Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. His most recent book is Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.
(Oct. 14, 2026 / Jewish Journal)
We are living in a time when you can say almost anything about or against Jews, and it will be unfailingly believed. All you have to do is substitute “Zionist” or “Israel” for “Jews,” and just like that, hatred toward them will be as easy as dealing from the bottom of a deck containing 52 “Get Out of Jail Free” cards.
Sometimes, you don’t even need to make the substitution; transparent antisemitism works just as well.
We have seen how a chain reaction of inflammatory rhetoric can leave a landscape strewn with dead and terrified Jews, none of whom are responsible for Palestinian deaths. Jewish and non-Jewish victims are everywhere: on Bondi Beach; outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C.; at an outdoor mall in Boulder, Colo.; after a soccer match in Amsterdam; and in synagogues in Rotterdam, Liège, London, Toronto, Houston, Austin, Oak Park and Brooklyn, N.Y.
No distinctions are made by those who wish nothing but misery for Jews. Hamas knew that most of its victims on Oct. 7, 2023, were progressive, left-wing Jews who desired friendly relations alongside a Palestinian state. Many performed acts of kindness for those living on the other side of the security fence.
Minor details. They were destined to die because they were Jews. Those on the fairy-tale left are always shocked to discover that “I’m one of the good ones” offers no exemption from death sentences, mass rapes and mutilations.
On city streets and college campuses, antisemitic slogans that ought to receive no First Amendment protection are allowed to linger like hallowed words of wisdom. They elicit enraged, violent reactions and incite lawless behavior. Meanwhile, foul-mouthed antisemites live to spew another day.
Until lately. It’s a relief to see Jew-haters finally receive some just deserts.
A professor at Haverford College outside Philadelphia who teaches religion was arrested this week for cyberstalking a Jewish colleague. He is facing charges in federal court. He sent threatening messages such as “The goyim have woken up, jew. Run. Flee. Leave” and “Lower Merion will be cleansed of the jew filth.”
To a Jewish professor from another university, he wrote: “What flavor would you like for the gas we will be using?” On social media, he had choice words for non-Jewish supporters of the Jewish state. He called Democratic New York Rep. Ritchie Torres the N-word and declared that Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman was “mentally retarded.”
He will now have to explain to a federal judge the “academic” meaning behind: “Spare not a single one of the jew rats.”
Last week, a French member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, removed an Israeli flag from an exhibition commemorating the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre. She tossed it aside and trampled on it for good measure. The Parliament’s president condemned the incident and promised to take appropriate disciplinary action.
A fellow French parliamentarian upbraided his countrywoman, stating that her actions were a “form of complicity with those who, including in Europe, seek to bring back the antisemitic hatred that marked the darkest hours of our continent.”
Francesca Albanese, the Italian U.N. Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories and the grand dame of die-hard Jew-hatred worldwide (and the irrepressibly loudest voice on Israeli “genocide”), has been taking a well-deserved beating as of late—even in her native land.
In Italy, she faced official diplomatic condemnation from the government. The Italian Foreign Ministry publicly stated that her report on the “Gazan Genocide” exceeded the scope of her mandate and lacked impartiality, integrity and good faith. The city of Bologna shelved the ceremony it had planned to grant her honorary citizenship.
You lose your status as an academic when you choose to become an activist.
In France, she was rebuked for minimizing the undeniably antisemitic character of the Oct. 7 pogrom. She contradicted the mournful words of the French president by stating that Israelis were killed not because they were Jews but “in reaction to Israel’s oppression.”
Several European nations, including France and Germany, called for her to resign from her U.N. post—and to receive a formal public reprimand—on account of unrelenting inflammatory and false remarks about Israel. One such example was calling Israel the “common enemy of humanity.”
The United States imposed financial sanctions on her for spearheading international legal proceedings against both Israeli and American officials.
On a much smaller scale, a New York City public school teacher was terminated for posting on social media, “Long live Yahya al-Sinwar.” Sinwar was the mastermind behind Oct. 7. A teacher in Jacksonville, Fla., was fired for a TikTok rant in which she stated that “Jews control everything” and Israel is a “fake country” created “out of thin air.”
A man was sentenced to seven years in prison for hate crimes when he defaced Northwestern University outside of Chicago with Nazi swastikas. A manager at the consulting firm KPMG was fired for calling a Jewish man a “Zionist pig.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni deported an imam who said during a sermon, “Every Muslim must fight the infidels or face catastrophic consequences.” Two other Muslims were deported for attacking a Chabad rabbi at a bus stop.
A federal civil-rights report called on Rutgers University in New Jersey to take action against a faculty member who condoned the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., in May 2025. Separately, the university had allowed for the creation of a “Zionist-free space” on campus.
A former University of Arkansas professor was terminated for praising the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. She also called for Israel’s destruction and for a “dagger” to be “thrust […] into the throats of the Zionists.”
She is now suing the state over the misapplication of its antisemitism law. She argues that her “academic freedom and free speech rights” were violated by “impos[ing] a limitation on the ability to criticize the State of Israel’s actions.”
Is that really the case? Is she impeded from merely “criticizing” Israel? What manner of public policy debate befitting a university professor includes plunging a knife into the hearts of Jews—given that most Jews identify as Zionists?
At the University of Oregon on Oct. 7, Hamas supporters rioted outside the campus Hillel. They shouted: “Long live the intifada”; “Death, death to the IDF”; “Zionism, shut it down. Get Hillel off campus now.” They burned an American flag and distributed a manifesto celebrating the Hamas massacre and praising all Islamic terrorist groups.
Does kicking Hillel off campus or calling for an intifada against all Jews suggest legitimate criticism of Israeli actions? Shouting and issuing violent threats do not inspire or invite civilized debate. Free speech guarantees do not extend to “fighting words” and “true threats” because, among other things, they don’t contribute to the marketplace of ideas.
Once you call for the destruction of a state, to end its existence and question its legitimacy, alone among the constellation of 193 nation-states, you are not engaged in a constructive debate on either public policy or international affairs.
You lose your status as an academic when you choose to become an activist. You are not a true scholar when you refuse to teach both sides of a conflict or when you award extra credit to students who join antisemitic crusades. You forfeit your journalistic credentials when libelous smears replace truth-telling as your guiding light.
The good news is that some purveyors of anti-Jewish hate are being punished. But the world’s most vile antisemitism peddlers remain very much in business.
Zionism is an idea that was debated and embraced by the United Nations nearly 80 years ago. Israel is its realization. There’s no going back, and no room for eradication. Today’s antisemites will have to live with that reality.
Originally published by Jewish Journal.