Multimillion dollar ad campaigns aimed at scaring Jews, or scaring others on Jews’ behalf, are not working.

They are not effectively combating antisemitism. They are not strengthening Jewish life. And they are not persuading Americans to embrace Israel or its government’s current course of action. They are, in fact, backfiring.

That was recently made clear in two very different contexts: A New Jersey Congressional race, and the Super Bowl. The reactions to two disparate ads — one attacking former Rep. Tom Malinowski, and one advocating an approach for fighting antisemitism that some found dated — sent the same message.

We Jews are tired. We are tired of being told that the only way to be Jewish in the United States is to defend Israel’s indefensible actions. We are tired of being blamed for every policy choice the Israeli government makes. We are in a precarious moment in history, possibly a pivotal one — and we are tired of being shown half-hearted solutions. We are tired of being afraid.

Fear is not a strategy. It is a reflex. And acting reflexively will not help us build a strong future.

A telling political miscalculation

The United Democracy Project, the super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, spent at least $2.3 million attempting to defeat Tom Malinowski in the race to replace now-New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill in the House of Representatives. Malinowski is no fringe critic of Israel. He is a longtime supporter of the Jewish state, who has said he would not deny the country what it needs to defend itself.

His only deviation from AIPAC orthodoxy was that he refused to rule out placing conditions on U.S. aid. For that, he became a target.

The AIPAC-backed ads themselves did not mention Israel at all. Instead, they criticized Malinowski for a vote on immigration enforcement funding during President Donald Trump’s first term, in a clear attempt to paint him as unreliable on domestic security issues. The goal, as a spokesperson for the PAC stated openly, was to push votes toward the group’s preferred candidate in the crowded primary.

Instead, Analilia Mejia, a left-leaning organizer who openly stated she believes Israel committed genocide in Gaza, surged to the lead. She declared victory on Tuesday.

In other words, after $2.3 million in negative ads, the candidate who most directly accused Israel of genocide appeared to benefit the most.

Many of AIPAC’s choices in this matter could be criticized, including their stance that openness to any conditions on aid is anti-Israel or worse, antisemitic. But perhaps the most important one was their decision to treat the issue of support for Israel as one that must be smuggled into a race under cover of unrelated issues.

If the case for unconditional support of Israel’s current government is strong, then why cloak it in ads about ICE? If such support is as morally and politically sound as its architects insist, it should be able to stand in the open.

The choice to obscure it suggests something else: that traditional, narrow support for the current Israeli government and its military campaigns no longer carries the traction it once did. Voters can sense when an argument is being rerouted through unrelated fears. And when they do, it breeds not persuasion but distrust.

Post-it advocacy

Then there was the Super Bowl.

An ad funded by Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, formerly known as the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, ran during the game. In it, a teenage Jewish boy walks down a school hallway, not knowing that someone has put a Post-it on his backpack reading “dirty Jew.” He looks small and isolated.

A larger Black classmate notices, covers the note with a blue square, then puts another blue square on his own chest in solidarity. The message is that allies can stand up to antisemitism.

But the image felt oddly untethered from the current moment. It asked viewers to see Jews primarily as vulnerable targets of crude prejudice. It did not speak to the nuance of Jewish life in America today. It did not grapple with the political entanglements or technological shifts shaping public debate. It flattened Jewish identity to an experience of persecution.

The same broadcast gave us a chance to understand the risks of that approach — of acting like minorities live in a state of constant endangerment.

Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny headlined the halftime show with a performance that was an act of cultural declaration. His staging celebrated Puerto Rican life and heritage, in all its complexity. There were the sugar cane fields, where enslaved people were forced to labor before emancipation, turned into a site of essential but emotionally mixed heritage. There were joyful community scenes interspersed with critiques of infrastructural failure. He performed almost entirely in Spanish, ending with a roll call of countries across the Americas and a message of unity that transcended borders and expectations.

That was a radical act at a time when this country is rife with state violence largely targeting Spanish speakers from many of those countries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, deportations, and threats against immigrants that have left families terrified and communities in crisis. Just days before his performance, Bad Bunny used his Grammy acceptance speech for Album of the Year to demand “ICE out,” a protest call to make clear that immigration enforcement’s brutality was unacceptable and dehumanizing.

The contrast could not be sharper.

Bad Bunny’s presence, his language choice, his celebration of heritage spoke to millions; it was the most-watched halftime show ever. It’s hard to imagine it being so successful if he had focused exclusively on the Latinx experience of persecution in the U.S.

Cultural vitality is an essential partner to moral clarity in building a stronger future. That building means saying no to violence, but also yes to life, even when it is complex and unsettled. It means joy. It means pride.

The AIPAC-funded ad against Malinowski and the Blue Square Alliance-funded one about fighting antisemitism made the same mistake. Fear alone does not persuade people to seek change. Faith in the good that life has to offer must be part of the picture.

In the classic Jewish text The Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak delivers a vocal celebration of our identity. “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax,” he says, “you’re goddamn right I’m living in the past.”

It’s a funny line. But it’s also a reminder.

We come from a civilization of argument, poetry, exile, reinvention, baseball heroes, mystics, storytellers, radicals, comedians, ping-pong hustlers and stubborn moral voices. We do not need to be reduced to frightened caricatures. We do not need to outsource our dignity for protection. We do not need to insist on adherence to dated principles in order to prove our belonging.

If we are going to invoke thousands of years of Jewish history, let it be the history of ethical wrestling, cultural creativity, and unapologetic presence. Let it be a Judaism that refuses both erasure and weaponization.

That is the Jewish future worth living for.

The post In two controversial ads, a tale of how not to fight antisemitism — or support Israel appeared first on The Forward.

Fox personality Tucker Carlson speaks at the 2017 Business Insider Ignition: Future of Media conference in New York, U.S., November 30, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

In one of Tucker Carlson’s recent Instagram reels, drawn from a conversation with far-left anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, Carlson returned to a maneuver that has become central to his treatment of Israel and Jews.

Carlson noted references to Israel in the assassination files of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, and wondered aloud why some remain redacted more than 60 years later.

His guest, Cenk Uygur, supplied the line that Carlson basically asked for: “That’s almost an admission.”

Carlson widened the frame: Why do we keep seeing Israel [in these files]? Why are the lines blacked out? Why, he asked, are there two “monuments” in Israel to James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s former counterintelligence chief?

Then came the disclaimer. Carlson says he opposes conspiracy thinking because it “drives you crazy.” But, he adds, “if you don’t tell people the truth, like what are they supposed to think?”

The performance is familiar. The host is merely “asking questions.”

But questions of this type are not requests for information. They are accusations regardless of the punctuation. They gesture toward a very nefarious destination, while preserving the speaker’s ability to claim he never quite traveled there.

And as with almost everything Carlson has written or said about Israel in the past few years, this series of “questions” is missing important information and is deeply misleading.

Anyone who has spent time with the Kennedy archives knows that Israel is hardly unique in attracting redactions. Black bars sit beside Mexico, Cuba, the former Soviet Union, Jordan, and a host of other countries. They exist for reasons that are often mundane: protecting sources, preserving methods, honoring liaison agreements, or shielding names that remain sensitive.

A redaction is not a confession. It is often paperwork.

Carlson should know this. Uygur should as well.

But this ordinary explanation, and the fact that many other countries have redactions in the Kennedy assassination files, would collapse the drama.

The “show” depends on persuading viewers that redactions related to Israel must mean something darker.

And so, evidence is withheld. Suspicion advances. Tone does the work that proof cannot.

This is not investigation. It is nefarious storytelling.

Then there is the Angleton insinuation.

Angleton oversaw counterintelligence and, among many responsibilities, managed relationships with allied services across Europe and the Middle East. His ties with Israel grew out of years of professional cooperation and personal familiarity.

Israel later honored him.

There is nothing extraordinary in that. Intelligence communities commemorate foreign officials who strengthen relationships and collaboration. Streets are sometimes named. Plaques are mounted.

Gratitude is not evidence of control. And commemoration is not proof of conspiracy.

To present routine diplomacy as something sinister is to convert normal statecraft into conspiracy.

Carlson’s particular gift (and grift) lies in inversion. He warns against conspiracism while practicing it. He performs reluctance while manufacturing certainty.

If conspiracy thinking corrodes those who consume it, as he says, one might imagine restraint before distributing it at scale.

But insinuation has become Carlson’s product. And it is not randomly distributed. It moves in one direction. The questions chosen, the contexts omitted, the raised eyebrows, the studied bewilderment — they point somewhere specific.

Toward Jews. Toward Israel.

There is never any actual evidence that Tucker provides. What remains are misleading hints elevated into conclusions, delivered with deniability and received, inevitably, by far too many, as fact.

History knows this propaganda method well. It is the politics of implication, the art of constructing guilt through repetition rather than demonstration. The speaker positions himself just outside the accusation while ensuring that the audience hears it clearly.

We know, in retrospect, what such machinery can produce.

The tragedy is not only that it is dishonest. It is that it works.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.

דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם פֿיפֿטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „ייִדישע דערציִונג“. אין דעם קאַפּיטל לייענט שׂרה־רחל שעכטער פֿאָר איר אַרטיקל, „וואָס סע פֿעלט בײַ אונדזערע ייִדישע מיטלשולן.“

צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.

אויב איר ווילט אויך לייענען דעם געדרוקטן טעקסט פֿון די אַרטיקלען, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ און קוקט אונטן בײַם סוף פֿון דער זײַט.

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