April 15, 2026

Beware, antizionism is spreading. Hostility to Israel keeps growing. Nevertheless, too many Mamdani Jews – and feckless Jewish institutions – are either drinking the Kool-Aid or pronouncing the poison “kosher.” They so worship “machloket” – healthy, even divisive, debate – they’re sacrificing the primary need to survive by fighting your enemies not letting them run your schools and shuls.

Call it blue-and-white washing. Antizionism is more unforgiving than ever. The perversions of Oct. 7 animated antizionists – although it should have humiliated them. Emboldened activists encourage irrational Israel-bashing, rationalize Jew-hatred and ostracize anyone remotely Zionist. Yet, targeted by the barrage, many American Jews agonize over how to help these fanatics distinguish their antizionism from antisemitism – forgetting that the burden on proof is on the haters not the hated. And too many American Jewish leaders futilely chase today’s Benedict and Becca Arnold Jews who joined this bandwagon of Hamas-appeasers.

Such pathetic, cowardly, morally-addled efforts will never work, but they risk diluting American Jewry’s core commitments to Israel, peoplehood, Jewish tradition. Raised to be accepted, addicted to being liked, worried about not being “inclusive,” many American Jews – as I have written before – are so open-minded, their brains are falling out. Meanwhile, raised on diets of settler-colonialism, Israel-apartheid, Zionism-racism, oppressed-oppressor hogwash they mistakenly call “social justice,” many antizionists are so close-minded, their brains shut down.

Watch how even some rabbis and professors blur the red lines. Haters far left and far right once shunned by polite society are now being mainstreamed – as long as they target Israel – the Jewish state – not the Jews. We read in The New York Times – then everywhere else – how that scheming, all-powerful Jew, Benjamin Netanyahu, bullied Donald Trump into attacking Iran. Yet you have to search hard to find the inconvenient fact that while publicly endorsing diplomacy, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “made multiple private phone calls to Trump” in February “advocating a U.S. attack.”

We also read Ezra Klein in the Times saying the venomous, pro-Oct. 7 social influencer Hasan Piker — who once said calling yourself a liberal Zionist is like claiming you’re a “liberal Nazi,”— is “not the enemy.” Is there any other American ethnic group that raises so many appeasers, traitors and cheerleaders for those who either attack us directly or dance on our graves and perform sexual crimes?

In that spirit, 42 Jewish authors attacked the Jewish Book Council’s supposed “bias toward centering Israeli and Zionist voices”  – despite the JBC’s celebration in 2024 of an author who celebrated his “definitive rupture with the dogmatism of my Zionist upbringing.” The petitioners demand a “genuine diversity” of views on Israel and Palestine – code for “please, mainstream antizionism, platform Palestinian exterminationism!” 

Donors go wild! Bully the JBC not to cave.

Meanwhile, J Street, which rarely misses an opportunity to slam Israel whenever Israel feels compelled to defend itself militarily, “urges Senators … to vote to disapprove two sales to Israel – one of large bombs and one of bulldozers – both to demonstrate consequences for misuse of these items in Gaza and to express consistent opposition to the war in Iran.”

Now, after two and a half years of lies about genocide, starvation and Israeli aggression, sitting on decades of antizionism, 60% of American Jews oppose this most-necessary war against Iran’s Jew-hating, America-threatening and nuclear-hungry regime. And most are foolishly, prematurely, pronouncing the ongoing war “lost” – forgetting Professor Yogi Berra’s teaching: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Amid all this, is anyone surprised that antisemitism is soaring, and Pew finds 53% of American adults viewing Israel unfavorably, with “80% of Democrats” holding “unfavorable views”?

Clearly, many thoughtful, proud, Zionist Jews have good reasons for opposing Trump, this war, Netanyahu and various Israeli policies. I’ve spent decades endorsing a big blue-and-white tent, open, welcoming, on all sides. Nor, having fought academic cancel culture, do I advocate importing it to Israel or the Zionist world.

Nevertheless, these dangerous currents distort the American and American Jewish conversations. When I told one friend “I’d rather see Israel win this war to survive and lose the PR battle, than lose the war and win fleeting PR points,” he countered: “Israel may be winning the war – but American Jews are losing it.” (I might add mischievously, they’re both losing this war – and losing it – as in their moral compass.)

Another friend called the Pew data “a 30-alarm fire,” wondering: “Who in the community is making turning this around their mission?” All I could offer is “a VERY long list of those in the community making it WORSE.”

A full battle plan or explanations of how we created this crisis are beyond this column’s scope – although it began with Obama in 2012, not George Floyd in 2020. This column is a battle cry: the issue goes beyond supporting this war or any particular Israeli government. It’s even bigger than building a constructive identity Zionism while opposing antisemitism.

We’re fighting for American Jewry’s soul and its future.

Imagine if “un-Jews” – rabbis, Jewish Studies professors, teachers and community leaders committed to undoing American Jewry’s core consensus merging Israel, Zionism, Jewish peoplehood and tradition – triumph. What kind of flimsy, insecure, illiterate, conditional, self-absorbed American Jewish identity will they instill: drained of Zionist pride, lacking peoplehood solidarity, and reprogrammed to follow the latest Democratic – or Progressive – platform?

This fight has massive implications for Israel, ranging from whether American Jews help America keep supporting Israel, to how we stay united globally with Jews aligning with antizionists targeting almost half the Jewish world living in Israel.

A sophisticated battle plan might follow the military’s SMEAC approach:

•  Situation – what’s happening, how did we get here, who’s in the tent, who’s outside, and what “conceptzias” – misconceptions – caused the crisis and must be rethought?

•  Mission – what’s the goal, what does a healthy, vibrant, inviting, inspiring, American Jewish community and conversation look like?

•  Execution – the “how to” – what strategic interventions will raise prouder, more defiant, proudly Zionist American Jews – while reprogramming their parents?

•  Administration and Logistics – what institutions, texts and materials, what other tactics, can launch this revolution?

•  Command & Signal – who will lead it, how can Israel help, which communications strategies can publicize the initiative and advance the mission?

Clearly, American Jews are deeply divided – and conflicted. We have too many Mamdani Jews, antizionists and fellow travelers. Ignore them.

Instead, fight for the soul of the majority: Obama Jews. Some remain proudly Zionist but anguished. Some support the defining Zionist idea of a Jewish-democratic Israel, but avoid the Z-word because it’s been so tarnished. And a growing group’s support for Israel is contingent on Israel’s good behavior – as they define it – and continuing popularity with liberals.

My alternative isn’t Trumpified Jews who won’t tolerate any criticism of Israel. Although far better, more loyal and Zionist than the turncoats, they can’t save us.

Ultimately, Israelis must become King David Jews, fighting when necessary while building a glittering Zion.

American Jews – and all Diaspora Jews — must become Queen Esther Jews.  Fit in. Prosper. Decipher your foreign lands’ cultural codes. But be literate, proud, brave Jews. Be ready to risk everything, if necessary, to defend yourselves, your people, your homeland – understanding that, as Esther realized, that’s also saving your adopted home from shared enemies too.

Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and Zionist activist born in Queens, living in Jerusalem. Last year he published, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and “The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath.” His latest E-book, “The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred” was just published and can be downloaded on the website of JPPI – the Jewish People Policy Institute.

John Lennon’s death in December 1980 shocked the world. As a member of The Beatles, he helped define the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Their message —  simple, powerful, and deeply appealing — was that love, not power or ideology, could unite humanity.

“All You Need Is Love” was more than a beautiful song, incorporating, one can assume purposefully, “La Marseillaise,” the French revolutionary anthem calling citizens to rise against tyranny, set within musical textures spanning Bach to Brubeck as only The Beatles could. It became a creed.  If all we need is love, the Vietnam War, the other main issue of the day, could be solved. The assumption was that beneath political systems and cultural differences, people ultimately wanted the same things.

The assumption that the world could unite under these universalistic aspirations seeded themes that would shape social thought for decades. It fueled movements for women’s equality, civil rights and environmental responsibility. Noble causes all. Nixon had bravely opened the door to China and less than 30 years later Reagan convinced Gorbachev to tear down the wall that had divided East from West. Democracy’s righteousness was on the rise, geopolitics was cooperating. Maybe it wasn’t all love, but the sense was that things were bending in a favorable direction. Live and let live was at hand.

Even at the height of the inspired optimism, glitches in the path of 1967’s Summer of Love generation were easily overlooked. Headlines, often from the Middle East, were troubling but siloed. The wars of 1967 and 1973, both coordinated attacks on Israel by neighboring Arab states, along with the rise of modern terrorism, were treated as aberrations to the underlying assumptions. Such disturbances were too far from the West to get in the way of the optimism.     

Small but persistent voices cautioned that not all cultures and communities shared the West’s assumptions. They argued that appeals to shared humanity, noble as they were, would not be appreciated by the communist or increasingly radical Muslim ideologies representing large swaths of the global population. Undeterred, the West continued to proffer increasing empathy, dialogue and goodwill.  Surely, they would win the day.

It did not. Overtures of conciliation — by governments, universities and international bodies — were often interpreted not as invitations to mutual recognition, but as opportunities to advance asymmetrical aims. Wealth, particularly from oil revenues, amplified this dynamic, extending influence into political, academic and cultural institutions. Simultaneously, Israel’s repeated efforts at negotiation and compromise were frequently dismissed. Over time, segments of governments, academia and international institutions moved beyond rejecting Israel’s overtures for peace to questioning its legitimacy itself.

Concrete efforts illustrate the pattern. In 1978, Jimmy Carter brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, conditioned on Israel’s return of the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt’s Arab allies rejected the accord and diplomatically isolated Egypt.President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981, in part for making that peace.

In 2000, Bill Clinton invested significant political capital in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David. When those talks failed — failure Clinton later attributed largely to Yasser Arafat — the Second Intifada followed, resulting in over 1,000 Israeli civilian deaths.

Nearly a decade later, Barack Obama’s Cairo address again appealed to shared values and mutual respect between the West and the Muslim world. These efforts reflected a genuine belief in convergence. They did not produce the transformation many anticipated.

A harder truth emerged: universalist democratic values do not automatically resonate across all societies. In communist oligarchies as well as the Middle East, Israel has faced not merely political opposition but, in too many quarters, a sustained refusal to accept its legitimacy as a Jewish state. Repeated efforts at negotiation and compromise have not yielded acceptance and have, at times, intensified hostility. This dynamic is reflected in Iran’s cultivation of a “ring of fire” of proxy forces surrounding Israel, whose sustained attacks on civilian populations culminated in the Oct. 7, 2023 assault by Hamas.

And yet, many in the West continue to hold these cherished universalist ideals as guiding principles despite continued assaults on Israel. Indeed, Israel’s self-defense is opposed broadly in much of Western society. Pundits and even Jewish organizations offer ever broader suggestions on how Israel should conciliate in the face of terror.   

Which brings us back to John Lennon.

His message of love — hopeful, expansive, humane — inspired genuine moral progress. It fostered hope that humanity might ultimately converge toward those ideals. In too many parts of the world, that expectation collided with societies that did not share those assumptions.

Lennon is gone. His vision remains. The question is whether we have learned where it illuminates — and where it cannot.

Moshe R. Manheim is a retired clinical social worker and psychotherapist. He writes on antisemitism, Jewish identity and social issues.

Coming out of the holiday of Passover, which is a sojourn in itself, with a great deal of preparatory work, planning, and a wresting oneself out of the normal flow of time, I found myself thinking about my life in new ways. To say that I was thinking more freely isn’t just a pun; it’s a reality.

One thing I began to consider, in ways I hadn’t before, or at least not with the same intensity, is the value of friendship. Let me put that another way, since the word friendship, at least as many of us use it, isn’t quite the right word. I’ll call it intimacies. Unfortunately, the word intimacy has come to carry a largely sexual connotation, and as such it misses a broader and more important swath of meaning.

Intimacy, in this sense, is a particular sort of love, most often occurring within a marriage, and often obtained only after a long stretch of years, even decades, where one’s understanding of compromise, conciliation, and care takes on meanings different from what those words held at the beginning of the relationship. But now, I’m speaking more broadly, about these kinds of intimacies, including those we find in friendship, their worth, their value as we age, and perhaps especially now, when there is so much apprehension about the world.

At synagogue this week I began reading a section of a five-part work called “Likkutei Dibburim” by Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe and father-in-law to the seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The collection, distinct from other Hassidic works, which are often highly detailed teachings on the nature of reality, the way a transcendent God intersects with the physical world, and other esoteric understandings, is a compendium of personal reflections. The section that caught my attention begins with a kind of remorse for what friendship had come to mean, compared to his youth in Ukraine in the late 1800s.

“The current acceptance of worldly notions has indeed introduced a certain order into the conduct of people’s lives, but with it a certain frigidity, a certain absence of truth, and occasionally a lie.”

Here he reflects on the ways people, perhaps because they were less distracted, or because of the dangers present at the time, lived in a way that allowed for greater honesty, and in which the perception of love was more tangible, more necessary.

“When two friends meet and kiss each other one sees the manifestation of a greater light of love than that expressed in a handshake. A yet higher manifestation may be observed in the long conversation in which good friends love to tell each other of all their experiences.

“Beyond this there is a kind of love so intense that words are too dry to express it: two friends in this state can simply stand and gaze at each other without uttering a word.

“These, then, are various ways in which friends express their love, the bond that brings them to oneness.”

After reading this, I’ll admit, I became quite emotional. I began to feel, in a way I hadn’t fully allowed myself before, that I am fortunate to know this feeling, that I have known this close, inexpressible love with many of my friends, both old and new. And what is its worth? How could I possibly appraise it? What has it given me, and what have these relationships given to those with whom I share this intimacy?

Freedom means many things, and something different to each person. But the freedom from unspeakable, existential loneliness, that which, on some level, every person must feel, is what may be most needed now. Aside from the basics of food and shelter, which so many around the world still lack, this, I think, is the resource most urgently required.

To see someone you love and to know you are loved in return, to know that you will be heard, seen, acknowledged on the deepest level, to “simply stand and gaze at each other without uttering a word,” this is the antidote to so much of our confusion and suffering.

Making such friends, even as children, requires courage, a courage that says: I am secure enough with myself to allow others in, to shed my defenses, to reveal my flaws and insecurities, to hold another person and to sense the sanctity of their being.

Very little of this is spoken about in our culture, this sort of love. It is nothing that can be marketed or sold. It is not brash or performative. It is made of humility, forged from the understanding that even with all our strengths, we desperately need one another.

“But there is also an inward bond, a bond of thought, through which one friend senses the other. Just as a person sees his friend who stands facing him near at hand, so it is with thought, which is not limited by distance.”

Thought is not limited by distance. It cannot be trapped or contained. Thoughts of love, of an irrepressible empathy for another, have a power beyond imagination.

Think for a moment: what would it be like if there were a suitcase of perfect diamonds in front of us, with a sign that read: Take as many as you need.

In truth, the diamonds are there — take as many as you need.

Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author.

The special character of contemporary antisemitism is that it emanates from both the right and the left. Just a few years ago, the “new antisemitism” seemed to be a strictly left-wing affair, tied to the Israel-Palestine conflict and informed by the “Red-Green Alliance” between the Western Left and Islamist groups. Right-wing Israeli and Jewish commentators emphasized that fact and added it to the advantages of identification with the Republican Party and other conservative groups.

But in the last year and a half, this picture has been fractured by the emergence of virulently antisemitic right-wing “influencers” such as Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and the cover they are provided by political and media figures such as Vice President JD Vance and Tucker Carlson.

Many commentators have expressed surprise at this development. Yet should this really be surprising? Hadn’t xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and discrimination against various groups (starting with Native peoples and African chattel slaves) been intrinsic to America, at various times and in various circumstances, since its inception? Furthermore, conspiracy theories demonizing Jews and others may be a deeply rooted byproduct of modernity.

One strong tradition in American politics, once associated with Southern Democrats but, since the 1960s, increasingly tied to the Republicans, holds that true membership in American society, with its rights and privileges, belonged to white, Protestant men, especially those who had been part of the American social fabric for generations. Such membership is not open to all people of any background who enter into the American social contract, but rather to a group with specific racial, ethnic, religious and gender characteristics.

On the margins of this restricted conception of belonging were organizations and movements that were more extremist in their racism, antisemitism and advocacy of conspiracy theories – the Ku Klux Klan in the 1880s and 1920s, Father Coughlin and the American Nazi Party in the 1930s; and Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc.) and the John Birch Society in the 1950s and ‘60s.

While these extremist actors and movements have only intermittently become significant political factors, they should not be relegated to the “lunatic fringe.” Rather, they are structurally related to the “more moderate” mainstream.

A key trait of extremist groups is that they traffic in conspiracy theories, especially those involving Jews. Since the Middle Ages, Jews and other groups, such as Freemasons and witches, have often been described as secret players in a conspiracy to take over the world and enslave, dispossess, or even kill other populations. According to these theories, Jews play this role as agents of the devil or some other principal of cosmic evil.

Such thinking seems to be a result (in one fashion or another) of anomie or anomia, a concept first advanced by Émile Durkheim, the late 19th-century “father of sociology.” It refers to a social state of normlessness, that is, when the social norms that permit social interaction are unknown (or cannot be known), unclear or unable to be implemented. Durkheim showed that in such situations where individuals are cut off from social life, they will, among other things, engage in self-destructive behavior. This situation can be caused, among other factors, by rapid change in both negative and positive directions, either rapid impoverishment or rapid enrichment.

In essence, anomia means that the social world has stopped making sense. In such a situation, one might be susceptible to the suggestion that the forces governing the social world are hidden and generally malevolent, perhaps a conspiracy brewed by witches or Jews. Some have suggested that belief in conspiracy theories grants a feeling of having privileged knowledge, together with a sense of control.

It has been hypothesized that the outbreak of one grand, hugely murderous conspiracy theory, the European witch craze (1480-1650),  which resulted in the execution of 50,000 women and men, was linked to widespread moral confusion and anomie – feelings of living in an alien and indifferent universe in which, because of the religious wars, death and destruction became ends in their own right.

The emergence of conspiratorial antisemitism around the turn of the 20th century, embodied, above all, in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” also seems to be related to moral and social chaos and anomie. This arose from rapid industrialization and urbanization in Europe, especially in Germany, and later from the mass, mechanized killing of World War I.

Today, too, there appears to be a great deal of moral confusion and the widespread feeling that American society does not enable a meaningful and productive life. This is evident in the “deaths of despair” of middle-aged, lower-class white men, the epidemic of Fentanyl addiction across all classes, and the feeling of Gen-Z young adults that they will never achieve the fundamental attributes of American middle-class existence – one’s own home, good health insurance, adequate retirement savings.

We should not be surprised that conspiratorial antisemitism has reemerged in the current circumstances. But there is a deep reason that ties it specifically to the right. One of the major and recurrent generators of anomie since the end of the Middle Ages has been the clash of traditional markers of collective identity – race, ethnicity, religion – with the increasingly rationalized and technological means of production on the one hand, and the increase of social criticism based on liberal reason that traces back to the 18th-century  Enlightenment and extends to the current “progressive”  ideology.  The contemporary “woke” mindset applies the rational, liberal ideals of equality and freedom to new areas of criticism – not only to gender, but to sexual orientation and behavior. Whether such criticism has value or utility can be contested, but it has certainly contributed to a pervasive moral confusion and lack of normative clarity.

Today’s anomie and the conspiracy theories that spring from it (including about Jews) may be an ironic byproduct of modernity. We should not be surprised by them, but rather focus our energies on mitigating them as we do with other unwanted byproducts of modernity, like other various forms of pollution.

Dr. Shlomo Fischer teaches sociology in the School of Education at Hebrew University and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.