Does Israel cause antisemitism? 

JVL introduction

The lengths to which Israel-supporting establishment figures, Jewish and otherwise, have been prepared to go in aligning the extreme racist football fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv banned from travelling to Aston Villa with Jews in the UK, has been astonishing to watch. So great has been their determination to allege anti-Israeli Jew-hating motives against West Midlands council and police, and particularly Muslim local politicians supporting the ban, they have shown utter disregard for the impression this creates of “the Jewish community” they claim to defend.

One might be forgiven for thinking Israel’s supporters are promoting hatred of Israel – which they then call antisemitism – in order to be able to shout about how terribly badly the innocent, peace-loving Israelis are being treated. Just like Kristallnacht all over again!

The question as to whether Israeli behaviour actively “causes” antisemitism is a highly sensitive one which has exercised JVL’s web editor Richard Kuper for some time. In this article he unpicks the threads of the argument to produce a highly relevant, timely analysis.

NWI

PS: 29 Oct – Two minor edits made for clarification and to avoid duplication

Does Israel cause antisemitism?

Richard Kuper, 26 Oct 2025

“Jewish leaders from 18 countries urge PM [Netanyahu] to change course, warning that government’s decisions are harming Israel’s global standing and fueling antisemitism… [italics added]”

Itamar Eichner, YNetNews, 7 Aug 2025

In her book Antisemitism: Here and Now Deborah Lipstadt writes: “It is hard, if not impossible, to explain something [like antisemitism] that is essentially irrational, delusional, and absurd.” Many would argue that this makes it nonsensical to suggest that Israel could possibly “cause” antisemitism. That would be to blame the victim, to blame Jews for hostility against them, no different to saying Blacks are responsible for anti-Black racism.

But it’s not as simple as that.

I shall argue here that Israel is most definitely fuelling anti-Jewish sentiment worldwide which the general term “antisemitism” flattens and distorts, conflating as it does two very different sources of hostility towards Jews. Israel’s actions facilitate and indeed encourage the slippage from legitimate criticism of what Israel does into what Jews are. Or, to put it in the words of the IHRA definition, it fosters the antisemitic view that “Jews are collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”

Stereotypes of  “Jews”

Traditional antisemitism is the phenomenon in which Jews are constructed as “Jews”, embodying stereotypical images of the ‘deceitful’, ‘crooked’, ‘manipulative’, ‘cliquey’, ‘rootless’, ‘wealthy’, ‘powerful’, ‘conspiratorial’ individual which are then projected onto Jews in general.  The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism’s definition captures this well: “Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).”

Let us hark back to debates of two decades ago and more in which it was alleged that a “new antisemitism” was emerging, in which Israel as the “collective Jew” was now the bearer of all the hatreds of traditional antisemitism.

There was a truth in this debate which proponents of the new antisemitism could not – or would not – see. Something new was indeed emerging. It was early days then compared with now but, quite simply, what Israel was doing was fueling anti-Jewish sentiment worldwide because its war on the Palestinians, conducted by the Jewish state, was perceived as unjust. It had nothing to do with historical stereotypes and everything to do with realities: the cruelty of the occupation, the killing of the peace process; the violations of the 4th Geneva Convention and international law more generally; the growing evidence of impunity and war crimes unpunished. Israelis were increasingly hated for what Israel was doing, not because they were Jewish. And governments who should have held Israel to account were turning a blind eye, fostering that sense of impunity and therefore the resentment it induced.

There was an early attempt to operationalise this distinction by the European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia in its report Manifestations of Antisemitism in the EU 2002 – 2003, pp.12-14. (See here.) This raised the question as to whether we should consider hostility towards Jews “perceived as representatives of Israel” as not antisemitic, because this hostility was not based on the antisemitic stereotyping of Jews. It would still be rightly monitored, but not on the grounds of “antisemitism”. So outraged were some critics of the report that, following what was effectively a coup, it was replaced by a draft “working definition”, published but not endorsed by the EUMC. This new “definition” is predicated on regarding criticism of Israel as inherently suspicious, presumed to be antisemitic unless proven otherwise.

This “working definition” failed in its primary task of providing a useful basis on which to collect comparative statistics on antisemitism and by 2010 was abandoned by the successor body to the EUMC. But those behind it had not given up and it was to return virtually unchanged when rebranded as the IHRA International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s non-legally binding “Working Definition of Antisemitism (the “IHRA definition”) in 2016. With the word Holocaust now in its title it became unassailable, holy writ, revealed truth, used to bludgeon pro-Palestinian supporters, most notably Jeremy Corbyn and hundreds of other Labour Party members in the UK.

Drawing the line

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, in its turn, was a careful response to the loaded IHRA document, affirming once again the line that had to be drawn between antisemitism and criticism of Israel and carefully scrutinising cases where one might overlap into the other.

So what I’m doing here is nothing new, but it needs to be restated in the context of recent developments, and some responsibility needs to be allocated for the situation we now face.

Since the genocide in Gaza there has been a qualitative collapse in Israel’s reputation around the world amounting to a catastrophic slump. As the Guardian reported on 3 Jun 2025 : “Public support for Israel in western Europe at lowest ever recorded by YouGov: Survey says fewer than a fifth of respondents in six countries hold a favourable opinion of the country”. On the same day, the Pew Research Center confirmed: “Most people across 24 surveyed countries have negative views of Israel and Netanyahu”. And an Israeli government commissioned report from US pro-Likud company, Stagwell, is even more damning, according to DropSiteNews, 5 Sep: “LEAKED: Israel Is Considered a “Genocidal, Apartheid Country” Abroad, According to Israel’s Own Research.”

The Jewish leaders from 18 countries who have spoken out (see above) are not outliers. They are embedded in the Jewish communities they speak from and their speaking out goes against the grain of their deep-seated loyalty to and love for Israel as they make clear in their statement.

There can be no question that what Israel is doing is causing widespread distress and, often indeed, hatred. There is also no doubt that Israel’s explanations for what it is doing are adding to that hatred. Quite simply, Israel’s explanations have lost credibility with wide sections of the public, as have Western leaders’ disgracefully permissive responses to the havoc in Gaza since October 7. People simply do not buy the increasingly prevalent efforts to restore Israel’s legitimacy by calling criticism of it “antisemitic”.

As former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote in Haaretz in May: “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”

Anger at Israel becomes anger at Jews

And Ezra Klein, writing in the New York Times, takes it to its logical conclusion: “Acres of evidence attest to a reality all Jews know: Anger at Israel becomes anger at Jews everywhere.”

The CST (Community Security Trust) too is absolutely clear that the increase in what it classifies as antisemitic incidents is “fuelled by ongoing reactions to the conflict in the Middle East”, as stated in its Antisemitic Incidents Report, January-June 2025: “51% of the 1,521 instances of anti-Jewish hate reported to CST in the first half of the year, referenced or were linked to Israel, Palestine, the Hamas terror attack or the subsequent outbreak of conflict…”

There is general agreement that incidents arising out of and in response to Israel’s actions have increased in Britain, the US and elsewhere. The question remains of interpretation to which I shall return.

Let’s look first at what they are reactions against. From the earliest days of the war after Oct 7, Israeli leaders have been outspoken about their contempt for Palestinians. Al Haq’s Registry of Israeli Genocidal Statements on Gaza is a useful source, as is Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide.

These bring together appalling statements which have been uttered in all seriousness by leading Israeli politicians, generals and rabbis. President Isaac Herzog’s press briefing on 12th October 2023 can stand in as one exemplar: “[Gazans are] an entire nation out there that is responsible… This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved [in the October 7 onslaught] — it’s absolutely not true.” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s statements referring to the Palestinians is another: “We are fighting human animals”, he said, on 9th October 2023 and vowed to “act accordingly”, adding that there would be “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”

It was statements like these that formed the basis of South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the war on Gaza was “genocidal in nature”.

Israel’s violent, contemptuous, viciously racist incitement against the Palestinians is clearly well documented. It is part of the process of dehumanisation which has accompanied every genocide historically and which we are witnessing among Israelis today.

Making all Jews targets

But it is not limited to that, bad as it is. Israel justifies what it is doing not just in terms in defence of “the Jewish state”. It goes further, claiming that what it does is on behalf of Jews worldwide. It willingly and deliberately implicates all Jews worldwide in its actions. It is doing what it is doing for us. It denies any real distinction between Jews in the diaspora and Israelis. It claims that Zionism is an essential part of Jewish identity. And, by and large, since 1967 if not before, most organised Jewish communities in the West have gone along with this identification.

That makes all of us complicit in Israel’s actions.

This is quite consciously making all Jews in the diaspora surrogate targets for Israel. It is saying to all those increasingly outraged at what Israel is doing – in Gaza and the West Bank – that is not just the current government and its military forces that are responsible for what is being done to the Palestinians but that we – all Jews everywhere – stand loyally by it, atrocity by atrocity. The self-proclaimed leaders of the Jewish community in Britain go along with it. Any who express dissent are railroaded out of the way.

Witness the response of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) after 36 of its members signed an open letter in the Financial Times in April 2025, in which they stated that it was their “duty…to speak out”, expressing their concern over the “renewed loss of life and livelihoods” in Gaza. The BoD’s response was not to welcome debate, to recognise diversity in “the Jewish community” it claims to represent. Rather it resorted to disciplinary measures to hold its line of not allowing criticism of Israel to be made in public.

“Our” very own Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is a cheerleader for this position. As the ICJ was about to hear South Africa’s evidence of potential genocide in Gaza, he spoke at a public event at a synagogue in Ilford in January 2024 to praise “our heroic soldiers” and hoped they would succeed in their mission. “What Israel is doing” he believes “is the most outstanding possible thing that a decent, responsible country can do for its citizens and its people.” He would go on to write in September that “It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel” should announce even a partial suspension of arms licences for export to Israel.

Holding Jews collectively responsible

In the IHRA working definition which communal leaders are in thrall to, the final example of what could, taking into account the overall context, be considered as an example of antisemitism is this: “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.” It’s as though the BoD, Mirvis and others want to assert this, while at the same time marching under a banner which affirms: “Yes, we as Jews are proudly in full support of the actions of the state of Israel.”

People are entitled to their individual views, however meshugge they may be. But these are not individuals speaking as individuals, but people claiming to represent large swatches of Jews worldwide. They are asserting unambiguously that to be a Jew is to be a Zionist, to be in wholehearted support of what the state of Israel is doing, in our name and for us.

How do others hear these words? Quite simply they hear that what Israel, the “Jewish” state is doing, is being done by Jews on behalf of Jews worldwide. We protest that the Board of Deputies is not in reality a representative body; we point out that the so-called chief rabbi represents only the Orthodox Jews of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth who make up less than half of all practicing Jews in the UK; we make it clear that at least a third of Jews in Britain are secular, represented by none of the communal institutions; nor are the ultra-orthodox, the fastest growing section of Jewry in Britain. And we say, loudly and clearly, that what Israel is doing is not in our name.

But what do most people hear? What image of Jews and Israel is generally projected by our  mainstream media?

“It isn’t my fault that they are Jewish”

Listen to the words of Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestinian poet, writer, journalist, and organiser written in September 2023, i.e. before October 7:

When we were growing up in occupied Jerusalem, the people seeking to expel us from our neighborhood were Jewish, and their organizations often had “Jewish” in their name. So were the people who stole our home, scattered our furniture in the street, and burned my baby sister’s crib. The judges banging their gavels in favor of our expulsion were also Jewish, and so were the lawmakers whose laws facilitated and systematized our dispossession. …

We lived under the rule of the self-proclaimed “Jewish State.” … The army declared itself a Jewish army and marched under what it has called a Jewish flag. Jerusalem city councilmen boasted “tak[ing] house after house” because “the bible says that this country belongs to the Jewish people,” and Knesset members sang similar tunes. These legislators weren’t fringe or far-right: the Israeli nation-state law explicitly enshrines “Jewish settlement” as a “national value … to encourage and promote.”…

There is a Jew who lives—by force—in half of my home in Jerusalem, and he does so by “divine decree.” Many others reside—by force—in Palestinian houses, while their owners linger in refugee camps. It isn’t my fault that they are Jewish. [Emphasis added]

Our leaders, by not speaking out against Israel’s unspeakable acts, are taking El-Kurd’s words not as an indictment, but as statement of desirable fact. We are the muscular Jews who won’t be pushed around, not like the shtetl Jews who went uncomplainingly to the gas chambers. We are Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “new Jews” building our future behind an Iron Wall, proudly and unashamedly.

Let me return to my starting point. What Israel is doing is causing hatred – of Israel and Israelis. But these Israelis insist on calling themselves Jews. This is not a construction of Jews “as Jews” forced on Jews from outside, as is classic antisemitism. This is a group of Jews willingly embracing, indeed celebrating, their own view of what it is to be Jewish: arrogant, enacting a Jewish supremacy not just in Israel but in the areas under their occupation. And beyond, with an unconcealed glee at being able to bomb Lebanon, Yemen, Qatar, Iran, Syria and more. And claiming that this is being done on behalf of Jews worldwide.

What the “leaders” of the Jewish community in Britain, the US and elsewhere are doing with their almost uncritical loyalty to a genocidal state is aiding and abetting this process.

What Israeli forces have done in Gaza is unconscionable. And they have done it as “Jews”. Openly, proudly affirming their right to lord it over the land which they say their god has given them. They see no distinction between Jew, Israeli and Zionist. Their actions generate all kinds of responses from disbelief and despair to simple hatred. And those who are appalled at what they have seen and heard coming out of Gaza – and increasingly the West Bank – on a daily basis react, not always in the most carefully thought out ways. They hear spokespeople say they are doing what they are doing as Jews. And then these very same spokepeople feign surprise that some people believe it is Jews who are responsible for what is going on in Gaza and accordingly blame Jews for it.

Distinct sources of hate

To summarise: the argument is that there are two very different sources of hatred of Jews. One is the traditional antisemitism, hatred of Jews “as Jews” on whom every conspiracy and obscenity can be projected. The other is hatred of Israelis for what they do. But they do it as Jews. There is no projection here, merely a taking of what Israelis proudly claim as their own, as what being a Jew is to them. They then claim that this includes all Jews worldwide. And they are aided and abetted by the irresponsibility of Jewish communal leaders in Britain and elsewhere who put Israel’s interests above those of the very communities they claim to represent.

These two sources of “hatred” are quite distinct though there is of course some slippage between them in practice. It is especially worrying when we see this emerging occasionally on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity movement today. People are less and less willing to make the distinction between Israeli, Zionist and Jew when those who support Israel’s brutality refuse to make any such distinction. People are less bothered about treading on the eggshells of Jewish sensitivity when Israel’s Jewish supporters can’t be bothered to maintain even the fiction of a distinction between Jews and Zionists. And we also see it creeping onto our social media as well. “The Zionists” are to blame for everything and, as they insist on affirming, they are the real Jews. The only surprising thing is that we don’t see more of it, as Israel’s genocidal enthusiasm gives license to the elisions we have spent our lives opposing.

Not all Jews are genocidal maniacs!

Despite this reality, most people are still careful to limit their criticism of what Israel is doing to those who are actually doing it. This is in no small measure down to the thousands of Jews who have been active in the solidarity movement, affirming again and again, that not all Jews are genocidal maniacs. We, the outcasts whom mainstream Jewish institutions revile, have contributed in significant ways to combatting the growth of anti-Jewish sentiment against all their efforts to align Jews with Israel and Zionism. Let us be honest: insofar as there is a genuine growth in antisemitism linked directly to Israel’s wars, we are the ones opposing it. Blame for it must be placed firmly where it belongs: on Israel’s actions and on those Jewish communal leaders who ride shotgun on the Israeli wagons.

There is no simple way of combatting the visceral, irrational Jew-hatred of traditional antisemitism but we know that organising with other oppressed minorities to combat all racisms needs to be central to any strategy. By contrast a hatred of what Israel does that slips over into a hatred of Jews has a very different origin – and a very different approach is needed. Quite simply, if Jewish communal bodies were serious about undercutting the processes that fuel the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment today, they would be tacking it at source, calling vociferously for the immediate end to the occupation and equal rights for all between the river and the sea. It wouldn’t end antisemitism as an irrational hatred of Jews as Jews, but it would drain the swamps in which anti-Jewish sentiment can fester. Why won’t they do it? Because they are invested in the notion of antisemitism as “the world’s oldest hatred”, the only solution to which is “the Jewish state”. It’s a notion of antisemitism which is now feeding the very sentiments which were used to justify having such a state in the first place, a state which it was claimed would end antisemitism once and for all when Jews became a normal people like any other…

How long before our representative bodies see the monster they are feeding – Israeli ethnonationalism/racism – for what it is, and back off? They need to do so while there is still time to rescue a defensible notion of Jewishness from the dead hand of what Zionism has become, rather than putting all of our collective heads on the chopping block.

Unconscionable wrongs

If they are serious about tackling the increasing anti-Jewish sentiment that has accompanied the genocide in Gaza there is a way. They should recognise that there are many diverse Jewish communities. They should dissociate themselves from what is being done in the name of Jews by the “Jewish” state. They should call for a permanent ceasefire, an end to the occupation and an end to Israeli apartheid, for equal rights for all from the river to the sea in whatever political formation can be made to work by those who live there.

They should recognise the unconscionable wrongs that have been inflicted on the Palestinians and brood on how much their actions and uncritical “love” of Israel until now has endangered Jews throughout the diaspora.

M.J.Rosenberg sums up the situation well:

“As a Jew, I hope that Judaism—our spiritual and cultural values—can survive what Israel has done to it by the usurpation (cultural appropriation?) of its name. A revolution in Jewish education has to take place so that we can again become, if not the “light on to the nations,” then at least not a perceived source of darkness. Israel should not be the most despised nation on the planet, but it will be until it uproots the belief in ethnic supremacy that is at its roots. Until then, a divorce between Israel and diaspora Jews is essential. We are not one.”

I’d like to thank both Naomi Wayne and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi for detailed comments and disagreements on earlier drafts of this article. I remain grateful to Tony Klug for inspiration from his eminently sensible December 2009 talk, “Are Israeli Policies Entrenching Anti-Semitism Worldwide?”, available here and to Brian Klug for his writings and ongoing conversations on the topic. Needless to say none of them is responsible for the opinions expressed here.