash against her criticism of Zionist actions in pushing her towards anti- Zionism.]"
↑Karine Walther, Dorothy Thompson and American Zionism, Diplomatic History, Volume 46, Issue 2, April 2022, Pages 263–291, https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dhab107. Quotation: "Militant Zionists' campaigns against the British led Thompson to critique this violence, although she remained supportive of the broader Zionist project. Despite the limited nature of her criticism, she ... began receiving hate mail ... accusing her of antisemitism" & "American Zionists publicly accused [Thompson] and the AFME of antisemitism and of being bribed by Arab oil interests. ... Thompson believed she had enough evidence to sue the newspapers publishing these accusations for libel ... she did successfully level this threat against Rabbi Baruch Korff, who published a letter in the New Hampshire Manchester Union Leader in 1953 accusing Thompson of being ... a "seasoned anti-Semite," a "Goebels-minded [sic] publicity agent," and a "mercenary ill-motivated agent for the heirs of Naziism." This was not the first time Korff had weaponized accusations of antisemitism." & "American Zionists responded by launching personal and public attacks against Thompson and the organizations she worked for in an attempt to silence their critiques. This included ... leveling accusations that Thompson and other Protestant critics were antisemitic."
↑H-Diplo Article Review of Karine Walther, 'Dorothy Thompson and American Zionism,' Diplomatic History 46:2 (April 2022) 263-291, by Amy Fallas, University of California, Santa Barbara. Quotations: "Following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Thompson became a more outspoken critic of Zionism but was shocked at the unabated character attacks and accusations of anti-Semitism that threatened to upend her career in journalism."
↑Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home between the Wars. By Nancy FCott. (2020). Quotation: "Before and during the war, American Zionists had prized Thompson for denouncing anti-Semitism and advocating unrestricted Jewish migration to Palestine. To these supporters' shock, her opinions shifted after she traveled to Palestine in 1945. As she learned more about the conflicts between Zionists and resident Arab Palestinians, Thompson became sympathetic to the Arab position. ... She supported Arab claims in 1946 and 1947, gaining enemies who vilified her as an anti-Semite—even as pro-Nazi. She was neither."
↑Sanders, Marion K (1973), Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time. Quotation: "For Dorothy, the bitterest blow was the discovery that Zionists equated criticism of their policies with anti-Semitism."
↑Robins 2022: "Zionists were working to police speech about Israel by equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism [Footnote (#113): Thompson, 'America Demands,' 218]"American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson (1990), Peter Kurth: "Dorothy became so widely identified with the opposition to Israel in America that it was not unusual to hear her described as 'a traitor' in the Jewish press. She was 'a Goebbels-minded publicity agent,' according to Rabbi Baruch Korff [...], 'a mercenary, ill-motivated agent for the heirs of Nazism.' ... Dorothy believed that she had been made the victim of 'a campaign of character assassination' unexampled in her thirty years of journalism." (pages 222-223) — "Her mail ... was now replete with accusations ... that she was 'anti-Semitic,'" (page 383)Maguire, Gil (April 28, 2015) Obama's role model to journalists – Dorothy Thompson – turned against Zionism and was silenced US Politics": "Thompson's editors warned her that in the American press a hostility toward Israel was 'almost a definition of professional suicide.' Nonetheless, she would not be intimidated and said, 'I refuse to become an anti-Semite by appointment', and refused 'to yield to this type of blackmail.' ... Her once-lucrative speaking career began to dry up because of the organized campaign to label her as an anti-Semite, a label that stuck for the rest of her career."
↑Stonebridge 2017: "There can be no doubt that anti-Semitism was a theme in Thompson's later writing. Pathologizing Jewishness, in particular, became habitual for her in the 1950s. By May 25, 1950, she is writing to Maury M. Travis, darkly, of the 'tragic psychosis of the Jew'... In what well may be a case of knowing your addressee, Thompson wrote to Winston Churchill in 1951: 'I have become convinced that the Jews, phenomenally brilliant individually and especially in the realm of abstract thought, are collectively the stupidest people on earth. I think it must come from cultural inbreeding—perhaps physical inbreeding also—in a desire to retain a homogenous, in-group society in the midst of 'aliens."
123Lapin, Andrew (1 December 2025). "StopAntisemitism's 'Antisemite of the Year' finalists include Tucker Carlson and Ms. Rachel, but not Nick Fuentes". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The group nominated Ms. Rachel, the children's YouTube personality who has become an outspoken advocate for children affected by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, because it said she "has used her massive platform to spread Hamas-aligned propaganda." A left-wing group, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, has defended Ms. Rachel, saying StopAntisemitism targeted her for expressing sympathy with Palestinians.
↑"Pro-Israel group attacks Ms. Rachel over Gaza aid posts". The New Arab. 8 April 2025. Archived from the original on 21 August 2025. Retrieved 3 December 2025. Ms. Rachel, has come under fire from StopAntisemitism, a US-based pro-Israel group that accuses her of "spreading Hamas propaganda" simply for expressing concern for the suffering of children in Gaza. StopAntisemitism, a right-wing organisation known for launching public smear campaigns against activists, artists, and academics critical of Israel, has been widely criticised for conflating legitimate criticism of Israeli policies with "antisemitism".
↑Vos, Matthew S. (2025). "Review of Redemptive Service: Loving Our Neighbors Well by Lisa P. Stephenson and Ruthie Wienk". Journal of Sociology and Christianity. 15 (2): 99–106. The YouTube star, Ms.Rachel (Rachel Griffin Accurso), who produces highly regarded children's content including catchy original songs, faced over-the-top backlash for singing "Hop Little Bunnies" with Rahaf, a 3-year-old Palestinian girl who lost both her legs in an airstrike. She was accused of anti-Semitism, ignoring the suffering of Israeli children, and of being paid by Hamas, none of which were true.
↑Sassoon, D. (2025), Gaza: livestreaming genocide. The Political Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923x.70004 - Quotation: "'Ms Rachel' (Rachel Accurso), an American children's entertainer with over 15 million YouTube subscribers, became increasingly outspoken about the plight of children in Gaza. In May 2025, she shared a post and videos of her meeting with Rahaf, a three-year-old girl who lost both her legs when her home was struck by Israeli bombs. Unsurprisingly, Jewish organisations such as StopAntisemitism accused Ms Rachel of spreading 'Hamas propaganda'. This is what you get for showing compassion toward Palestinians."
↑"Tell Ms. Rachel: We've Got Your Back!". Jews for Racial & Economic Injustice. April 2025. The group targeting Ms. Rachel, StopAntisemitism.org, solely exists to punish and harass private and public individuals who criticize the actions of the State of Israel or simply express sympathy for and solidarity with Palestinians. Instead of combating antisemitism, the group cheapens the word through its use of false and bad-faith accusations, making it harder to take on the very real and serious problem of antisemitism.
↑Sir John Bagot Glubb, A Soldier With the Arabs (1956), p. 7: "Criticism of the Israeli government does, however, require a particular explanation. A number of people, both Jews and Gentiles, are apt to refer to any criticism of Israeli policy as 'offensive anti-Semitism', an accusation implying a definite moral lapse. ... It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism."
↑White 2020, p.67: "Israeli officials, as well as Israel advocacy organizations internationally, have a long history of charging Palestinians and their allies, as well as Israel's critics and human-rights campaigners, with anti-Semitism. Prominent individuals are not exempted."
↑Abraham 2014, p.179: "If to state that 'Israel is in violation of international law' is beyond the pale, reflecting that one harbors anti-Semitic animus, then it is completely understandable why public figures such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu are so often accused of engaging in anti-Israel rhetoric. This tendency to condemn criticism and critics of Israeli policy as anti-Semites enforces a type of political correctness at the cost of refusing to promote greater understanding about the conditions producing conflict in the Israel-Palestine conflict."
↑Dadoo, Suraya (30 December 2021). "Desmond Tutu's inconvenient pro-Palestine legacy". The New Arab. Retrieved 31 October 2024. Almost as enduring as Tutu's support of the Palestinian liberation struggle has been smear campaigns against him, accusing the Archbishop of anti-Semitism ...
↑Abraham 2014, p.51: "The usual charge that critics of Israel are motivated by anti-Semitism is no longer as effective a weapon in distracting the public from the relevant criticisms of Israel's behavior."
↑Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, p.196: "...increasing numbers of people recognize that this serious charge keeps getting leveled at individuals who are not anti-Semites but who are merely questioning Israeli policies..."
↑Marcus 2010, pp.68–69: "Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that overplaying the 'anti-Semitism card' must be avoided for several reasons. These are, generally speaking, a subset of the risks of playing 'the race card' that Stanford Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford catalogued in his important recent book of that name. First, it is dishonest (at least if it is done intentionally)... Second, it is shortsighted and dangerous in the way of the boy who cried wolf. ... Third, it can be mean-spirited because it involves the use of charges that in some cases can have serious repercussions. ... Even if true, an overplayed "anti-Semitism card" may distract socially concerned individuals and organizations from other pressing problems, including social injustices facing other groups. Finally, it may disrupt or retard outreach efforts to other groups, including Arab and Muslim groups, with whom partnership efforts may be jeopardized."
↑Riemer 2022, p.7: "Just as Islamophobia has been politically instrumentalized in the service of neocolonial control of Muslim populations, anti-Semitism currently provides the excuse for a heavy-handed and highly irrational assault on fundamental democratic liberties."
↑Bamford, James (31 January 2024). "The Anti-Defamation League: Israel's Attack Dog in the US". ISSN0027-8378. Retrieved 12 October 2025. On January 9, for example, a few weeks after a large pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York City, Greenblatt released a report listing over 3,000 antisemitic incidents committed in the three months since the war in Gaza began. ... But much of the report was hype. Rather than attacks against Jews due to their religious or ethnic identity, many of the cited "incidents" were actions directed against Israel to protest the conduct of its war in Gaza—incidents the ADL would later admit made up nearly half of the total.
↑Finkelstein, Norman. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, University of California Press, 2005, pp. 21–22, 66–71.
12Finkelstein 2008, pp.34: "... playing the anti- Semitism card ... displaces fundamental responsibility for causing the conflict from Israel to the Arabs, the issue no longer being Jewish dispossession of Palestinians but Arab 'opposition' to Jews..."
↑Ball & Ball 1992, pp.217–218: "Viewed objectively, it seems astonishing that Jewish organizations and Israeli spokesmen should employ the charge of 'anti-Semitism' so carelessly as to trivialize it... Any Jewish American who equates that term with critical comments on transient Israeli policy implicitly acknowledges that he cannot defend Israel's practices by rational argument... In addition, the haphazard use of this odious term is clearly intended to stifle criticism of American policies in the Middle East."
↑Zimmerman, Simone (August 2025). "Nakba denial and the future of American Judaism". Critical Research on Religion. 13 (2): 247–253. doi:10.1177/20503032251344335. ISSN2050-3032. They have conflated the safety of Jews with support for the state of Israel. In so doing, they undermine their own stated mission of fighting antisemitism. How did this happen? Since the 1970s, the ADL has sought to popularize the concept of the "new antisemitism," the idea that Israel as "the Jew on the world stage," was being unfairly singled out for criticism in ways that echoed old school antisemitism (see Forster and Benjamin 1974). They have long worked to smear and discredit the movement for Palestinian freedom.
↑Thompson 2012, p.12: "They called the charge of anti-Semitism 'the Great Silencer'."
↑Alexander, Jeffrey C.; Adams, Tracy (2023). "The return of antisemitism? Waves of societalization and what conditions them". American Journal of Cultural Sociology. 11 (2): 261. doi:10.1057/s41290-023-00184-7.
↑Finkelstein 2008, pp.16: "A close analysis of what the Israel lobby tallies as anti-Semitism reveals three components: exaggeration and fabrication; mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy; and the unjustified yet predictable 'spillover' from criticism of Israel to Jews generally..."
↑Mearsheimer & Walt 2008, p.191-192: "this tactic works because it is difficult for anyone to prove beyond all doubt that he or she is not anti-Semitic, especially when criticizing Israel or the lobby"
↑Marcus 2010, p.73: "Indeed, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer recently called anti-Semitism allegations the 'Great Silencer'."
↑Leifer, Joshua (26 August 2019). "Israel's one-state reality is sowing chaos in American politics". +972 Magazine. Today, the Israeli hasbara apparatus's most active front is the attempted redefinition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, with the goal of rendering any opposition to the occupation, Zionism—or even simply Israeli policies themselves—beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability.
↑Beinin 2004, p.112: "Paradoxically, by failing to make a clear distinction between anti-Semitism, which should always and everywhere be opposed, and anti-Zionism, which is a legitimate political opinion, the ADL and like-minded organisations exposed American Jews to attack because they were identified with Israel."
↑Segal 2024a: "This weaponization contributed to the disavowal of Israeli settler colonialism by tagging as antisemites those who focused on the settler-colonial character of Israel at a time (the 1990s) when settler colonialism increasingly became a key framework in research and discussions about Israel."
Carey, Andrew (February 2022). "Amnesty accuses Israel of apartheid, is labeled anti-Semitic in return". CNN. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2024. Amnesty International has become the latest human rights organization to accuse Israel of apartheid for its treatment of Palestinians, prompting an angry response from Israel, which has denounced the report as anti-Semitic.
↑"EU needs to acknowledge the reality of Israeli apartheid". Amnesty International. 20 March 2023. 12 Israeli human rights organizations have since expressed "grave concern" about attempts to associate Amnesty's report with antisemitism, and they have rejected the Commission's failure to recognize Israel's apartheid. These organizations argue that weaponizing antisemitism to silence legitimate criticism actually undermines attempts to address rising antisemitism.
↑Shaw, Martin (4 March 2025). "Gaza and the Structure of Genocide in Palestine". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 53 (2): 416–422. doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2493304.
Abraham 2014, pp.67–68: "With increased attention being brought to Israel's violations of Palestinian human rights in the European press since the beginning of the Second Intifada in September of 2000, US supporters of Israel sought to blame the poor reputation Israel was developing in the international community on the rise of a New Anti-Semitism."
123"Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about antisemitism – but they're part of a rightwing plan". The Guardian. 11 May 2024. ISSN0261-3077. Retrieved 14 April 2025. Anti-boycott laws – targeting the non-violent tactic of boycott when applied to the state of Israel – exist in 38 states, under the argument that such boycotts constitute antisemitism. In the past few years, this tactic has spread to protect other causes beloved by the right. Now, several states have laws on the books that prohibit the government from doing business with groups or individuals who are boycotting fossil fuels or the gun industry. [...] The pro-Palestine movement has also provided cover for the right to expand its attack on protest – a project advanced significantly after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. [...] In a tactic familiar from the post-9/11 landscape, GOP lawmakers and civil society leaders from groups like the ADL and the Brandeis Center have endeavored to paint student protesters and groups as 'terrorists'.
↑Segal, Raz. "How Weaponizing Antisemitism Puts Jews at Risk". TIME. Archived from the original on 18 June 2025. Retrieved 15 October 2025. That's woefully misguided—and dangerous. Indeed, the blanket assertion by pro-Israel advocates is intended as a political cudgel: weaponizing antisemitism to shield Israel from criticism of its attack on Gaza...
↑"Jewish student protesters say Columbia's pro-Palestine protests aren't antisemitic". The Independent. 25 April 2024. Retrieved 11 June 2025. Sarah, a Jewish student at Columbia [... said] that the term had been 'weaponized in a really deceitful way by political opportunists who insist on conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism.' [...] Nara Milanich, professor of history at Barnard College [...] was among nearly two dozen Jewish faculty members to write to Columbia president Nemat Shafik before the protests broke out [...] warning against the 'weaponization of antisemitism' at Columbia by politicians eager to stoke division."Columbia professor says student protesters are being smeared". Newsweek. 29 April 2024. Retrieved 11 June 2025. almost two dozen Jewish faculty members of Columbia University and Barnard College signed a letter published in the Columbia Daily Spectator rejecting the "weaponization of antisemitism" ...Nadworny, Elissa (17 April 2024). "At antisemitism hearing, Columbia official tells lawmakers, 'We have a moral crisis'". NPR. Retrieved 11 June 2025. ...several Jewish faculty members at Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, warned against the 'weaponization' of antisemitism on college campuses.Thompson, Isaiah (22 May 2024). "Jewish Academics Push Back on Claims of Anti-Semitism in Student Protests". Nonprofit Quarterly. Retrieved 11 June 2025.Solomon, Alisa; Nation, The (6 May 2024). "The Real Takeover of Columbia Was By Those on the Right". The Nation. ISSN0027-8378. Retrieved 11 June 2025. I am a professor at Columbia, a Jewish one at that, and I have watched with alarm as politicians have ginned up exaggerated charges of antisemitism to advance an ultraconservative agenda.
↑Deeb, Lara; Winegar, Jessica (2 July 2024). "Resistance to Repression and Back Again: The Movement for Palestinian Liberation in US Academia". Middle East Critique. 33 (3): 313–334. doi:10.1080/19436149.2024.2375669. ISSN1943-6149. In a governmental attack on academia not seen since the McCarthy era of the 1950s, the US House of Representatives has held multiple hearings accusing college presidents of fomenting anti-Semitism because they allow criticism of Israel on campus. ... These attacks are part of a coordinated effort in the US to silence pro-Palestinian speech, abolish anti-racist teaching and diversity initiatives, eliminate academic freedom, and question the value of higher education in general.
↑Cineas, Fabiola (21 December 2023). "How Republicans are weaponizing antisemitism to take down DEI". Vox. Retrieved 14 April 2025. 'There's been a very strong simmering war of attrition against DEI for some time in universities. And somehow these two things started to merge together to the point where we got these congressional hearings,' said Rabbi Shaul Magid, who teaches Jewish studies at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. 'It seemed to me that the issue [at the December 5 hearing] was antisemitism and also not antisemitism. It seemed like it was about DEI and [Rep.] Elise Stefanik's interest in attacking it, rather than the rise of antisemitism on campus.'
Stern, Kenneth (13 December 2019). "I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 June 2020. starting in 2010, rightwing Jewish groups took the 'working definition', which had some examples about Israel (such as holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel, and denying Jews the right to self-determination), and decided to weaponize it with title VI cases.
Stern, Kenneth (15 February 2024). "I wrote a definition of antisemitism. It was never meant to chill free speech on campus". The Boston Globe. There were examples about Israel, not to label anyone an antisemite but because there was a correlation, as opposed to causation, between certain expressions and the climate for antisemitism. But it was never intended to be weaponized to muzzle campus free speech
"Weaponizing antisemitism makes students 'less safe,' says drafter of definition". NPR. Retrieved 13 April 2025. [Stern] also said that the definition is being distorted and used to silence anti-Israel critics. He was the lead drafter of the definition in 2004-2005 to help European countries have a common definition to track data on antisemitism. Then it was officially adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016.
↑Brown, Nathan J.; Nerenberg, Daniel (13 June 2023). "'Anti-antisemitism' was meant to unite American Jews. Why is it backfiring?". +972 magazine. What started as an honest attempt to tackle growing antisemitism quickly became weaponized by definitional warriors, among them the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the Brandeis Center, all of whom have lobbied institutions and governments to adopt it
↑Harrison, Bernard (1 December 2022). "In Defense of the IHRA Definition (Despite Its Defects as a Definition)". Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism. 5 (2). Academic Studies Press: 43–66. doi:10.26613/jca.5.2.115. ISSN2472-9906. The IHRA definition of antisemitism has been widely criticized on the alleged ground that it restricts freedom of speech by stigmatizing, as antisemitic, views that critics assert to fall well within the bounds of legitimate political controversy. In several recent papers, my legal colleague Lesley Klaff and I have argued that these criticisms are without foundation.
↑Investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party, p. 35: "The Labour Party told us that it now seeks to comply with the Macpherson principle, that all complaints about incidents of racism should be recorded and investigated as such, when they are perceived by the complainant or someone else as acts of racism."
↑"Antisemitism and the Labour Party"(PDF). Antisemitism Policy Trust. 2020. Anti-Jewish hatred has been dismissed as a 'smear' or as being 'weaponised' by its victims for political ends. Talk of Jewish and/or right-wing media plotting is dangerous and contrary to the British model for addressing hate crime, namely, the Macpherson principle. This translates to treating perceived victims with sensitivity, recording the crimes they report as 'racist' if perceived as such, and investigating claims with due diligence.
↑"Anti-Semitism used as factional weapon within Labour, says report". BBC News. 19 July 2022. Retrieved 29 January 2025. Thus, rather than confront the paramount need to deal with the profoundly serious issue of anti-Semitism in the party, both factions treated it as a factional weapon.
↑"In the conservative or right-wing antisemitic comments, a compound word involving cudgel [-keule] is often used: "Nazi cudgel" ["Nazi Keule"], "N-cudgel" ["N-Keule"], "system cudgel" ["Systemkeule"]." -- Becker, M. J., Allington, D., Ascone, L., Bolton, M., Chapelan, A., Krasni, J., Placzynta, K., Scheiber, M., Troschke, H., & Vincent, C. (2021). Discourse Report 2: Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online. (Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online). Technical University of Berlin Centre for Research on Antisemitism. https://decoding-antisemitism.eu/ p.32
↑Albertini, Dominique; Doucet, David (20 November 2014). "Une nouvelle ére". Histoire du Front National (in French). Tallandier. ISBN979-10-210-0303-3.
↑Goldfeder, Mark (2023). "Codifying Antisemitism". Penn State Law Review. 127 (2). Instead of believing or acknowledging the experiences of Jewish people who have been targeted and subject to abuse, and dispensing with any notion of good faith, the antisemitic rejectionists instead blame and smear the victims themselves, accusing the Jews/Zionists of once again organizing their secret cabal to act maliciously and manipulate others into doing their bidding and silencing others.
12Rensmann, Lars (8 November 2021). "The Politics and Ethics of Anti-Antisemitism: Lessons from the Frankfurt School". Confronting Antisemitism from Perspectives of Philosophy and Social Sciences. De Gruyter. pp.305–324. doi:10.1515/9783110671971-015. ISBN978-3-11-067197-1. Today, more often than not, those who address the problem [of antisemitism] are targeted by portraying them as allegedly swinging 'the antisemitism bat' against innocuous 'Israel critics' or 'upset Muslim youth' in bad faith ... However, the charge of bad faith, of " overstretching " the term and illegitimate charges, is almost ubiquitous whenever Jews raise the issue of antisemitism or anti-Zionist antisemitism. This denial, which constitutes a profound ethical problem ... is virtually without empirical evidence...
↑Rensmann, Lars; Schoeps, Julius H., eds. (2011). Politics and resentment: antisemitism and counter-cosmopolitanism in the European Union. Brill eBook titles. Leiden Boston: Brill. p.16. ISBN978-90-04-19047-4.
↑Kahn-Harris, Keith (2019). "How Racism Became Unspeakable". Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: Watkins Media. ISBN978-1-912248-43-8.
↑Rensmann 2019, pp.343–371: "Judith Butler and some (post-)Marxist fellow travelers do not recognize current antisemitism... but only detect 'the charge of antisemitism' with its allegedly 'chilling effects' on debates, as they charge those who raise it with bad faith and argue that they ought to be combatted politically."
↑Arnold, Sina; Taylor, Blair (2019). "Antisemitism and the Left: Confronting an Invisible Racism"(PDF). Journal of Social Justice. 9. We are not saying these dynamics are motivated by antisemitic hatred, but are rather the result of unexamined assumptions, myopic political analysis, and, importantly, a genuine but inconsistent concern for the suffering of others. Nevertheless, the result is that the left has set an inordinately high bar for what constitutes antisemitism, in effect defining it out of existence – at least on the left.
↑Arnold, Sina; Blumenfeld, Jacob (2022). From occupation to occupy: antisemitism and the contemporary American left. Studies in Antisemitism. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN978-0-253-06312-0.
↑Kovács, András (2011). The stranger at hand: antisemitic prejudices in post-communist Hungary. Brill eBook titles 2011. Leiden, The Netherlands Boston: Brill. p.28. ISBN978-90-04-19195-2.
Hirsh, David (2013). "Struggles over the Boundaries of Legitimate Discourse: Antizionism, Bad-Faith Allegations and The Livingstone Formulation". In Small, Charles Asher (ed.). Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity. Vol.V: Reflections. Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.
Hirsh, David (2018). Contemporary left antisemitism. London; New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN978-1-138-23530-4.
Waxman, Dov; Schraub, David; Hosein, Adam (4 July 2022). "Arguing about antisemitism: why we disagree about antisemitism, and what we can do about it". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 45 (9): 1803–1824. doi:10.1080/01419870.2021.1960407. ISSN0141-9870. S2CID238721730.
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