Category Archives: Jews

A Jewish Glass Ceiling on the American Dream

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The American Dream promises that anyone can achieve anything. Build a business, accumulate wealth, enter politics and shape culture. Pursue your ambitions without an artificial ceiling imposed by your ancestry or religion.

Unless, according to antisemitic conspiracy theories, you are Jewish.

For centuries, Jews have been accused of controlling banks, manipulating politicians, owning the media and starting wars. The accusations change with the times, but the underlying claim remains: Jews possess too much power, and that power is dangerous.

Nazi Germany defined Jews by ancestry. Fighting for Germany, converting to Christianity, marrying a non-Jew or even supporting Hitler could not erase Jewish ancestry. As explored in What Does a Jew Have to Do to Be Accepted?, there was no reliable way to become acceptable under Nazi racial ideology.

The contemporary jihadi-socialist alliance presents a different challenge. Some of its rhetoric portrays Zionists and Jewish institutions as part of a privileged elite, accused of colonialism, oppression and Jewish supremacy. The objection is framed not simply around Jewish ancestry, but around Jewish power.

Left-wing media The Nation, described the grassroots organizing to oust unpopular incumbent Congressman Jamaal Bowman as a fight waged by Jewish billionaires against a poor Black man

That suggests a different solution. If Jews have too much power, perhaps they can become acceptable by surrendering some of it.

But how much?

A Jewish businessman can succeed, but at some undefined level of wealth, as success becomes evidence of financial domination. A Jewish politician can gain influence, but too much influence becomes proof of a conspiracy. Jewish writers, journalists and entertainers can flourish, until their achievements are portrayed as Jewish control over American culture.

How much Jewish wealth is acceptable? How many Jewish members of Congress? How many newspapers, universities or businesses may Jews lead before their achievements become threatening?

There is no published limit. No established threshold.

The conspiracy theory supplies its own answer: Jewish success is evidence of Jewish power, and Jewish power is something to fear.

This is a peculiar kind of glass ceiling. Jews are not necessarily prevented from achieving success. They are condemned for achieving too much of it. The ceiling becomes visible only after they have supposedly crossed it.

Perhaps Jews should stop contributing to political campaigns, lobbying Congress or advocating for their interests. Perhaps they should withdraw from finance, become less prominent in entertainment and apologize for their prosperity.

Would that make them acceptable?

What about their synagogues? Jewish institutions increasingly rely on security guards, police protection and barriers against attacks. Should Jews abandon those protections to demonstrate that they enjoy no special privileges? Must Jewish worshippers accept intimidation outside their synagogues to prove they deserve no more protection than anyone else?

And what about Israel?

Americans routinely celebrate their ancestral homelands which is a core part of Judaism. Yet Jewish support for Israel is sometimes portrayed as evidence of divided loyalty or Jewish supremacy. Must American Jews abandon their homeland and support for the Jewish state or distance themselves from Jewish organizations to demonstrate that they are acceptable Americans?

Is there an emerging demand that Jews can participate in American society, provided they never become too wealthy, too influential, too visible or too supportive of Israel? An invisible glass ceiling over Jewish achievement, with the height determined by those who resent it.

That is not the American Dream.

In 1790, George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport

Washington rejected the idea that Jews lived in America by the generosity of a Christian majority. Their rights were inherent. They could worship, prosper, participate in government and pursue their ambitions without asking permission. There was no provision that Jews must remain sufficiently poor, powerless or inconspicuous to avoid offending others.

The demand that Jews surrender their supposed power would turn Washington’s promise upside down. Political participation becomes a privilege. Economic success becomes an offense. Supporting Israel becomes a test of American loyalty. The American Dream becomes something Jews may pursue only until their success makes someone uncomfortable.

That is unacceptable.

The American Dream has no Jewish ceiling. Those who would impose one are challenging something far greater than Jewish success.

Jewish Students for America

What Does a Jew Have to Do to Be Accepted?

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Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938 – November 9, 2026

Imagine being a Jew living in Germany in 1910, with the extraordinary ability to see the future. You know that Adolf Hitler will come to power in 1933, that antisemitic laws will follow, and that on November 9, 1938, synagogues will burn across Germany and Austria.

You love Germany. Your family has lived there for generations. You want to remain in your homeland, raise your children and grow old among your neighbors. What should you do over the next 28 years to ensure that you and your family will be accepted?

Perhaps you should enter government service immediately.

Excellent idea. On April 7, 1933, the Nazis enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, removing Jews from government employment. But Jews who had entered service before August 1, 1914, were exempted.

Perhaps you should fight for Germany in World War I.

Another excellent decision. Jewish veterans who had fought at the front were also exempted from the 1933 civil service purge. Even Jews whose fathers or sons had died fighting for Germany received protection under that law. Some 12,000 German Jews died fighting for their country during World War I. Surely that counted for something.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800-1882), Die Jahrzeit (Minjan), 1871

Perhaps you should marry a Christian German woman, convert to Christianity and raise your children as Christians.

That might offer additional protection. Conversion would not change your racial classification under Nazi law, but an existing marriage to a non-Jewish German could affect how the authorities treated your family.

Monument in Berlin, Germany for the German women who fought to save their Jewish husbands from death in the Nazi concentration camps. (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Or perhaps you should go even further. What if you supported Hitler himself?

You could embrace German nationalism, reject Jewish communal organizations, vote for the Nazi Party and seek to join its ranks. You could agree with its economic program, its hostility to communism and its promise to restore German greatness.

Would becoming a Nazi make you an acceptable Jew?

No. The Nazi Party generally excluded Jews from membership, and its racial laws did not reward Jewish ancestry with exemption because someone supported Hitler. Political loyalty could not transform a Jew into an Aryan. You might have agreed with every Nazi policy except its treatment of Jews. That disagreement would not have saved you.

And the other strategies were unraveling.

In 1935, the Nazis eliminated the civil service protections for Jewish veterans and longtime government employees. The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of full citizenship rights and prohibited marriages between Jews and people classified as German or related blood.

By 1938, German Jews faced escalating economic exclusion, confiscation of property, arrests and expulsions.

Consider Victor Klemperer, a German professor, World War I veteran, Protestant convert and husband of a non-Jewish German woman. He had embraced German culture and served his country. The Nazis nevertheless classified him as Jewish and dismissed him from his professorship in 1935.

On November 9, 1938, Nazi-organized mobs burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish businesses, attacked Jewish homes and arrested tens of thousands of Jewish men. The German Jew who had spent decades demonstrating his patriotism could watch his synagogue burn alongside the synagogue of the Jew who had never sought to assimilate.

Interior of synagogue torched during Kristallnacht

Eighty-eight years later, Jews across the diaspora face a renewed surge in antisemitism and questions about what makes them acceptable. In 2021, CAIR leader Zahra Billoo warned Muslims against the “polite Zionists,” including Jewish Federations, Hillel and synagogues. Even Jews who had stood alongside Muslims against discrimination were not necessarily friends. “Know your enemies,” she said.

So what should a Jew do today? Become an anti-Zionist? Denounce Israel? Turn against Jewish organizations? Would that finally be enough?

The German Jew of 1910 could spend the next 28 years changing everything about himself and still discover that he had changed nothing in the eyes of those who hated him.

There is no winning a contest in which someone else keeps changing the rules.

Jews should decide what they believe, whom they support and how they live their lives. The moment they begin making those decisions to satisfy people who demand that they become a different kind of Jew, they have already surrendered something far more important than approval.

The Palestinian Authority’s Campaign to Islamify the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs

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On November 6, 2026, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, condemned another alleged Israeli effort to “Judaize” the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron. The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs declared the site an “exclusively Islamic endowment” and called for international intervention to protect its Islamic character.

The tomb is the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. The Palestinian Authority is accusing Jews of Judaizing the burial place of their own patriarchs and matriarchs.

The declaration came on the eve of Shabbat Chayei Sarah, when Jews around the world read Genesis 23, describing Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite to bury Sarah. Abraham was subsequently buried there, followed by the other patriarchs and matriarchs. The site has been central to Jewish religious history for thousands of years, long before the emergence of Islam in the seventh century.

Muslims later culturally appropriated the site and instituted a regime of Islamic supremacy. Under centuries of Muslim rule, Jewish access to the tomb was restricted, eventually limiting Jews to praying outside the compound at the seventh step. In August 1929, Arab rioters massacred 67 Jews in Hebron, devastating the city’s ancient Jewish community. The killings and subsequent British evacuation nearly eliminated Jewish life in Hebron. Some survivors returned in 1931, only to be evacuated again in 1936. Jewish worship inside the Cave of Machpelah resumed following Israel’s capture of Hebron in 1967.

The contemporary campaign for exclusive Islamic control has been advanced by senior Palestinian officials. In August 2021, Mahmoud al-Habash, the Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Sharia Judge and religious adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, declared “Israel and the Jews have no right – not historically and not religiously – to any centimeter of this purely Islamic mosque.“

In July 2026, al-Habash again declared that the site was a purely Islamic mosque and that non-Muslims had no rights there.

The Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf reinforced this position throughout 2026. It condemned Israeli construction work in the courtyard as an attempt to transform the compound into a synagogue, declared every courtyard and hall part of an exclusively Islamic endowment, and repeatedly characterized Jewish worship and religious administration as Judaization.

The Palestinian Authority’s campaign represents the continued Islamic appropriation of Jewish holy sites, denying Jewish religious rights while presenting Jewish prayer as an incursion. Through its religious ministry and official media, the PA promotes the Islamization of the Cave of Machpelah and the erasure of its Jewish identity, describing Jewish worship at the graves of Judaism’s founding families as an act of aggression.

The Palestinian Authority is so self-unaware that it has appealed to the “international and human rights institutions” to condemn Israel for violating Muslim rights at the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs. The world should use the opportunity to condemn this antisemitic denial of Jewish history and religious rights, rather than accept the outrageous claims of Palestinian officials.

The Apartheid Israel Actually Has

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Israel is routinely accused of maintaining a privileged Jewish class over Palestinian Arabs. Yet its latest election exposes a different system of institutionalized inequality: those who fight and die for the country shoulder burdens that other citizens are largely spared.

After three years of war on multiple fronts, Israelis awarded 19 Knesset seats to Israeli Arab parties and 13 to ultra-Orthodox parties. Together, more than one-quarter of Israel’s parliament now represents communities whose members overwhelmingly do not serve in the military, as Israeli Arabs are generally exempt from conscription, while ultra-Orthodox Jewish men have historically enjoyed widespread draft deferments and exemptions.

Israeli soldiers gather at Yad Va’Shem in Jerusalem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust (photo: First One Through)

Other Israelis must leave their families, careers and studies to defend the country. They risk injury, trauma and death. Meanwhile, fellow citizens enjoy the protection of that same military without comparable obligations.

Israel has created two classes of citizenship when it comes to national defense: those expected to sacrifice and those largely exempt from sacrifice.

Those who serve must defend a democracy in which others can exercise political power to preserve their exemption from serving.

An Israeli soldier, cellphone and gun in hand, rides the train to Tel Aviv (photo: First One Through)

The irony is that military exemption can also be a lifelong economic disadvantage. Military service is one of Israel’s great social and economic integrators, building professional networks, leadership skills, technological expertise and lifelong relationships. Research has documented significant employment benefits from service.

The same communities spared the risks of military service often miss its economic and social rewards. Israel’s unequal service system simultaneously concentrates military sacrifice and perpetuates economic separation. Israeli Arabs and Ultra Orthodox Jew are poorer than the secular country, in general.

Universal national service, whether military or meaningful civilian service, would do more than strengthen the military. It would bring communities together, expand economic opportunity and restore the principle that citizenship carries obligations as well as rights.

Israel’s divide is not between religions or races but between those who serve and those who don’t, the secular and the religious.

Britain Is Not God

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Every November 2, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, condemns the 1917 Balfour Declaration as Britain’s “colonial promise” of a Jewish homeland in another people’s land.

Modern media offer another version of the Promised Land story, portraying Jews in Judea and Samaria as religious extremists seeking to fulfill a divine promise and establish a “Greater Israel.” In September, Al Jazeera described young Jewish women in the West Bank as pursuing the “so-called Promised Land” through territorial expansion. The Wall Street Journal similarly reported on violent Jews who regarded the territory as their divine birthright, so needn’t follow man-made laws.

Jews are cast both as messianic lunatics and colonial tools.

For the Palestinian Authority, Britain replaces God as the source of the promise. Contemporary reporting instead portrays Jews in Judea and Samaria as seeking to seize by themselves territory promised by God. One story invokes colonialism, the other religious zealotry. Both portray Jews as outsiders seeking land granted by someone other than local Arabs.

The word promised suggests a benefactor, a recipient and something yet to be delivered. That framing obscures the fundamental relationship between Jews, Judaism and the Land of Israel.

Britain could endorse a political homeland, but it could neither create nor define the Jewish people’s relationship with the land. When the League of Nations incorporated the Balfour commitment of a national home for Jews into the Palestine Mandate in 1922, it expressly recognized the Jewish people’s historical connection to Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting such national home there.

Reconstituting, not inventing.

Yet even the Mandate’s recognition of a historical connection falls short. Many peoples have ancestral homelands. The Land of Israel is not simply where Jews once lived.

As explored in our earlier article, Judaism Is an Ancient Folk Religion, Jews are not merely followers of a universal faith like Christianity or Islam. They are a people whose religion developed around a particular land. That land is embedded in Jewish law, language, calendar, prayers and identity. Exile dispersed the people without removing the land from their religion.

Jewish house from the Second Temple period in Old City of Jerusalem, Israel (photo: First One Through)

Nor does Judaism divide the land according to modern political borders. Hebron, Bethlehem and Shiloh in Judea and Samaria are as integral to Jewish sacred geography as Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias.

The biblical promise remains central to Jewish religious tradition, but it is not the source of Jewish peoplehood. A secular Jew can reject belief in God while remaining part of a people whose civilization is inseparable from the Land of Israel.

Palestinian Arabs portray Jewish attachment to the land as a product of British colonialism, while contemporary media often portray it as a religious zealotry to acquire territory. Both falsely turn something embedded in Jewish identity into something Jews are seeking to obtain.

The Land of Israel is neither past nor future for Jews but integral, outside of time. It was never a gift of Britain nor the United Nations but an eternal promise from God to Jews. The lies promoted by the Arab world that Judaism is not connected to the Land of Israel and that Jews are interlopers is not just antisemitic but turns the Jewish God into a European Lord, a further desecration of Judaism.

When You Say Israel, Be Clear What You Mean

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“Israel’s only existed since 1948,” declared political streamer Hasan Piker during a June 2026 interview on The Breakfast Club, explaining that Palestine had existed for far longer.

That’s moronic.

Piker was comparing a modern sovereign country with an ancient geographic designation. By that logic, Greece is younger than ancient Greek civilization, and Italy has existed for only 165 years.

The confusion arises because Israel is not simply a modern country. It is also a people, a land, a government with a collection of policies. These five meanings are related but profoundly different. Switching between them can erase thousands of years of Jewish history, turn criticism of a government into condemnation of a people, and make Jews appear to be foreigners in their ancestral homeland.

The Tower of David in the Old City of Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)

The Five Israels

The People of Israel, or Children of Israel (Bnei Yisrael or Am Yisrael), are the Jewish people, whose name derives from the biblical patriarch Jacob, renamed Israel. The people existed thousands of years before the modern country bearing their name.

The Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael, is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, where ancient Israelite and Jewish kingdoms existed, Jerusalem became the center of Jewish religious and national life, and Judaism developed. It is core element of the Jewish people and Judaism.

The State of Israel, Medinat Yisrael, is the modern sovereign country established in 1948, nearly two thousand years after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

The Government of Israel consists of the political leaders who govern the country. Governments change through elections, coalitions collapse, and prime ministers come and go.

The Policies of Israel are the decisions those governments make concerning security, diplomacy, immigration and other matters. They can be supported, opposed, modified or reversed.

These five meanings move from the enduring identity of a people and their homeland to the changing decisions of political leaders. Confusing them produces arguments that can sound reasonable at first blush while being historically and logically indefensible.

Making Jews Newcomers to Their Own Homeland

Piker’s comparison illustrates the problem.

The name “Palestine” has been used for centuries, including under Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Ottoman and British rule. But the existence of an old geographic designation does not establish the existence of a sovereign Palestinian Arab country throughout those centuries. More specifically, no such Palestine has ever existed. If it had, it would not have needed to declare itself a country in November 1988.

1660 map of “Palestina Siue Terrae Sancta Descriptio” by Jan Jansson. It is flanked by pictures of the life of the Jewish prophet Moses

The modern State of Israel was established in 1948. The People of Israel and their connection to the Land of Israel existed thousands of years earlier. Ancient Israelite kingdoms, Jewish religious institutions and Jerusalem’s central place in Jewish life preceded both Christianity and Islam.

The sleight of hand is simple. Compare the modern State of Israel with the historical land called Palestine, and Israel suddenly appears young while Palestine appears ancient. Then treat those dates as proof that Palestinian Arabs are indigenous and Jews are foreign colonizers. Jewish history disappears through a quick change in definitions. A complete lie appears logical.

Judaism Is a Religion of a Particular Land

Part of the confusion comes from a misunderstanding of Judaism itself.

Christianity and Islam, which together account for more than half the world’s population, are universal religions. They have sacred places, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Mecca, but their adherents are not collectively defined as one ancestral nation awaiting restoration to a particular homeland.

Judaism is both a religion and the national tradition of a people whose history, laws and identity are deeply rooted in the Land of Israel.

God’s covenant with Abraham includes the promise of that land to Isaac, Jacob and their descendants. The Exodus from Egypt is a journey toward it as are later prophets discussing Jewish return from diaspora. Many commandments in the Torah concern its agriculture, harvests and religious obligations. Jerusalem and the Temple became the center of Jewish worship.

Even after the destruction of the Temple and the dispersal of much of the Jewish population, the connection endured. Jews continue to pray toward Jerusalem, mourn the Temple’s destruction, celebrate holidays tied to the agricultural seasons of the Land of Israel, and conclude the Passover Seder with the hope of being in Jerusalem the following year.

Christians do not need to live in Bethlehem to fulfill their identity as Christians. Muslims do not need to live in Mecca to fulfill their identity as Muslims. Jews do not need to live in Israel to be Jews, either. But Jews have a diaspora; Christians and Muslims do not because Judaism is a particular land-based religion.

Zionism did not invent the Jewish attachment to the land in the nineteenth century. It was a modern political movement seeking to restore Jewish national sovereignty in the ancestral homeland. Similarly, Jews did not become connected to Israel because a country was established in 1948. The country was established in a land to which Jews had been connected for thousands of years.

From Criticizing Policies to Denying a People’s History

The same confusion that distorts history also distorts contemporary political debate.

Someone may criticize an Israeli military operation or decision by a prime minister. That is criticism of government policy. But the argument can morph: Israel’s government becomes “genocidal”; Israel itself is declared illegitimate; Zionism becomes inherently evil and racist. Finally, the Jewish people’s connection and rights in their ancestral homeland is rejected.

That’s a preposterous slide from natural criticism to antisemitism.

Consider someone who objects to Israeli Jews living in Judea and Samaria / the West Bank. That is a dispute over policy and territory. But when the argument becomes that Jews are foreign colonizers with no legitimate claim to any part of the land, the discussion has moved from settlements to Jewish history and Judaism itself.

One can criticize a policy without denying a people’s history, oppose a government without opposing the country, and defend Jewish national rights without endorsing every action taken in their name.

When Israel Becomes a Substitute for Jews

The most dangerous shift occurs when Israel stops referring to a government or country and becomes a substitute for the Jewish people.

A Jewish student in New York is not the Israeli government. A synagogue in London is not an Israeli military installation. A Jewish business in Paris is not responsible for decisions made in Jerusalem.

Yet Jews around the world are confronted over policies they did not create, governments they did not elect and military operations they did not authorize. Jewish institutions become targets of protests ostensibly directed at a foreign government. Jews are expected to disavow Israel to establish their own moral legitimacy.

Antisemitism can hide inside this ambiguity. A speaker claims to be criticizing government conduct while advancing accusations against Jewish collective identity. The word remains the same even as its target changes.

Israel

The People of Israel are ancient and their bond to the Land of Israel is ancient. Those are facts not subject to debate or approval.

The State of Israel is modern, and its government and policies belong to the present. They are political beings and entities like others and subject to scrutiny in the same manner of others. No more, no less.

Five meanings. One name: Israel.

The New York Times Participates in Antisemitism as It Attempts to Whitewash It to Protect El-Sayed and the Democratic Party

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Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens did something extraordinary on November 1, 2026. Two days before the election, she endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over her own party’s Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, who had defeated her in Michigan’s Democratic primary.

She explained why.

“We have to stand with country. We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker.”

Stevens specifically condemned Piker, warning about his influence on college campuses and the hatred being spread to young people.

Piker is no obscure activist. The internationally followed livestreamer reaches millions online, appears at universities and campaigns alongside prominent Democrats, including El-Sayed at an April rally at the University of Michigan.

Days before Stevens’ endorsement, Piker had compared West Bloomfield, a heavily Jewish Detroit suburb, to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood. “It’s racial supremacy. It’s Jewish supremacy,” he declared.

This was the same community where a synagogue and preschool had been targeted in an attempted terrorist attack earlier in the year.

Piker has a long history of stoking Jew hatred and had previously described Israeli and Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and “psychopaths,” compared Jews in Judea and Samaria to the KKK and repeatedly invoked Jewish supremacy. His rhetoric had traveled well beyond Michigan, gaining enormous audiences and legitimacy through appearances alongside political candidates.

El-Sayed had proudly campaigned with Piker before distancing himself from some of his statements. Another controversy involved Cenk Uygur, whose advertisement linked rising grocery prices to American assistance to Israel, even though annual military spending to it is less than 5% of what America spends on its military abroad, and has sent six times as much money to Ukraine for its defensive war against Russia as the US sent to Israel for its defensive war against genocidal Palestinian Arabs. Stevens condemned the advertisement as antisemitic. El-Sayed only disavowed its message.

Stevens nevertheless concluded that she could not support him.

Then came The New York Times.

Its article, “Inside the Abdul El-Sayed-Haley Stevens Meltdown in Michigan,” explained in the subheading that the relationship had shattered partly because of Israel, “but also because of their sensitive egos and hurt feelings.”

Sensitive egos? Hurt feelings?

The newspaper described Stevens as “still absorbing her primary loss” and feeling “scorned” by El-Sayed’s failure to include her in campaign events. It quoted a Democratic operative blaming the spectacle on “one person”—Stevens.

One person? What about the Jews who were being attacked?

The Times declared that “at the root of the disagreement” was American policy toward Israel. It detailed AIPAC’s spending against El-Sayed, Stevens’ attachment to Israel, her Jewish fiancé, his donations to AIPAC and her consideration of converting to Judaism.

Yet it never named Hasan Piker, whom Stevens repeatedly condemned, or Cenk Uygur, whose advertisement had sparked another confrontation. Uygur became merely “an ally.”

Most remarkably, the only time the word “antisemitism” or “antisemitic” appeared was when this so-tarred overly sensitive person said that “she viewed” the ad as antisemitic when in fact it was widely viewed as antisemitic, even among Democratic politicians.

The newspaper had plenty to say about Stevens’ feelings, Israel, AIPAC and Jewish connections. It could not bring itself to name the hatred at the center of her objections.

Instead, the Times described the rupture as reflecting “a major fissure coursing through the Democratic Party about what its relationship with Israel and Jewish donors should be.”

Jewish donors.

Not Jews being attacked. Not the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric. Jewish donors.

Piker himself had accused Stevens of being “weirdly obsessed with Israel” and having been “paid handsomely for this strange obsession.” The Times did not repeat his accusation, but its framing likewise directed attention toward Jewish money and influence rather than the hatred Stevens condemned.

This is how antisemitism becomes mainstream. The New York Times did not need to endorse Piker’s hatred to reinforce its underlying prejudices. By reducing objections to antisemitism to hurt feelings and Jewish concerns about safety to money and influence, the newspaper helped normalize the very hostility Stevens was protesting.

The Times was no longer simply reporting on attacks against Jews. It had become a participant in perpetuating them.

How the Language of Jewish Supremacy Became Mainstream

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With the help of alt-left Jews.

Hasan Piker recently compared the heavily Jewish Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood, calling its supposed supremacist attitude “identical” to that of the KKK. The influential political streamer was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for his vile, antisemitic comparison.

But Piker did not invent the accusation of Jewish supremacy. Over decades, language once associated with political extremists and provocateurs gained legitimacy through academics, journalists and Jewish organizations, moving from criticism of Israel to accusations against American Jewish communities.

From Provocation to Political Argument

Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz notoriously used the expression “Judeo-Nazis” in criticizing Israeli conduct around the 1982 Lebanon War. Hamas incorporated conspiracy theories from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into its 1988 founding charter, portraying Jews as manipulating international finance, media and world events. These were distinct episodes that helped establish the historical backdrop.

A modern wave emerged at the end of the century. In 1998, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei compared Zionists to Nazis. In 1999, Israeli Jewish historian Ilan Pappé described early Zionist settlement as establishing “a society based on Jewish supremacy.”

During the Second Intifada, the terminology appeared across ideological extremes. Columbia University professor Joseph Massad delivered a February 2002 lecture titled On Zionism and Jewish Supremacy. That same year, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke published Jewish Supremacism, promoting conspiracy theories about Jewish control of world affairs. Palestinian Arab BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti accused even the Israeli left of perpetuating Jewish supremacy in 2007.

These were provocateurs and political figures operating from sharply different ideological positions. Their accusations demonstrated the flexibility of the terminology, but its use remained particularly associated with contentious political movements.

Turning the Accusation Around

The collapse of the Obama–Kerry Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative in April 2014 was followed by another Gaza war that summer. The language soon acquired a new political purpose: turning accusations of antisemitism and racism back against those making them.

In November 2014, Jewish American journalist Max Blumenthal faced accusations of antisemitism and efforts to prevent him from speaking in Germany. Rather than simply defend his criticism of Israel, he accused American Jewish organizations of using antisemitism allegations to protect their privilege. He argued that American Jews had generally displaced WASPs as a new elite and declared that “pro-Israel organizations on American college campuses are functioning as White Students Unions.”

The target was no longer simply Israeli policy. American Jewish-associated organizations were being portrayed as defenders of racial privilege, reversing the accusation of antisemitism into an accusation of Jewish racism.

American white nationalist Richard Spencer employed a related reversal. Challenged over the antisemitism surrounding the August 2017 Charlottesville rally, he described himself as a “white Zionist,” comparing his desire for a white homeland with Jewish nationalism. Spencer had used similar arguments earlier, but Charlottesville gave the analogy greater public attention.

Naomi Dann of Jewish Voice for Peace responded in The Forward that Spencer’s comparison contained a “kernel of truth,” while acknowledging differences between the movements. Her article asked whether Spencer might be right about Israel. ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt answered with an article titled Zionism Is Nothing Like White Supremacy.

The comparison had become a political weapon. Blumenthal used it to turn accusations of antisemitism against his critics; Spencer used it to defend white nationalism; and anti-Zionist activists found in the analogy a new argument against Zionism.

From Accusation to Institutional Authority

January 2021 marked another turning point.

B’Tselem, one of Israel’s “human-rights” organizations, published a report titled A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid. Its argument concerned the political system governing Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.

The following day, Jewish American political commentator Norman Finkelstein, a Princeton-educated author with an international following, explicitly urged broader use of the expression. He argued that calling Israel a “Jewish supremacist state” would “compellingly resonate in public discourse.”

Finkelstein went further, recommending that advocates routinely refer to Benjamin Netanyahu as a Jewish-supremacist prime minister and identify the Anti-Defamation League and British Board of Deputies as supporters of a Jewish-supremacist state. He explicitly invoked B’Tselem’s standing to defend the terminology.

Other Jewish voices added their institutional reputations. In February 2022, the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace declared that Israel’s system of control rested on “the idea of Jewish supremacy.” In March 2023, Peter Beinart, the former editor of The New Republic, CUNY professor and Jewish Currents editor-at-large, called for legal equality rather than Jewish supremacy. Jewish Currents publisher Daniel May discussed the terminology in 2024, while Independent Jewish Voices Canada issued a declaration opposing Jewish supremacy that November.

These were rabbis, Jewish professors, editors, authors and organizations with established audiences. Their participation helped move the terminology beyond fringe polemics into recognizable institutional and intellectual discourse.

The criticism also extended into Jewish communal life. In June 2025, former Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel described a “voracious rot” infecting Jewish institutions. Her argument prompted concern from another Jewish left-wing editor that such sweeping criticism risked making Judaism itself, rather than Zionism, appear to be the problem.

When Jews Become the KKK

Piker had already described violent Israeli settlers as “Jewish KKK brigades” in 2024. In 2025, during an interview with Representative Rashida Tlaib, he compared liberal Zionism to liberal Nazism. By October 2026, he no longer needed Israeli settlers or Zionist ideology as his target. A Jewish neighborhood in Michigan would suffice.

Over the decades, the accusation of Jewish supremacy underwent a remarkable transformation. It moved from the political fringes into respected institutions, from jihadists of Hamas and Iran to prominent Jewish voices, and from a defensive response to accusations of racism into an affirmative charge of racism. Criticism of conduct during wars and political conflicts increasingly became a judgment about the character of Zionism, Jewish institutions and ultimately Jews themselves.

Governments can change policies, armies can end wars, and political movements can change direction. But a people accused of being inherently supremacist cannot reform their way out of the accusation. Their identity has become the offense.

That is a conspiracy theory made manifest, and it will kill Jews around the world.

Four-part series tracking the root of attacks on Jews is tied to believing in conspiracy theories:

Part 1: Antisemitism Around the World: What the Numbers Tell Us

Part 2:Why Did Antisemitism Explode Around the World?

Part 3: When Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories Enter the United Nations

Part 4:The Limited Counter To Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

Why Are Democrats Asking Jews to Sacrifice Themselves to Save Their Party?

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What brings together a far-left streamer, a right-wing nationalist and a progressive Democrat running for the United States Senate? Hostility toward Israel and Jews.

Abdul El-Sayed calls his campaign Michigan First. A more fitting slogan would be El-Sayed First or Jews Never.

El-Sayed campaigned alongside Hasan Piker, the influential left-wing streamer who compared heavily Jewish West Bloomfield, Michigan, to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood. Piker took aim at a Jewish community in a state already shaken by an attack on Temple Israel earlier this year, in which El Sayed dismissed the antisemitism of the attacker saying “hurt people hurt people.”

Two men standing in front of a campaign banner. One man, in a black suit, is speaking passionately with clenched fists, while the other man, in a brown blazer and red tie, looks on attentively.
Hasan Piker stumping with Abdul El Sayed

El-Sayed also featured Tucker Carlson, the right-wing nationalist who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories and given a platform to Holocaust revisionism, in campaign advertising attacking Republican Mike Rogers.

El-Sayed received support from Imam Hassan Qazwini, who has claimed Israel created ISIS and praised a Hezbollah leader. Qazwini urged his congregation to vote for El-Sayed as a religious duty.

Cenk Uygur‘s Rebellion PAC produced an advertisement blaming Americans’ economic hardships on support for Israel, recycling the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews and their state are responsible for ordinary people’s suffering.

Different political camps, united by a common target – Jews and the Jewish State – urging voters to elect Abdul El Sayed to be a senator in Michigan.

Not every Democrat was willing to look away.

Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who endorsed El-Sayed after losing the primary, demanded that he remove the Carlson advertisement. Senator Elissa Slotkin condemned the PAC commercial. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged El-Sayed’s opposition to a Jewish state.

CNN commentator Van Jones called the PAC advertisement anti-Jewish hate, warning of the historical consequences of blaming Jews for society’s problems. Jones refused to choose which minority deserved protection based on the politics of the moment. His standard was the same for both.

Yet Stevens was reportedly asked to stay away from El-Sayed’s campaign events. Supporting the Democratic nominee was apparently insufficient. She was also expected to remain silent.

Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan Democratic Senate primary winner, at a press conference in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue on August 5, 2026.
Split image featuring Abdul El-Sayed on the left, talking, and Haley Stevens on the right, speaking, with a headline about their political dynamics in Michigan.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, herself Jewish, went further. Speaking to Jewish Democrats, she invoked a moral obligation to sacrifice the comfort, safety, security and even the future of their own people for the opportunity to save humanity.

Who gave Democrats the authority to decide that Jews must sacrifice their security for the party’s political ambitions?

Democrats like Senator Chris Murphy have turned the argument upside down, branding criticism of El-Sayed as Islamophobia while failing to confront the antisemitism surrounding his campaign. The candidate becomes the victim, his critics become the bigots, and Jewish Americans are expected to remain silent.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell urged Democrats not to let the controversy surrounding Hasan Piker divide the party ahead of November. Party unity was apparently more important than confronting the rhetoric that provoked the controversy.

The burden has been reversed. Instead of demanding that El-Sayed answer for the extremists he embraces, Democratic leaders are asking Jewish Americans to explain why they cannot simply accept them. The candidate’s associations become secondary; the Jews who object become the political problem.

Democrats have spent years insisting that politicians are responsible for the extremists they embrace, applying that standard relentlessly to Donald Trump. Why should El-Sayed be exempt?

If a politician embraces / welcomes / ignores the notorious bigots to get elected, why should anyone vote for him? If a political party demands that Jews tolerate antisemitism to secure victory, why should any minority trust that party to defend its rights?

A party that unites around hatred of Jews is not a party worth defending, voting for or belonging to. It is not even a party worth preserving.

If saving democracy requires sacrificing the rights and security of Jews, what exactly is being saved?

Related:

Michigan’s Slide on Israel (April 2021)

The Limited Counter To Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

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Part four, Summary: The root cause of most antisemitic attacks comes from a belief in conspiracy theories. There are limited ways of combatting it.

Israel has become a catalyst for people already primed to see the world through conspiracy theories. They imagine Jews acting as a single force, secretly controlling media, finance, and governments for their own benefit. Israel gives this old story a contemporary focus: anger at a Jewish state becomes suspicion of Jews everywhere.

Politicians and entertainers help give these ideas a public voice. Rep. Rashida Tlaib spoke of “the same people” profiting “from Gaza to Detroit”; and Rep. Ilhan Omar dismissed support for Israel as “all about the Benjamins.” Musician Ye claimed “Jewish people have owned the Black voice”; and Roger Waters called the “Jewish lobby” extraordinarily powerful in the music business. Actor Mel Gibson blamed Jews for “all the wars in the world,” while French comedian Dieudonné called Jews a “sect.”

Social media carries these claims to young audiences. The United Nations give them institutional authority when antisemitic theories enter official reports. The three-part series traced that path:

  1. When Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories Enter the United Nations
  2. Antisemitism Around the World: What the Numbers Tell Us
  3. Why Did Antisemitism Explode Around the World?

The next question is harder: how do we stop conspiracy theories from taking hold? The evidence offers little reason for easy confidence. A 2026 meta-analysis of 56 study samples found only a small average effect from interventions, with much of the underlying research carrying a high risk of bias. Still, “fact-checking conspiracy claims,” was viewed favorably.

Prebunking – teaching people to recognize manipulation before they encounter it – is one promising approach according to the ADL, but its success is limited. A classroom study found that a 45-minute lesson presenting antisemitism as a recurring conspiracy reduced students’ endorsement of several antisemitic tropes. The finding offers a practical lead, not a settled solution.

Conspiracy theories about Jews have endured by adapting to each new crisis. In a post-COVID world shaped by distrust, social media incentives, and increasingly capable Artificial Intelligence, they are likely to find new audiences and spread faster.

Related:

The Center Of Intersectionality Sounds Like Adolf Hitler (July 2023)