This article is adapted from an episode of Jonah’s award-winning show, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. To watch the video monologue on YouTube, click here. To listen to this article, click here: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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I have had the privilege to be in community with many, many Jews, and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve engaged with thousands of you on social media, in my own city of LA, in Israel, and in many cities across the United States.

I want to share some of what I’ve learned: three revelations I’ve come to by speaking with and listening to you. Maybe some of these will seem obvious. They weren’t to me.

Revelation One: Nobody Knows Anything About Jews

Jews wildly overestimate what the world at large knows about Jews.

People don’t know anything about Jews. I mean nothing. The vast majority of people around the world will never meet a Jew in their lives, and that goes for literally millions of Americans.

The only touchpoints most people have with Jews come through three equally destructive avenues.

The news. The only time Jews end up in the news is when they can be portrayed as the bad guys, or when they’re being killed. Not a lot of stories about Jewish wisdom, achievements, or celebrations. And certainly no stories about the myriad ways in which they’re discriminated against in this country.

Television and film. Metta World Peace once told me that his first exposure to a Jew was Robert Duvall’s lawyer character in The Godfather, which taught him that you go to a Jew when you want to make money. Cool cool cool. He meant no offense by it and none was taken. But it’s a testament to the way Jews are so often portrayed onscreen: one-dimensional, stereotypical, and inauthentic. That is why accurate, contemporary, humanizing Jewish narratives onscreen are so important, and why any that come close to achieving this deserve our full support as a community.

Prejudice. The stuff you hear through the grapevine. Jews have horns. Jews only care about money. Jews control the world. Jews control the media. Jews control the banks. Jews control the weather. Et cetera, et cetera.

None of these representations provide an authentic or positive or even factually accurate understanding of who Jews are. And as a result, nobody knows who Jews are. As Van Jones told me, people don’t even know that Greenbaum or Feldstein are Jewish last names. They have no idea.

This is a vitally important concept for the Jewish community to grasp as we think about our place in the world and strategize about how to approach people outside it.

The only time Jews end up in the news is when they can be portrayed as the bad guys, or when they’re being killed.

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One of the first pieces I ever wrote for Being Jewish was my methodology for having difficult conversations with folks with whom you disagree. It was primarily motivated by the extreme political divisions we were feeling here in America in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

But the primary need for this playbook within the Jewish community has shifted. The animus towards Jews who love Israel, who know the difference between a humanist and a jihadist, between a war and a genocide, between truth and propaganda, is stronger than ever.

So it’s not surprising that the question I’m asked with the most urgency is this one:

“How do I deal with the people in my life — friends, colleagues, relatives — who have decided to make being anti-Israel a pillar of their personality at the expense of our relationship?”

Well, have no fear, friends as I’m going to walk you through my method step by step.

The Point Is Not to Change Their Mind

Before you can even begin, let me be crystal clear about what this approach is meant to achieve and what your expectation should be. This is probably the most important thing I will say here. The point of your conversation is not to change the person’s mind. Let go of that desired outcome right now.

Maybe it’ll happen over time, over many conversations, over private soul-searching. But it ain’t gonna happen in this conversation.

First of all, people don’t want to have their minds changed. Even smart people suffer from a variety of cognitive biases that predispose them to stick to what they already believe, and to reject or diminish any facts, no matter how salient, that do not confirm their predetermined position.

Moreover, if your partner sniffs out an agenda, their defensive wall will go up. They don’t want to be proven wrong. In fact, in their minds, it is you who has the explaining to do. You are the one who is a “genocide supporter,” or who “loves killing babies,” or whatever disgusting anti-Zionist libel they’ve assigned to you. Their primary interest is in explaining their own position, and hearing just enough of yours to ensure you pass their morality test. Any change they do or do not make will have to be of their own choosing, in their own time.

The point of your conversation is not to change the person’s mind. Let go of that outcome right now.

So Why Bother At All?

Because the goal here is the preservation of your relationship.

To bring an end to the “does this person really hate Jews?” question on your side, and the “does this person really love starving children?” question on theirs. To re-establish the intimate relationship that connects you in the first place. And to leave on good terms.

Once all that has been accomplished, at the very least you can agree to disagree on Israel and still be able to function together socially, with less tension and more fun.

That’s the goal. That’s the desired outcome.

Two Ground Rules

One: you must have this conversation in person. You can accomplish certain things via text or email or DMs, but meaningful understanding isn’t one of them. You need body language, tone, familiarity, eye contact — to keep the warmth and good will flowing, and to keep the walls down, both yours and theirs.

And you need time. I’m talking three to four hours of uninterrupted hang time, so you can give yourselves the room and freedom to really go deep.

Two: make sure this relationship is actually worth the effort to preserve. Here’s a simple test. If the only reason you’d be getting together with this person is to disagree with them about Israel, that’s a good indicator they’re probably not worth the investment.

C #1: Cabernet Sauvignon

Or Chardonnay. Chenin Blanc. Claret. You get the idea.

When I say this to a live audience, it usually gets a laugh. But I’m dead serious.

Having a discussion over a drink is not about getting tipsy. It’s about setting a tone. You’re here to enjoy a conversation together, not to assume a battle stance behind a podium for ferocious debate. Having a drink is what we do among friends. It’s disarming, it cuts the tension immediately, and it tells your partner this is a safe space to continue being whatever it is you have been to each other until now.

Also, everything’s better with wine. Come on.

C #2: Camaraderie

Be cheeky. Go on tangents. Make jokes. Take breaks.

You are here as friends, having a robust but friendly conversation — the same as if you were talking about careers or global warming or the war in Ukraine. If they say something you find ridiculous, giggle instead of getting mad.

Or as I like to say: be tickled, not prickled.

You and this person are not going to solve the Middle East crisis over dinner. So don’t act like that’s what you’re there to do.

Be tickled, not prickled.

C #3: Curiosity

What you are there to do brings me to the next C.

You must actually be interested in gaining an understanding of where your partner is coming from. Really listen and absorb. Don’t just wait for your turn to speak. Ask follow-up questions.

Obviously they’ve been gulping down propaganda. But at least you’ll come away with more of a why. They felt lied to in day school. Their only Jewish friends are also anti-Israel. They’re a social justice warrior who goes with the pack. And so on.

Understanding where they’re coming from reminds you of their humanity, however flawed, which can take some of the sting out of the bad feelings. You’ll likely discover they’re not jihadists — just well-meaning people who have been sadly misguided, are intellectually lazy, and harbor unexamined biases against Jews.

It’s not great. But it’s palatable, and it’s definitely better than not knowing where they’re coming from.

And better is what we’re going for.

C #4: Calm

If you show up for this conversation fired up and ready to unleash, you’re going to fail.

This has to be dispassionate and tension-free. I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t have deep feelings about what you’re divulging or discussing. Of course you should. But you need to keep your impulsive emotions in check.

You can’t get mad. You can’t shut down. You can’t raise your voice, or the walls will go up and your progress will stop.

C #5: Compassion

Remember that you love this person.

Remember that they are lost and don’t know it. Remember that their own lived experience has brought them to this point, and even if they’re wrong in their conclusions, their experience is not invalid. Remember they have been captured by a well-funded, highly strategic ideological cult of hate, decades in the making.

Remember that you can probably make every argument for them, and they probably can’t make a single one of yours, and you’re going to have to be okay with it.

Because again: the goal is the relationship.

Give Them the Chance to Have Compassion for You

Lead with your vulnerability as the other side in this relationship. It’s not “You have to believe XYZ or you’re an idiot.”

It’s “As my friend, when you didn’t reach out to me after the worst massacre of my people in generations, I felt really abandoned. I needed you and you were not there.”

Keep the focus on the relationship and the love between you. If you can preserve that, everything else is on the table.

Make the Implicit Explicit

I also find it helpful to remind myself that whether or not this person supports Israel will not change anything materially for the world. What Israel does or does not do will not be affected by your cousin’s beliefs. So we have to pull those stakes out of it.

What’s at stake is being able to live and love together.

Don’t be afraid to say that out loud. Make the implicit explicit. Let them know that cherishing your relationship is the entire reason you’re sitting down together in the first place.

God willing, they get it, and you can get on the same page about what’s needed to keep your connection alive despite your disagreements.

Maybe they don’t. And you can still love them, but maybe they drop down a peg in the inner circles of your heart. That’s okay too. It’s sad, but it’s okay. And you’ll be okay, even if it hurts.

If You Try It

If you decide to try my 5 C’s, please let me know. Head to beingjewishpodcast.com/contact and leave me a voice message. I want to know what worked for you, what didn’t, and how things stand now. B’hatzlacha. Good luck.

And remember — as the Great One, Wayne Gretzky, once said:

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Communication might not solve everything. But not communicating definitely solves nothing.

This article is adapted from an episode of Jonah’s award-winning show, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. To watch the video monologue on YouTube, click here. To listen to this article, click here: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Last year, the 97th Academy Awards took place here in LA, an occasion that, for me, brought the intersection of Jews and Hollywood into focus, producing a lot of observations, feelings, and questions. So I want to tackle, in no particular order, everything I thought about — and some of the things a lot of you told me you were thinking about too.

If “Jews Run Hollywood,” Why Is Hollywood So Uncomfortable With Jews?

That’s a question I get a lot. There’s a lot to the answer, so let’s start at the beginning — before even the first Academy Awards.

Surely you all recall Hollywood founders Lazar Meir, Wilhelm Fuchs, Shmuel Gelbfiscz, and the Wonsal Brothers. No?

How about Louis B. Mayer, William Fox, Samuel Goldwyn, and the Warner Brothers?Yeah.

Hiding one’s Jewishness was one of the bedrocks upon which Hollywood was built. And that is no knock on these pioneering men, all of whom were Eastern European immigrants looking to embrace their new home and achieve success in a brand new industry.

And just as these studio heads — or should I say Jewdio heads — were hiding in plain sight, so too were Jewish sensibilities and values and humor leaking into scripts and onto the screen, in many ways charting the course for the pop culture-defined values of this great country. Though of course, rarely under the auspices of actual Jewish characters or stories.

So even though Jews built the industry, their efforts were rarely to the public benefit of the Jewish people or their image. And the same often rings true today.

Hiding one’s Jewishness was one of the bedrocks upon which Hollywood was built.

Is the Trope Even True?

Which begs the question — though Jews have always been an integral part of Tinseltown, is the “Jews Run Hollywood” trope in fact true?

First of all, there has never been a single study to actually identify how many Jews even work in Hollywood. The whole thing is anecdotal and, obviously, there are many non-Jews in positions all over the industry, including the head honchos at major companies like NBCUniversal, Netflix, and Sony. And with international conglomerates buying up studios anyway, entertainment industry leaders don’t have the power they used to — Jewish or otherwise.

Furthermore, let us zoom in on some geographically specific data concerning Hollywood’s Jewish gatekeepers. According to a 2021 study commissioned by Jewish Federation Los Angeles, a quarter of the city’s Jews identified as “minimally involved,” and of that quarter, only 5% said being Jewish was important to how they see themselves. Another quarter of Jews participate in home-based activities, but rarely in Jewish organizational or communal life.

So when we think about “Jews running Hollywood,” we must bear in mind that 50% of the Jews in this town are not actively connected to the community at large. To expect them to be outspoken leaders or strongly focused on a Jew-positive agenda feels unreasonable. Though I have witnessed the post-October 7th awakening of many Hollywood Jews with my own eyes, so I imagine that picture looks different now.

50% of LA’s Jews are not actively connected to Jewish communal life.

Celebrities Are Not Symbols

Even so — and if I may revisit a point I’ve made before — we must stop expecting all celebrities with a drop of Jewish blood in them to advocate loudly for our community. This is not to “let them off the hook,” but to expect that already disconnected Jews will carry the torch for us in a time of crisis is unrealistic.

Take Timothée Chalamet. Despite having a Jewish mother and playing a Jew on screen, Chalamet has never engaged with the Jewish community in a meaningful way. You can’t expect someone like that to wear a hostage pin to the Oscars.

The world often forgets that celebrities are just human beings with very public jobs. They’re not symbols, they’re not leaders — they’re just people who are highly visible, which in no way means they will or should feel or behave the way we want them to.

Speaking of Adam Sandler: as one of the most public-facing Jews in entertainment, many of you have expressed to me being particularly hurt by his not speaking up after October 7th. Which I completely understand.

And — consider this. Adam Sandler has probably done more for normalizing contemporary Jewish life in popular culture than anyone in a generation. The man made Hollywood’s only mainstream Hanukkah film, the only comedy starring an Israeli character, a song that introduced millions to the joys of Hanukkah and simply being Jewish, and he was behind You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, which I think is one of the best onscreen celebrations of contemporary Jewish life ever. I wrote about it for Variety.

I am certain that in his mind, his cultural contributions are his way of making a difference. And I agree — it should count for something.

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The Ones Sprinting the Other Way

But it makes me wonder: are these Jewish actors truly unaware of how pathetic it is to watch them cower and shrink away from their identities? And for what? Follower counts? A pat on the back from someone who’d hunt them before they’d hide them?

In an age where Zoe Saldaña wins an Oscar, speaks in Spanish, and proudly announces her Dominican heritage — where the entire telecast pauses to recognize Paul Tazewell’s accomplishment as the first Black man to win the Oscar for costume design — Jews are sprinting the other direction. Backwards into the 1930s. Desperate to prove to their uneducated, antisemitic peers how assimilated they are, how they’re “the good kind of Jews,” who, you know, renounce their own people and embrace terrorist propaganda for social acceptance.

Haven’t these people read the Hanukkah story, or studied the Holocaust? In any minority group, are the ones who turn against the rest of the group in hopes of approval from people who hate them EVER the ones worthy of respect?

And let me say this. Of all the people I’ve asked to appear on Being Jewish, the only professional group from whom I’ve received multiple no’s are Jewish actors. Actors with Jewish names, who’ve earned money and acclaim playing Jewish roles, and have become so morally confused in their quest for community validation that they literally have no idea who they even are anymore.

A pat on the back from someone who’d hunt them before they’d hide them?

Two Holocaust Films, Zero Mentions

Two very Jewish, Holocaust-related films were nominated — The Brutalist and A Real Pain — both of which took home acting awards, for Adrien Brody and Kieran Culkin respectively. In their acceptance speeches, neither actor mentioned the word Jew or Holocaust, despite those things being wholly responsible for their Oscar wins.

Sure, Kieran Culkin is a non-Jewish actor who’s built a 30-year career playing a wide range of roles, of which this was just one, and his speech focused on his family and long-time manager. And Brody, who’s won both of his Oscars for portraying persecuted Jews during the Holocaust era, did call out systemic oppression, antisemitism, and racism in his speech.

But was that enough? Would it really have been so hard to pay respect to the struggles of a tribe they temporarily inhabited to further their own careers?

It’s not for us to say. But a Jew can dream.

Why Nobody Wore a Pin

As to why no one at the Oscars wore a yellow hostage pin — well, nobody wore the bloody red hand pin of Artists4Ceasefire either. And nobody even mentioned Donald Trump.

There seems to have been a collective agreement to make the night about what it’s actually supposed to be about: movies. Not global events or politics.

If award shows want to refocus on just being about entertainment, I’m all for it. We want celebrities to shut up about politics, right? Unless they agree with US. But we can’t have it both ways. After years of preachy outbursts and unwanted opinions, a return to professionalism and neutrality is a-ok by me.

The Elephant in the Room

And finally, let’s tackle the elephant in the room and talk about the acceptance speech for No Other Land, the joint Palestinian-Israeli documentary focused on life in the Masafer Yatta neighborhood of Judea and Samaria.

If you immediately went into angry defensive mode when everyone started rapturously cheering and applauding, you weren’t alone. But now that we’re past the moment, consider this.

There is nothing inherently evil or unfair about people — whether they’re Palestinian or anyone else — documenting the difficult conditions under which they live. And if the film is skillfully made and tells a compelling story that breaks your heart, it’s going to reach well-meaning audiences who feel sympathy for people living under duress. This is not unreasonable. Context or not, justified or not, the reality is that Palestinians in certain areas of Judea and Samaria live under military law and are subject to certain practices neither you nor I would like to live under. And that’s fine content for a documentary.

But the speech obviously touched a lot of nerves.

Basel Adra, the Palestinian co-director, called on the world to stop Israel’s “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” Are there Israelis living within Judea and Samaria who would rather live there without Palestinians? Sure. Is that the entire country? Of course not. Adra also lamented feeling he was always “under surveillance,” which obviously sucks for a regular person like him. But is it understandable that after decades of suicide bombings and knife attacks and public shootings, Israel might rather be safe than sorry? I think so — though it absolves neither side of responsibility for the situation.

Adra’s partner, Israeli director Yuval Abraham, laid responsibility for the devastation of Gaza at Israel’s feet, which always bothers me whenever someone does it, which is all the time. Then he closed the speech by saying, “My people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe.”

Do I think Palestinians deserve to be “free and safe” to a greater degree than they are? Yeah. Do I think if they were, Israelis would suddenly be “truly safe”? No way. But it does seem to me that Palestinian freedom and safety is at least a prerequisite to achieving lasting safety for Israelis — not the whole shebang, but one of the pieces. Though how we accomplish that outcome is the conundrum of our times, and will not be solved by a documentary or a speech.

A Little Secret

Let me leave you with a comforting little secret.

That speech didn’t actually matter. This was an award for a documentary during a three-hour ceremony that around 96% of the country didn’t even watch. Oscar acceptance speeches do not meaningfully move the needle one way or the other.

On-screen representation, contemporary narratives, authenticity — these are things that can have impact. These can reach audiences and humanize Jews for the masses. These are things that can shift public opinion. So demand them, create them, commit to supporting them however you can.

And when Jewish actors lose themselves in the miasma of self-abasement and shame, let them hear from you. Don’t let them skate by and continue to make money off an identity they’re too embarrassed to stand by when it actually matters.

They think we don’t see them. But as the old Hollywood adage says, the camera sees everything. And so do we.

This article is adapted from an episode of Jonah’s award-winning show, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. To watch the video monologue on YouTube, click here. To listen to this article, click here: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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About a year ago, something happened to me. Maybe you read about it, maybe you didn’t — I’m not going to get into it. But what I will get into is how that experience granted me the opportunity to analyze literally thousands of hateful messages and try to draw some conclusions from them. With this mountain of data, I was able to distinguish certain unique patterns in behavioral norms online, the sociology of a certain kind of social media user, and most interestingly to me, the root of some of the most common anti-Jewish racism being spewed on our screens.

Now, some of the hate I got was your tired, run-of-the-mill racism: the k-word, “what size oven fits your head” (which was a weird way to phrase that), “you people are an f’ing cancer on Earth,” etc. Not so interesting. Also got a lot of Nepo Baby. Which I only mention because it’s really fun to say. “Nepo Baby.” If I had a band, I’d call it Nepo Baby. Anyway — also not interesting.

But what was interesting was the most common type of hate speech I received, which was a variation on a single theme: Zionist scum. Zionist trash. Zionist pig. Dirty Zionist. Zionist nepo baby. Okay, I’m done, I swear.

The Pattern in the Hate

The sheer volume of these “Zionist”-as-insult DMs, plus something my friend Sarah Hurwitz said in one of the episodes of Being Jewish, helped me understand something I hadn’t fully grasped until now — something that I know most Jews do not yet understand.

We continue to bang our heads on the tree, Charlie Brown style, shouting “Zionism means self-determination in some part of the land to which Jews are indigenous, don’t you get it!” First of all: no, they don’t get it. They’re not listening to us. At all. Either because no one they know or follow is saying that, or because they shut out anything counter to their already chosen belief.

Thus, when these anti-Israel haters continue to use Zionist as an insult anyway, we wrongfully assume that they are doing so as a codeword for Jew — as a slur, as a way to get shots in without getting tagged for it. And while the evil leaders who disseminate the anti-Jew, anti-Israel propaganda are absolutely doing this, the vast majority of people — that is, the useful idiots — are not. Remember: they’re idiots. More kindly, these are not folks admired for their superior critical thinking skills. There’s no subterfuge going on here. What’s happening is that they have had a very different and very specific definition of Zionism implanted in their brains.

When these haters use “Zionist” as an insult, we wrongfully assume it’s a codeword for Jew. The truth is stranger — and more fixable.

They Don’t Think They Hate Jews

If you ask most “Zionist scum” DMers if they hate Jews, I guarantee you, you’d get: “Of course not. I love Jews. My friend is a Jew. I’m a Jew. My doctor’s a Jew, I’m very nice to him.” First of all, you can love an individual in your day-to-day life and still be a total bigot towards their group as a whole — but that’s another essay for another day. That’s not what’s happening here either.

A large swath of the global population has been carefully taught — by social media, by elementary and middle and high school teachers, by their friends who learned it from their teachers or social media, and by tenured college professors — that Zionism means Israelis want to kill all Palestinians on Earth simply because of who they are: their skin color, their not-Jewness. When you hear someone say “Zionism is racism” and you think, “But Jews aren’t white, and there are 2 million Arab Israelis,” you likely conclude that this someone is either stupid or hates Jews.

But in fact, they have been taught that Zionism is an evil on par with other racially motivated murder cults like Nazism or the KKK. This is what they have been taught — as verified by Sarah Hurwitz, who visited dozens and dozens of colleges. It is utter, illogical, brainwashed ignorance. But it’s not actually motivated by sincere bigotry towards Jewish people. Which doesn’t mean that it’s okay — but it’s not the worst-case scenario, and it’s vitally important to understand precisely what we’re dealing with so we can appropriately confront it.

We are dealing with folks who have been formally educated to believe that Zionism is evil incarnate. So of course they have no qualms about calling me Zionist scum or Zionist trash. Would you have qualms about calling an actual Nazi “Nazi scum” or “Nazi trash”? Not only would you not feel bad — you’d feel good. And not just good, but righteous. You’re serving justice to the very worst humanity has to offer. You, my friend, are on the right side of history.

The Algorithm Is Playing All of Us

So how the hell do we fix this? How do we re-educate millions of people? To be honest, I don’t think we can. I think in a lot of ways, our present is f*cked. The deck is absolutely stacked against us. We are up against billions of dollars in foreign money that have been planting this seed for decades. We are up against an algorithm that cordons us off into completely different realities. Let me give you an example.

Over a year ago, I participated in an amazing Passover-themed dinner with a ballroom full of Black folks, Jews, and Black Jews united in allyship, led by my friend Van Jones. Over dinner, Van recounted a story of the day the Bibas children were returned to Israel. In coffins. As I’m sure most of you know, Van is one of our greatest allies and incredibly well informed about the world. And he told me that when he asked a friend that day — who happened to be Jewish — why she wasn’t returning his texts, she said it was because she was distraught over “what was going on.” He had no idea what she was talking about. Did she mean something about Trump? The economy?..

He had never even heard of the Bibases. The algorithm doesn’t show them to him.

Practically every Jew on Earth was in a state of grief and trauma, shouting online, “Where is everyone? Where are my Black friends? Why is nobody speaking up for us?”

It’s because they literally had no idea it was happening. For a Jew, it sounds impossible to believe. But that’s how the algorithm works.

If you’re not actually engaging regularly with Jewish voices, and you bought a yoga mat one time so Meta thinks you’re a liberal? You’re just getting videos of dead Gazan children over and over and over, while Jewish pain is ERASED. And it works the other way too. Jews don’t get those videos — and we also don’t get videos about pain in the Black community, or any other community, unless we seek it out deliberately. And the result is that we blame each other for being bad allies, when in fact, we’re all just being played. It is critical to understand how this works.

We blame each other for being bad allies, when in fact, we’re all just being played.

How We Win in 30 Years

So, how do you fight an algorithm? How do you dismantle or reform the billion-dollar apparatus of social media? How do you fight back against deep-seated academic brainwashing? There is no easy fix, and certainly not a fast one. Our opposition is going to take years. I’m not sure how we win the battle today — but I think we can win it in the next 10, 20, 30 years, if we start now.

Instead of Jewish donors putting their names on hospitals and theaters and sports facilities, we need to be investing in professorships and Middle East History Chairs and Jewish Studies departments to counter the anti-Israel poison inside academia.

We need to make Jewish Day School financially accessible to every Jewish family, to ensure that the next generation of young Jews are fully informed, confident in their strong Jewish identity, and cloaked in the dignity they need to face this fight on the front lines. We need to be showing up to school board meetings and statehouses and town halls and playing a role in the shaping of children’s curriculums.

We need to be bringing educators like Project Shema or Mosaic Persuasion or Holocaust survivors to speak in our businesses and our classrooms.

We need to be sounding the alarm and getting to work — and we have to start now.

The Stonecutter’s Credo

And lest you be discouraged, remember the Stonecutter’s Credo, coined by 19th-century social reformer Jacob Riis:

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

We’ve got to just chip, chip, chip away. Who knows when it will happen — but one day, that stone will crack. And when it does, make sure you’re able to look at it and say: I helped do that.

This article is adapted from an episode of Jonah’s award-winning show, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. To watch the video monologue, click here. To listen to this article, click here: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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In his seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning, humanist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” It’s a truth of existence that never loses its primacy. Are you glass half full or half empty? Both are accurate. Neither is uniquely naive. It’s a choice.

We, as Jews and as allies, face such a choice today. As the Western Left continues its descent into antizionist madness, as racism against Jews rears its head in ways once unthinkable, and as the number of engaged non-Orthodox Jews continues to decline, there’s an easy argument to be made for glass half empty. On the other hand, we are witnessing the nascent stages of a Jewish Renaissance — a renewed commitment by Jewish individuals and institutions to invest in the development and celebration of Jewish personhood as never before. Which glass do you see? A half-empty disaster with some nice bonuses, or a half-full opportunity with challenges to be overcome?

If you know me at all, you can probably guess which glass I’m drinking from.

I see this moment not as the last chapter of some fading Jewish Golden Age, but as the prologue to the first chapter of a true Golden Age. Think about how we as Jews have defined this so-called Golden Age — opportunity, yes; acceptance, yes; safety, yes. Amazing, wonderful, historic. And also: a Jewish community steadily decreasing in its engagement with Judaism itself. A community that has too often achieved success not by expressing our identity but by sublimating it. Accomplishment paired with an unspoken directive: keep your head down. Hold your Jewishness back. Be less like you, and more like them.

Is that really the most Golden version of Jewish life we can hope for?

I don’t think so. I see a global Jewish community only just beginning to fully step into and own its power and potential. I see tremendous, exciting opportunity to build a true Golden Age in the ashes of one of the darkest chapters in history. But in order to seize it, we need awareness. We need strategy. We need collaboration. And most of all, we need intention. Nothing is by accident.

If we want to create the thriving Jewish community we deserve, here are the eleven steps I think we need to take to get there.

1 – Win the AI race

From radio to television to social media, the world’s villains have successfully harnessed the communications technology of each given age and used it against an unsuspecting populace — to the detriment of not just Jews, but all of humanity. Social media is already an enormous notch in the loss column for us. We got our asses handed to us. Islamist forces invested the time, money, and strategy required to capture the hearts and minds of an entire generation and then some, built entirely on lies, distortions, and a lethal command of the medium at hand.

The next frontier is artificial intelligence. Jews and our allies cannot afford to get caught napping this time. Every brilliant Jewish mind in tech, communications, cybersecurity, and adjacent fields needs to ensure that the good guys dominate this technology first.

Think about every action or sci-fi movie you’ve ever seen. “If this technology got into the wrong hands, it could be catastrophic for Earth.” Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. That’s exactly what happened with social media. We’re tearing ourselves apart, unwittingly doing the bidding of literal jihadist terrorists bent on our annihilation — because the technology got mastered by the wrong people. Fool us once, shame on you. If we don’t go all out to win the AI race and ensure it’s used for the illumination of truth and the betterment of humanity, it’ll be a big old shame on us.

Coders, get coding. Funders, get funding. Scientists, get sciencing. If we lose the AI battle, we may lose the war.

2 – Fix Jewish day schools and camps

Jewish day schools and summer camps must become financially accessible — and equally as important, if not more so, they need to become competitively excellent. Removing the financial barrier alone is critical, game-changing, and worth our utmost focus. And yet it’s hardly the full picture. An estimated 90 percent of American Jews are non-Orthodox, and of that 90 percent, only about 5 percent enroll their kids in Jewish day school. Most estimates put Jewish camp enrollment around 15 to 20 percent of Jewish kids. In both cases, the vast majority of eligible participants are opting out. That’s clearly about more than just money.

We lack the value proposition. Tuition should be affordable, yes — but the education should also be the best in the area. Our schools should have the best facilities, programs, college acceptance rates, parental involvement, and community relationships. They need to offer Jewish families a real home, full of great people, that’s also a slam dunk for their kids’ futures. We need to be so great that non-Jews are applying to give their kids the same opportunities ours receive. Jewish camp shouldn’t just be affordable — it should be everything you could possibly want in a summer camp, plus challah!

We need dollars, of course, but we also need leadership and strategy. We need to highlight the models already innovating, disrupting, and flourishing — and follow their lead. We don’t need fifteen organizations around Jewish education trying fifteen different things that haven’t worked. Schools like JLA in Miami or Milken in Los Angeles are already paving the way. The rest of us need the humility to say: oh wow, that’s working — how do I copy it? Only when our schools and camps are the jewels of their communities, with the financial support to ensure a seat for anyone who wants one, will we have any hope of changing the Jewish future.

3 – Use your professional skills for the community

Everyone — and that means you, dear reader, — needs to think about how you can begin to use your professional skills for the benefit of the Jewish community. We do not have the luxury of handing over our best assets, ourselves, for the rest of the world to enjoy without also ensuring our own community’s flourishing.

If you’re a cook, start a Jewish restaurant. If you’re a dentist, open a free clinic for Holocaust survivors. If you’re an actuary, offer your services to Jewish organizations. If you make chairs, make Jewish chairs. If you make music, make Jewish music. If you make coffee, put a Magen David in the latte.

Think about how much Jews have accomplished in this world without a thought to our own community — or, worse, by overcompensating for our Jewishness, going out of our way not to work for our own benefit, as if proof of our allegiance to the majority will somehow make us better off than actually just making ourselves better off. Imagine the possibilities if we flip that single switch and get everyone rowing in the same direction.

That’s a Golden Age. Be a part of it.

4 – The entertainment industry has to step up

There’s one industry in particular I feel needs to answer the call more than any other, and it’s my own: the entertainment industry. If you don’t like bad language, earmuffs please — Jews in the entertainment industry need to step the fuck up.

There is no more potent way to achieve positive change at scale than through popular culture. Jewish stories, shows, books, musicians, actors, writers, agents — their opportunity to influence change is unparalleled. Mohammed Al Samawi, a Yemeni-born Muslim who was raised to despise Jews, once shared that watching Ross and Monica Geller — two openly Jewish characters on Friends — opened his mind to what Jewish people actually were, and to what respectful interfaith friendship could look like. Do you understand how impactful that is? Simply including Jews as fully realized characters on the show was a chance to humanize us for tens of millions of viewers around the world.

When you understand the potential impact, the lack of engaged Jews across Hollywood, theater, music, literature, and sports is a downright shanda. Are there heroes in each of these fields working their tails off on behalf of our people? Without a doubt — many have been guests on Being Jewish, and they’ll all agree with me. They are the minority. The majority are Jews who are either too scared, or don’t care enough, to assume any responsibility for the well-being of our people. We have Jews who supposedly “run Hollywood” refusing to use their influence to help, or thinking that whatever they may have whispered in private is enough — they wrote a check, went to a gala, maybe listened to a podcast.

Sorry, fam. It’s not enough. Not anymore. Ask yourselves — Jews of the entertainment world — what would a real Jewish Golden Age look like? And what can you personally do to help us get there? If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Until we each take that responsibility personally, we’re not going to move the needle.

05 – Run for office

We need more Jews running for political office at the local, city, and state levels. Politics is a game of interests. Everyone plays it. We need to as well. We need Jewish and truly allied voices at the tables of power where the decisions that affect our day-to-day lives are made — on school boards, city councils, in courtrooms, in state houses.

Our enemies on both sides — the DSA, Islamists, white nationalists — are already throwing themselves into this endeavor openly and unabashedly, in much bigger numbers than we can ever hope to match. As the saying goes, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re on the menu.

And when you do have a seat at the table, you can make tangible, meaningful, life-saving contributions. I’ve had the great fortune to see this up close through the accomplishments of friends in public office — the Hernandez siblings in Arizona, Nick Melvoin on the LA School Board, the many terrific members of the California Jewish Legislative Caucus. Run for office. We need you. It matters about as much as anything can.

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6 – Make Ally-yah

We need allies. I published a whole piece on this already, on what I call making Ally-yah. If we aren’t investing time, energy, and intention in cultivating deep, personal, meaningful two-way relationships with allies at every level of Jewish life, we’re in trouble. We are far too small to accomplish change at scale by ourselves.

As we’ve seen in the post–October 7th world, we cannot afford to wait for disaster to strike before we build friendships. We need to build the bridges now, so that when the moment comes to knock on the door, we’ve already paved the road.

A foundational pillar of every Jewish undertaking must be: how do I include allies in this work — or how do I expose this work to allies so they understand?

We need non-Jews at our events, in our organizations, at our tables, as our partners. They are not a side dish. They are an entree.

7 – Israel has to care about Diaspora Jews

Israelis have to start caring more about Diaspora Jews as a matter of policy and practice. Israel cannot at once claim to be the home of all Jewish people and operate on the assumption that if you aren’t physically present, we don’t actually care about you all that much.

I recognize this is an unusual arrangement. Israel is a country like any other, with its own myriad domestic priorities. But for too long it’s been too much of a one-way street. How many Israelis even know that Magen David Adom — Israel’s national emergency medical and blood services organization — is funded almost entirely by Diaspora Jews? We don’t do that because we care about Israel, the location. We do it because we care about Israelis the people. Our brothers and sisters. That’s how families work. Out of sight, out of mind is not a cool way to approach fellow members of the tribe.

In today’s climate, everything the Israeli government says or does affects how Jews in the Diaspora are treated. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And it doesn’t mean the government is good or bad. It’s just a fact. Global Jewry is being made to answer for Israel — and as bad as that situation is, we need Israelis to recognize the reality and assume more responsibility for our well-being.

Think about the billions in philanthropy that flows into Israel from the Diaspora, as it should. Are the other 50 percent of Jews on earth really so much less valuable just because we live somewhere else?

8 – Make more Jews

We need more Jews. Set aside the Orthodox community for a moment — their numbers continue to grow, nice job team, keep up the great work. But the rest of us, the majority? We are shrinking year after year, due to assimilation, the absence of Jewish identity in the children of interfaith marriages, and declining birth rates.

We need to open our arms and remove barriers to anyone who wants to be part of this tribe. That means converts, patrilineal Jews, interfaith families, LGBTQ families — anyone with the kavana, the intention, the commitment, the desire, should be passionately embraced. Not just because I happen to think it’s the right thing to do, but because it is necessary. What kind of club hemorrhaging members turns sincerely interested parties away over what basically amounts to ancient technicalities? How much will those technicalities matter if there’s no more club at all?

We also need to support Jewish fertility funds and organizations worldwide, ensuring that every Jewish couple who wants Jewish children has the financial and medical support required to make it happen. Jewish parents: have more Jewish kids! Be fruitful and multiply! Don’t just replace yourselves — grow the numbers! And while we’re at it, ensure that Jewish philanthropy is focused on making the pathway to raising Jewish children as joyful and financially stress-free as possible.

We need numbers, people! This is not a drill.

9 – Call out antizionist hate

When it comes to antizionist Jew-hatred: if you see something, say something. Nobody gets to call you a baby-killer or a genocide-supporter or a Nazi — least of all the people who, knowingly or unknowingly, are supporting actual baby-killers, actual genocidaires, and the actual collaborators of actual Nazis!

We cannot let these people — devoid of actual knowledge, expertise, or experience — continue to walk around with their misplaced arrogance, accusing us of being brainwashed by so-called Israeli propaganda (which I wish existed but does not), while they all repeat the exact same talking points, word for word, that Israel’s enemies have been feeding them in school and on social media for decades. Just because an anti-Jewish racist doesn’t realize they’re being racist doesn’t mean they’re not a racist.

We have to let them know — and then go about our lives. They’re in it for the feelings of moral righteousness and the high of bullying someone successfully. Take those wins away, and the whole enterprise becomes a lot less appealing.

10 – Celebrate the F*** out of Jewish culture

Jewish pride cannot start and end with Am Yisrael Chai. We put too much reliance on defiance. We need to revel in being Jewish because it’s amazing, not just to stick it to the haters.

Find ways to celebrate the culture that speak to you. Rock Jewish jewelry — or as I like to call it, Jewelry✨. Bump Jewish music. Buy Jewish art. Wear Jewish apparel. Do your date night at the Israeli spot. Dance through the streets on Simchat Torah. Throw a banger on Purim. Toss some Hebrew into your day. Meveenim?

The Jewish people provide endless levels of awesomeness. Feast on it — and let them know.

11 – Jewnity

Finally: Jewish unity. Or, as I like to call it, Jewnity.

I’m not talking about agreement — Hashem knows we ain’t built for that. I’m talking about a people-wide recognition that our enemies are mobilized and motivated, and a house divided against itself cannot stand. I’m thinking along three lines: religious observance, ethnic heritage, and politics.

The different sects of Jewish observance are far too siloed and, frankly, do not care enough — if at all — about each other’s well-being. It’s both a moral embarrassment and a strategic disaster. If we continue to let technicalities divide the tribe from itself, eventually there won’t be a tribe to fuss over technicalities.

So find ways to build bridges — not just from Jews to allies, but from Jews to other Jews. We need Reform–Orthodox mixers, with kosher and non-kosher options at the bar. We need communal events, fundraisers, days of service that bring different denominations together. Why this type of engagement appears to be on hardly anybody’s radar is beyond me. It’s obviously an enormous need, and yet there’s a real lack of intention in addressing it.

We also need to squash whatever weird Ashkenazi–Sephardi–Mizrahi prejudice remains and just be one people. Maintain the beloved customs. Honor the unique histories. Share them freely with one another. But can we cut it out with the discrimination between us, like, right now?

My kids’ day school has a majority Persian population, and I’ve heard Ashkenazi Jews express disinterest in enrolling their kids because the school is — and I’m quoting the exact excuse — “too Persian.” What kind of nonsense is that? That’s the attitude that has to go. Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews: please try to stop being offended that American Jewish institutions are traditionally geared toward Ashkenazim, when Ashkenazim make up around 80 percent of the American Jewish population and have been here in much greater numbers for a much longer time. Spotlighting and sharing in the rich, diverse cultural traditions of our global community is a must. But the current imbalance isn’t a reflection of supremacist intent. It’s demographic reality.

And Hashem knows the way Jews tear each other apart over politics is disgraceful. The nastiest vitriol I receive online is always from Jews to the right of me — who talk to me worse than the anti-Jewish racists do. I’m not exaggerating. When I express any inclination that might be read as left of center, they come for me, teeth bared. And though I am not, nor have I ever been, a Republican, whenever I give any credit to anyone or anything on the right, I’ll hear from at least a couple of Jewish lefties insulting my intelligence and trying to tear me down.

When the aliens come to destroy Earth, humans either put aside their petty differences and unite, or die. Hell, it’s what happened on October 7th — it was division that allowed the enemy to catch us unaware, and it was unity that allowed us to push them back.

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In a true Jewish Golden Age, wouldn’t we all be connected as one? Agreeing to disagree, as we most certainly will — but with respect and love and an appreciation of the stakes as our foundation? That’s a Jewish people ready to face whatever comes. That’s a Jewish people who understand the opportunity at hand and are poised to take advantage of it, not squander it.

Not that we had any say in the matter, but like it or not, the next chapter of the Jewish people has begun. How this volume gets written — whether that story ends in triumph or tragedy — is up to each and every one of us.

What will you build?

This article is adapted from an episode of Jonah’s award-winning show, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. To watch the video monologue, click here. To listen to this article, click here: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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One of the questions I’ve been asked most often since October 7th is: Why do you stand up? What makes you use your voice? The more I turn those questions over, the odder they sound to me — because the answer should be obvious. I stand up and use my voice for the same reason every Jew and every ally standing up right now uses theirs. Because we have to. There is rabid, widespread, normalized Jew-hatred throughout the world at a scale we haven’t seen in decades. In our schools, our institutions, our workplaces, our media, in the very neighborhoods where we live. And of course, there are the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th and every single day since.

So I think the better question is the one aimed the other way. If you’re someone who isn’t standing up or speaking out — why not? If you haven’t said anything yet, what would it take to get you to say something? How bad does it have to be for Jews before you decide it’s worth breaking your silence? What would that look like, exactly?

Really think about it. Because from where I’m sitting, it’s already looking pretty bad.

The Record

Three hundred and sixty-four young people were slaughtered at a music festival — more than six times the death toll of the deadliest mass shooting in American history. And that wasn’t enough for you to say anything.

Jewish families were burned alive in their homes. Jewish infants were shot in their cribs. Jewish peace activists — the very people who had spent their lives advocating for coexistence — were butchered and kidnapped. And still you said nothing.

Jewish college students were barred from entering campus buildings. Mocked and isolated by professors and classmates alike, simply for being Jewish. You said nothing.

Radical Islamists in masks burned American flags on the campuses of our most hallowed universities. They waved terrorist banners. They chanted for the genocide of the Jewish people. Still not enough.

Violent mobs assaulted Jews in Los Angeles, Montreal, Brooklyn, Amsterdam. Synagogues and day schools were firebombed, desecrated, vandalized in Tunisia, Toronto, Sydney. You said nothing.

Iran launched enough ballistic missiles to annihilate the civilian population of Israel — targeting innocent Jews, Christians, and Muslims. You said nothing.

Terrorists paraded Israeli hostages on stages, surrounded by thousands of rapturous Jew-hating Palestinians and their children, all of whom appeared to be far better clothed and fed than the emaciated hostages they had held in tunnels and civilian homes for more than a year. They traded the body of a toddler they had kidnapped and murdered in exchange for the release of convicted mass murderers. They broke the ceasefire by missing deadlines. They broke the ceasefire by firing a rocket that killed a Gazan teenager. They broke the ceasefire by swapping out Shiri Bibas’ body — just to torture her family, and everyone watching, a little more. You said nothing.

People drew swastikas on posters of a nine-month-old Jewish baby who had been kidnapped from his bed. Five hundred days later, that baby — Kfir Bibas — came back murdered, his tiny coffin defiled with terrorist propaganda materials. And that wasn’t enough for you to say anything.

The Question That Remains

So I have to ask again. If none of that was enough to move you to speak, what could it possibly take? Seriously — how much worse does it have to be for you to say, out loud, this is bad, I should say something?

And for those of you who have spoken up, but only quietly — only online, only once, only when it felt safe — what is it you’re waiting for? Really think about your answer. Because there will be one, and it’s worth knowing what it is.

And for those of you who remain committed to your silence in the face of these abject horrors: at least have the fortitude to search yourself and be honest about why. About where you actually stand. About whether you stand for anything real at all.

The Bitter Pill

As for the rest of us — those of us who have been speaking, and those of us ready to start — I have a bitter pill I need you to swallow. Here’s the truth:

Nobody else is coming. Accept it. Embrace it. Breathe it in. Breathe it out.

Stop waiting for your favorite celebrity or your friend from college to do the right thing. Stop hoping. Stop raging. Stop being shocked when they disappoint you. If they haven’t said anything yet, that is a choice they’ve made — and they’re probably not going to say anything now. On the off chance they do finally wake up out of their brainwashed, cowardly stupor, we can be pleasantly surprised and welcome them warmly back to reality. Though it’ll likely only be once it’s become socially acceptable, and therefore easy to do without exhibiting any integrity — or once it’s already too late to make a difference.

But it’s okay. We’ve got this. We are more than capable of holding this down as we are — if each of us is active, and unified, and willing. Don’t wait for someone to tell you you’re needed. You’re needed now. You’ve been needed.

What else could you possibly be waiting for?

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This article is adapted from an episode of Jonah’s award-winning show, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. To watch the video monologue, click here. To listen to this article, click here: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Hey, comrade!

Have you ever noticed that “Zionists” are evil? That’s right — there’s a group of people, right in your backyard, who support a white, settler-colonial racist supremacist apartheid genocidal baby killing entity. That entity is called Israel, and these “Zionists” enable it. Isn’t that gross? You should punish them. Here’s how!

Step One: Whiteness

First, talk nonstop about how Israel embodies “whiteness.” I know, I know. Many Israelis are descendants of Holocaust survivors, whose ancestors were industrially genocided by Hitler for “not being white.” But we’ve decided they’re white now!

And the other Israeli Jews? Even though they came from Africa and the Middle East — places like Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Ethiopia — they’re also white, i.e. they “practice whiteness.” It’s not like their countries rejected, dispossessed, and expelled them for “being Zionists” or anything. They chose to leave! Anyway, Jews are white. Talk about their whiteness.

Step Two: Settler-Colonialism

Next, call Israel a settler-colonial project. Now, I know this seems weird because settler-colonies usually have a metropole, or mother country (e.g. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal), whereas Jews don’t!

But they’re definitely still colonizers! After all, they came to a place! It’s not like they were refugees escaping existential violence. I mean, we’re all faced hard times. But Jews were greedy white people who wanted to build an evil society, extract resources, and send them back to — um — well, it doesn’t matter!

Now, you might be asking why Jews picked Israel to colonize. So random, right? They could have picked Uganda or Madagascar — but they picked Israel, and now the Arabs (who definitely aren’t colonizers) have to live with them. Ugh!

Jews often claim they’re connected to the land, but you must always deny this. Never talk about how the word “Jew” comes from Judea, or about the continuous Jewish presence in the land, or about the centrality of Israel to Jewish culture, ritual, storytelling, and prayer. Never talk about the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. And never, ever, talk about how Arabs built a mosque on top of that temple.

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Step Three: Erase Their Peoplehood

Now, let’s go deeper. Not only are Jews colonizers, but they come up with this sinister lie that they’re a “people,” “tribe,” or “nation,” kind of like the Cherokee or Navajo. Isn’t that ridiculous?! White people can’t be a nation! That’s for people with shell necklaces and grass skirts. Everyone knows that.

So remember: Jewish nationhood is fake. They’re just white people with a religion. Never let Jews bully you by defining themselves. Better yet, always refer to Israel as a “Zionist entity” or “project” (never a country) and use “spiritually Israeli” as a slur for anything you perceive as culturally vapid or inauthentic. Hahaha. Isn’t that hilarious?

Step Four: Jewish “Supremacy”

Okay, next: Jews are supremacists. Think white supremacy, but worse. Now, I know David Duke coined the term “Jewish supremacy” and hated Jews for not being white because he was a…white supremacist. But don’t get confused. The bottom line is, Jews think they’re better than others! You can read all about it in this great book from the 1500s, On the Jews and Their Lies, by Martin Luther, the Christian cleric who…um…hated Jews. But he had good reason to! Remember, Christians made salvation available to everybody, but Jews said “no thanks” and kept their little tribe — I mean, their white religion. So now we get to call them “arrogant,” “racist,” and “supremacist” — forever.

Step Five: Apartheid

Now that you know about Jewish supremacy, you’ll understand why Israel is an apartheid state. You see, it has this wall that separates it from Gaza for no reason at all. I know, I know, Egypt also has a wall separating it from Gaza. Never talk about that.

And in the West Bank it’s even worse! Israel has checkpoints and different roads and license plates for Israelis and Palestinians. Isn’t that gross and racist? Of course, the Israelis were sneaky and waited to install that infrastructure until the 1990s, decades after Israel’s founding. Why did they wait so long, you ask? Uh, I don’t know. But I’m sure it has nothing to do with the repeated waves of suicide bombings and other violent attacks against Israeli civilians in the 1980s. Or with the antizionists in the West Bank who get paid to murder Israelis. Or with general ongoing war and territorial conflict.

And never let the Jews distract you from their apartheid state by talking about the 2 million Arab Muslims who live with full rights in Israel proper. Hijabs and kippahs chilling side by side. Israel is definitely not the most tolerant and pluralistic country in the Middle East. That’s just hasbara. After all, look at all the Jews (and Christians, and other minorities like Druze, Yezidi, Berbers, and Kurds) who are thriving with equal rights in Arab countries, like — well, never mind.

The point is: Israelis are supremacists. And just like certain Arab countries criminalize even speaking to an Israeli, you too must purge all Israeli people and products from your local grocery store / coop / town hall / literary panel / yoga retreat, turn your backs on Israeli athletes, harass Israelis at singing competitions, and then proudly label these spaces “apartheid free zones.” That’s the obvious moral thing to do. It’s definitely not you who is being racist or enacting apartheid.

Step Six: “Zionism is Racism”

Still don’t buy that Jews are racist? Just look at what the church says — I mean, what the UN says! They passed a resolution claiming “Zionism is racism.” Of course, they repealed it in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union because, that slogan came directly from Soviet propaganda. But times, they are a-changing. We should totally reinstate the UN resolution, and even better, try to pass it in every rinky dinky town across the West! Because we’re all about progress.

Step Seven: “Genocide”

Next, we have to talk about genocide. Israel is genocidal. It’s a fact! And the accusation has nothing to do with Nazi tropes, or medieval libels of Jews as ritual child murderers, or Soviet propaganda that equated Israelis with Nazis, or with the twisted and poetic sense of moral satisfaction you personally might get from such a comparison, or with how painful and cruel such an inversion might feel to Jews. No, that’s all a distraction. The fact is, Israelis are Nazis (see: white racists). Their whole reason for existing, obviously, is eliminating Palestinians.

So, when you’re shrieking “genocide” outside your local synagogue, remember you’re on the right side of history. And try not to think about the theocratic Iranian regime that messianically vows to wipe out Israel, or its proxy militias (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis) who put “Death to Israel” on their flags, repeatedly shoot missiles at Israeli population centers, and massacred, burned alive, abducted, and tortured Jews on 10/7. Did you say rape? Eh, that probably didn’t happen. But even if it did, our freedom fighters probably just got a little excited. Plus, it’s not like antizionist regimes are actually a threat to Israel or Jews. They don’t really mean what they say.

Step Eight: Lean on the Institutions

If you want proof that Israel is genocidal, look again at the UN and global NGOs. They’re neutral arbiters of peace and morality. They definitely don’t use fringe scholarship or cabals of antizionist academics like Dirk Moses to warp the definition of genocide into some vague “structure” based on “settler colonial logic.” They definitely don’t appoint oppressive regimes to human rights councils. And they definitely aren’t filled with antizionist bigots who hate Israel, pass more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined, and produce endless biased reports against Israel that erase antizionist atrocities and gaslight Jews worldwide.

And the UN definitely doesn’t participate in genocidal anti-Israeli violence itself. All that stuff about over 100 UNRWA workers helping Hamas carry out the October 7 massacre? Or Hamas building tunnels under UNRWA schools? Or those schools explicitly teaching anti-Jewish hate? That’s just a few bad apples.

Step Nine: Assemble the Conclusion

So let’s review: Jews are a fake people, Israel is a white settler-colonial state filled with Jewish supremacists who enact apartheid, and “Zionists” are inherently genocidal people who take pleasure in murdering children. It logically follows, then, that we must eliminate Israel and purge “Zionists” from public life!

By the way, this has nothing to do with white Westerners symbolically projecting their own history, sins, and guilt onto Israel, and seeking to destroy it as a form of moral redemption (no parallels whatsoever with Christianity).

Step TenWear the Costume

Anyway, now that you’re on board, make sure to wrap a keffiyeh around your face (definitely not a symbol tied to anti-Jewish violence), hang inverted red triangles everywhere (definitely not a Jew-hunting symbol), and join the masked mobs chanting “death to the IDF” and “river to sea” and “by any means necessary.”

You might worry that this is all…a bit much. Like, maybe antizionism is just classical antisemitism flipped inside out? Or maybe antizionism already decimated Jewish life in the USSR, 1968 Poland, Iran, North Africa, and the Middle East? But trust me, there’s no relation. Antizionism is the social justice movement of our time.

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This essay is the work of MAAZ — whose ongoing project of naming, dissecting, and dismantling the antizionist script is doing some of the sharpest analytical work in this space anywhere.

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playlist.

This is a story about a city, about the people who once lived there, and the few who still do. It’s a story about memory, about the past haunting the present and the present echoing the past. It’s a story about loss — about what’s been stolen, and about what we’ve given away. It’s a story I didn’t realize I was a part of, and now, it’s a story you’re a part of too.

Halfway around the world, nestled along the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea, sits the port city of Thessaloniki — a city you’ve maybe only heard about if you’re Greek, or a hardcore history buff, or a child of its Sephardic or Romaniote Jewish communities. Thessaloniki was home to one of the world’s most ancient Jewish societies. Our earliest record of it is found in the writings of St. Paul the Apostle, who traveled there to preach in three of the city’s synagogues during the first century CE. As empires rose and fell, the Jewish community of Salonika, as it was also known, stayed steady — until a generational calamity shook things loose.

The Mother of Israel

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and also sucked if you were a Jew. The Alhambra Decree, the Spanish Inquisition, Jews on the run. Spaniards being hostile to Jews — imagine that. The Ottoman Turks, who by this point had conquered Greece, sensed an opportunity to populate their territory with well-educated and industrious subjects, so they opened Salonika’s glittering port to welcome Spain’s expelled Sephardi Jews. Ladino-speaking Jews poured in from Majorca, Catalonia, Valencia, and Toledo. From Sicily, Venice, Naples, Portugal, Provence. Ashkenazi Jews from Transylvania, Austria, and Hungary joined their Romaniote brethren from Greece to form one of the world’s only Jewish-majority cities — a thriving cultural and commercial hub by the sea.

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A follower reached out to me with a question I’d been turning over for months. He’d been thinking about the parallels between the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and the rise of the antizionist movement today — and wanted to know how, exactly, the Klan was eventually marginalized. What pulled the hood off? What can we learn from it?

It’s a thoughtful question, and I want to do my best to answer it. First, an important clarification: the KKK is not a direct parallel to today’s antizionist movement, and nothing here suggests they are the same. Full stop. But as hate movements that once operated comfortably within social norms, there are macro-level similarities worth examining — and a real strategic playbook hiding inside the Klan’s decline.

A Hate Movement That Didn’t Look Like One

The 1920s Klan initially positioned itself as a civic and moral reform movement — anti-bootlegging, anti-adultery, pro–public school, pro–Protestant values. Broad, appealing language that framed participation more as community service than as anything hateful. Not anti-immigrant, just pro-American. Not anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, or anti-Black — just pro-Protestant Anglo-Saxon.

Most importantly, the Klan provided a sense of belonging. It was a social club, with meetings and events, rituals and regalia, somewhere for small-town folks to go. It was politically ambitious, with multiple governors and congressmen representing its interests. It nearly tore apart the 1924 Democratic National Convention in a floor fight over whether to condemn the Klan by name — which Democrats narrowly voted not to do.

What the Klan understood very well was that people don’t join movements they perceive as hateful. They join movements that make them feel righteous and embattled on behalf of something worth defending. The Klan gave millions of Americans a way to act on ethnic and religious prejudice while feeling like heroes of justice.

The parallels write themselves — right down to the fight over the DNC. A few others worth naming. The 1920s Klan tolerated violence at the fringes; antizionists not only tolerate it but call it “resistance.” The KKK was legitimized by government and churches; antizionism by academia, media, and students. The Klan recruited where the white middle class socialized; antizionism recruits where progressives, minorities, and Gen Zers socialize.

And like the Klan, antizionism does not brand itself as hate. It brands itself as social justice, human rights, and progressivism. It sells moral righteousness, community, belonging, and the intoxicating feeling of fighting evil — all while focused entirely on what Vanderbilt professor Shaul Kelner has called the “intellectually justified, socially acceptable othering of Jews.”

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We’re all familiar with the narrative by now. A young Jew, typically between eighteen and thirty-five, often a day-school or Jewish-summer-camp grad, announces themselves as a member of the anti-Israel crowd through social-media posts or conversations with family and friends. Sometimes they don’t fully announce it at all, wary of the backlash they’ll get from their childhood communities. More often than not, these aren’t the people wearing masks and keffiyehs and harassing Jews on the street. More often than not, they identify strongly as Jewish, just without any connection to Israel. To us, that sounds like a contradiction. To them, it isn’t.

Usually, this particular kind of anti-Israel Jew is of Ashkenazi descent. They’re at least second-generation American, usually third or more. They were raised Conservative or Reform and aren’t especially observant now. They aren’t meaningfully connected to Jewish life day to day — they don’t go to temple, they aren’t involved in communal programs or on Jewish boards, or tied to legacy Jewish organizations. They don’t have children.

And yet they have strong Jewish roots. They’re Jewishly literate. They know the holidays, the prayers, the songs, the customs. They were bar and bat mitzvahed; they had Jewish wedding ceremonies. They’ve never been to Israel, or went only with family or as a student, and usually not recently.

To call these folks anti-Jewish or self-hating is to misunderstand them entirely — and to fall for the very binary being weaponized so effectively against mainstream Jews by our enemies. You’re either pro-Israel or a self-hating antisemite. As usual, the truth is far more nuanced.

Tennessee and the Pink Pony Club

Let me illustrate with a concrete example: “Pink Pony Club,” by Chappell Roan, an outspoken anti-Israel recording artist herself, which makes the parallel almost too perfect (and, full disclosure, the song’s been stuck in my head for years). It tells the story of a young, free-spirited, queer Gen-Zer who leaves behind the traditional Tennessee upbringing she still openly loves and thinks about constantly, in order to join the world of the Pink Pony Club — a special place where everyone’s a queen every single day. It’s where she belongs.

In this analogy, Tennessee is the childhood Jewish community of our young anti-Israelers. It represents their parents, teachers, synagogues, family friends — a community they share bonds of love and history with, but one they left some time ago and no longer engage with day to day. Not out of shame or spite or any fault of the hometown, but simply because it’s not the Pink Pony Club. It’s no longer their core community. It’s no longer where they belong — and there’s nothing inherently wrong or malicious about that.

The Pink Pony Club represents the leftist progressive community in which they’ve been building their adult lives. We love the term “echo chamber,” with its decidedly negative connotation, to describe people who surround themselves entirely with others who think and act as they do. But if we’re being honest, another way to say “echo chamber” is “friend group” — or “community.” Most of society works this way. You’re not a sheep or an idiot because you and your friends share values, priorities, and ideas. If your friends are heading to a restaurant, are you a sheep for going along, because you enjoy their company and trust they picked somewhere good that accounts for what you like?

As usual, when there’s discord and misunderstanding, it’s because we aren’t talking to each other. We aren’t asking questions and listening to the answers. We’re making assumptions from our own vantage point instead of discovering the truth of theirs. And the truth is that while anti-Israel Jews are obviously seen as an extreme fringe minority within the mainstream Jewish world — Tennessee — that world simply isn’t of great importance to the Pink Pony Clubbers anymore. Who matters to them are the girls and boys inside the Club, their real community. And within that circle, they’re the majority.

So when mainstream Jews wonder how these young people are standing against their own community, remember: they aren’t. Your community is not their community anymore.

How an Anti-Israel Jew Is Made

And here lies the actual problem — one that’s too late to solve at scale for the current crop, but that must be urgently corrected for the generation just behind them, and forever after. Beyond the profile I’ve already sketched, two more things have to be true for this specific kind of anti-Israel Jew to exist.

The first is estrangement: they must already be removed from the day-to-day life of the mainstream Jewish community. If there’s nothing Jewish about you except the way you were raised, that’s essentially the same as being born in Oklahoma and living in Japan. It’s where you came from, it’s a part of you, and it always will be — but it has very little to do with how you spend your time, prioritize your life, or move through the world.

The second condition is linked to the first: to be an anti-Israel Jew, you must, by default, be uneducated about what Jews are, what Israel means to Jews, and the reality of life on the ground in Israel. Anyone of any background who is genuinely educated in those three areas cannot possibly be anti-Israel. They can be anti—the current government, as enormous numbers of Diaspora and Israeli Jews certainly are. But once you have all the facts, you cannot remain against the entire country in the face of them, unless you truly are an anti-Jewish racist who wants to see us destroyed. And as we’ve established, that is not the MO for this particular group of Jews.

The Binary Trap

You might be wondering: if these Jews aren’t actively connected to the community and only know this conflict through cherry-picked facts and the privileged lens of assimilated American Jewish culture, why are they weighing in at all? It’s the right question — and the answer is exactly what I’ve discussed before. Contemporary society and the pervasiveness of social media have given people the false sense that they’re both obligated and entitled to weigh in on the topics of the day, regardless of their actual capacity to do so meaningfully.

In other words, people who — as we’ve established — know little about Israel and aren’t connected to mainstream Jewish life feel a social responsibility to weigh in on the former as representatives of the latter. And with that microphone thrust upon them, and no ability to engage deeply or with nuance, they get backed into a corner: pick a side. They know they can’t possibly be on the side of the group killing Gazan children on their TikTok feeds, so they must be on the other side. That’s the binary trap. Even if they believe — as many of these anti-Zionists do — that Israel does deserve its own sovereign state (which would, in fact, make them Zionists, but tomato, tomahto), they still consider themselves part of the anti-Israel camp, because they can’t possibly be “pro” if “pro” means siding with the army bombing babies.

I’ve come back to this point a hundred times: people with no grip on the subject dumping low-information opinions into the public sphere, with seemingly no desire to get it right, which is precisely the case. These are folks with no skin in the game, so there’s no incentive to put in the time and effort it takes to actually get it right. In their circles, they’re already right. The extra homework requires intention and effort; they simply don’t care enough to spend — if they did, they’d have done it already.

Careless People

A year ago, I met with some people from Search for Common Ground, a global conflict-resolution organization that works on the ground with key stakeholders to break geopolitical stalemates like this one. The idea that stuck with me from that meeting: it’s almost always the people least involved, least touched by a conflict, who form the most rigid opinions — and who are least helpful in bringing it to an end.

That’s our well-meaning but woefully misguided anti-Israel Jews. They remind me of Tom and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby — “careless people” who smash things and then retreat into their carelessness, leaving others to clean up the mess.

It’s maddening. It’s dangerous. It’s irresponsible. It’s shameful. But it isn’t nefarious. It isn’t Jew-hatred, it isn’t self-hatred, and honestly, it isn’t that hard to understand. These are disconnected, uneducated people, surrounded by like-minded peers, all reinforcing one another in a disconnected, uneducated worldview — one they’re not especially invested in anyway, and focus on only because progressive society says they’re supposed to.

What We Do Now

So what do we do about it? We deal with the present, and we deal with the future.

For the present, we need to stop being hypocrites. You don’t want to be painted as a baby-killer simply because you’re a Jew who naturally supports Israel. So don’t paint every anti-Israel Jew as a self-hating Hamas supporter because they don’t like watching children starve or get crushed under buildings. We need to talk to the anti-Israel Jews in our lives — using my four C’s of difficult conversation, of course, which I’ve laid out before. Communication leads to understanding, and with understanding, there’s at least room to breathe, to stay connected, to keep love and respect. The changing-of-minds part, if it happens at all, can only come after there’s mutual respect, trust, and understanding. You have to pave the road before anyone can meet you on it.

As for the future, we need to address this a few clicks upstream. The problem isn’t that disconnected, uneducated Jews are turning against Israel. The problem is that we’re failing to stop our children from becoming disconnected, uneducated Jews. The onus falls on both parents and Jewish institutions.

Jewish children must understand that we are a people — an ancient tribe — for whom religion is only one facet of all we share. It’s much harder to disconnect from your family than from your shul. They must know that Jews are not rich white Europeans, but that the world is full of Jews of every color, country, and socioeconomic background — and that even the ones who present as white do so only conditionally.

Jewish teens must know the history of our people — not just the Bible, and not just the Holocaust, but everything in between. They must understand that they stand on a single point along a long line of resilience in the face of unceasing persecution. They must know what happened to us in England and France and Spain and Russia and North Africa. They must know the ins and outs of ’48 and ’67, the fall of the Shah, the Farhud, the Intifadas, and every other pivotal moment in Israeli history — from every angle.

If all we teach them is holidays, songs, and tikkun olam, we can’t be surprised when the only things they know about being Jewish are holidays, songs, and tikkun olam.

✦ ✦ ✦

We can fix this. We have to fix this. And we will. If there’s one thing Jews know how to do, it’s endure. So we beat on, boats against the current — but we always find a way.

This article is adapted from an episode of Jonah’s award-winning show, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. To watch the video monologue, click here. To listen to this article, click here: Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

That’s not an accident. It’s a strategy.

And antizionism — the modern-day anti-Jew hate movement masquerading as social justice — runs almost entirely on it. The whole thing is built on libels: a handful of buzzwords propped up by pseudo-social science, the fudging of details, and the purposeful flattening of complex realities into oversimplified, incorrect, easily debunked lies.

So let’s debunk them and get you on the right side of history.

First, How Libels Actually Work

Libels succeed because they’re built on bits and pieces of truth — then distorted, misrepresented, and mashed together with blatant falsehoods until you’ve got a repeatable, unbeatable slogan that trades reality and nuance for stupefying simplicity.

That tiny kernel of truth is the whole trick. It’s what gives the libel its sheen of authenticity.

Think of it like this. I give you a point, and you mix it up with a bunch of other points and flatten them all into a line. Yes, my point is technically in there somewhere. But all you see is a line — and at that point, my point is besides the point.

You get the point.

Libels are also an inversion. Not only is Israel not guilty of them — the Arab enemies who invented them are. So each libel does double duty: it’s a demonizing attack on Jews and a distraction that dupes the dupable into overlooking the actual evil being perpetrated upon Jews by their very accusers.

F’ed up, right?

And they make for terrific slogans because they obey Brandolini’s Law — the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It’s far easier to say something misleading, lazy, or wrong than it is to dismantle it with facts, context, and precision.

That’s why libels win. They beat lengthy explanations. They travel faster than corrections. The person spreading them looks confident; the person debunking them looks defensive. Add the availability heuristic — whatever’s loudest and easiest to recall feels most true — and a dash of inattention blindness — missing the complexity nobody framed for you — and you’ve got yourself a solid foundation for a hate movement.

Libel #1: Apartheid

First up, alphabetically at least.

The term comes from South Africa: a systematic, intentional, and permanent domination of one racial group over another, codified through law, policy, and state power — where the subordinate group has to be retained for the dominant group’s system to keep functioning.

It’s a mouthful. But that’s the legal bar.

And here’s what I’ve found: when people accuse Israel of apartheid, they almost always fall into one or more of three camps. They don’t actually understand the term. They don’t know anything about life on the ground in Israel. Or they don’t even know which slice of land “from the river to the sea” they’re talking about.

Because that land is three distinct places: Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank — also called Judea and Samaria, or the Occupied West Bank, depending on who you ask. Let’s take them one at a time.

Israel. Anyone who’s spent ten seconds here knows the apartheid charge is ridiculous. It’s one of the most racially diverse places on the planet.

More than 20% of the country isn’t Jewish. Everybody comes from everywhere. Everyone shares the same civil rights under the same law — everyone votes, everyone can run for office, everyone litigates in the same courts.

The inclusion of Arab minorities is just that: inclusion. People seeking their ancestral home, or economic opportunity, or democracy, or LGBTQ rights. That is the opposite of a system designed to retain a laboring underclass.

Now the kernel of truth: yes, there’s structural discrimination and inequality in Israel. Why? Because it’s a country with multiple ethnic groups — and like every such country (America, India, France, Japan, Estonia, Malaysia), it’s got issues.

But only Israel gets the apartheid treatment. I wonder what’s different about that one Jewish country surrounded by 57 Arab ones.

And here’s the inversion: it’s the Arab states across the Middle East and North Africa that have come closest to actual apartheid. They suppressed and segregated Jews as dhimmis for centuries, then ethnically cleansed nearly a million of them out of communities thousands of years old — through legal strangulation, asset seizures, denationalization, and good old-fashioned violence — cutting the region’s Jewish population by 99%. But you don’t hear about that on social media.

Gaza. It doesn’t even resemble apartheid. Before the war, there wasn’t a single Jew in the territory — not since Israel pulled out unilaterally in 2005.

It’s hard to run “two laws for two peoples” when only one people is allowed inside. Talk about the blockade. Talk about airspace. Talk about whatever you want. But you can’t talk about apartheid, because it flat-out doesn’t apply.

The West Bank. Now we’re in the weeds. The Oslo Accords split it into three zones meant to be temporary — and technically still are, 30 years later.

Area A — administered and secured by the Palestinian Authority — holds the major cities like Ramallah and Nablus, where most Palestinians live.

Area B — administered by the PA, secured by Israel — covers the smaller towns and villages where the next big chunk of people live.

Area C — full Israeli civil and military control — is where most Israeli settlers live, alongside less than 5% of the Palestinian population.

It’s only in Area C that you get the thing critics point to: Israelis under Israeli civil law, Palestinians under Israeli military law. Two laws, two peoples.

And yes — that’s the closest any of this comes to one element of apartheid. But this is exactly how libels work, because it is distinctly not apartheid under the actual legal definition.

The Israeli forces there aren’t a state government, because the West Bank isn’t part of the state of Israel. The dual legal systems aren’t about race, and they aren’t about retaining a permanent labor force. They exist because settlers are civilians of an occupying power and Palestinians are not.

Are there real problems with this setup? Absolutely. But apartheid isn’t one of them.

And because we’re forever getting hit with the vilifying shortcut, we never actually get to talk about what’s really happening. We just get stuck in “it is” / “no it isn’t” — which entrenches everyone, demonizes only Israel, and gets us nowhere fast.

Libel #2: White European Colonizer

Three bad words in a row. This is the easiest one to debunk, because it’s so ludicrously untrue.

Start with “white.” Jews aren’t white. We’re not really a “race” at all — we predate and exceed that Western social construct. And most of Israel’s population doesn’t even present as white: Ethiopians, Moroccans, Yemenites, Algerians, people from Asia, from South America, from everywhere. Spend five minutes on the Tel Aviv tayelet and you’ll see it.

Now “European.” Jews aren’t from Europe. Jews are from Judea — which is modern-day Israel.

You cannot colonize a place you are from.

There is no other land Jews are collectively connected to. Every Muslim holy site in the land is literally built on top of a Jewish one. A state founded by an indigenous people — already living there or returning from exile, with no mother empire, mostly arriving as refugees fleeing for their lives — does not meet the definition of settler colonialism by any stretch.

Arabs, on the other hand, are from Arabia. Which, I probably don’t need to tell you, is not in Israel. There’s a reason there are 57 Muslim-majority countries stretched across Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Now that’s effective colonizing.

And there’s a second inversion here, because this libel lets white Westerners scratch the itch of their own white guilt — taking their shame out on some Jews thousands of miles away.

These lost leftists have been convinced they’re personally on the hook for the colonialism of centuries ago, for slavery, for things their great-great-great-grandparents weren’t alive for. Even white-presenting Jews — whose families showed up as broke, Yiddish-speaking immigrants 100 years ago — somehow feel responsible for things that happened in countries their families weren’t even living in.

That’s why the progressive response to white guilt never gets past performance. It isn’t genuine, internally felt guilt. It’s external guilt, handed to them to satisfy somebody else’s gaze. So even the ones who want to do right, in the eyes of their peers, will only go so far.

And so you get millions of hypocrites calling Israelis “white European colonizers who should give back stolen land” — while they themselves are the white European colonizers actually living on stolen land.

The kernel of truth? It’s a stretch, but fine: about half the Jews present at Israel’s founding in 1948 came from Europe. Okay.

But here’s the thing —

Israel isn’t a colonial project. It’s the most successful decolonization movement in history. A return to sovereignty for an indigenous people robbed of it for thousands of years.

Libel #3: Baby Killer

This one’s newer — a social-media favorite haunting the comments of every Jewish account from bubbies to bagel shops.

“Baby killer.” Jarring even to type.

This time, I want to start with the kernel of truth, because this one matters.

As with every army in human history, some soldiers lose their way in the fog of war. Out of vengeance, immaturity, exhaustion, power, darkness — atrocities happen. I’m certain more than one innocent child has been killed by a rogue Israeli soldier in this war.

I don’t know how many or how. But I’m as sure as I’d be in any war that the number is more than zero. And anyone who does something unforgivable should be punished — on Earth and in Heaven. Nothing out of Gaza has been forensically verified, but probability tells me at least one of these accusations is true. Maybe ten. Maybe twenty. Maybe fifty.

If you want to talk about those incidents — fine. Let’s.

But branding the entire 400,000-person IDF — or all of Israel, or any random Jew anywhere who supports it — as “baby killers” isn’t an argument. It’s a punch below the belt, designed to demonize and ostracize Jews. Full stop.

So let me put two cultures side by side, and you tell me which one sounds more like baby killers.

One teaches its kids that the highest aim in life is to die killing their enemies. The other teaches that the point of life is to make the world better.

One sends its youth to blow themselves up to murder civilians. The other releases thousands of enemy prisoners to save a single life.

One starves its own people so it can resell aid back to them at a profit. The other has likely moved more aid to an enemy population during active combat than any army in modern history.

One stashes weapons in kids’ bedrooms, hospitals, and kindergartens. The other coordinates hundreds of thousands of polio vaccines for the very children it’s accused of hunting.

One army exists only to kill its enemies. The other — three-quarters of it reservists in their 30s and 40s who left their regular-ass jobs, spouses, and kids to serve — exists only to defend its own people.

If we’re talking about killing children as policy, one side actually does that.

Hamas fights by burying itself — and hostages, and weapons — directly underneath civilians. The entire point of the strategy is for their own people to die. They attack, draw fire, hide, force civilians to stay put, and wait.

They have 500 miles of tunnels. Enough to shelter every child in Gaza and then some. They don’t. Because they don’t want to.

They want the kids to die. So Israel looks bad. So people call them the baby killers.

And on October 7th? Hamas murdered every baby they could find — in cribs, in their mothers’ arms, in their mothers’ bellies. In cold blood.

The actual baby killers are the ones running the accusation. As a deliberate strategy. They get away with the exact horror they pin on Jews — and the denial of that is what makes this libel hurt the most.

The Big One: Genocide

A libel so pervasive, so perverse, and so destructive it gets its own section. It’s the number-one excuse people use to treat Jews like garbage anytime, anywhere — and feel righteous doing it.

You know the lines. “That’s what you get when you commit genocide.” “Have you tried not supporting genocide?” “You’re complicit.” “You can’t be in politics if you won’t call it genocide.” “I’m not anti-Jew, I’m just anti-genocide.”

It is far and away the most effective weapon antizionists have for removing Jews from society — and removing Israel, the Jew of nations, from the society of nations.

Here’s the inversion, and it’s a brutal one:

“Genocide” is a word invented to describe the systematic extermination of six million Jews.

That genocide was carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators across Europe — including the highest-ranking Muslim official in Palestine, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who lived in Berlin, recruited Muslims to the Nazi cause, and whose role in the Final Solution was called “not insignificant” at Nuremberg.

How’s that for inversion.

Start with common sense.

Why does anyone who thinks Gaza is a genocide think that? Because someone told them. That’s it. Hearsay, from sources they assume are reputable — not from weighing evidence against a legal definition.

How do I know it isn’t a genocide? The opposite. From the evidence, the actions, and the law.

So who told them? The closed loop. Anti-Israel “progressive” accounts, podcasters, legacy media, cable pundits, Arab propaganda outlets, UN officials, academics, tokenized antizionist Jews, and celebrities — all citing each other in a circle.

Here’s the loop in action. Hamas — bankrolled by Iran, Qatar, and friends — manufactures a lie. Your former friend hears it from her pottery class, who heard it from the teacher, who saw it on an actor’s Instagram, who heard it on a podcast that cited a TikTok that cited an antizionist Jewish group that cited “genocide experts” that cited a UN report that cited an Amnesty report that cited another UN report that cited a BBC report that cited UNRWA — which cited the Gaza Health Ministry, a.k.a. Hamas.

Rinse and repeat. If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is.

Successful mass manipulation looks like masses of people being manipulated while you look on from a distance, in dismay.

Every link in that chain deserves its own takedown. A few quick ones:

Amnesty International. Its Middle East account, Secretary General, and UK Campaigns Manager tweeted 214 times about Gaza. 87% targeted Israel or focused on Palestinian suffering. Tweets calling for the hostages’ release: three. Tweets condemning Hamas for war crimes: one. Neither Amnesty’s main nor its MENA account posted a single tweet focused solely on Israeli victims, or an unqualified condemnation of October 7th. Human rights? More like anyone-but-Jew-man rights.

The UN. The body whose humanitarian affairs chief said “Hamas is not a terrorist group.” Whose General Assembly passed 17 resolutions against Israel in 2024 — and seven against the entire rest of the world combined. Which pushed out its own Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide for refusing to call this a genocide. That UN.

The “experts.” Anyone can join the International Association of Genocide Scholars for $30 — and plenty did, including Cookie Monster, Emperor Palpatine, and at least one dog. And the studies in their genocide resolution? Written by human rights orgs like Amnesty and B’Tselem — the token antizionist Jewish group — both of which openly redefined genocide to fit. Look it up: B’Tselem admits using a “broader analytical framework than the legal definition.” At least they admit it.

And don’t get me started on the Westerners citing Al Jazeera — Qatari-funded, and so openly extreme it’s been banned for inciting violence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, the UAE, Bahrain, and the West Bank. Too extreme for the Palestinian Authority. Just right for your yoga instructor.

Now, the actual case.

Israel didn’t commit genocide — not because I want that to be true, but because it didn’t do the things you have to do to be guilty of it. The legal bar is incredibly high, and for good reason.

You don’t blow your own element of surprise with millions of leaflets, texts, calls, roof-knocks, and interrupted broadcasts warning civilians you’re coming — if you’re trying to commit genocide.

You don’t send your own young men and women in on foot, room by room, into IEDs and snipers and booby traps, for two years — if extermination is the goal.

You don’t coordinate hundreds of thousands of polio vaccines for the children you’re supposedly trying to wipe out. You don’t open humanitarian corridors, move millions of tons of aid, or negotiate ceasefires.

And you sure don’t negotiate ceasefires if you’re the victim of a genocide.

Here’s a number that stops me cold.

The Jewish birth rate during the Holocaust was zero. Statistically zero.

Because in an actual genocide, pregnant women and babies are slaughtered. Because there’s no privacy to conceive under a staircase, or crammed into a ghetto room with twenty sick people, or inside a van being pumped full of carbon monoxide.

The estimated birth rate in Gaza in early 2025 — the supposed peak of the supposed genocide? Around 130 babies a day. Lower than usual, sure. But not zero.

Lower means war. Zero means genocide.

Now the math. Take the highest death-toll estimate floating around — about 100,000, higher even than Hamas’s own count. Say it’s true.

Subtract natural deaths over two years at pre-war rates (~16,000), and you’re at 84,000. Subtract terrorist deaths at the most conservative estimate (~15% of the count, around 12,600), and you’re at ~71,400 — still higher than Hamas claims. A horrible, sickening number that never should have happened. Stay with me anyway.

Israel is estimated to have dropped 70,000 metric tons of bombs on Gaza. Which means that for a military supposedly running an extermination campaign — in one of the densest urban areas on Earth, whose own leaders locked civilians out of the tunnels, whose neighbor Egypt refused refugees — roughly one civilian died for every 2,200 pounds of bombs dropped.

2,200 pounds of explosives. One death.

Take the names off it. Is that what genocide by the most precise military on the planet looks like?

The legal part.

The 1948 Genocide Convention — written, of course, after the genocide of the Jews — defines genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” via one of five acts: killing, serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting destructive conditions, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children.

That’s the definition antizionists cite. What they don’t mention is that decades of cases at the International Court of Justice have refined it — because on its own it’s so broad it could mean almost anything.

Their favorite move is the phrase “in part.” To them, any number of Gazan deaths is genocide, as long as the “intent” is there — and they’ll point to the closed loop, or to some rabid official’s rhetoric, as proof.

But that ignores the “only reasonable inference” standard. For intent to count as genocidal, genocide has to be the only reasonable explanation — not a reasonable one. The only one.

Call me crazy, but: your territory invaded, 250 citizens kidnapped, 1,200 murdered in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — that seems like a pretty plausible reason a military might enter Gaza, after 20 years of staying out. (It also sounds a lot like an attempted genocide. Inversion number three.)

Then there’s the “substantial part” requirement — it’s not enough to target a part; it has to be substantial. Look at the scale of real genocides:

Holocaust: 40% of all Jews on Earth. Rwanda: 70% of all Tutsis, in 100 days. Armenia: ~55% of all Armenians. Gaza: a civilian death toll around 2% of Gaza’s population — about 0.5% of all Palestinians alive.

40%. 70%. 55%. Versus under 1%. That’s not “substantial” unless we’re redefining that word too.

And courts have held it’s not enough that conditions could lead to a group’s destruction — that has to be the sole intent behind creating them. So yes, Israel badly botched parts of the aid situation. But it also delivered more wartime aid to an enemy than ever before, with a legitimate aim: stopping Hamas from stealing and reselling it. That alone kills “sole intent.”

Why this libel really exists.

Look at how the word actually gets used, and the motive shows. It’s there to punish and “other” Jews for the crime of being Jews. Any hatred, anytime, at any level, gets a pass — because “genocide,” and because you, random Jewish person, did it by proxy.

Unless you publicly amputate from your identity the completely natural connection to the world’s only Jewish state — where most Jews live, around which our calendar, holidays, and liturgy revolve, the one place on Earth we’re actually indigenous to — you’re guilty.

This collective guilt, for a crime against humanity that didn’t even happen, applies to no other people on Earth. Not even people who actually committed genocide. Jews are no more responsible for the Israeli government — real actions or imagined — than the bigots throwing these charges are responsible for their own governments.

It’s one big hypocritical shit sandwich.

And the “ongoing genocide” thing.

Some say it’s been going on for decades. Some say it started the day after October 7th. Some pick other dates. Some insist it’s still happening, after the war officially ended.

That chaos is the tell.

You cannot name another genocide in history with no clear beginning and no clear end.

Rwanda, the Holocaust, Armenia, Bosnia, Srebrenica, Cambodia — even slow burns like Darfur — all have boundaries in time. Not this one. Because it isn’t one. It’s a libel laid over a real, ongoing conflict between two responsible parties, punctuated by sharp bursts of war.

As for “ongoing” — by Hamas’s own numbers, about 500 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in the months since the October ceasefire. That’s roughly four a week. If four deaths a week is a genocide, the word means nothing. Any number of deaths, over any stretch of time, is simply not what genocide describes.

And here’s the cruel genius of it: defending yourself with death counts is macabre. You cannot look compassionate while saying “actually, only half that many civilians died.” It won’t win anyone over — because the goal was never the count. The goal is to other Jews, and someone who sounds like they’re rationalizing dead civilians is easy to cast out.

Worst of all? The smug, uninformed people burying their heads in the sand are the ones actually complicit in the Palestinian deaths they claim to mourn. By swallowing the propaganda and aiming their rage at Jews, they keep jihadist terrorists in business — guaranteeing more dead Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Civilians give Hamas physical cover. Westerners give it narrative cover.

That’s the worst inversion of all.

So What Do We Do?

Look — I know this is exhausting. That’s the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, live: they throw one word, and I have to write three thousand to take it apart.

Will the people who most need this read it? No. Would it change their minds if they did? Probably not. But if you’ve had doubts — if you’re surrounded by that closed loop, or love someone trapped inside it — I hope this puts them to rest.

So here’s what we do: fight back.

They’ve got propaganda. We’ve got the truth. They’ve never had to argue their case, because everyone around them just nods along. They don’t even realize their entire worldview is secondhand — never corroborated, never proven.

So make them prove it. With evidence. With case law. Not “because someone said so.”

And at the very least, take some courage from all of this. Don’t be afraid to tell them, flatly, that they’re wrong — and that no slogan is going to change that.

They’re the ones who’ve been lied to. They’re the ones who’ve been manipulated. Not you. You’ve got this one right. So as lousy as these libels feel, feel good about that.

This essay is adapted from the ‘ABC of Libels’ monologue of Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. The full audio and video are available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, and are available at beingjewishpodcast.com

There is a cartoon that comes to mind often when undertaking the work of Jewish advocacy in a world that can be less than kind to Jews. It shows a single figure standing before a sea of thousands, all staring him down. And the figure says:

This is what moral clarity feels like in 2026. At times, the advocate will be placed at odds with the majority. Told that they are brainwashed when, in fact, they have resisted the brainwashing. To be right in this work is to stand against a tide of people who are convinced you are wrong.

The Jeremiah Effect

Which brings us to the third and final pillar of the Mental Iron Dome — a concept worth naming The Jeremiah Effect.

The Book of Jeremiah can be found in the section of the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, called Nev’im — the Prophets. Jeremiah lived during the final decades of the Kingdom of Judah, biblical Israel, and was present for one of the most catastrophic moments in Jewish history: the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

Jeremiah’s defining trait was his moral clarity in isolation. He warned Judah that its corruption would lead to destruction, while all the other leaders assured a future of peace and security. As a reward for his stance, Jeremiah was ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned, and ostracized by his own community — yet he refused to deny what he knew to be true, without expectation of success or popularity.

He remained steadfast in his compassion for his people, grieving their doom even as he warned them of it.

This is the experience of moral clarity in a manipulated world. Not arrogance. Not obstinance. Just the unbearable loneliness of knowing something true that everyone around you has been convinced is false.

The Oldest Inversion

One of the oldest inversions leveled against Jews is that we are a secret cabal of conspirators, plotting to control minds and take over the world. When in reality, it is our enemies who conspire — who work together to concoct and skillfully disseminate a malicious and demonizing narrative meant to turn the world against us.

Consider it objectively for a moment.

This inversion of reality — where the truth seems isolating and consensus seems false — is not accidental. It is the cost of refusing a lie that hypnotizes the many. This is what it feels like. And Jews engaged in this work must prepare themselves mentally to face that feeling without being thrown by it.

How Can So Many Be So Wrong?

The natural question is: how can this happen? How can so many people be so wrong on something so easy to get right?

Part of the answer, as explored in the previous installment of this series, is the closed-loop antizionist ecosystem. Social media and academia have been heavily and strategically pumped full of foreign money from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran. Why? Because those are the two arenas where young people spend all of their time. It is no wonder that Gen Z has become the most anti-Jewish generation in nearly a century.

On the other hand, there are institutions — the UN, legacy media outlets, human rights organizations — to which we mistakenly ascribe an aura of moral perfection. But institutions are, of course, just groups of people. Nothing more, nothing less. Flawed, biased, agenda-driven people. To treat such institutions as heavenly bodies incapable of wrongdoing is to be either naive or blissfully cocooned in the privilege of a life as yet untouched by the wicked machinations of these organizations.

But what about the people closest to us — friends, family, teachers, colleagues — who studied Nazi Germany in school, who know how dangerous and effective propaganda can be? How are they still falling prey to it?

The answer is a question: What do you think Nazi Germany looked like? What does it mean when we say that all the politicians, the intelligentsia, the academics, and the journalists all sang the same anti-Jewish tune?

It looked like this.

Because of the way our brains work, we are essentially only able to study history as spectators — never from the vantage point of participants in its next chapter. The reason for this is a set of cognitive biases that deserve naming.

The Three Cognitive Biases That Make History Invisible

Historical Exceptionalism

We arrogantly assume that our moment is fundamentally different from the past — even when structural conditions are basically the same and the warning signs are identical. We believe humans of the past were constrained by ignorance, primitive norms, or propaganda. But not us. We are enlightened, informed, and morally superior — totally removed from those other people, who were, by the way, basically our grandparents. As a result, we treat history as interesting, but not diagnostic.

Moral Self-Licensing

“Because I learned the history, I would never repeat it.” Or the “They Were Monsters” Fallacy: “If I were there, I would have acted differently.” History clearly teaches us, again and again, that our most catastrophic failures were carried out by ordinary people — not uniquely evil monsters from another world — acting entirely within societal norms, not outside them.

Temporal Distance Bias

Events far away in time are processed abstractly, while events close to us are processed emotionally and situationally. We analyze history at a remove, with a clear sense of causality and morality — while experiencing the present from inside it. Our brains resist collapsing those two modes into one, so the same pattern can be understood entirely differently, simply depending on when it occurs.

What This Feels Like — And What It Means

Those who hold to what is right and true will be told they are biased, emotional, reactionary, blinded by identity, or paid by AIPAC. They are not — unless, of course, they work at AIPAC.

The confusion, the isolation, the sense that reality has inverted — these are not signs of error. They are symptoms of rectitude.

The Jeremiah Effect names this experience. It is the third pillar of the Mental Iron Dome precisely because it must be understood before it is felt — or it will shake even the most clear-eyed advocate off their footing. Understand it. Expect it. Be ready for it.

The Mental Iron Dome Is Complete

Full comprehension and command of these three concepts will safeguard moral clarity in an impregnable fortress — one that no amount of propaganda, social pressure, or institutional authority can breach.

The Three Pillars — A Summary

1 Palestinianism. When the Palestinian leadership decides they want a state more than they want Jews not to have one, the conflict will end. Everything else is noise.

2 Antizionism is not a rational intellectual position. It is the Othering of Jews from the Left — a racist anti-Jew hate movement. Set it. Forget it. Slam that door closed.

3 The Jeremiah Effect. The confusion, the isolation, the sense that reality has inverted — these are not signs of error. They are symptoms of rectitude. You are not lost. You are early.

Armed with a Mental Iron Dome, the work becomes clear: get out there and reclaim the truth from those who seek to deny it.

There is no obligation to convince everyone. No obligation to win the internet. In fact, winning the argument is not the point at all. The point is to carry the armor — to withstand the fight, day after day, week after week, year after year.

Ignorance, laziness, and hate are their weapons. Clarity is ours.

And there is something worth remembering about that cartoon. The one figure standing before the sea of thousands. Truth has never needed a crowd. It has only ever needed people willing to stand still when the crowd moves.

When you feel alone — remember: You are not lost. You are early.
All of history’s great movements had to start somewhere. The only question is:

Will you be part of this one?

There is a version of antizionism that sounds reasonable on paper. It presents itself as a principled intellectual position — rooted in legitimate historical grievance, political critique, and concern for human rights. Walk through a pro-Palestine protest, however, or spend a few minutes on social media, and the gap between that stated premise and its actual practice becomes impossible to ignore.

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Antizionism, in practice, has as much to do with opposition to Zionism as antisemitism has to do with opposition to Semitism. Which is to say: nothing at all.

Operationally, antizionism is not a debate about the merits of a Jewish state. It is a coordinated effort to bar Jews — socially, professionally, culturally, and physically — from full participation in society.

Blocking Jewish college students from class. Defacing synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. Boycotting Jewish authors, artists, athletes, and musicians. These are the day-to-day activities of the antizionist movement — and none of them have anything to do with the geopolitics of the Middle East.

How Good People Justify Bigotry

The more interesting question is how people who genuinely consider themselves progressive and morally conscious are able to participate in — or tacitly endorse — behavior that is, by any honest standard, bigoted. The answer lies in the construction of a supervillain.

The figure of “the Zionist” has been built through decades of repetition into something so uniquely evil, so irredeemably demonic, that it no longer registers as human. Once a group has been sufficiently dehumanized, the violence and exclusion directed at them stops feeling like bigotry — it starts feeling like justice.

This is not a new strategy. It is, in fact, the oldest strategy in the history of antisemitism — and it has always followed the same logic.

The Pattern Across History

Medieval Period

The creed: Christianity

The blood libel painted Jews as murderous killers of Christian children — enemies of the faith’s most sacred values. Persecution of Jews was reframed as a righteous act of religious protection.

1930s Germany

The creed: Science and racial purity

The Nazis deployed pseudoscientific claims that Jewish blood was literally contaminating the German race. Antisemitism was reframed as a biological necessity — a matter of national survival.

Today

The creed: Human rights and social justice

Antizionism portrays Israel — and by extension, Jews — as the embodiment of everything the progressive world opposes: colonialism, apartheid, genocide. Jew hatred is reframed as antiracist advocacy.

The pattern is consistent across every era: take whatever moral framework a society holds most sacred, then construct a version of Jews as its perfect enemy. Persecution stops being unjust and becomes, instead, a noble undertaking — the defense of good against evil.

The libels change. The logic does not.

Worth noting: the accusations leveled at Jews and Israel — colonizer, apartheid state, perpetrator of genocide — are not only false. They are, in each case, far more accurately applied to those making them. Western antizionists often carry the legacy of genuine colonial histories and the displacement of indigenous peoples. The most extreme actors in the region, who on October 7th killed every child they encountered, are the ones invoking genocide as their cause. This inversion — accusing others of what you are actually doing — is a feature of the strategy, not a coincidence.

Why the Lies Feel True

The reason these libels gain traction is not because they are persuasive on the merits. It is because they are repeated, relentlessly, across every media environment in which people spend their time. Repetition, as cognitive psychology has established through decades of research, produces what is known as the Illusory Truth Effect: repeated statements feel more true over time, even when the listener knows they are false.

The scale of that repetition, when it comes to Israel, is not accidental.

6,656 vs. 80.

In the first nine months after October 7th, the New York Times published 6,656 articles about the war in Gaza. In the same nine-month window during America’s war against ISIS in Iraq, the same paper published 80. Syria’s civil war — 13 years of conflict — generated 5,400 articles in total.

More staff on Israel than Russia, China, and India combined.

The Associated Press — whose coverage determines what most other outlets run — employs more journalists to cover a country of 10 million people than it does to cover three countries with a combined population of over 3 billion.

This is not journalism responding to news. It is a volume strategy — and it works. Repetition does not require proof. It requires only presence and time.

How Antizionism Gets Its Credibility

Every mainstream iteration of Jew hatred throughout history has shared one feature: institutional legitimacy. Medieval blood libels were endorsed by the Church. Nazi racial theory had the backing of academics and scientists. Antizionism has college professors, Hollywood figures, UN officials, and human rights organizations.

These institutions form a closed feedback loop — each citing the others, each conferring credibility on the same set of libels and behaviors. As Vanderbilt University Jewish Studies professor Shaul Kelner has described it, the result is an intellectually justified, socially acceptable Othering of Jews whose social base is in the professional class.

Antisemitism vs. Antizionism — The Same Hatred, Different Packaging

Both forms of Jew hatred operate through the same mechanism — the exclusion and dehumanization of Jews — but they present themselves very differently depending on the political environment in which they operate.

Antisemitism — from the Right

• Low cultural register

• Jews are not white enough

• Jews must leave Europe

• The Nazis had the right idea

Antizionism — from the Left

• High cultural register

• Jews are too white

• Jews must go back to Europe

• Jews are the new Nazis

Since the Holocaust, Western education has focused almost exclusively on recognizing Jew hatred from the right. The left-wing variant has gone largely untaught — which is why so many Jews have walked directly into antizionist spaces, unaware that their inclusion was conditional and instrumental. It is worth remembering that Soviet antizionism successfully suppressed Jewish identity and community life less than a century ago. The mechanism is not new. Only the branding is.

What Antizionist Hate Actually Looks Like

Recognizing antizionist hate does not require expertise in Israeli history or Middle Eastern politics. It requires pattern recognition. The following behaviors are not political expression — they are expressions of anti-Jewish racism, regardless of how they are framed.

Libels — using terms like apartheid, colonizer, baby killer, ethnostate, or genocide to describe Israel and its people without a factual basis constitutes racist dehumanization.

Slurs — terms like “Isra-hell,” “Zio,” or “Zionazi” are racial slurs. Their use signals hate, not critique.

Dismissing Jewish voices — responding to any positive statement about Jews or Israel by claiming it is “paid propaganda” is a tactic to silence rather than engage.

Vandalism — defacing Jewish institutions, businesses, or personal property with political slogans is an act of targeted harassment, not protest.

Litmus tests — requiring Jews to denounce Israel or renounce their connection to Jewish peoplehood as the price of inclusion is a form of coerced identity suppression.

Explaining Jewishness to Jews — insisting on the authority to define what Jews are, what Zionism means, or who counts as a legitimate Jewish voice is a form of intellectual domination.

Calls for ethnic cleansing — chanting for the removal of Israelis from their land, or for violence against Jews globally, is incitement. It is not protected political speech.

Refusal of service — denying service to someone in an Uber, restaurant, classroom, or therapist’s office solely because they are Jewish or Israeli is illegal discrimination.

Mob harassment — masked groups targeting synagogues, hospitals, and campuses to intimidate Jewish communities is organized hate activity, regardless of stated political justification.

Physical violence — assaulting or killing Jews for being Jewish requires no further analysis. It is the endpoint of the dehumanization described above.

Mental Iron Dome — Pillar Two

Moral clarity requires closing the door to doubt — not out of arrogance, but out of certitude arrived at through honest examination. Antizionism is a racist anti-Jewish hate movement. The evidence supports no other conclusion. Once that is understood, it does not need to be relitigated each time it is encountered. It needs to be recognized and named.

The dissemination of anti-Jew ideas functions very much the same way. We are under a relentless barrage of anti-Jew, anti-Israel messaging, all day, every day, from all around us — but unlike Hamas rockets, this weaponry is invisible, and we don’t get an alert on our phones to warn us when it’s coming. Even one of these mental missiles getting through can cause extreme damage.

In order to stop them, we need to break their cloaking abilities, build up our own internal warning system, and safeguard our minds where truth and clarity reside.

Today, I’m here to help you build your own Mental Iron Dome — to provide you with the three essential, unassailable, missile-proof ideas that comprise the foundation upon which your impenetrable fortress of moral clarity is to be built.

We Have Enemies. And They Have a Strategy.

As Western liberal societies, we naively — arrogantly — ignorantly continue to believe that the entire world operates on our same fixed set of moral values. That everyone plays by the same rules we do.

They don’t. That’s not reality.

Our enemies — Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, supported by proxy militias and other opportunistic states like Turkey and Qatar — are united in destabilizing Western power, liberal norms, and Israeli sovereignty. This is not a conspiracy theory. Qatar invests billions of dollars in American education. Russia interferes in our presidential elections. China uses TikTok to sow discord. This is common knowledge.

Like it or not, we are living in an age of mass manipulation — our institutions, media, education, and culture are being subverted through the deliberate use of emotional triggers, identity framing, and narrative control to steer our perceptions and actions while preserving the illusion of independent judgment.

The Hidden Engine: Repetition

To understand how to protect ourselves, we turn to former KGB propaganda specialist Yuri Bezmenov and his concept of demoralization — whereby a society’s ability to recognize truth, defend itself, or believe in its own institutions is eroded by nefarious actors.

The hidden engine of demoralization is repetition.

1. What is repeated becomes familiar. What is familiar becomes credible. What becomes credible no longer needs to be defended. Repetition doesn’t require proof — only presence.

2. The Illusory Truth Effect: Repeated statements feel more true, even if they are known to be false. This is one of the strongest, most replicated findings in behavioral science. It works on experts. It works on people who have been lied to before. It works without argument.

3. Narrative entrenchment: Once a narrative has been embraced, to challenge it feels disruptive, annoying, or easily dismissed as partisan. This is why propaganda thrives on slogans, binaries, memes, buzzwords — the aim is not nuance or truth, just stuff that’s easy to repeat.

4. Pluralistic ignorance: When an idea appears ubiquitous, we assume everyone else believes it. Silence is interpreted as agreement, and public dissent feels risky and lonely — so even when many people privately know something isn’t true, they don’t speak up.

Pillar One: Palestinianism

Now that we’ve named what we’re up against, we’re ready to start building our Mental Iron Dome.

The first pillar we have to lock in is the understanding, without a shred of doubt, that:

If the Arabs wanted a Palestinian state more than they wanted to destroy the Jewish one, there would be a Palestinian state. Period.

This simple notion is what the entire Israeli-Arab conflict is about. Not because I said so, but because the Palestinians have said so, literally and openly for decades, supported by every action they have taken for the past 100 years.

The Evidence

Let’s look at the very first partition plan the Arabs were offered in 1937 under the Peel Commission — Britain’s initial attempt to deal with the mandate they had over the territory known as Palestine. The British plan offered Jews about 18% of the territory, with all of the rest going to the Arabs, minus a British-controlled corridor through Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Moreover, nearly every time peace has seemingly been on the table, the Palestinian response has been to initiate violence against the Jews. The War of Independence. The Second Intifada. The disengagement from Gaza.

Ask yourself: Are these the actions of people who just want a state if only they’d be granted one? Or the actions of people who want to eradicate Jews first, state later?

What Israel Actually Is

Israel was created the same way nearly every other country on Earth was created: by a nationalist religious or ethnic group — in the Jews’ case, both — building the foundations of statehood in the geographic location they’re connected to, and then having their new state recognized by other nations around the world.

Israel is a country. Not an experiment, not an ideology, not a project. It is a country, like all the others, and it is not getting reversed any more than any other country on Earth is.

What Isn’t the Reason

The existence of Israel is not the reason there’s no Palestinian state. Lack of financial or public support is not the reason. The Occupied West Bank is not the reason. Bibi Netanyahu is not the reason.

The only reason you consider any of these as legitimate explanations is because you’ve been distracted into doing so by mass manipulation. You have been conned into embracing repetition as reasoning.

Engaging with anything but the core idea is like shuffling chairs on the deck of the Titanic. The iceberg is Palestinianism — and until Palestinian society accepts the presence of Jews in some part of the land to which we are indigenous, there will be no two states.

Ideas like “from the river to the sea,” “right of return,” support for UNRWA, the generational inheritance of refugee status — these are the lifelines of Palestinianism. And our focus has to be on dismantling these ideas. Not just for the safety and security of the Jewish people — but for the Palestinians as well, who will never live in a state of their own as long as the Western World keeps their leaders doped up on billions in welfare and long-held dreams of Jewish extinction on life support.

It has never mattered what Israeli government is in power — right, left, or center. The Palestinians said no to all of them.

Mental Iron Dome — Pillar One

Next in this series

Part 2: Antizionism — the contemporary anti-Jew hate movement masquerading as social justice. And why is the only reason you’ve ever questioned whether the libels might be true repetition.

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