Antisemitism: The Political Cudgel You're Not Allowed to Question

Let us be clear about the word that is being used to shut down our conversations, hollow out our political discourse, and shield a nuclear-armed state from any semblance of accountability. That word is “antisemitism.” Once a term with a clear and horrific meaning—the hatred of Jewish people for being Jews—it has been systematically hollowed out, reshaped, and weaponized into the most effective political cudgel of the 21st century. Its new, unstated definition is this: any criticism of the state of Israel that makes its defenders uncomfortable.

This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's a political strategy playing out in plain sight, and its architects are becoming bolder with every success. The recent international firestorm over a chant at the Glastonbury music festival is a perfect case study. In a crowd of thousands, a handful of people reportedly chanted “Death to the IDF.” The Israel Defense Forces, for the record, is a state military, one of the most powerful on earth. Criticizing a military, even with crude and hyperbolic language common to protests, is a fundamental act of political speech. Yet, the reaction was not one of political disagreement, but of coordinated, manufactured outrage designed to trigger a specific tripwire.

Instantly, the machine whirred into action. The Israeli embassy, UK government officials, and a compliant media apparatus reframed this protest against a military force as an attack on Jewish people everywhere. The BBC was savaged for simply broadcasting the event, facing immense pressure to act as a censor for the Israeli state. The goal was transparent: to create an unbreakable link in the public mind between criticism of the IDF’s actions and genocidal anti-Jewish hatred. The message is simple and chilling: if you challenge Israeli state power, you will be branded a racist, and the institutions that give you a platform will be threatened into silence.

This strategy of engineered outrage requires a constant supply of villains, and the political left has been cast in the leading role. Look at the playbook being run against Zohran Mamdani in the New York City political arena. Mamdani, a politician critical of Israeli policy, is immediately slapped with the label of ‘antisemite.’ But here, the strategy reveals a more insidious layer. When his supporters, many of whom are Muslim, push back and call the attacks a smokescreen for Islamophobia, a perfect trap is sprung. The discourse is no longer about policy, justice, or international law. It becomes a toxic battle of identities, a zero-sum game of bigotry where any criticism can be deflected. This serves the pro-Israel lobby perfectly; while communities are pitted against each other, the state of Israel remains above the fray, its actions unexamined.

To make this narrative stick, you need “proof” that the left is the real source of hatred. And so, a quote is laundered into the mainstream, presented as unimpeachable fact. Walker Meghnagi, the head of Milan's Jewish community, is suddenly everywhere, quoted as saying, “Hatred of Jews is now being driven by the left.” This is not a grassroots observation; it is a strategic soundbite. It transforms a right-wing talking point into a supposed fact delivered from a ‘credible’ source. It is designed to demoralize and divide progressives, to make them second-guess their solidarity with Palestinians, and to force them to spend their energy policing their own language rather than challenging injustice. It’s a masterful, if cynical, piece of public relations.

This all leads to the central battlefield: the very definition of the word “antisemitism.” The incidents at Glastonbury and the attacks on Mamdani are not random flare-ups. They are calculated battles in a war to permanently expand the meaning of antisemitism to include any speech that delegitimizes or applies double standards to the state of Israel. Proponents of this redefinition, like those pushing the controversial IHRA definition, seek to codify this political protection into law and institutional policy. They want to make it impossible to call Israel an apartheid state, to advocate for a boycott, or to even vigorously critique its military without being professionally and socially destroyed by an accusation of antisemitism.

We are being manipulated. The profound historical weight of antisemitism—the memory of pogroms, persecution, and the Holocaust—is being shamelessly exploited as a shield for a modern political project. This does a disservice not only to the Palestinians whose suffering is being silenced, but to the concept of antisemitism itself. By crying wolf at every protest chant and political disagreement, these actors dilute the meaning of the word, making it harder to identify the real and resurgent threat of neo-Nazi and white supremacist Jew-hatred.

It is time to refuse to be silenced. It is time to call this strategy what it is: a cynical campaign to weaponize a tragedy in order to evade accountability. Criticizing the Israeli government is not antisemitism. Protesting a military’s actions is not antisemitism. Demanding that international law apply to Israel as it does to all other nations is not antisemitism. We must reclaim our language and our right to speak, before the political cudgel they are swinging shatters our ability to tell the truth altogether.