We Can’t Fight Antisemitism Without Fighting Anti-Palestinian Hate

Antisemitism is the main tool the Trump administration is using to stifle dissent and target Palestinians. It’s rooted in bigotry. And it’s harming the fight against antisemitism itself.

Right now, we are seeing a horrific and unprecedented crackdown on free speech. Students are being deported. Universities are losing funding. And it was just announced that social media will be monitored in order to determine who should be targeted. All of this has been done in the name of fighting against antisemitism.

That’s a lie, and we all know it. It’s a fascist power grab. It is also part of the white nationalist agenda to rid the country of brown immigrants, Muslims, and Palestinians.

This did not happen in a vacuum. The fascist power grab using antisemitism accusations is possible only because we have normalized using undemocratic means to silence dissent around Israel for years. This is possible for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that Palestinians are so dehumanized that many people do not even consider their protection in discussions about bigotry. In fact, the very safety of Palestinians is almost always framed as oppositional to the safety of Jews.

This has led to a total redefining of what antisemitism even is. As long as the existence of Palestinians is seen as an existential threat to Jewish safety, it will be considered antisemitic to speak up for their safety. You may say that it is not about targeting Palestinians, but targeting Hamas and those sympathetic to them. But anti-Palestinian racism has led many to a place where “Hamas” actually means “Palestinian” and vice versa.

This creates a new definition of antisemitism where:

Antisemitism = Caring about Palestinians

and

Fighting antisemitism = Anti-Palestinian hate

There is a term for considering the existence of a group of people as an inherent danger to another group. The term is bigotry. It is the same logic that argues that white people are inherently endangered by Black people and immigrants. Or that children are inherently endangered by trans and queer people.

The far right has already normalized a similar inversion of bigotry. They claim (and often truly believe) that empowering Black people is anti-white hate. This is why the targeting of DEI has been so effective. It is also why simple acts like respecting pronouns are seen as inherently oppressive.

When you frame your oppression as a fight against bigotry, you are far more likely to have people support it. And it’s far easier to do that if the people you are reaching out to already have biases against the groups you’re oppressing.

But unlike supposed anti-white hate, antisemitism is actually very serious and widespread. Not only that: antisemitism is a very specific form of bigotry with its own history, logic, mythology, movements, and ideologies. It is not just hate, it is a way that racists and bigots make sense of the world. And when we redefine antisemitism, we erase all that. We are no longer fighting antisemitism, we are fighting Palestinians.

This is why the very same people on the right who argue they are standing up for Jews are themselves so often antisemitic. Their bigotry against Palestinians, Muslims, and so many others is informed by antisemitic conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement.

They can get away with this precisely because antisemitism has been redefined. People often are no longer looking for antisemitism within tropes and conspiracy theories since they no longer define it that way. Which means it goes undetected. Spreads. Normalizes. And eventually, leads to mass shootings and other horrors.

This is one of many reasons that we must learn to stand up to anti-Palestinian racism if we ever want to defeat antisemitism. Not doing so has led directly to a redefinition of antisemitism, one that largely does not truly endanger Jews. And it has erased the true forms that endanger us, especially on the right.

The richest man in the world spreads antisemitism almost daily. He has reinstated neo-Nazis on X and uplifted their voices. And amazingly, it took years for anyone to even notice since he didn’t also target Israel. That was only possible because most people can no longer see antisemitism even at its most obvious. Because it simply means something else to them, whether they realize it or not: erasing Palestinians.

And despite what you may think, this applies to the left as well. This new definition has become so popularized that many people actually believe they have to choose between valuing Palestinian and Jewish lives. That leaves many to think that protecting Palestinians must come at the expense of Jewish safety. Thus the lack of concern about synagogue vandalism and other issues: to many, this seems like simply the cost of liberating Palestinians.

To protect Jews, then, is to redefine Jewish safety as inherently connected with Palestinian safety as opposed to in opposition to it.

The same applies to fascism. There was a time when most people understood that Jews are not safe in fascist states. Today, we have redefined it to mean that Jews are safe in fascist states if those states target Palestinians and those who stand with them.

This has created a dynamic where many who would otherwise be vocally against fascism may find themselves quieter in the face of it. And that quiet, that acceptance, is how fascism takes hold.

Despite what it may seem like, a fascist government cannot engage in power grabs without the agreement of much of the populace and others in power. This is why they target DEI instead of targeting Black people overtly: they need to get as much of the rest of the population on board as possible to be able to destroy programs, laws, and people who uplift Black people.

And that’s why accusations of antisemitism are so useful. They have brought together centrists, the center-left, liberals, and many others who would otherwise stand against naked bigotry.

That agreement has meant that the Trump administration can grab a Palestinian student without any charges or evidence, brag about it, and not receive the same pushback they would get otherwise.

That part. The less pushback. That’s how they take power.

We can’t, and we never will, defeat antisemitism or fascism as long as we let bigotry cloud our worldviews.

As long as we have an inherent inability to value Palestinian lives in the way we do Jewish lives, fascists and others will be able to keep using us. And the more antisemitism will spread far beyond what we can imagine.

Note: This was originally a text post I did for Instagram. I do those quite often on the platform, and it struck me recently that this may be a good venue to share something shorter than only my 9,000 word manifestos. If you are a follower of both, please tell me if this bugs you! And if you aren’t, is this something you’d like to see here?