PREFACE

Last winter, sitting with a 40-something-year-old friend from Boston who reported that her peers and her teenaged children could not explain the challenges facing Israel – and Israel׳s reactions – I responded: ״Wouldn׳t it be great, if we had short, punchy, user-friendly, guides to the big questions vexing so many about Israel today?״ The idea was that people could enter Jewish Community Centers, synagogues, schools, as well as non-Jewish spaces to easily access non-partisan, fact-driven, and non-polemical books, which would also be shared online.

That conversation inspired The Essential Guide to October 7th and Its Aftermath: Facts, Figures, History. Since JPPI published it in July 2024, and then updated it in February 2025, the Guide has been shared on the 100,000-person network of the JCC — Jewish Community Centers — Association of North America, as well as many Jewish Agency and Federation networks. The Montreal Federation-CJA printed 10,000 copies, and organizations, schools, and synagogues printed and distributed hundreds of other copies. My friend and JPPI colleague Dov Maimon translated The Guide into French – tailored for Francophones – and distributed over 20,000 copies in France, Switzerland, and Belgium – thanks to the KKL de France and World Zionist Organization. The Guide was translated into Hebrew and will soon be translated into Spanish, with some interest in a Chinese translation.

Eventually, we envision publishing Guides to U.S.-Israel Relations, Israeli History, Jewish History, and on Being a Jewish Parent and a Jewish Student Today. This project, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and Jew-Hatred, describes two defining phenomena: Zionism, the movement of Jewish nationalism that established Israel; and, alas, the ongoing hatred against Jews, and its modern manifestations, left and right, especially anti-Zionism.

Once again, before building into Five Chapters, illuminated with fact-boxes and charts, we pose Five Basic Questions:

• What is Zionism?
• What is Anti-Zionism?
• How do Anti-Zionism and antisemitism overlap, how do they differ, and why are both surging now?
• Are all pro-Palestinian activists and critics of Israel antisemitic?
• What can Jews and Zionists do to lessen the hatred against them?

After short responses below, this Guide deepens the answers in the following chapters:

CHAPTER 1: Zionism: The People of Israel Enjoying the State of Israel in the Land of Israel

CHAPTER 2: The Evil Overlap: How Anti-Zionism Became The New Antisemitism – and Mainstreamed Jew-hatred Again

CHAPTER 3: The Global Surge in Jew-Hatred: Why Now?

CHAPTER 4: Boundaries and Balance: How Israel׳s Critics Can Avoid Antisemitism, How Israel׳s Supporters Can Avoid Confusing Critics with Bigots

CHAPTER 5: Liberal Living and Zionist Dreaming in a World Gone Mad

EPILOGUE: The 6 Ps to Respond to Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

The Guide starts and ends on positive notes. That׳s an ideological and historical statement, putting the hatred in proportion. The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre claimed in Anti-Semite and Jew, written as the Holocaust ended, that the Antisemite makes the Jew. Zionists say ״no!״ The Jew makes the Jew.

Four key phenomena define this work:

• Zionism, the Jewish movement of Jewish national liberation, recognizing the Jews as a people as well as a religion with the right to establish a Jewish-democratic state on that homeland.
• Anti-Zionism, which rejects the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism, denies Jewish ties to the Land of Israel, and opposes the defining Zionist project, the State of Israel.
• Antisemitism, many Jew-haters׳ obsessive, conspiratorial ideology casting ״the Jews,״ Judaism, the Jewish people, or ״the Jewish state״ as a central source of evil in the world.
• Jew-hatred, the crude bigotry against Jews, individually and collectively, often expressed in disdain, discrimination, intimidation, and violence.

We live in partisan times. Even what should be a unifying fight against Jew-hatred divides us, often along party lines. Just as Hamas׳s crimes on October 7 and the subsequent celebrations worldwide showed how much anti-Zionism and antisemitism blur, it should have ended this silly debate: ״Which is worse – right-wing antisemitism or left-wing antisemitism?״ We need zero tolerance for all forms of Jew-hatred, and all forms of bigotry. Even in the United States, the most welcoming of countries, Jews have been attacked violently by a right-wing White supremacist in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, by a left-wing pro-Palestinian progressive outside a Washington, DC Jewish museum in 2025, and by an Islamic fundamentalist in Boulder, Colorado, eleven days later. These represent the three most popular – and deadly – forms of antisemitism today.

Antisemitism is the most plastic hatred. It׳s a remarkably adaptive obsession, welding Jew-hatred onto other agendas. When religion dominated the world: Christians and Muslims hated Jews as the ״great heretics.״ As the world industrialized, Jews were too modern for traditionalists, too traditionalist for moderns, too capitalist for Communists, too Communist for capitalists, and too cosmopolitan to be trusted – that is, until Zionism made them too nationalist for the universalists. When eugenic racism was in vogue, Nazis vowed to eliminate the Jewish race. When anti-racism and anti-colonialism predominate in political and academic discourses, bigots cast Zionists, meaning Jewish nationalists, as racists and settler-colonialists. And today, to those who hate Whites, Jews have White privilege, while White supremacists say Jews are not white enough and scream, ״Jews will not replace us.״ Again and again, as people fear different evils, Jews nevertheless remain the devil׳s workmates.

Forever mutating, updating, shapeshifting, Jew-hatred feeds off the hot issue of the day, be it sympathy for ״the oppressed,״ pro-Palestinianism, anxiety about immigrants, frustrations of Whites – or Blacks. For centuries, antisemites have cleverly connected a big worry of the moment to the historical dread of the Jews – and now the Jewish state. Just as there׳s a difference between anti-Zionists and non-Zionists, thoughtful people must sift: just because some fanatics link just causes to unjust assaults on Judaism or Zionism – don׳t reject the cause, the Jews, or the Jewish state.

Antisemitism is not some mystical force. It׳s a useful way of organizing a confusing world for misanthropes of various stripes. An assortment of metaphors capture the different dimensions of antisemitism. It׳s a ״parasite״ because it feeds off so many different hosts, from left to right. It׳s a ״virus״ or ״plague״ because it׳s so contagious and afflicts so many. It׳s an ״addiction״ because its self-righteous intoxication becomes so overwhelmingly habit-forming. It׳s a ״gateway drug״ to other hatreds. It׳s ״plastic,״ a ״shapeshifter״ – metaphors already used – forever mutating. It׳s a ״ladle״ stirring the pot of political furies and social instability. Perhaps, most illuminating for historians, it׳s a ״reservoir״ – albeit polluted – a cultural pool filled with accusations, images, and grievances people draw upon when they wish to criticize anything Jewish or need a scapegoat.

Antisemitism is a process too. In 1975, Elie Wiesel, eleven years before winning the Nobel Peace Prize, recognized the morphology of antisemitic hatred in the onslaught against Israel and Zionism. ״To prepare ‘solutions׳ to the ‘Jewish problem׳ the first step was to divorce the Jew from mankind,״ he wrote. Accusing Israel, the collective Jew, of the reprehensible crime of racism started the process of ostracizing, demonizing, then dehumanizing, which in the 1940s spawned Auschwitz. Fearing that ״hate of the Jew has once more become fashionable,״ the Romanian-born American immigrant admitted then, ״I remember and I am afraid.״

In 1982, when Israel׳s war in Lebanon triggered another anti-Zionist, antisemitic hate-swarm, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy confirmed Wiesel׳s fears, saying subtly, gradually, ״through tiny slips of meaning within these drifts of language and words, the [post-Holocaust] taboo is being broken.״ Demonizing Israel helped paint ״a portrait״ of Jews as ״a shameful people, a satanic people . . . this abominable people, universally loathed״— and deservedly so.

Robin Shepherd, a British political commentator who attended university in London in the late 1980s and early ׳90s, remembers watching attempts to ban Jewish student societies using the ״justification״ that ״Zionism was racism.״ Like accusations of settler-colonialism and genocide today: ״It was a charge that would put anyone with even mildly pro-Israeli leanings right on the back foot. It was a verbal jab to the chin. It was a way of telling you to conform to the anti-Israel orthodoxy or be vilified.״

Of course, ״It would be foolish to suggest that all criticism of Israel is motivated by antisemitism,״ the Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet noted during another terrorism-triggered Jew-hating surge in 2002, ״but it would be irresponsible to believe that none of it is.״

At a time when more and more liberals and conservatives refuse to associate with each other, partisan loyalties blur the issues. Most American Jews, for example, more easily recognize antisemitism from the right than from the left. This reflects the Jewish community׳s liberal majority, exacerbated by the different haters׳ characters.

Neo-Nazis don׳t hide: they shout ״Heil Hitler״ while calling Israel׳s flag the ״kike flag״ before burning it. Right-wing White supremacist influencers like Nick Fuentes don׳t hide: denouncing ״Jewish subversion״ while calling the Holocaust ״exaggerated״ and dismissing detailed descriptions of Hamas׳s October 7 atrocities as ״all a lie.״

Islamists also don׳t hide: saying, as Hamas׳s founding charter proclaims, ״Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious….״ Judgment Day ״will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.״ Such rhetoric inspired Mohamed Sabry Soliman to yell ״Free Palestine״ on June 1, 2025, while throwing Molotov cocktails and burning 15 pro-Israel demonstrators protesting peacefully for the hostages׳ return in Boulder, Colorado. His crime murdered one 82-year-old woman. When interviewed by authorities, Soliman said he wanted to kill all Zionist people, blurring Zionists and Jews and pro-Israeli protesters together. Earlier that spring, a Temple University student, Mo Khan, was more explicit when resisting his suspension for posting a sign in a bar saying ״Fuck the Jews.״ Denouncing ״Jewish supremacy״ while raising over $18,948 on a Go-Fund Me platform, Khan insisted: ״That sign didn׳t kill any jews…. but their support of Israel kills 1000s of people EVERY SINGLE DAY.״

Many progressive anti-Semites are more subtle. Hiding behind human rights rhetoric, many nevertheless celebrated Hamas׳s mass-murder of Jews on October 7. They justified it as ״de-colonization״ or a struggle against ״oppressors,״ and ostracized Jewish colleagues.

Still, their rhetorical smokescreens convinced some Jews that ״they׳re just criticizing Israel.״ And, a year-and-a-half into the post-October 7th Jew-hating surge, magazines like The Atlantic ran articles downplaying campus antisemitism as harmless. One contributor claimed the university upheavals merely fostered ״a pervasive sense of non-belonging among Jewish students,״ while accusing the Trump Administration with ״cannily appropriating for its own ends one of the progressive left׳s highest priorities: protecting a minority from hostile acts.״ Unfortunately, illiberal liberals today block the Jewish ״minority״ – 2.4 percent of America – at the intersection, caricaturing Jews as having ״white privilege,״ and thus not a genuine minority.

In short, it often takes one punchline to refute Right Wing or Islamist Jew-hatred, but paragraphs to expose Left-wing bile. As a result, while condemning all bigotry equally, this Essential Guide necessarily devotes more space to decoding Left-Wing Jew-hatred than Right-Wing. This doesn׳t reflect authorial bias — but certain bigots׳ duplicity.

A second warning: this book often focuses on the hatred. But most Diaspora Jews׳ fellow citizens, in every Western democracy, are not bigots. Note how many Americans, from neighbors to political leaders, embraced the Jewish community after one extremist killed eleven worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. Three years earlier, 3.7 million protesters took to France׳s streets to denounce terrorism and Jew-hatred after the ״Charlie Hebdo״ and HyperCacher murders. The evil of one should not define a nation, especially when so many stand up for good.

Proportion is essential. The Jewish world, the pro-Israel community, and liberal democracies worldwide, face many challenges. Hamas׳s attack on Israel unleashed waves of hatred. But Jews are not homeless, stateless, or defenseless any more. Unlike a century ago, most Jews either live in the Jewish State of Israel, or in democracies that are free, orderly, ideologically opposed to antisemitism, welcoming to Jews personally, and pro-Israel.

Like the first Essential Guide to October 7 – and the others forthcoming –– this book is a joint publishing venture with the Jewish world. We encourage organizations, foundations, federations, synagogues and schools to send out or, even better, print out the PDF with the cover, both of which are available on the JPPI website.

Full documentation backing this guidebook can be found on the JPPI website.
https://jppi.org.il/en/

For more copies of this guidebook or to discuss organizational collaborations and sponsorships. please email: info@jppi.org.il

I am incredibly grateful to my extraordinary colleagues at JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, the Global Think Tank of the Jewish People, for inspiration, illumination and support. Yedidia Stern, Shuki Friedman, Ita Alcalay, Shlomo Fischer, Noah Slepkov, Eliran Carsenti, Moshe Cohen, Sam Hyde, On Levy, and Jason Pearlman – made great contributions to the Guide – or are about to! Special thanks to Barry Geltman for his thoughtful editing, Tal Shimshoni for the powerful graphics, and Dov Maimon for his constructive suggestions and masterful French edition. I also thank my assistant Matthew Shapiro for all his talents.

In memory of our fallen, especially Sgt.-Maj. Yosef Malachi Guedalia, 22, the heroic ״angel of Kfar Azza.״ In shock that innocent hostages still remain captive in Hamas׳s hands, enduring abuse daily, and with hopes for a genuine peace – and the kind of decency and respect in democracies so many of us took for granted not that long ago.

Professor Gil Troy, Jerusalem, September, 2025