The Weaponization of a Word: How ‘Antisemitism’ Became a Tool to Crush Dissent

There is a word being hollowed out in real time. It is a word heavy with the horrors of history, a word that should evoke images of pogroms, ghettos, and gas chambers. That word is ‘antisemitism.’ But in the hands of a new class of political operators and frightened institutional cowards, it is being systematically stripped of its meaning, reshaped, and repurposed into a political cudgel designed for one purpose: to silence dissent against a specific nation-state and its military policies.

We are not just witnessing a debate over semantics. We are witnessing the construction of a linguistic cage. Any critique of Israeli state action, any solidarity with the Palestinian people, any opposition to a brutal military occupation is now being deliberately and cynically crammed into the box of ‘antisemitism.’ The goal is to make the cage inescapable, to make the very act of political criticism a form of hate speech. The events of the last few weeks have laid this strategy bare with terrifying clarity.

Let’s start at the Glastonbury festival, long considered a bastion of progressive culture. The punk band Bob Vylan, in a moment of raw political expression, led a chant of ‘Death to the IDF.’ A direct, angry, and unambiguous statement against a military force, the Israeli Defence Forces. The response from the festival organizers was not to defend the right to political speech, however provocative. It was not to engage with the substance of the critique against a military accused of war crimes. Instead, in an act of breathtaking cowardice and intellectual dishonesty, they issued a formal condemnation of the act as ‘antisemitism.’

Let that sink in. A chant targeting a state’s military was officially branded as hatred for Jewish people. This was not a random misinterpretation; it was a calculated move. Glastonbury’s statement provides the institutional seal of approval for the very lie that pro-Israel advocates have been pushing for years: that the IDF is the Jewish people, that the state of Israel is Judaism, and that to oppose one is to hate the other. This is a grotesque and dangerous conflation, one that ironically puts Jewish people worldwide in the position of being de facto shields for a foreign government’s military actions. By accepting this framing, Glastonbury organizers did not stand against hate; they became willing participants in the weaponization of language and the suppression of legitimate protest.

And now, the state has stepped in. The Glastonbury incident is no longer just a cultural dispute. It is a matter for law enforcement. UK police are assessing the video. In the United States, the Department of Justice’s Task Force is officially involved, scrutinizing the band’s US tour. The message is clear and chilling: your political speech against our allies’ military is now a potential criminal and international security matter. The process is simple: first, label the speech ‘antisemitism.’ Second, use that label to justify a full-spectrum crackdown by the security state. This is how dissent is criminalized in the 21st century—not with overt censorship laws, but by twisting the definition of hate speech to encompass political opposition.

This strategy is playing out in the political arena with equal ferocity. Look at the public pillorying of New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. On national television, he was repeatedly pressed to condemn the slogan ‘globalize the intifada.’ His refusal was not an endorsement of violence, but a principled stand against a McCarthyite loyalty test. He correctly identified that it is not the role of a state official to “police speech,” especially the slogans of protestors crying out against what they see as oppression. But in the current climate, this principled defense of free expression is portrayed as extremist evasion.

The term ‘intifada’ itself is deliberately mistranslated by its critics as a call for terrorism. They ignore its literal Arabic meaning—an ‘uprising,’ a ‘shaking off’—and its deep resonance in the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. By demanding its condemnation, the media and political establishment are forcing a choice: either you disavow the entire history of Palestinian resistance in a language they control, or you will be branded a sympathizer of anti-Jewish violence. It is a textbook witch hunt, where the target’s refusal to confess to the inquisitor’s definition of sin is presented as proof of guilt.

This war on words has long been waged on college campuses, the primary incubators of critical thought. The ongoing lawsuit against MIT, which names a tenured professor for alleged antisemitic harassment, is not an isolated event. It is part of a broader, well-funded campaign to paint universities as hotbeds of Jew-hatred. The real target, however, is not actual antisemitism. The target is academic freedom. The target is the growing and vocal student and faculty support for the Palestinian cause. By creating a climate of fear, by threatening institutions with costly lawsuits and public relations nightmares, these actors are successfully pressuring universities to censor anti-Zionist speech, divestment campaigns, and critical scholarship on Israel.

This is the grand strategy, laid bare. It is a multi-front war across culture, politics, and academia to enforce a single, toxic equation: Anti-Zionism = Antisemitism. This is not being done to protect Jewish people. It is being done to protect a political project and a military apparatus from accountability. The tragic irony is that this campaign does immense damage to the fight against real antisemitism. When the word is used as a cheap political smear against anyone who criticizes the state of Israel, it loses its power. It becomes diluted, a punchline, the cry of ‘wolf’ from a state that cannot tolerate scrutiny. The real, dangerous, and resurgent forces of white nationalist and neo-Nazi antisemitism are the beneficiaries of this cynicism. They watch as the term is debased, confident that when it is finally turned on them, it will have been rendered meaningless.

We must refuse to accept their dictionary. We must reject the linguistic cage. We must have the moral and intellectual clarity to say, unequivocally, that criticizing the actions of the IDF is not antisemitism. Supporting the right of Palestinians to resist occupation is not antisemitism. Calling for an end to the siege of Gaza is not antisemitism. And we must recognize the campaign to label it as such for what it is: a cowardly, dangerous, and profoundly cynical attack on the very foundations of free expression.