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Why I don’t love ‘Jew hate’ as a substitute for ‘antisemitism’
(JTA) — I read a lot about antisemitism — as a professor researching prejudice, as a former fellow at a Holocaust memorial center, as a blogger for The Times of Israel, as the son of a Jewish father who was so grateful to get to live in the United States and as the father of a Jewish son in that same country, but with antisemitism on the rise.
I’ve noticed a shift in what I’m reading. The media, especially social media, are increasingly replacing the term “antisemitism” with a new term: “Jew hate.”
“Simply put, antisemitism is Jew hate,” Richard Lovett, co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency, the world’s leading entertainment and talent agency and a marketing and branding powerhouse, remarked last month in an address encouraging his industry to fight antisemitism. Also last month, the governor and attorney general of Massachusetts, the mayor of Boston and other state leaders launched a campaign to “#StandUpToJewishHate,” an effort bankrolled by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Brooke Goldstein, the founder of the pro-Israel Lawfare Project and author of the book “End Jew Hatred,” has started an organization with the same name. The nonprofit JewBelong launched the #EndJewHate billboard campaign in 2021 in cities around the country.
London’s Jewish Chronicle — the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world — has now run several articles using “Jew hate” in addition to or instead of “antisemitism.”
I have asked colleagues who work on Holocaust remembrance, fighting antisemitism and promoting tolerance why they now prefer “Jew hate” to “antisemitism.” They consider it strong and clever branding, jarring and unapologetic, and I can’t argue with that. The phrase packs a punch. And it aligns Jewish groups with a larger social phenomenon: the various efforts to study and stop the menacing resurgence of hate groups. There are new university centers for the study of hate, new hate-focused conferences and several journals dedicated to hate studies. Hate is hot. Branding antisemitism as “Jew hate,” it is hoped, will help to mainstream concern about antisemitism.
The popularity of “Jew hate” coincides with concerns about the term “antisemitism.” Once usually spelled “anti-Semitism,” the term is increasingly spelled without the hyphen and with a lowercase first “s.” This change was made out of concern that the former spelling reinforced the pseudo-scientific, long-discredited idea that Jews are members of the “Semitic” race.
Nevertheless, adopting “Jew hate” in place of “antisemitism” is a big mistake. It misses way too much.
A JewBelong bus ad in downtown San Francisco, part of a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of antisemitism. (Gabriel Greschler/J. Jewish News of Northern California)
The term “antisemitism” — like the reality it describes — encompasses not only hate, but also fear and envy. People can fear or envy Jews without hating them. True, these biases can lead to stereotypes about Jews and the negative consequences of those stereotypes. People with preconceived notions about Jews are likely to notice and remember selectively or simply hear and believe whatever supports their biases while disregarding, disbelieving or downplaying information to the contrary. One Jewish head of a major newspaper or movie studio, according to this thinking, shows that Jews control the media. In this way, antisemitism can be self-perpetuating even when not powered by outright hatred.
“Jew hate” does not take into account apathy, the lack of concern that throughout history has allowed the actual haters to get away with much more than they would have otherwise. Nor does “Jew hate” take into account a dangerous kind of admiration. Well-meaning people may have positive stereotypes about Jews being intelligent and good in certain professions. These biases are not hateful, but they do reduce Jews to stereotypes.
“Jew hate” does not adequately capture antisemitism born of ignorance — not only of Jewish history and culture but also of the history and effects of antisemitism. Ignorance about Jewish culture, history and traditions can contribute to discrimination against Jews, thus perpetuating antisemitism even when there is no hate. The rising and amazing ignorance of the facts of the Holocaust, for example, sets the stage for more people to dismiss or downplay its severity. That, in turn, will breed resentment — or worse — toward Jews, who are increasingly being cast as obnoxious and self-pitying for insisting that the Shoah happened and seeking to remind the world how bad it was.
If it irritates people when a Jew doesn’t care to join them in singing Christmas carols or to buy the annual Christmas stamp, that’s not necessarily hatred. It’s probably just ignorance of what it means to be in the minority versus the majority. Nevertheless, such ignorance, like ignorance of the Holocaust, can have an antisemitic effect.
Most alarming, the concept of “Jew hate” undermines the fight against antisemitism by — and this was supposed to be a point in its favor — making antisemitism just one instance of a broader category: hate. It should go without saying that one should be against most forms of hate. “Hate has no home here” lawn signs are admirable. But there are essential differences between each form of hate. They are not simply flavors to be served up when the media or a corporation wants to take a popular position. Diseases of the society, like diseases of the body, need to be understood and combatted on their own specific terms. Antisemitism has its own distinct history and pathology. The fight against antisemitism is not just the fight against white supremacy or misogyny or Islamophobia with a different name on the tee shirt.
Ultimately, what worries me most is that the concept of “Jew hate” lets people off too easily. Most people aren’t going to defend hatred, but having disavowed hatred, there’s still a lot to answer for. Antisemitism is real and there seems to be no end in sight. The digital age has amplified the speed and spread of anti-Jewish tropes, extremist ideologies and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Metal detectors and armed guards are now common at major Jewish gatherings. That’s a sign of real sickness in the culture, but rebranding antisemitism to fit more neatly into the “fight hate” agenda isn’t the cure.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel, Syria to Set Up Communication Mechanism After US-Mediated Talks
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool
Israel and Syria agreed during US-mediated talks in Paris to set up a communication mechanism to coordinate on security, intelligence, and commercial issues, the three countries said in a joint statement released on Tuesday by the US State Department.
But in a statement to Reuters, a Syrian official said it would not be possible to move forward on “strategic files” in talks with Israel without a binding, clear timeline for Israeli troop withdrawal from Syrian territory seized after the late 2024 toppling of Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest round of talks with Israel in Paris, which took place on Monday and Tuesday, concluded with an initiative to suspend all Israeli military activities against Syria.
There was no immediate from Israel on whether it had agreed to suspend military activities in Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had focused on security issues as well as Israel-Syria economic cooperation during the talks.
Syrian state media reported that the discussions in Paris were focused on reviving a 1974 disengagement agreement that established a UN-monitored buffer zone between Israel and Syria after the 1973 Middle East war.
Israeli troops advanced deeper across the border after Assad was toppled on Dec. 8, 2024, by rebel fighters who assumed Syria’s leadership. Israel has also intervened in what it calls missions to protect the Druze religious minority in southwestern Syria.
Syria is seeking an Israeli withdrawal to positions held before Assad was toppled, and wants a reciprocal security framework guaranteeing its sovereignty and preventing interference in its internal affairs.
The State Department statement said that the two countries would use the communication mechanism “to facilitate immediate and ongoing coordination on their intelligence sharing, military de-escalation, diplomatic engagement, and commercial opportunities” under US supervision.
The Syrian official accused Israel of stalling by using technicalities in the talks, and said it should abandon its “expansionist mentality” so that the talks could proceed.