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There Are Not Two Sides to Antisemitism; These Are Signs of Jew-Hatred
Illustrative: Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators from the Midwest gather in support of Palestinians and hold a rally and march through the Loop in Chicago on Oct. 21, 2023. Photo: Alexandra Buxbaum/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The October 7 Hamas terror attack in Israel was the worst single day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And yet, Hamas’ torture, indiscriminate murder, and kidnapping of innocent people has unleashed staggering antisemitism around the world.
More than 1,200 people were slaughtered in Israel, including women, children, infants, and the elderly, and approximately 240 hostages are still being held in Gaza. The attacks, and the Israeli government’s response to them, have sparked protests around the world.
Unfortunately, too many of the voices criticizing Israel’s actions to defend itself and rescue its hostages have descended into open antisemitism.
American Jews make up just more than 2% of the US population, yet they accounted for more than half of religiously-motivated hate crimes in 2022 according to the FBI — a 37% increase compared to 2021. And that was long before the Hamas attack and the subsequent aftermath on the Jewish community.
Contemporary antisemitism is often stoked by social media and online posts. Since October 7, messages that are not only anti-Israel, but anti-Jewish have been amplified by segments within pro-Palestinian protests.
Antisemitism is the world’s oldest prejudice because of its adaptability; today we see this hatred promoted under the guise of human rights. While it is not always clear when or whether some words and phrases are blatantly antisemitic–and context can be critical, if you witness these eight terms, tropes, and themes, you are seeing discrimination against Jews.
There are not two sides to antisemitism.
1. Dirty/Filthy Jews
Describing Jews as “dirty” or “filthy,” which was seen on a sign during a pro-Palestine protest, draws on anti-Jewish themes including “poisoning the well,” an accusation rooted in the 14th-century Bubonic Plague that blamed Jews for purposefully spreading disease. Following the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, a Jewish person in London was called a “dirty Jew” and was also told, “no wonder you’re all getting raped.” That’s happened countless times before and after October 7.
2. Dual Loyalty
Dual loyalty is a bigoted trope used to cast Jews as the “other,” accusing them of being disloyal citizens whose true allegiance is to other Jews or to Israel. This creates distrust and spreads harmful ideas, such as the belief Jews are a traitorous “fifth column,” undermining their country from within. Some anti-Israel activists have asserted Jews should leave their countries and Israel to go “back to Poland” or other places where Jews have historically lived. Dual loyalty accusations also occur on US college campuses, when Jewish students are asked to denounce Israel in order to participate in progressive activities.
3. Justifying Hamas
Hamas is an internationally-recognized terrorist organization in Gaza, which is funded by Iran. Its founding charter, also known as the Covenant, calls for the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the world’s Jews.
Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin said, “Killing Jews is an act of devotion.”
At several pro-Palestine rallies around the world, protestors chanted, spray painted, and held signs supporting Hamas and promoting violence, saying “resistance is justified when people are occupied.” Slaughtering innocent people, including children and babies; raping women; and kidnapping civilians is not resistance. Any justification for Hamas must be condemned for what it is: defending the indiscriminate murder of Jews.
4. “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”
“From the River to the Sea,” is a rallying cry for terrorist groups and their sympathizers, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to Hamas, who are seeking Palestinian control over all of Israel’s borders from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
While there is nothing antisemitic about advocating for Palestinians to have their own state, this specific call implies the eradication of Israel and Jews from their historic homeland.
To most Jews, the chant is an existential threat to the one Jewish state where Jews can live freely and safely. Yet, pro-Palestine protesters, including members of Congress, have repeatedly used and defended the phrase, despite it being a call for violence against Jews and Israelis.
5. Deicide
The deicide charge, which blames Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion, is a trope echoing centuries-old methods of maligning Jews that have been refuted for decades by the Roman Catholic Church. But antisemites continue to use it to justify anti-Jewish hatred. Branding Jews as Christ-killers has been recycled in the Middle East, often by comparing Jesus with Palestinians who are “crucified” by the Israeli military or government.
In May 2021, for instance, a protester in Miami held a sign reading, “Jesus was Palestinian and you killed him too,” and in London, a protester shared an image of Christ carrying the cross with the words, “Do not let them do the same thing today again.”
6. Blood Libel
Since the Middle Ages, blood libel charges have falsely accused Jews of killing and using the blood of Christians for ritual purposes. For centuries, such claims to demonize Jews led to horrific violence, destruction, persecution, and massacres of Jewish people and communities.
Today, these antisemitic charges have evolved into blaming Jews for purposefully targeting and killing Palestinian children. The blood libel has been seen and heard from cartoons, such as in Al-Ghad, the Jordanian daily, which depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drinking the blood of children in the Gaza Strip, to inappropriate signs and libelous headlines, including on October 17, 2023, when major newspapers including The New York Times falsely reported that Israel intentionally bombed the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital.
This misinformation perpetuated a common antisemitic trope that Israelis are bloodthirsty and intentionally killed Palestinian civilians, and led to attacks on Jewish communities and institutions. It took several days before news sources accurately reported that a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket misfired and hit the hospital, by which time the false narrative was already accepted as truth.
7. Holocaust Distortion and Denial
Distorting or trivializing the Holocaust, which was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators, is an attack on Jewish memory and identity.
We saw an alarming amount of Holocaust comparisons during the COVID-19 pandemic, which downplayed and distorted the Holocaust and lessened what Hitler did. On the other side, saying Zionism, which is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, equals Nazism — which led to the genocide of the Jewish people — also lessens what Hitler did. That statement is not a disagreement with Israeli policy; it is a distortion of the Holocaust.
The day after Hamas’ invasion, a pro-Palestinian protester displayed a Nazi swastika in Times Square. Graffiti of Nazi swastikas were tagged on Jewish institutions around the world. Saying Israel is perpetrating a “second Holocaust” by trying to annihilate Palestinians is both factually wrong and antisemitic.
8. Holding Jews Collectively Responsible
While criticizing the Israeli government is not antisemitic, associating all Jews with the policies of a sovereign nation absolutely is. This blame furthers long standing conspiracy theories of secret Jewish power and world domination, which originate from a discredited Tsarist Russian publication called Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Even though it is clearly a work of fiction, “many school textbooks throughout the Arab and Islamic world teach the Protocols as fact,” according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Jews around the world have rightly feared that anti-Israel protests and pro-Hamas sentiment would lead to violence against Jews living in the Diaspora. Unfortunately, there are dozens of examples of how Jews continue to be targeted because of the war.
Many of these terms and dozens of others are found in the Translate Hate glossary from American Jewish Committee (AJC), which highlights how easy it is for antisemitism to hide in plain sight. The more you can recognize these terms, the easier it is to call them out for what they are and help combat anti-Jewish prejudice and hatred.
Holly Huffnagle is the U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism at American Jewish Committee (AJC).
The post There Are Not Two Sides to Antisemitism; These Are Signs of Jew-Hatred first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization condemned the US bombing of nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the weekend, threatening that the American government will be deposed.
The anti-government comments came one day after US President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz — where Western governments believe the Islamist regime was working to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has claimed its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
“The empire will fall, from Gaza to Tehran,” NSJP said, writing on the Instagram social media platform. “The unprovoked attacks the US and the Zionist entity have launched against Iran prove only one thing: imperialism in the region will not stop at suffocating Palestine. From Iraq to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and now Iran, the Empire [sic] demands constant expansion and destabilization.”
It added, “We must be clear: Nuclear development is neither a crime nor the reason for the US’ war against Iran. The US Empire cannot permit the continued existence of a country that dares to stand against Zionism and imperialism.”
On Monday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said that NSJP is mirroring an ideology that university professors have trafficked and taught to their students since the 1960s.
“Left-wing academics have loathed ‘American imperialism’ since the Vietnam War and used it to explain and more importantly justify violent ‘’iberation movements’ around the world. Both communist and Muslim revolutions and insurgencies have been applauded over the years by American academics and their European counterparts,” Romirowsky said. “Some of that has been transmitted to students disinterested in the details of Islamic theology (which underlie Iranian policy). Anti-imperialism situates the Palestinian cause firmly on the political left and glosses over its theological basis in Sunni theology — which is perfectly well expressed in the Hamas Charter and countless other Hamas statements.”
SJP splinter groups across higher education rallied to share NSJP’s post, as noted by the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative on Monday. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Florida reposted it to their Instagram stories, while an SJP group for graduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did so as well. At Columbia University, a group which calls itself “Unity Fields” posted a photograph of the coffins of fallen US soldiers, captioning it, “Soon, Inshallah,” which means “God willing” in Arabic.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another pro-Hamas group which directs campus activities, said, “From Iran to Palestine, from Lebanon to Syria to Yemen, it is our duty from within the belly of the beast to stand against the US empire and zionist [sic] entity’s barbaric, illegal genocidal aggression, and to stand by all those resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by any means necessary.”
The tight coordination of the group’s messaging demands a complete accounting of NSJP’s funding, according to Alex Joffe, a historian and editor of the BDS Monitor for SPME.
“The relationship between NSJP and other action-oriented groups, such as Within Our Lifetime and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, suggest nearly complete overlap in interests and even personnel. Most problematic are the relationships between these Muslim and communist vanguard groups and the nominally legitimate Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party,” he explained. “These overlaps and penetrations into broader politics leaves outstanding the question of who is directing whom. The instant pivoting of Communist Chinese Party-backed groups like Code Pink to support Iran points to the fact that they, like NSJP, are not grassroots movements but primarily tools for state actors, above all Qatar, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
He continued, “The question of who funds NSJP is therefore more important than ever. With NSJP and other organizations threatening and engaging in domestic violence, the national security threats have increased and should be addressed by local and federal authorities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
The post UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities over the weekend has divided his longtime supporters, with some prominent voices in the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement opposing the strikes and others standing with the administration’s military action.
Mark Levin, the longtime conservative talk radio host and vocal pro-Israel voice, called out US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her disagreement with the US strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs.” She warned that “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against the actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make BILLIONS doing it day after day, year after year.”
In response, Levin labeled Greene a “shameless nitwit” and asked, “How incredibly dumb is this Marjorie Taylor Green? She doesn’t know anyone in America who has been a victim of crime or killed by Iran? You mean the thousands of Americans, especially military personnel, killed and maimed by the Iranian terrorist regime?”
Levin aimed his ire at other leaders on both left and right who he christened “America’s Iranian nukes coalition.” He wrote that “if the radical Democrats and their Isolationist fake MAGA reprobates had their way, Iran would have nuclear weapons. This is the new gravely dangerous coalition of Marxists-Islamists-isolationists-grifters. They’re represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders- AOC-Schumer-Jeffries and Rand Paul-Massie-MTG- Qatarlson-Bannon. And they’re giving aid and comfort to a regime that has murdered directly and indirectly thousands of Americans. Never forget. They will forever be opposed and challenged by we, the people — America First loving patriots.”
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster, has faced recent accusations promoted by social media influencer Laura Loomer, alleging links to Qatar, claims which he denies, thus prompting Levin’s “Qatarlson” epithet. Carlson had clashed over Iran in a recent interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly watched by Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News CEO-turned-presidential adviser-turned America First podcaster, declared his disagreement with Trump’s invocation of America’s potential engagement toward regime change in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change?” Bannon asked. “And if that’s fine, Israelis, have at it. If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government.”
The Daily Beast reported that according to anti-Trump biographer Michael Wolff, unnamed sources within the administration described how Trump had initially leaned toward the Carlson-Bannon isolationist position until shifting Friday under congressional Republicans’ influence toward seeing the value to his image of a successful strike. “The tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” Wolff said.
Further exposing the extent to which the Iran strikes have diverged from the last decade of the MAGA movement’s tilt toward isolationism, two of Trump’s former close allies who later parted ways with him and went on to criticize his actions have now voiced their support.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both historically identified with former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” hawkish foreign policy philosophy. Each praised the bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pence said to Fox News on Sunday that even though “the president and I have had our differences,” he “couldn’t be more proud [sic] of President Trump’s decisive leadership in this moment or the extraordinary professionalism and courage of our armed forces that brought about this historic mission.”
On Sunday morning, the conservative magazine Washington Examiner published an article with the headline “Trump did the right thing in Iran” by Bolton, one of the conservative movement’s most steadfast and robust Iran hawks.
“It was long past time that Washington did more to aid Israel in defeating Iran and took direct action against Tehran’s nuclear proliferation efforts,” Bolton wrote. “There are undoubtedly additional measures now underway to protect American deployed forces and civilian personnel in the region against Iranian retaliation now that we have taken offensive military action. Similarly, we should continue bringing forward additional forces to bolster Israeli and Gulf Arab state defenses against Tehran military retaliation.”
Bolton warned that “peace and security in the Middle East are impossible while the ayatollahs rule in Tehran.” He urged that “overthrowing the current regime is a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition to reach that goal. The sooner the better.”
Trump said after Saturday night’s strikes that the US was acting to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but not seeking regime change. The next day, however, he seemed to entertain the idea. Writing on Truth Social, he posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
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