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Misguided Super Bowl Ad: Antisemitism Isn’t a Sticky Note — It’s an Institutional Failure
Anti-Israel demonstrators protest outside the main campus of Columbia University during the Columbia commencement ceremony in Manhattan, in New York City, US, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
It is an odd sign of the times that one of the clearest statements about antisemitism this year came not from a university president or a political leader, but from a $15 million Super Bowl commercial.
Robert Kraft’s advertisement was earnest, expensive, and plainly intended as a civic intervention. Kraft is not a marginal celebrity. He is one of the most prominent Jewish civic patrons in America. The fact that even he must purchase a national pulpit at Super Bowl rates is itself a measure of institutional retreat.
The ad depicts a Jewish teenager in a school hallway, targeted with a slur. Another student intervenes, covers the insult with a blue square, and offers solidarity. The message is simple: don’t ignore hate.
The impulse is understandable. Antisemitism is rising. Jewish students feel exposed. Institutions equivocate.
And yet the ad landed with a discomfort that is difficult to dismiss. As critics in The Forward, Tablet, and the Jewish Journal all noted, the problem is not the intention. The problem is what the ad reveals.
The ad reflects the only kind of antisemitism that elite America still feels fully comfortable condemning: the obvious kind.
A crude insult. A bullying moment. A hate that is personal, adolescent, and safely detached from politics, ideology, and power.
But that is not the antisemitism American Jews are confronting right now.
The defining feature of antisemitism in the post–October 7 era is not that it is whispered in hallways. It is that it is rationalized in public.
It is not merely cruelty. It is permission.
It is the normalization of harassment as “activism.” The recycling of ancient hatreds in contemporary moral language. The steady refusal of elite institutions — many educational institutions, but colleges and universities most of all — to draw enforceable lines.
The Super Bowl ad is antisemitism for a society that cannot bring itself to talk about faculty, ideologies, and institutions.
The question is no longer whether antisemitism exists. The question is whether the institutions entrusted with moral authority will name it when it is inconvenient, and confront it when it is costly.
On that question, the record is bleak.
At Columbia University last week, police arrested protesters outside campus gates — an incident that included not only students but faculty participation. That detail matters. When professors are arrested alongside students, the story is no longer youthful excess. It is adult legitimization.
The most corrosive feature of the current moment is not simply student radicalism, but the way faculty and institutional actors increasingly supply the moral vocabulary that makes intimidation feel righteous.
Universities issue statements while disruptions become routine. Administrators cite “process” while Jewish students are told, implicitly, to endure it. Students are harassed on Monday; the campus receives an email about “values” on Tuesday; nothing happens on Wednesday.
The problem is not that Americans haven’t heard of antisemitism. The problem is that institutions have stopped punishing it.
This is not a crisis of awareness. It is a crisis of authority.
Which raises the deeper irony of Kraft’s approach: a $15 million advertisement is, in some sense, a substitute for the backbone our institutions no longer display.
It is philanthropy stepping in where leadership has retreated.
Bret Stephens made a version of this argument just days before the Super Bowl, in his State of World Jewry address at the 92nd Street Y, calling the fight against antisemitism “a well-meaning, but mostly wasted effort” and urging the Jewish community to redirect resources from awareness campaigns toward strengthening Jewish life itself. Stephens is right that awareness is not the bottleneck. But the answer is not merely identity-building. It is institutional enforcement. The crisis is not that Jews lack pride. It is that universities lack spine.
That may be the most revealing thing about the ad. It is an attempt to do, through symbolism, what our civic institutions are increasingly unwilling to do through enforcement.
The blue square is unobjectionable. But it also reflects a broader cultural habit: the preference for gesture over boundary, performance over consequence.
A hallway. A slur. A moment of interpersonal cruelty.
That is antisemitism as many Americans prefer to imagine it: isolated, obvious, juvenile — disconnected from the ideological infrastructures that now sustain it.
But the antisemitism American Jews increasingly confront is embedded in systems.
On many campuses, Students for Justice in Palestine chapters function less like protest clubs than like parallel moral ecosystems: separate communications channels, teach-ins, counter-programming designed not to engage speakers but to delegitimize them.
This is not spontaneous dissent. It is infrastructure.
And infrastructure is precisely what awareness campaigns do not touch.
That is why the problem persists. Confronting contemporary antisemitism requires naming not only hatred, but the respectable ideologies that now carry it.
Here we reach another familiar discomfort: the pressure to universalize.
Even Kraft’s campaign folds antisemitism into a broader effort against “all hate.” Again, the instinct is decent. But the move is familiar. Jews are permitted sympathy so long as their experience is immediately generalized.
The particularity of antisemitism is softened, and made safe for consensus consumption. But antisemitism is not merely one prejudice among others. It has a specific history, a specific structure, and a specific contemporary resurgence. Jews know, historically, that when elites insist on vagueness, trouble is already advancing.
There is also something telling in the ad’s narrative posture. The Jewish teen is passive. He does not speak. He does not resist. He is acted upon, rescued by an ally.
Solidarity matters. But Jews cannot rely on symbolic allyship in place of institutional accountability. A society that requires minority groups to depend on the kindness of bystanders rather than the firmness of institutions is not a healthy society.
And that may be the deeper point. Kraft’s ad is not offensive. It is diagnostic.
It reveals a culture that has difficulty naming antisemitism as it actually exists in 2026.
It reveals institutions that prefer statements to discipline, empathy to enforcement, and symbols to boundaries.
It reveals how far moral speech has been outsourced to philanthropy and branding because civic leaders and universities have proven unwilling to speak plainly when the costs are real.
A $15 million ad is, in this sense, an indictment — even if unintentionally — of everything that should not require an ad in the first place.
What American Jews need now is not another awareness campaign. We need institutions that enforce rules. Leaders who name what is happening. Universities that treat intimidation as intimidation and hate, not as “political expression.” Administrators who stop hiding behind process.
The blue square is fine as a gesture. But gestures are not enough.
Antisemitism will decline only when universities treat it the way they treat every other serious violation: with rules, consequences, and clarity — not symbols. A society that can only condemn antisemitism through commercials is a society that has lost the courage to confront it.
Note: According to the ADL’s 2024 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, there were 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024, including an 84% increase on college campuses and 860 incidents in K-12 schools.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Thousands Protest Over Israeli President Herzog’s Visit to Australia in Wake of Bondi Massacre
Demonstrators gather at Town Hall Square to protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s state visit to Australia following a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, 2025, in Sydney, Australia, Feb. 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jeremy Piper
Thousands gathered across Australia on Monday to protest over the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is on a multi-city trip aimed at expressing solidarity with Australia‘s Jewish community following a deadly mass shooting last year.
Herzog is visiting Australia this week following an invitation from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 shooting at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15.
The visit has attracted the ire of some people in Australia, who accuse Herzog of being complicit in civilian deaths in Gaza. Anti-Israel groups have organized protests in cities and towns across the country on Monday evening.
In Sydney, thousands gathered in a square in the city’s central business district, listening to speeches and shouting pro-Palestinian slogans.
“The Bondi massacre was terrible but from our Australian leadership there’s been no acknowledgment of the Palestinian people and the Gazans,” said Jackson Elliott, a 30-year-old protestor from Sydney.
“Herzog has dodged all the questions about the occupation and says this visit is about Australia and Israeli relations but he is complicit.”
There was a heavy police presence with a helicopter circling overhead and officers patrolling on horseback.
Police used pepper spray and tear gas to push back groups of people who were trying to breach the line and march ahead. Several protesters were arrested as they clashed with police.
Authorities in Sydney declared Herzog’s visit a major event and were authorized to use rarely invoked powers during the visit, including the ability to separate and move crowds, restrict their entry to certain areas, direct people to leave, and search vehicles.
On Monday in a Sydney court, the Palestine Action Group – which organized the protest – failed to legally challenge the restrictions on the demonstration.
PRESIDENT COMMEMORATES LIVES LOST
Meanwhile, thousands of Jewish community members, government officials, and opposition party politicians welcomed Herzog at an event, more than a kilometer away from the protests, honoring the victims of the Bondi attack.
“We all remember the boycotts, the threats, the colleagues who turned their backs on their Jewish friends … that was the prelude to Bondi,” he told a large crowd at Sydney’s International Convention Centre, according to an ABC News report.
Herzog began his visit earlier on Monday at Bondi Beach, where he laid a wreath at a memorial for the victims of the attack. He also met survivors and the families of 15 people killed in the shooting.
“This was also an attack on all Australians. They attacked the values that our democracies treasure, the sanctity of human life, the freedom of religion, tolerance, dignity, and respect,” Herzog said in remarks at the site.
In a statement, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-Chief Executive Alex Ryvchin said Herzog’s visit “will lift the spirits of a pained community.”
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Saudi Arabia Wealth Fund Set to Announce Strategy Revamp, Sources Say
A billboard at the site of New Murabba shows The Mukaab, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Benmansour
Saudi Arabia‘s $925 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) plans to announce a new five-year strategy this week, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said, in the biggest reset yet of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic transformation plan.
The Saudi sovereign wealth fund soft-launched its new 2026-2030 strategy with key investors and strategic partners on Monday on the sidelines of a conference in Riyadh, the two people and another familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The new blueprint will emphasize sectors including industry, minerals, artificial intelligence, and tourism, while scaling back and in some cases reconfiguring expensive mega projects such as The Line, a futuristic mirrored city, the sources said.
All three sources declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
One said the new roadmap will place greater emphasis on attracting capital from major global asset managers, reflecting mounting fiscal pressures as oil prices remain well below levels needed to fund the kingdom’s ambitious transformation agenda.
The shift marks the most significant recalibration to date of bin Salman’s Vision 2030, which for nearly a decade has prominently featured mega futuristic developments. The kingdom is currently reviewing several of the mega projects.
Many of these, including The Line, which extends 170 km (106 miles) into the desert, and the planned Trojena winter sports hub, have faced delays and ballooning costs. The latest to be suspended was a cube-shaped skyscraper in Riyadh.
Last month, Saudi Economy Minister Faisal al-Ibrahim told Reuters: “We’re very transparent. We’re not going to shy away from saying we had to shift this project, delay it, re-scope it,” without mentioning specific projects.
Under the new strategy, NEOM will shift away from its earlier emphasis on tourism and futuristic urban design toward renewable energy and industrial development, including green hydrogen, solar and wind projects, and data centers that benefit from their proximity to the sea for cooling, the people said.
The Line was not on display in the venue at Monday’s opening day of the private sector forum, while NEOM’s video displays underscored the new direction, focusing on energy and industrial initiatives rather than the high‑profile real estate and tourism concepts once billed as being at its core.
PIF’s updated focus echoes details previously reported by Reuters, including a broader shift toward logistics, mining, and advanced manufacturing, as well as clean energy and religious tourism.
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US Issues Fresh Guidance to Vessels Transiting Strait of Hormuz as Iran Tensions Simmer
A map showing the Strait of Hormuz and Iran is seen behind a 3D printed miniature of US President Donald Trump in this illustration taken June 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
The United States issued fresh guidance on Monday to commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane for Middle East oil supplies, as tensions simmered between Washington and Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program and brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Iran has in the past threatened to close down the Strait of Hormuz, a portion of which lies within its territorial waters, and has at times seized commercial ships and oil tankers moving through the area alleging smuggling.
The US Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration advised US-flagged commercial vessels to stay as far from Iran’s territorial waters as possible and to verbally decline Iranian forces permission to board if asked, according to the guidance.
“It is recommended that US-flagged commercial vessels transiting these waters remain as far as possible from Iran’s territorial sea without compromising navigational safety,” according to the guidance posted on its web site.
It also said crews should not forcibly resist Iranian forces if they board.
“If Iranian forces board a US-flagged commercial vessel, the crew should not forcibly resist the boarding party,” it said.
Iran‘s top diplomat said on Friday that nuclear talks with the US mediated by Oman were off to a good start and set to continue, in remarks that could help allay concern that failure to reach a deal might nudge the Middle East closer to war.
While both sides have indicated readiness to revive diplomacy over Tehran’s long-running nuclear dispute with the West, Washington has said it also wants the talks to cover Iran‘s ballistic missiles, support for armed groups around the region, and human rights.
President Donald Trump ratcheted up the pressure on Iran on Friday with an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on imports from any country that “directly or indirectly” purchases goods from Iran, following through on a threat he made last month.