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What 120 million people were just told about antisemitism

What 120 million people were just told about antisemitism.

On the ground in Gaza: a snapshot “No one inside Gaza is calling this a ceasefire, not even the children.” The Israeli military has killed more than 500 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire was declared in October. Exacerbated by the Israeli government’s near-total destruction of infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, and basic sanitation, winter conditions in Gaza have been brutal. Hundreds of tents have flooded and collapsed in heavy rains, killing dozens and endangering hundreds of thousands. At least nine people, including infants, have frozen to death in Gaza this winter. The supposed “reopening” of the Rafah crossing last week has been a disaster, with Israel continuing to severely restrict medical evacuations. More than 20,000 Palestinians urgently require medical evacuations, but the Israeli government is allowing fewer than a dozen evacuations per day, while continuing to restrict the influx of critical aid into Gaza. Act now: Demand the U.S. stop arming Israel

Meanwhile, the right weaponizes accusations of antisemitism    There was no mention of Gaza on Sunday night, when more than 120 million people tuned into the Super Bowl, but billionaire interests still managed to push an anti-Palestine narrative.    A 30-second ad spot claiming to fight antisemitism ran midway through the game. The $15 million ad was paid for by the “Blue Square Alliance Against Hate” (BSA), an organization explicitly launched in 2019 to counter the success of growing calls to divest from Israeli apartheid and occupation. BSA was founded by Patriots’ billionaire owner Robert Kraft, friend to Trump and million-dollar donor to the racist, war-mongering, anti-Palestinian lobby group AIPAC.   The use of false and dangerous antisemitism data   The ad showed a Jewish teenager walking down a school hallway while the surrounding students stare and laugh at him. When he gets to his locker, he sees that someone has placed a sticky note reading “Dirty Jew” on his bag, until a Black classmate comes over and covers it up with the BSA’s signature “blue square” sticky note. He tells the Jewish student “I know how it feels.” A statistic onscreen informs the viewer that “2 out of 3 Jewish teens have experienced antisemitism.”    Unsurprisingly, this stat is credited to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel lobby group that is at the forefront of the effort to push a false narrative conflating antisemitism with criticism of the Israeli government. ADL data on antisemitism has come under consistent fire for its inaccuracy, particularly its practice of counting any “anti-Israel or anti-Zionist” speech or actions in its data as “antisemitic acts,” including instances of anti-Zionist Jews speaking out for Palestine.    Kraft’s ad suggests that the antisemitism that “2 out of 3 Jewish teens” experience is flat-out hate speech and clearly equates it to anti-Black racism. But since the ad uses ADL data, we have no way of knowing that these statistics about Jewish teenagers experiencing antisemitism don’t include every time someone said “Free Palestine” in the lunchroom. This false definition of Palestine advocacy as antisemitic is wholly baked into the numbers.

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Of course, the ADL’s intentional misrepresentation of antisemitism data makes it harder to actually identify and address antisemitism when it does show up. As the extreme right wing rises in power, explicit antisemitism has become widespread in certain corners of social media, common with popular right-wing media personalities, and espoused by a laundry list of Trump administration officials. This normalization of antisemitism at the highest levels of government is horrifying, and its spread on social media directly impacts what teenagers hear from their peers. But groups like the ADL and Kraft’s BSA aren’t actually concerned with reducing bigotry. Their goal is instead to use accusations of antisemitism to crush criticism of the Israeli government and smear advocates for Palestinian freedom as anti-Jewish racists. In fact, they’re more than happy to ignore antisemitism when it comes from Israel’s defenders.   A report in Jewish Currents found evidence that ADL data may “significantly undercount right-wing antisemitic incidents,” despite the ADL’s own data collection showing white nationalist groups being the most frequent perpetrators of clear-cut antisemitism. In one of the most egregious recent examples of this pattern, ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt defended Elon Musk’s Nazi salute as “awkward.” Only months before, he had compared the Palestinian keffiyeh to a Nazi swastika.

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Deploying the re-definition of antisemitism   The cost of this intentional misrepresentation is thousands upon thousands of Palestinian lives, as this narrative is used as a bludgeon to suppress and criminalize Palestinians and the solidarity movement across the globe. We’ve seen this false definition of antisemitism used against anti-genocide advocates everywhere over the last few years, from universities censoring and expelling students and firing faculty for their supposed “antisemitism” in standing up for Palestine, to kidnapping and deporting student activists, to Congresspeople dismissing calls to end U.S. funding of Israel’s genocide as unfairly biased against Israel. Israeli government propaganda has used this strategy of calling something one thing while it’s clearly another for decades, and not only with false allegations of antisemitism. The splashy declaration of a so-called “ceasefire” deal in October 2025 is yet another example.   While it’s pulled media attention away from Gaza and slowed the tide of international advocacy, the “ceasefire” period has not meant an end to the genocide in Gaza. The Israeli military has killed more than 500 Palestinians in Gaza since October, and alongside Trump, recently unveiled plans to ethnically cleanse and resettle Gaza and force the Palestinians that remain into dystopian, hyper-surveilled concentration camps.

What we're reading: A Day for Gaza.

Last week, the Nation dedicated one day on its website to stories and photos directly from Gaza and its people. Read their forceful records of what's been lost and life in Gaza right now. Read more

The fearmongering is the point    The BSA's Super Bowl ad was so absurd that even Israel’s defenders didn’t buy it. Zionist Jewish social media and news outlets lit up early this week, lambasting the ad for portraying the Jewish student as weak and unable to stand up for himself, and for not being explicit enough about the idea that most “antisemitic” incidents in schools are not anti-Jewish hate speech, but of course, criticism of Israel.   But even the ADL knows that the Israeli government is more unpopular than ever, and that claiming outright that opposing a genocide is antisemitic is an increasingly losing argument. In response to Zionist outcry that the ad didn’t say the quiet part out loud, the ADL responded that they’d tested the ad and “it worked” — viewers of the ad were slightly more likely to “fight antisemitism” after watching.     The ADL weathered the anger over the ad’s portrayal of the Jewish student as vulnerable and almost everyone around him as complicit in antisemitism because this narrative is crucial for the ADL and its allies. Their hope is to foster a culture of fear and confusion, one which does nothing to identify and confront real antisemitism, but instead works to shut down free speech and defend Israeli impunity. For Jews, this fearmongering is intended to stoke a constant fear of the world around us and legitimize anti-Palestinian racism; for others, it’s meant to create an immediate association between criticizing Israel and being racist towards Jewish people.    Groups like the BSA and ADL desperately want us to believe that it’s us or them. But we reject this fearmongering entirely. We will always choose solidarity with each other.

Tell Congress: Stop arming Israel NOW.

Zionist narratives are trying desperately to erase the truth: The U.S. has spent billions funding Israel's unspeakable genocide of Palestinians.   Use this tool from our sibling organization JVP Action to demand your Congressperson commit to stop arming Israel now. Email Congress now

Join the Power-Half Hour against ICE.

Join JVP's Power Half-Hour for Gaza today at 3pm ET, when a special guest from the Detention Watch Network will share about their immigrant defense work and lead us in taking action to cut funding for ICE. Register and join

Hear from Christian leaders challenging Zionism.

Join Adalah Justice Project, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Christians for a Free Palestine on Monday, February 16 for a conversation with Christian leaders organizing for Palestinian freedom and a faith rooted in collective liberation. Register now

What we're reading: A Day for Gaza.

Last week, the Nation dedicated one day on its website to stories and photos directly from Gaza and its people. Read their forceful records of what's been lost and life in Gaza right now. Read more

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