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Things are only going to get worse for Jews from here
I spent last week compiling a summary of news from the past year for the American Jewish Year Book, an annual project that allowed me to zoom out on 2025 — and the results are bleak.
Even as my reporting has often uncovered evidence that the most doomer takes on contemporary antisemitism are wrong, key signals are pointing toward things getting worse for Jews, and antisemitic attitudes growing with few checks.
The country’s largest Jewish advocacy groups are downplaying its rise on the right, afraid of appearing partisan and damaging ties with the Trump administration. At the same time, the Jewish establishment — the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, the Conference of Presidents and other big institutional players — refuses to acknowledge any distinction between Jewish identity and Zionism, making it difficult to influence the growing share of Americans whose political turn against Israel sometimes slips into antisemitism.
Progressives, meanwhile, tend to view antisemitism as a secondary or tertiary issue — if not a complete distraction from their priorities. And their work on antisemitism is often stymied by an inability to understand the complex relationship that most American Jews have with Israel.
So despite Jewish organizations’ massive investment in combating antisemitism — and huge levels of concern among Jews — there are shockingly few meaningful checks on growing antisemitic sentiment across the political spectrum, and little indication that such checks will emerge in the near future.
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The antisemitic turn on the right has not been subtle. President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused American Jews of disloyalty, and his administration is stocked with high-level appointees who have either espoused antisemitism — Elon Musk thinks Jews are destroying Western civilization, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson believes Leo Frank was guilty of the crimes he was lynched for and White House official Paul Ingrassia has a self-professed “Nazi streak” — or fraternized with avowed antisemites, like FBI director Kash Patel’s repeated appearances on a podcast whose host called for the mass deportation of Jews.
Prominent Trump supporters in the media — like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Theo Von — have either made antisemitic comments or brought on offensive guests.
And data has consistently shown that conservatives hold the most openly offensive views about Jews, and anecdotes suggesting the same continue to pile up. At a recent roundtable of young conservatives hosted by the Manhattan Institute, three of the four responses to the question “What do you think of Jewish people?” included: “They’ve got Hollywood on lock,” “Don’t they own, like, a ton of the media, and, like, just kind of everything?”; and, “I would say a force for evil.”
Yet none of the country’s largest Jewish advocacy groups have directed their energy at addressing conservative antisemitism or the Trump administration’s tolerance of at least certain forms of antisemitism.
Instead, Eric Fingerhut, chief of the Jewish Federations of North America, cautioned his network’s members against signing an April statement criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to antisemitism and urged synagogues to apply for federal security funding, even though it appeared to prohibit them from engaging in diversity work. When asked about Patel, the FBI director who cozied up to an antisemitic podcaster, Fingerhut called on Congress to significantly boost his budget.
I don’t mean to single out Fingerhut — his approach is the same as almost every other major Jewish establishment figure; most have spent the past year focused on opposing progressive groups like teachers unions, student protesters and politicians like Zohran Mamdani.
Paradoxically, focusing on criticizing the left rather than the right helps avoid allegations of partisanship because the Democratic Party and major Jewish leaders are often aligned on Israel. It’s not viewed as an attack on the Democrats for Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL chief, to compare student protesters to ISIS terrorists; President Joe Biden basically agreed with Greenblatt that the demonstrators were antisemitic, even if he used more restrained language. Kamala Harris refused to allow a Palestinian speaker at last year’s Democratic convention and the party’s top brass dragged their feet or outright refused to endorse Mamdani in the New York City mayor’s race.
Trump, on the other hand, has steadfastly refused to condemn his movement’s antisemitic wing. Carlson delivered a keynote address at the Republican convention last summer and Trump defended him after he interviewed Nick Fuentes, a notorious Holocaust denier. And Vice President JD Vance has dismissed examples of overt antisemitism on the right as “edgy, offensive jokes.”
This dynamic makes a full frontal assault on the antisemitic elements of the right much more fraught for Jewish groups that want to maintain a working relationship with the Trump administration.
And they do want to maintain that relationship — in large part because the current administration is aligned with the Jewish establishment in going after the anti-Zionist left.
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On the other side of the political spectrum, I’ve seen two problematic tendencies increase over the past year.
The first is that Jews are often thought of as a privileged group. This can minimize concern about antisemitism. (“Sure, it’s bad, but not as bad as other forms of discrimination.”) Or it can fuel suspicion that claims of antisemitism are just a smokescreen for the powerful elite to shield themselves from criticism.
The second factor is a misunderstanding of the Jewish relationship to Israel. Some wrongly assume Jews all support Israel, conflating Jewishness with the Zionism they oppose. Others wrongly insist Israel has nothing to do with Jewishness, making it OK to demonize every Jewish person who refuses to unequivocally denounce Israel’s existence.
These combine to create a perilous climate for Jews, fueling animus toward Jewish targets with only the faintest connection to the Israeli state’s actions in Gaza — a student dinner hosted by Baruch College’s Hillel, a Minneapolis synagogue on the anniversary of Oct. 7, a Cincinnati rabbi slated to speak at an anti-Nazi rally before organizers determined that his liberal Zionism made him a “white supremacist.” These are only a few examples among many small indignities experienced on college campuses and in workplaces by Jews with even slightly complicated views about Israel.
The porous boundary between opposition to Israel and antisemitism is especially stark online. “It was promised to them 3,000 years ago” — a meme originally poking fun at the ancestral Jewish claim to modern Israel — has transformed into a way to mock supposed Jewish entitlement, disconnected from any political valence. (“A video of Jewish content creators joking about bringing free shampoo home from a hotel?” my colleague Mira Fox explained over the summer, “well, they must think those toiletries were promised to them 3,000 years ago.”)
When Jews raise concerns about this rhetoric, the response is often a mix of the factors I mentioned above: A little antisemitism is no big deal because Jews aren’t oppressed, or it’s not antisemitic because it’s only a dig at Zionists. And, in cases where the vitriol is aimed at Jews that have nothing to do with Israel, well, they’re probably Zionists.
Some young leaders on the far-right, including Fuentes, have sought to join criticism of Israel with explicit antisemitism. But, in contrast, young progressives driving the political turn away from Israel remain less likely to agree with classic antisemitic tropes than conservatives, and more likely to say antisemitism is a problem for society.
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This should make them a relatively easy audience to reach.
But rather than wage a battle for the hearts and minds of these progressives, the largest Jewish organizations have opted for blunt force. They’ve joined with the Trump administration to pressure universities to arrest, expel and, in some cases, deport student protesters, and implement strict new rules for demonstrations. And they’ve sought to legislate definitions of antisemitism that include criticism toward Israel, while outlawing school curriculum that they believe is biased.
Some of these policies may be sound. But, with perhaps the sole exception of Robert Kraft’s quixotic public service announcements about antisemitism — one features Shaquille O’Neal calling for a “timeout on hate” — none of these efforts focus on convincing people to change their minds about Jews.
Instead, they effectively aim to outlaw or restrict expression of negative views toward Israel, leaving whatever harmful beliefs about Jews that might be tied to those positions to fester in silence.
There are a variety of projects that seek to explain, first of all, why progressives should care about antisemitism and, second, how to critique Israel without slipping into antisemitism, including The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, Safety Through Solidarity and PARCEO training.
But these efforts receive little funding. Amid the hundreds of millions of dollars that philanthropists are throwing at countering antisemitism, why are projects made by and for progressives left out?
The reason, I suspect, is that the Jewish establishment is not interested in teaching people how to oppose the existence of a Jewish state in Israel without engaging in antisemitism. To them, opposition to Zionism is itself antisemitism, which erodes their credibility with anti-Zionists who genuinely want to avoid antisemitism.
Nobody is going to listen to a Jewish organization that says, “Your political ideology is always going to be antisemitic — and I’m going to try to get your school to expel you for promoting it — but in the meantime could you please try to be careful about using these slogans because they make some of your Jewish peers feel uncomfortable?”
This approach has convinced some progressives that “antisemitism” just means criticism of Israel — in part because prominent Jewish leaders describe it this way — rather than a genuine form of bigotry.
Ostracizing Israel’s harshest critics might have worked when anti-Zionism was a fringe belief. But the aftermath of Oct. 7 heralded a near-consensus among liberals, including many Jews, that Israel is a villain on the world stage. Attempting to simply ban people from expressing these views — or taking away their phones — is not going to help address the antisemitism that can get mixed in with animus toward Israel.
The good news is that things are still not as bad as some would have you believe. Mamdani, who became a fixation for many Jewish leaders during the race for mayor, has been remarkably conciliatory to the Jewish establishment, modeling a version of anti-Zionism that mostly avoids some of the pitfalls I’ve outlined. And Jews still have a place in the mainstream conservative movement, which has directed most of its ire toward other minorities — after all, it was Somali immigrants, not Jews, who Trump recently referred to as “garbage.”
For now, this explosion of antisemitism remains mostly — though, tragically, not entirely — confined to feelings of social alienation rather than violence or systemic discrimination.
But that only buys time to find meaningful remedies that, to date, have been few and far between.
The post Things are only going to get worse for Jews from here appeared first on The Forward.
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Somaliland already operates as a de facto state. So why is Israel’s recognition of it so controversial?
Last week, Israel became the first nation in the world to recognize Somaliland as a country, prompting global outcry and an emergency meeting of the United Nations.
The de facto state on the northern coast of the Horn of Africa has long operated independent of Somalia, but before Israel’s announcement, its sovereignty had not been officially recognized by any UN members.
After the collapse of Siad Barre’s regime in Somalia in 1991, Somaliland declared independence. The breakaway region has its own democratically elected government, military, currency, license plates and passports. It is often lauded for bringing relative stability to the region, with a record of peaceful transfers of power, though it is still only rated “partly free” by Freedom House amid crackdowns on journalists.
Somaliland also benefits from relative social cohesion, with the Isaaq clan comprising the majority of the population— a factor which has contributed to its stability in a clan-based society, according to Seth Kaplan, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who has researched Somaliland.
Somalia, however, considers Somaliland to be part of its territory, and slammed Israel’s recognition as an “illegal act” that undermines the region’s stability.
Is the recognition illegal?
There is no international law that bars countries from unilaterally recognizing a state. But countries generally consider international norms, including deference to the preservation of existing borders so as to prevent cascading secessionist conflicts.
The African Union has been especially committed to this principle, adamant that post-colonial borders remain intact to avoid instability and ever-changing lines.
“Any attempt to undermine the unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Somalia runs counter to the fundamental principles of the African Union and risks setting a dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications for peace and stability across the continent,” Nuur Mohamud Sheekh, spokesperson for the African Union, wrote in a statement.
In Somalia’s case, its border disputes trace to the late 19th century, when the north was governed by Britain as British Somaliland, the south by Italy as Italian Somaliland, and the area that is now Djibouti by France as French Somaliland. In 1960, the British and Italian territories gained independence and united to form the Somali Republic.
In Somalia, tens of thousands of people protested against the recognition, many waving Somali flags. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, also called Israel’s move to recognize Somaliland illegal.
At the same time, there is no blanket ban on recognizing breakaway states that challenge existing borders: Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and more than 100 UN member states, including the United States, recognize it. Serbia does not, nor do five European Union countries, which have cited concerns that recognition could embolden separatist movements within their own countries.
Meanwhile, U.S. ambassador to the UN Tammy Bruce accused the international body of applying double standards when it comes to unilateral recognition, noting that several countries have independently recognized Palestine as a state without triggering emergency UN meetings.
Somaliland’s bid for recognition is bolstered by the fact that it already functionally operates as a relatively stable, autonomous state, according to Kaplan. It meets many of the widely cited criteria for statehood, including a permanent population, a defined territory, and an independent government.
“In general, I support those norms of not recognizing breakaway states,” Kaplan said. “But if there’s one country or one state in the world that deserves it, this would be the one place.”
Israel’s goals
For others, resistance to Somaliland’s independence appears less driven by objections to Somaliland’s sovereignty than by opposition to Israel’s goals in the region.
While Israel’s exact motivations remain unclear, Kaplan said the move seems intended to secure a strategically important foothold in the Horn of Africa. As part of the recognition, Somaliland has agreed to join the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Muslim-majority nations.
“From the Israeli perspective, this is going to be a base that it can leverage to get a better handle on Yemen, as well as anything that Iran or other rivals of Israel might be doing in the Red Sea,” Kaplan said.
There is also fear about ulterior Israeli motives, with Israel having reportedly contacted Somaliland about sending Palestinians forcibly displaced from Gaza to the region. Somaliland denied that such a discussion took place.
Even in Somaliland, some residents expressed disappointment that the long-awaited recognition came from Israel of all countries, though most coverage has depicted scenes of celebration.
“It would be less controversial if Ethiopia or the UAE had done it,” Kaplan said. “But for the people of Somaliland, you can understand why they might be happy with this decision by the Israeli government.”
The post Somaliland already operates as a de facto state. So why is Israel’s recognition of it so controversial? appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Call for Division’: Australian Muslim Council Sparks Outrage Over Push to Block Israeli President’s Visit
People stand near flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honor the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone
The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) has come under widespread scrutiny after seeking to block Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia to commemorate the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre, a move that Jewish leaders have denounced as a “call for division.”
In a press release, ANIC called on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to revoke next month’s invitation for the Israeli leader to visit Sydney, where he intends to honor the victims of the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration that killed 15 people and injured at least 40 others.
ANIC accused Herzog of being “implicated in widespread war crimes and breaches of international law” amid Israel’s defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, adding he should not be “welcomed or afforded legitimacy” in Australia.
“The president is directly implicated in grave war crimes and acts of genocide against the Palestinian people, including the mass killing of civilians, the destruction of Gaza, and the expansion of illegal settlements,” the Islamic body wrote in a post on X.
“While ANIC stands in solidarity with the Jewish community and mourns the victims of the horrific Bondi terrorist attack, accountability and justice must not be compromised,” the statement read.
ANIC Statement on NSW Protest Legislation and Invitation to the President of Israel
The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) is extremely disappointed and expresses serious concern over the NSW Government’s new legislation introduced following the Bondi terrorist attack,… pic.twitter.com/ZW6MhVnIDc
— Australian National Imams Council (@ImamsCouncil) December 26, 2025
With Herzog having already accepted the invitation, Albanese is now facing growing pressure and criticism from politicians and Jewish leaders to oppose ANIC’s call to block the Israeli leader’s visit, planned for early next year in a show of solidarity with the Jewish community.
David Ossip, president of the New South Wales (NSW) Jewish Board of Deputies, condemned ANIC’s latest statement.
“It’s so disappointing to hear calls for division just as Australians want this to be a time for unity,” Ossip said in a statement.
“Australia has been attacked, and its citizens have been slaughtered on the beach. Many countries, quite rightly, want to show their solidarity with us at this time. Let them,” he continued.
In its statement, ANIC also denounced the NSW government’s new laws that expand police powers and curb protests in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre, describing the demonstrations under scrutiny as “an act of solidarity for Palestinians.”
“There is no evidence to suggest that peaceful protest … has any connection to the Bondi terrorist attack,” the statement read.
“ANIC is concerned that the legislation conflates lawful, peaceful protest with terrorism and acts of violence … increases social division rather than strengthening cohesion, and threatens fundamental democratic freedoms and rights,” it continued.
As the local Jewish community continues to grapple with a shocking surge in violence and targeted attacks, the Australian government has been pursuing a series of firearm reforms, including a national gun buyback and limits on the number of firearms an individual can own.
Last week, NSW passed its own legislation further restricting firearm ownership, granting local police greater powers to limit protests for up to three months, and outlawing the public display of flags and symbols associated with designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas.
In the aftermath of the Bondi beach attack, Australia’s rabbis urged Albanese to establish a federal Royal Commission into antisemitism — a formal public inquiry empowered to investigate, make recommendations, and propose legislative measures to also address the issue.
“We have sat with grieving families. We have visited the injured. We have stood with children who no longer feel safe walking to school. We have watched members of our communities withdraw from public spaces, universities, and civic life out of fear,” the Rabbinical Association of Australia wrote in a letter.
“We are demanding nothing less than the banning of [anti-Israel] marches and demonstrations, and the criminalization of the phrases ‘death to the IDF,’ ‘globalize the intifada,’ and ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ This is not an abstract concern. It is a lived reality,” the letter added, referencing three popular chants among anti-Israel activists that have been widely interpreted as a call for violence against both Jews and Israelis.
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Iran Protests Escalate as Pressure Mounts on Regime
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Dec. 29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Iran is again in motion. Four days of strikes and protests have unfolded across the country, from Tehran to Mashhad, from Isfahan to Kermanshah, from Shiraz to Arak, since Sunday.
In Fasa, in Fars province, protesters broke through the gates of the governor’s office on Wednesday and attacked a government building, an act that carries weight in a system built on the choreography of fear. Each day has brought new reports, new cities, new confrontations. Each day has also revived the familiar, painful question: Could this finally be the moment when the Islamic Republic loses its grip?
The protests did not begin as a single ideological uprising. They emerged from economic pressure and daily suffocation. Bazaar merchants, money changers, workers, and ordinary residents reacted to a currency in freefall, to inflation that devours salaries, to a state that extracts obedience while offering little in return. Students have since joined. Chants have hardened. Anger has spread geographically and socially.
These details matter. In Iran, unrest confined to campuses can be isolated. Unrest that reaches bazaars, provincial towns, and state offices strains a different set of nerves.
Even figures within the system acknowledge this fragility. Fatemeh Maghsoudi, a spokesperson for the Economic Committee of the Iranian Parliament, said last week that the collapse of the rial owed less to any concrete economic development than to an atmosphere of fear driven by the prospect of conflict, remarking that when US President Donald Trump so much as tells Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “let’s go and have a coffee,” the exchange rate suddenly collapses. And when Netanyahu makes any statement, Maghsoudi added, prices in the market immediately rise, despite the fact that nothing substantive had changed in Iran’s economy.
Yet the regime, too, is moving. According to the Iran specialist Kasra Aarabi, sources inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) indicate that the state has raised its internal threat posture to a “yellow” level, defined as an abnormal situation within a four-tier (white, yellow, orange, and red) national security system. That architecture, built methodically since 2007, reaches into every province, city, district, and neighborhood.
Under higher threat levels, layers of security are activated: checkpoints, patrols, phone searches, internet restrictions, Basij deployments down to the street and apartment block. When a “red” level is declared, infantry units fold into domestic suppression, and the IRGC’s operational security headquarters assume sweeping authority over provincial life. This apparatus exists for one purpose. It has been used before. It has not yet fractured.
History teaches restraint in moments like this. The 1979 revolution did not triumph because crowds filled streets for a few dramatic days. It succeeded because strikes paralyzed oil production, administrative systems failed, and elite loyalty dissolved under sustained pressure. Today’s thresholds have not yet been crossed. There is no confirmed nationwide shutdown of core industries. There is no evidence of defection within the IRGC or the regular military. There is no alternative authority capable of coordinating power. These absences do not negate the tremendous courage of those protesting. They define the uncertainty of what comes next.
The international environment sharpens that uncertainty. Speaking in Florida alongside Netanyahu this week, Trump warned that Iran may be attempting to rebuild its nuclear program after US strikes in June damaged three nuclear facilities. His language was characteristically blunt. Any renewed nuclear buildup would invite rapid eradication. Missile production, too, was placed under explicit threat. The message was typically blunt. Negotiations remain open. Deadlines, Trump reminded his audience, have consequences.
The last time Trump issued a deadline to Iran, he gave Tehran 60 days to reach an agreement over its nuclear program. When that deadline expired, Israeli strikes followed the very next day, with clear US permission.
Strikingly, this convergence of internal unrest and external pressure has received only limited attention in much of the international media, treated as background noise rather than as a meaningful shift. The result is a failure to register how significant it could be for economic protest, regional spread, and explicit great-power deadlines to coincide in Iran like this.
For Tehran, this external pressure intersects dangerously with internal unrest. The regime faces a population increasingly willing to test red lines and a strategic environment in which miscalculation could invite devastating force. It is within this context that documented evidence from IRGC-linked academic institutions should be noted with great concern: the development of incapacitating chemical agents, including medetomidine and fentanyl derivatives, appear to have been adapted for crowd control munitions. During the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022, demonstrators described effects inconsistent with standard CS gas. The implication is grim: The state has invested not only in batons and bullets, but in yet more insidious, chemical tools of repression.
And still, hope persists. It persists among Iranians chanting on rooftops and in streets. It persists among families who have buried the dead and returned anyway. It persists across the Iranian diaspora, for whom memory and longing blur into expectation. Each cycle of protest carries the belief that this time the accumulation of anger, courage, and exhaustion might finally converge. Each cycle also carries the memory of how brutally that belief has been punished before.
Prediction is a temptation best resisted. Revolutions are legible only in retrospect. While they unfold, they present as disorder, hesitation, advance, and retreat. What can be said is narrower and more honest. The protests of these four days show breadth, persistence, and a willingness to confront symbols of authority. The regime’s response shows preparedness, experience, and an arsenal refined over decades. Between these forces lies a struggle whose outcome remains unwritten.
The future of Iran will be decided neither by foreign speeches nor by analytical frameworks alone. It will be decided by whether pressure can move from streets into the systems that allow the state to function, by whether fear can be transferred from society back to those who govern it, by whether the machinery of repression can be strained beyond its capacity. Those conditions may yet emerge. They may also recede.
For now, Iran stands in that familiar, aching space between possibility and reprisal. The chants rise. The checkpoints loom. The world watches, hoping, doubting, fearing. The question remains suspended, unanswered and unavoidable: How many times can a people rise before rising becomes irreversible?
Jonathan Sacerdoti, a writer and broadcaster, is now a contributor to The Algemeiner.