Weaponization of antisemitism

Examples of allegations

In 1990, the Argentine newspaper Buenos Aires Herald defended President of Argentina Carlos Menem against charges of antisemitism, writing that the allegations "may have been prompted by President Menem's good relations with Jews which constitutes 'a perceived threat to the [opposing] Radical Party's traditional Jewish constituency'".

After American author Alice Walker was accused of antisemitism for recommending a book by Holocaust denier David Icke and for her 2017 poem "It Is Our (Frightful) Duty To Study The Talmud", Walker wrote in response that the "attempt to smear David Icke, and by association, me, is really an effort to dampen the effect of our speaking out in support of the people of Palestine." Palestinian American writer and activist Susan Abulhawa wrote that Walker's "real offence [in the eyes of her critics] is her defiant support for Palestinian liberation" and called the backlash against her the "clawing [of] Zionist machines".

After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was criticized for saying that "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people [and] the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese", Kennedy said that the allegations against him of antisemitism were hurtful, that his words had been "distorted and weaponized", and that he had "literally never said an antisemitic word in my life".

Areas of controversy

The charge of weaponization has been raised across the political spectrum, especially in anti-Zionist discourse on the left and right. Scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in the 2000s and Matthew Abraham in the 2010s suggested that the charge of antisemitism was becoming less effective when applied to criticisms of Israel.

While warning in 2010 against denying or minimizing antisemitism, attorney and academic Kenneth L. Marcus also cautioned against overuse of the "anti-Semitism card", paralleling concerns raised by Richard Thompson Ford with the broader misuse of "the race card": that it can be dishonest and mean-spirited, risks weakening legitimate accusations of bigotry, risks distracting socially concerned organizations from other social injustices, and hurts outreach efforts between Jewish and Arab or Muslim groups.

Israel and Zionism

Some activists and scholars have said that weaponization of antisemitism, and new antisemitism in particular, has been used to stifle criticism of Israel.

In the early 1950s, U.S. journalist Dorothy Thompson, a former advocate of Zionism, was publicly called antisemitic when she began to criticize Zionism after a visit to Palestine in 1945. Thompson felt the accusations, which persisted throughout her career, amounted to a "type of blackmail" or character assassination. Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge wrote, "today, many see the silencing of a bold humanitarian advocate in her story, and it is not difficult to understand why", but also that "there can be no doubt that anti-Semitism was a theme in Thompson's later writing."

In his 1956 memoir, British military officer John Bagot Glubb denied accusations of antisemitism for his criticism of Israel, writing: "It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism." Israeli historian Benny Morris linked such allegations against Glubb to a "tendency among Israelis and Jews abroad to identify strong criticism of Israel as tantamount to, or as at least stemming from, anti-Semitism", although Morris also said Glubb's anti-Zionism was "tinged by a degree of anti-Semitism" and his "outlook on the history of the Jews ... is jaundiced, inaccurate, and, at times, blatantly anti-Semitic".

Stephen Rosenfeld wrote in 1982 that, in response to the notion that criticism of Israel can euphemistically conceal antisemitism, some critics of Israel "now routinely start out by asserting that of course they are going to be smeared as anti-Semites for their remarks [...] These attempts too often sound like a tacit attempt to identify Jews as people whose first loyalty is to a troublesome group outside America." Rosenfeld wrote that he found this current deeply troubling, even as he condemned attempts to intimidate critics of Israel. In 1989, Cheryl Rubenberg wrote that it was "a common practice among Israel's advocates" to call opponents of "the [Israel] lobby's positions" or supporters of a Palestinian homeland antisemitic, referring to incidents involving U.S. politicians Charles Mathias, Pete McCloskey, and Jesse Jackson. In a 1992 book, the American diplomat emeritus George Ball wrote that AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups "employ the charge of 'anti-Semitism' so carelessly as to trivialize it", suggesting that this was due to the lack of any "rational argument" with which to defend the state's actions.

Critics such as the Israel–Palestine researcher Suraya Dadoo, journalist Ben White, and Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona Matthew Abraham have suggested that international Israeli advocacy groups have charged prominent people who express pro-Palestinian sentiment, such as Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, with antisemitism. Abraham says this is a form of "political correctness" that undermines "greater understanding about the conditions producing conflict in the Israel–Palestine conflict". In 2002, Tutu said, "to criticise [Israel] is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if the Palestinians were not Semitic ... People are scared in this country [the US] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful." South African Muslim scholar Farid Esack wrote that it was unfortunate that Tutu's statement "verged into antisemitic tropes" but "this misspoken moment unfolded because of his prophetic support of Palestinians".

In the 21st century, various writers have suggested that charges of antisemitism in discussions of Israel can have a chilling effect, deterring criticism of Israel due to fear of being associated with beliefs linked to antisemitic crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust. In 2004, Joel Beinin wrote that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other organizations used the "well-established ploy" of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, exposing Jews to attack by suggesting they are responsible for the Israeli government's actions.

In a 2005 interview with Campus Watch, Norman Finkelstein said, "Whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.'" Jonathan Judaken said Finkelstein's dismissal of new antisemitism was "the mirror-image of the alarmists he seeks to denounce". In 2008, Finkelstein said that organizations such as the ADL had advanced charges of new antisemitism since the 1970s "to exploit the historical suffering of Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism". Finkelstein has said that use of "the anti-Semitism card" attempts to displace "fundamental responsibility for causing the conflict from Israel to the Arabs, the issue no longer being Jewish dispossession of Palestinians but Arab 'opposition' to Jews". He compared claims of antisemitism against critics of Israel to Soviet censorship. In 2008, he wrote that some of what "the Israel lobby" suggests is antisemitism is in fact "exaggeration and fabrication", "mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy", and "the unjustified yet predictable 'spillover' from criticism of Israel to Jews generally".

In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2008), John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote that Israel's supporters have sought to shield it from criticism and pressure using fears of a "new antisemitism", naming as examples ADL publications raising concerns of antisemitism at moments of particular political pressure against Israel. They wrote that the charge of antisemitism can discourage others from defending in public those against whom the charge has been made. They said that rhetorical accusations of antisemitism put a burden of proof on the accused person, putting them in the "difficult" position of having to prove a negative. They wrote, "we should all be disturbed by the presence of genuine anti-Semitism", but suggested that "playing the anti-Semitism card stifles discussion" and "allows myths about Israel to survive unchallenged". In 2010, Kenneth L. Marcus wrote that although Mearsheimer and Walt called such accusations "the Great Silencer", they had not themselves been silenced, having received a wide audience for their book and appearances. Marcus also wrote that many pro-Israel commentators had also taken pains to say that not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Ross Douthat wrote that the Mearsheimer and Walt are more the beneficiaries of "a calculated decision to take a highly-polemical approach to a hot-button topic" than they are victims of a supposed "suffocating and dangerous atmosphere of lockstep philo-Zionism in the American intelligentsia". Debates about the "antisemitism card", Douthat wrote, take place in a political environment where explicit political antisemitism is a "live and potent political force", whereas "race card" debates take place in a context where racism has been banished from open expression and exists only in "the realm of symbolism and subliminal messaging".

The Community Security Trust's 2008 report on antisemitic discourse in Britain says that, despite British Jewish community leaders' statements that Israel is legitimately subject to criticism, "some mainstream media commentators and political activists regularly accuse Jewish representative bodies of manipulating antisemitism as a smear with which to target any criticism of Israel." The report says that British Jewish representatives who raise concerns about antisemitism "are often treated with derision and contempt" and that "the false accusation [of manipulating antisemitism to smear Israel's critics] is often accompanied by the claim that politicians and journalists are too fearful for their careers and personal safety to speak out against Israel and the alleged Jewish cover-ups on its behalf. This charge is partly reliant upon the antisemitic notion of an all pervasive and all powerful pro-Israeli conspiracy."

In 2009, Tamar Meisels wrote that it is "very convenient for Jews, Israelis and Americans… to counter political attacks with the victim's cry of anti-Semitism. After all, in the post-Nazi era, no one wants to appear anti-Semitic. After the gas chambers, it is hardly bon ton to be an anti-Semite. So such accusations should be enough to shut anyone up." But she notes that many criticisms of Israel are antisemitic, giving the example of antisemitic tropes in statements by two western writers, Breyten Breytenbach and Jose Saramago. Responding to her article, Brian Klug agreed that unwarranted accusations "devalue the word [antisemitism], cheapen the charge and alienate people of goodwill", but that antisemitic criticisms of Israel exist and should be called out as such. The next year, Klug wrote: "Critics of Israel, crossing an invisible line in the sand, find themselves accused of anti-Jewish hatred (or self-hatred if Jewish). They react by accusing their accusers, alleging that so-called antisemitism is nothing more than a machination of 'the Israel lobby'. At once, this is seized upon as an antisemitic slur; which in turn is denounced as a Zionist smear. Round and round they go, down and down they go, in a circle that gets ever more vicious. One of the depressing things about this vicious circle is that so many virtuous people—people of goodwill—get caught up in it."

Commenting on a 2015 Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) poll of British Jews that found that 77% of respondents had "witnessed antisemitism that was disguised as a political comment about Israel", Jonathan Sacerdoti said, "often people are told that it's the other way around—that Jews silence criticism of Israel by invoking antisemitism [... the results show that] there are people who use a legitimate debate about Israel to prevent Jews from speaking out when they feel they have been the victims of antisemitism."

In 2019, Joshua Leifer, an editor of Dissent magazine, wrote that campaigns that consider anti-Zionism antisemitic aim to shift criticisms of the Israeli government "beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability". In December 2023, antisemitism expert David Feldman said that, while "some anti-Zionism takes an antisemitic form", the context must be considered when differentiating antisemitism from legitimate discourse and that there is "a long history of Israel and its supporters portraying anti-Zionism and other criticisms of Israel as antisemitic" to delegitimize them.

In the 2020s, some authors have accused the ADL of advancing false claims of antisemitism against anti-Zionists.

In 2024, during the Gaza war, Raz Segal wrote that conflating the state of Israel with Jews is part of the weaponization of antisemitism discourse that protects Israel from criticism, especially in discussion of Israeli settler colonialism. Political scientist Omar Shahabudin McDoom wrote in 2024 that the identification of "critic[ism] of the conduct of the Israeli government" with antisemitism is not necessarily in bad faith but may be attributed to conscious or unconscious "prosemitic" bias: "Although it has long been argued the antisemite label has been used instrumentally to silence critics of Israel, it may not always be disingenuous behaviour." In 2024, Marshall Ganz accused the Brandeis Center of McCarthyism in its responses to critics of Israeli policies as antisemites. In a 2026 editorial in Critical Research on Religion, Warren S. Goldstein of the Center for Critical Research on Religion wrote, "the conflation of being critical of Israel and being antisemitic is an attempt to deflect criticism of the policies of the state of Israel and instead displaces blame on to all Jews" and "it is the poor unhumanitarian behavior of Israel which is the prime driver of antisemitism."

In April 2025, American children's educator Ms. Rachel, who has advocated for children experiencing trauma and starvation in Gaza, featured in an "Antisemite of the Week" column by the pro-Israel advocacy group StopAntisemitism, which accused her of spreading Hamas propaganda. In November 2025, the group named her a finalist for its "Antisemite of the Year". Jews for Racial and Economic Justice defended Ms. Rachel, saying that StopAntisemitism "solely exists to punish and harass private and public individuals who criticize the actions of the State of Israel or simply express sympathy for and solidarity with Palestinians."

Jewish anti-Zionism

In 1989, Noam Chomsky sarcastically said, "it is now necessary to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism—or in the case of Jews, as 'self-hatred,' so that all possible cases are covered". In 2014, Matthew Abraham wrote, "the traditional response to [anti-Zionist Jews who counter the notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitic] has been to label anti-Zionist Jews as 'self-hating Jews,' which requires a suspension of rationality and sound judgement."

Pro-Palestinian activism

Multiple scholars have said that allegations of antisemitism have been weaponized against pro-Palestinian protesters.

In 2018, over 40 Jewish organizations on the political left, including Jewish Voice for Peace, published an open letter saying that pro-Palestinian organizations were the subject of "cynical and false accusations of antisemitism" in order to discredit them.

During the Gaza war, scholar Raz Segal, former Hillel executive director for Harvard University Bernie Steinberg, and former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy said that antisemitism has been weaponized to silence pro-Palestinian voices, especially in regard to Israel's human rights abuses. According to Mitchel Plitnick and Sahar Aziz, a presumption that all Muslims are antisemitic has been "increasingly deployed by Zionist groups to eliminate critical debate inclusive of Palestinian experiences". In 2024, a group of Germanophone scholars said the weaponization of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian protesters, people of color, and post- and decolonial scholars by universities and the Austrian political right meant the "recent increase of antisemitic crimes and the structural antisemitism across Austrian society are thereby obscured".

One organization accused of weaponizing antisemitism is Canary Mission, an anonymously run doxing website established in 2014 that publishes the personal information of students, professors, and organizations it describes as anti-Israel or antisemitic, focusing primarily on people at North American universities. Canary Mission's published materials were called a blacklist by freelance journalist Alex Kane in The Intercept, and James Bamford wrote in The Nation that Canary Mission weaponizes antisemitism to silence criticism of Israel.

University campuses in the United States

During the 2023–25 Gaza war, there were many protests at universities. Israel and its supporters called the protests at U.S. universities antisemitic, and Israel's critics say such allegations are used to silence opposition. There were antisemitic remarks and violent threats during the protests, but the protest organizers, some Jewish, described the movement as peaceful defense of Palestinian rights. In the U.S., Democrats and Republicans have characterized campus protests in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza as "rampant antisemitism", a characterization Israeli Holocaust historian Raz Segal has called "woefully misguided—and dangerous". Segal, former Hillel Harvard director Bernie Steinberg, and Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel said that criticisms of the protests included weaponized antisemitism. Of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, Segal wrote, "the blanket assertion [of "rampant antisemitism" at the protests] by pro-Israel advocates is intended as a political cudgel: weaponizing antisemitism to shield Israel from criticism of its attack on Gaza". Angel said the American right has weaponized claims of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian campus activism to ban boycotts of Israel and curtail the right to protest, and that Republicans and the Anti-Defamation League have attempted to portray pro-Palestinian student protesters as "terrorists". Steinberg wrote that "fabricated and weaponized" charges against campus protesters must be "put aside" to deal with the "real and dangerous" antisemitism posed by "alt-right white-supremacist politics".

Some Jewish and Palestinian faculty and students at Columbia University and Barnard College called the response of politicians and the universities' administrations to campus protests "weaponization of antisemitism". Harvard University appointed antisemitism scholar Derek Penslar to head a task force on the issue. After criticism of Penslar, who had signed an open letter critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, Slate columnist Emily Tamkin said his critics were weaponizing antisemitism.

Following restrictions on pro-Palestinian protests at universities, several Jewish organizations, activists, and scholars said the second Trump administration was using antisemitism as a pretext for anti-democratic and authoritarian actions. Kenneth S. Stern said the Trump administration was "absolutely weaponizing antisemitism" to curtail "speech we don't like", in "a total assault on the university". Representative Jerry Nadler said Trump was "weaponizing the real pain American Jews face to advance his desire to wield control". Nadler also criticized cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, which terminated nearly half its staff, as contradicting Trump's claim to combat antisemitism. Shaul Magid, a rabbi and Jewish studies scholar, has suggested that Republicans used congressional hearings about antisemitism to attack universities' diversity, equity and inclusion policies rather than to address campus antisemitism.

Lara Deeba and Jessica Winegarb, anthropologists of the Middle East, suggest antisemitism has been weaponized in the U.S. against pro-Palestinian students and university staff in an attempt to "silence pro-Palestinian speech, abolish anti-racist teaching and diversity initiatives, eliminate academic freedom, and question the value of higher education in general".

In September 2025, a federal judge ruled against Trump's funding freeze for Harvard University, finding that it was "difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Trump administration] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of [federal law]".

Between January and June 2025, nine U.S. attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice resigned because of the pressure they felt from the Trump administration to conclude that University of California (UC) campuses had violated the civil rights of Jewish students and staff. Middle East Monitor reported that Ejaz Baluch, a trial attorney assigned the task of finding antisemitism at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) called the exercise "unserious": "It was not about trying to find out what really happened", he added. A federal judge found that the Trump administration's proposed settlement with UC was "coercive and retaliatory" and likely violated the First Amendment.

Daniel Ian Rubin and Mara Grayson criticized the University of California, Santa Cruz Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department's statement following the October 7 attacks for not condemning the attacks and instead decrying supposed "underhanded efforts" by Jewish nonprofits to "smear" the department's Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism as antisemitic. Rubin and Grayson analyzed the statement as preemptively deflecting accusations of antisemitism by "declaring that any such accusation is strategically designed and unscrupulously deployed to silence criticism of Israel", reinforcing antisemitic tropes about conspiracy and Jewish dishonesty.

International law disputes

In February 2022, when Amnesty International reported that Israel was committing apartheid in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel rejected the findings and denounced them as antisemitic. Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard called the Israeli officials' responses "baseless attacks, barefaced lies, fabrications on the messenger". Human rights advocates subsequently argued that the criticism of the report constituted weaponization of antisemitism.

During the Gaza war, pro-Israel advocates, including speakers, writers, and politicians, were accused of weaponizing antisemitism to silence valid criticism of Israel. Political scientist Omar Shahabudin McDoom has written that accusations of antisemitism play two roles in what he calls Gaza genocide denial: claiming that Israel is unfairly targeted in an orchestrated campaign motivated by antisemitism, and attacking the motivations of critics of Israel's genocide. Martin Shaw has written that Israel's supporters use the ideology of anti-antisemitism as institutionalized in the U.S., Germany, and other Western countries to block recognition of the genocide.

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) was rumored to be preparing arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Aryeh Neier said that Netanyahu's assertion "that ICC indictments would be antisemitic is indicative of his promiscuous use of antisemitism allegations". Shortly thereafter, on 20 May 2024, the ICC announced that it was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, and Netanyahu called chief prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan one of the "great antisemites in modern times", saying that Khan was "callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging across the world". Kenneth Roth said Netanyahu's response was a "common last resort for defenders of Israel" that endangered Jews: "if people see the charge of antisemitism as a thin cover for Israeli war crimes, it will cheapen the concept at a time when a strong defense is needed."

In February 2024, Israeli officials accused the International Court of Justice of antisemitism following South Africa's genocide case against Israel. Anthony Lerman wrote in Declassified UK that the officials' "weaponised antisemitism to deflect criticism" and that "using past experience of anti-Jewish persecution to neutralise criticism of, and generate sympathy for, the Jewish state [...] is decades old".

The left and the right

In a 2021 independent study funded by the office of the UK Government's Independent Adviser on Antisemitism (Lord Mann), academics Daniel Allington and Tanvi Joshi found that alternative media outlets, including The Skwawkbox and The Canary on the left and Tommy Robinson's TR News on the right, often represent Jews and Zionists as raising antisemitism in bad faith.

Political left

A 2024 study by the French Foundation for Political Innovation found that "those close to [left-wing party] La France Insoumise criticize what they perceive as an abusive use of the accusation of anti-Semitism, which they believe is aimed at muzzling criticism of the Israeli government", giving as an example party founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon's references to the "paralyzing radius of anti-Semitism" and "genuflections" before the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions in French politics. Camilla Brenni et al. criticize the French left for ignoring and minimizing antisemitism, and the radical left in particular for never discussing antisemitism except as an issue tactically instrumentalized against the movement. They write that the left's defensive posture against the supposed "blackmail" of antisemitism prevents any reflection on tropes that infuse antisemitism in both the sovereigntist left and the nationalist right.

Political right

The German far-right has accused Jews of "using the Antisemitismuskeule" (lit. 'antisemitism club/cudgel') in relation to new antisemitism, nationalism, and neo-Nazism. German studies scholar Caroline Pearce describes the phrase as a "common far-right term" in contemporary German politics. For example, Jörg Meuthen initially described criticism of Wolfgang Gedeon's writings—which have been widely described as antisemitic—as attempts by political opponents to wield the Antisemitismuskeule against the AfD. He later reversed his position, calling Gedeon's statements "crystal clearly anti-Semitic". Gideon Botsch, a German political scientist specializing in the far right and antisemitism, has said that, in Germany, far-right claims of weaponization of antisemitism, especially in relation to criticism of Israel, are often overlooked because of a tendency to attribute anti-Israel antisemitism to the left and Islam and to treat far-right antisemitism as a separate, historical phenomenon. The National Democratic Party of Germany (NDP) cites Norman Finkelstein (named on the party's website "the Jew Norman Finkelstein) and his book The Holocaust Industry in its explanation of the NDP's stance on antisemitism, questioning the term's meaning and framing the charge of antisemitism as a form of blackmail and "psychological warfare" employed by "Jewish power groups" such as the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

In 1967, Jewish writer Moshe Menuhin wrote in the German far-right publication National-Zeitung that antisemitism charges were "becoming more and more a weapon of propaganda serving Zionist aims". During the 1984–1985 trial of James Keegstra for promoting hatred against Jews, Keegstra told the court that antisemitism was, in the words of Alan T. Davies, "a smear word invented by Jews to obscure their conspiratorial activities" and "divert public attention from the truth."

Upon resigning from the far-right National Front party (now National Rally) in 2011, Jean-Marie Le Pen said, "Jews cry wolf, unduly claiming to be victims of anti-Semitism", and that a journalist who had claimed he was racially insulted and violently expelled from a party meeting "could say that it was because he was Jewish that he had been expelled... It could not be seen, neither on his card nor on his nose, if I dare say." The party's next leader, his daughter Marine Le Pen, said the claim of antisemitism was a lie. French comedian Dieudonné included in his 2010 show Mahmoud (named for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) a sketch in which he complains of "the blackmail of antisemitism" after being called antisemitic by a Jewish character depicted as racist and neurotic. Scholars Stephen W. Sawyer and Roman Zinigrad interpret this sketch as an attempt to spread antisemitic material beyond the far right, intended to appeal to leftists and descendants of immigrants in France.

Right-wing American political commentators Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have claimed that accusations of antisemitism are used to silence people, with Owens complaining of "ultimately Marxist [...] D.C. Jews" raising allegations of antisemitism and Jew-hatred "not because they believed that what they were hearing was actually antisemitism or Jew-hating, but to basically silence people." Owens said separately that Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk have been victims of weaponized claims of antisemitism. During an interview with Theo Von, Carlson denied being an antisemite and said he was being labeled a Nazi in order to silence his opinions.

American neo-Nazi and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke has alleged that the charge of antisemitism is generally a smear used by Zionists in an effort to silence political speech. In 2007, Duke wrote: "It is perfectly acceptable to criticize any nation on the earth for its errors and wrongs, but lo and behold, don't you dare criticize Israel; for if you do that, you will be accused of the most abominable sin in the modern world, the unforgivable sin of anti-Semitism!" He said in 2015 that Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the UK Labour Party "despite a massive smear campaign by Britain's Zio-establishment over his association with anti-Zionist activists." Duke also praised Roger Waters after German police investigated Waters for allegations of antisemitism. He encouraged Waters, who he said was being attacked "for daring to expose Israel's crimes and the crimes of the Jewish-controlled US government and media", to go further in rejecting of the charge of antisemitism by asserting that "antisemitism is nothing more of vile smear [sic] against anyone who dares to expose the UltraRacist Jewish globalists behind both the Palestinian Nakba but also the insane Ukraine war". In 2010, Waters said the charge of antisemitism is "a screen [the ADL] hides behind" after the ADL said an animation displayed during Waters's tour, showing a bomber plane dropping stars of David beside dollar signs, had "crossed the line into anti-Semitism". In 2014, two authors of an open letter in The Lancet accusing Israel of manufacturing a pretext to massacre Gazans endorsed a video by Duke titled "CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix". The Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton declined to retract the letter, calling the revelations "utterly irrelevant" and a "smear campaign".

In a 2022 opinion piece, Spokesperson of the Government of Hungary Zoltán Kovács denied American diplomat Ira Forman's claims that Hungarian president Viktor Orbán is antisemitic, and decried "attempt[s] to play the tired antisemitism card over and over again [...] because this charge of antisemitism is a political tool that disregards the facts to push an agenda that has no democratic legitimacy."

Opposition to immigration

Several commentators have suggested that political groups on the populist right and far-right weaponize antisemitism to demonize immigrants, especially Muslims, and obscure their own antisemitism. Political scientist Jelena Subotić suggests that parties such as the AfD and Fidesz first declare support for Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, then portray their "hostility to Islam and Muslim immigration to Europe" as defending European Jews, as a "shield" from their own antisemitism. She describes this as part of a growing "pro-Israel antisemitism".

Stanford University professor Cécile Alduy (fr) says the National Rally has "started to target the supposed entrenched antisemitism of immigrants of Muslim heritage" and pretends to "protect the Jewish community from them" as a way to obscure its own antisemitic past. Rachel Shabi writes that "wrapped in the Israeli flag, far-right parties with fascist roots and current displays of antisemitism cast themselves as defenders of Jews against an antisemitism claimed to be coming from Muslims and migrants".

German anti-antisemitism

The culture of anti-antisemitism in Germany has been described by Gert Krell, Heidrun Friese and Yuval Abraham as weaponizing antisemitism and compared by Candice Breitz to McCarthyism. Similar criticisms have been made about Austrian politics and academia by Author Collective scăpa شاه.

In 2019, the German Bundestag passed resolutions declaring the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement antisemitic and compared it to the 1933 Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. This comparison—and the belief that BDS is "nothing less than the start of a road to another Holocaust"—is prevalent in German discourse.

240 Jewish and Israeli intellectuals, including some specialised in antisemitism and Holocaust research, wrote an open letter criticizing the resolution. Signatories included Alon Confino, Amos Goldberg, and Avi Shlaim. The letter said:

We conclude that the rise in anti-Semitism is clearly not the concern which inspired the motion adopted by the Bundestag. On the contrary, this motion is driven by political interests and policies of Israel’s most right-wing government in history.
For years, the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been labelling any opposition to its illegal and peace-undermining policies as anti-Semitic. No one can be surprised that Netanyahu warmly welcomed the motion by the Bundestag. This embrace illustrates how the fight against anti-Semitism is being instrumentalized to shield policies of the Israeli government that cause severe violations of human rights and that destroy the chances for peace.

Commenting on German anti-antisemitism, Esther Bejarano wrote that criticism of Israel's policies is not antisemitism, and that "I did not survive the Auschwitz extermination camp, the Ravensbrück concentration camp and the death march, to be insulted as an 'anti-Semite'."

IHRA working definition of antisemitism

The IHRA definition of antisemitism is the "non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism" that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) adopted in 2016. It is also known as the IHRA working definition of antisemitism (IHRA-WDA). It was first published in 2005 by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), a European Union agency. Accompanying the working definition are 11 illustrative examples, seven of which relate to criticism of Israel, that the IHRA describes as guiding its work on antisemitism.

In 2011, the UK's University and College Union Congress debated a motion to formally reject the IHRA's working definition of antisemitism. Antisemitism scholar and anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activist David Hirsh said the definition was "denounced as a bad-faith attempt to say that criticism of Israel was antisemitic".

In 2019, 2024, and 2025, Kenneth S. Stern, the lead author of the original definition, said it had become weaponized by Donald Trump and right-wing Jewish groups in ways that threatened to suppress and limit free speech in the U.S. Stern said Trump's Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism, aimed at university campuses in particular, would "harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself".

A 2023 report by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies analyzed 40 cases where UK university staff and/or students were accused of antisemitism on the basis of the IHRA definition between 2017 and 2022, and found that in 38 cases, the accusations were dismissed, with two yet to be resolved. According to the report, false accusations of antisemitism have caused staff and students severe stress.

In 2023, Middle East scholar Nathan J. Brown and Israeli academic and peace activist Daniel Nerenberg wrote in +972 Magazine that the definition, though created in good faith, had been weaponized by groups including the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Committee, and the Brandeis Center. In 2024, Holocaust scholar Raz Segal wrote: "The weaponization of antisemitism by Israel and its allies, including the U.S. government, draws on the deeply problematic 'working definition of antisemitism' adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)." Jonathan Hafetz and Sahar Aziz made a similar argument about the definition's use against critics of Israel's actions during its war on Gaza.

Philosopher Eve Garrard countered the idea that the IHRA definition suppresses free speech critical of Israel, writing that the IHRA definition and examples are "peppered with conditional verbs", which Garrard attributes to an adherence to necessary caution in discussions of racism. "The only view which this definition threatens", she wrote, "is the view that criticism of Israel can never, ever, in any circumstances, be antisemitic. But this is not a view which is even remotely plausible (although some critics of the IHRA definition do seem to find it attractive)." Responding to widespread criticism that the definition classifies legitimate speech on Israel as antisemitic, philosopher Bernard Harrison and legal scholar Lesley Klaff argued that such criticism was unfounded.

UK Labour Party

In 2018, in light of accusations of antisemitism in the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid called a debate on antisemitism in Parliament. At the debate, Jewish Labour MPs Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth spoke of their experiences of being accused of weaponizing antisemitism. Lesley Klaff says Berger experienced online antisemitic and misogynistic harassment by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn who saw her "as deliberately manufacturing a crisis within the Labour Party by making false accusations about antisemitism". Anthony Lerman said that "many hyperbolic claims" were made against Corbyn himself and that such claims "politicized antisemitism" and emptied the word of utility. Ronnie Kasrils, writing in Palestine Chronicle, compared the charges to a witch hunt and to rhetorical strategies against the South-African anti-apartheid movement. A 2018 YouGov poll of paying Labour members found that 77% believed that the "extent [of the issue of antisemitism] is being deliberately exaggerated to damage Labour and Jeremy Corbyn or to stifle criticism of Israel". Support for Labour among British Jews fell to 13% during the affair.

In 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigated claims of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, concluding that investigators should treat complaints of antisemitism in good faith according to the Macpherson principle, and that dismissing reports of antisemitism without investigation could itself be antisemitic. It said party agents who suggested complaints of antisemitism were "fake or smears" could be guilty of "unlawful harassment". It also said that Jewish members, in particular, were accused of trying to "undermine the Labour Party" with reports of antisemitism, and that this "ignores legitimate and genuine complaints of antisemitism in the Party". In response to the report, several formal complaints were filed against Labour MPs. The Jewish Labour Movement said, "We were told that this racism was imagined, fabricated for factional advantage or intended to silence debate. Today's report confirms that our voices were marginalised and our members victimised". Gideon Falter, leader of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said that the EHRC report "utterly vindicates Britain's Jews who were accused of lying and exaggerating, acting as agents of another country and using their religion to 'smear' the Labour party". Similarly, the Antisemitism Policy Trust's 2020 report on antisemitism in the Labour Party said that some Labour activists had "dismissed [Anti-Jewish hatred] as a 'smear' or as being 'weaponised' by its victims for political ends", which they said was against the Macpherson principle and not supported by the evidence. In 2022, Corbyn's successor as Labour leader, Keir Starmer, commissioned the Forde Report, which said antisemitism had been used as a "factional weapon" between the party's anti-Corbyn and pro-Corbyn factions.

Michael S. Broschowitz writes that Labour leadership responded to the controversy using a pattern of DARVO tactics: "denying the antisemitic character of documented incidents by reframing them as 'legitimate criticism of Israel,' attacking complainants as politically motivated actors seeking to 'weaponize antisemitism allegations,' and ultimately reversing victim-offender relationships by characterizing Jewish members raising concerns as the primary threat to party unity and progressive values." According to Dave Rich, Labour's worldview "made it possible for antisemitic ideas to be expressed and defended as legitimate political discourse, while Jewish concerns about antisemitism were dismissed as attempts to silence criticism." Of the Labour affair, Howard Jacobson wrote: "That Jews invoke anti-Semitism primarily to silence critics of Israel is a tired canard, but it continues to be pressed in to service. It serves a purpose: It libels the Jews as liars in the act of protesting innocence of any such offense."

Balazs Berkovits wrote that defenders of the Corbyn left throughout the scandal employed rhetoric similar to French discourse about a supposed "state philosemitism", according to which "Jewish middle and upper classes willingly identify and collude with power elites [and attack] left-wing and working-class Jews." According to Berkovits, this idea "strives to legitimize attacks and critiques conducted against Jews [...] as something that is just targeting power elites", by first asserting that "power elites, Jews included, attack left-wingers with the antisemitism smear, [such that] the concept of antisemitism is hollowed out, instrumentalized in an absurd fashion, and turned into its opposite."

Responses

Some scholars have said that charges of weaponized antisemitism often seek to delegitimize complaints of anti-Jewish sentiment, are antisemitic, or draw on antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and deception. Scholars such as Matthias J. Becker, Mark Goldfeder, Robert Fine, and Kenneth Waltzer have said charges of weaponization are themselves antisemitic and rely on stereotypes of Jews that portray them as dishonest or greedy. In an article in Fathom, John Hyman and Anthony Julius wrote in response to claims of false charges of antisemitism, "that Jews lie is an established antisemitic defamation" given "canonical form" by Martin Luther in On The Jews and Their Lies and Heinrich von Treitschke's view that "Jews stand for 'Lug und Trug'" (lit. 'lying and cheating'). Michael S. Broschowitz connects the trope with Augustine of Hippo's writings on Jewish–Christian relations, which he said established a framework that interprets Jewish complaints of antisemitism as evidence of their manipulative nature.

Political scientist Lars Rensmann has said that while complaints about "illegitimate racism charges" are generally unacceptable in society, accusations that Jews are weaponizing antisemitism are "almost ubiquitous" and nearly always lack evidence.

Rensmann and German historian Julius H. Schoeps compare claims of a "general misuse of 'antisemitism'" to claims that racism more generally is "only a 'political weapon' of powerful groups to suppress 'the white people.'" They write that the notion of weaponization is often accompanied by ethnic stereotyping and the downplaying of antisemitism, and is common among the far left, the New Right, and "various European publics". David Schraub says the charge of weaponization "presents marginalized persons as inherently untrustworthy, unbelievable, or lacking in the basic understandings regarding the true meaning of discrimination".

Becker, a hate speech scholar, says the charge that Jews "instrumentalize antisemitism" for political or financial gain is connected to the claim they "instrumentalize the Holocaust", which he says can lead to Holocaust distortion and denial. Becker interprets this trope in post-WWII German and Austrian society (in German, die Antisemitismus- oder Auschwitz-Keule schwingen, lit. 'wielding the antisemitism or Auschwitz club') as a "collective reflex" in the context of reckoning with Nazi history. Similarly, Julius called the trope of weaponization of antisemitism a version of the "libel" that Jews are "liars and deceivers, hoodwinking others by making false claims about themselves", with the other version being Holocaust denial.

In 2015, Marcus wrote that after antisemitic incidents occur, people invariably "argue about whether the incident was really anti-Semitic or whether the Jewish complainants are instead trying to smear and silence the innocent", which often means "the accuser is punished" for speaking up. In response to the English Wikipedia article Weaponization of antisemitism, Marcus told the Jewish News Syndicate, "the so-called 'weaponization' is really more of a smear against Jewish advocates and should be recognized in that way [...] Advocates for the Jewish community, such as myself, are very aware of the dangers of exaggeration and have been clear about the need for objective assessments [...] This should be seen as an indication that weaponization charges are, at best, exaggerated or distorted and, at worst, fabricated."

Legal scholars Schraub, Dov Waxman and Adam Hosein have said that accusations of bad faith are often made about those who raise charges of antisemitism—especially Jews—because "antisemitism today is not always easy to identify or even define". They suggest that accusations of bad faith may be defused by clarifying which of the potential understandings of antisemitism is being invoked, and that "persons who encounter a Jewish claim of antisemitism [should] at least adopt a presumptive disposition towards taking that claim seriously and considering it with an open mind".

Of antisemitism in 21st-century French pro-Palestinian rhetoric, Pierre-André Taguieff wrote: "we regularly observe that more or less well-intentioned, but always ill-informed, figures publicly assert that 'there is no antisemitism in France,' or that antisemitism in France is 'declining,' or even 'disappearing.' Some add that it is time to 'put an end' to 'the blackmail of antisemitism.' This is the main argument of self-proclaimed anti-Jews, who identify as radical anti-Zionists, and who thus seek to present themselves as victims of an intolerable 'censorship' in a democratic society. [...] Their objective is clear: to make people believe that the accusation of 'anti-Semitism' is merely a perverse way to discredit, without reason, an individual who wants to 'fight against the injustice done to the Palestinians.'" Citing Taguieff, Marc Angenot wrote: "to the accusation of 'anti-Semitism,' whether founded or not, the opposing side will shout even louder, denouncing the 'blackmail of anti-Semitism' and the 'censorship' of which they are a victim. To the accusation of 'Islamophobia,' no less widespread, the other side will cry out, even louder if possible, about 'blackmail of Islamophobia,' and so on—each side loudly invoking 'freedom of expression,' transformed into a democratic absolute trampled by the opposing side."

In 2012, Ben Cohen compared German anti-circumcision rhetoric to left-wing anti-Zionist rhetoric in their "deflections" of accusations of antisemitism, writing: "The core message [in the rhetoric] is unmistakable: whether the topic at hand is Israeli foreign policy or the ancient religious rites of the Jewish people, critics will invariably be silenced by the invocation of anti-Semitism. Anticipating this tactic—by portraying it as a red herring designed to turn attention away from the critical imperative of protecting the bodies of defenseless children from the backward customs of their parents—is one means of defeating it. Another is to find an individual of Jewish origin to prop up the anti-ritual [circumcision] position."

Political left

Rensmann has said that some Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers, such as Judith Butler, do not "recognize current antisemitism" but only the "chilling effect" of "bad-faith" charges of antisemitism. Robert Fine has criticized progressive perspectives (such as those of Butler, Alain Badiou, Tony Judt, and Göran Therborn) on the charge of antisemitism as primarily weaponized, saying they abandon "inclusive universalism" to stigmatize others and treat "instrumentalizing the charge of antisemitism" as intrinsic to antisemitism itself.

Sina Arnold and Blair Taylor say charges of weaponizing antisemitism are a common way of "shutting down" discussions of antisemitism in the contemporary American Left, along with changing the subject to Israel or right-wing antisemitism. Arnold and Taylor attribute this to "unexamined political assumptions" and ignorance about the nature of antisemitism rather than "conscious antisemitic intent". Rıfat Bali writes that the left's "sensitivity toward the phenomenon of antisemitism in Turkey tends to be quite low" due to the belief that Israel weaponizes the charge of antisemitism against criticism. Bali cites the example of Nuray Mert, who said that Israel "tries to pressure everyone who opposes Israel's policies, whether in the Muslim world or in general [by accusing them of being anti-Semites]" in the context of her criticism of antisemitism in Islamist Turkish media responses to the 2006 Lebanon War.

Mikael Shainkman writes that the contemporary left openly condemns right-wing antisemitism but is unable to recognize antisemitism disguised as criticism of Israel, instead calling those who raise the issue Zionists acting in bad faith. Jovan Byford says there has been a "contamination" of antisemitic motifs in leftist politics due to the belief that antisemitism is less of a social problem than the accusation of antisemitism itself, "which 'the Lobby' uses to silence opponents and de-legitimize criticism of Israel".

Emanuele Ottolenghi wrote in 2007 that the political left "sees itself as immune from anti-Semitism, which it considers the exclusive province of the xenophobic right". In the view of Israel's leftist critics, Ottolenghi writes, "Instead of crying wolf and allowing Israel to use the charge of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism, Jews should denounce both Israel and the misuse of anti-Semitism as a smokescreen for injustice." Ottolenghi criticizes the notion in leftist discourse of a "moral imperative" for Jews to denounce Israel and "to save themselves from moral complicity with its policies and in order to escape 'the blackmail of anti-Semitism'—the crude equation of any criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism which, critics say, is used to silence Israel's detractors."

Izabella Tabarovsky has compared contemporary left-wing antisemitism to Soviet antisemitic campaigns between 1967 and 1988 that said Zionists "complain about antisemitism in order to smear the left", rejecting allegations of antisemitism as "Zionist tricks" and "nefarious imperialist scheming".

In 2026, Jewish Studies scholar Joel Swanson wrote: "The tendency among some progressives to dismiss most antisemitism complaints as presumed to be in bad-faith unless proven otherwise has real costs. When allegations of antisemitism are reflexively treated as a political tactic, it becomes easier to ignore actual antisemitism, even when it's claiming lives and burning down religious buildings."

The Livingstone Formulation

Coined in 2005 by antisemitism scholar and anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activist David Hirsh after an incident involving former mayor of London Ken Livingstone, the "Livingstone Formulation" refers to "responding to an accusation of antisemitism with a counter-accusation of Zionist bad faith". The term has been applied especially to charges of weaponization of antisemitism from anti-Zionists and the far left, although Hirsh says the formulation "long predates antizionist antisemitism". He gives as examples comments by former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, American white supremacist David Duke, British National Party leader Nick Griffin, and American aviator Charles Lindbergh, along with passages by 19th-century German antisemites Heinrich von Treitschke and Wilhelm Marr.

Arnold and Blumenfeld say the Formulation is a key characteristic of discourse related to antisemitism on the American Left. Rensmann calls it a "discursive ideological strategy to immunize antisemitism from antisemitism charges". Samuel Lebens writes that it amounts to epistemic injustice and gaslighting against Jews who complain of antisemitism, and says claims of antisemitism should be treated in good faith, like claims of sexual harassment or racism.

Israel and anti-Zionism

Scholars such as Ben Cohen, Shany Mor, Lars Rensmann, and Efraim Sicher say that anti-Zionist statements and criticism of Israel are sometimes framed as neutral while often relying on traditional antisemitic tropes. Werner Bonefeld says this is more common among those who view antisemitism as "a phenomenon of the past". David Schraub says that the statement "criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic", while true, falsely implies that "any non-trivial number of individuals" must believe the opposite, recentering discussions of antisemitism from Jewish victims to the way charges of antisemitism are "allegedly abused to victimise innocent bystanders".

In 2016, Schraub wrote that the presumption "that most anti-Semitism claims related to Israel are leveled in bad faith" is "very common" and itself antisemitic, relying on the belief that Jews are largely either dishonest or delusional. Schraub writes that the ubiquity of this presumption among progressives contrasts with the general unacceptability of similar claims about complaints made by groups such as women and black people. He writes that "most Jews and Jewish organizations" are reluctant to raise claims of antisemitism, since the "default response" to even clear-cut cases of antisemitism "will be to fulminate about oversensitive Jews always playing the anti-Semitism card". Shany Mor wrote of the frequent charge of weaponization in discussions of anti-Zionist antisemitism: "It is a weak defense to rely on the very antisemitism you are supposing try to abjure in order to exculpate oneself from the charge of antisemitism—so weak, in fact, that its repeated use is the best evidence that it represents a deeply held belief." Derek Spitz, John Hyman, and Anthony Julius have called this a form of victim blaming that places a large burden of proof on Jews. In 2025, Gabriel Sacks wrote, "There is no meaningful way to combat this claim [that Jews weaponize antisemitism to deflect criticism of Israel]: Jews could protest, or merely ignore and not even dare challenge the allegations. Either route has proven to be insufficient for centuries."

Michael S. Broschowitz calls the weaponization charge antisemitism's "most sophisticated defensive evolution", wherein Jewish identification of antisemitism is reframed as a dishonest deployment of victimhood meant to suppress legitimate criticism and "maintain perceived institutional privilege". Broschowitz also writes that deployers of the weaponization charge "may weaponize their own minoritized identities as defensive shields ... [creating] "a perfect defensive inversion: Jews are accused of weaponizing antisemitism while accusers weaponize anti-racism to protect their own antisemitic expression." Broschowitz calls this "weaponization inversion", and writes that it is particularly effective in progressive discourse because it allows Jews to become the "designated repository for colonial shame and white supremacy", allowing progressive actors to "resolve white guilt while maintaining anti-racist legitimacy".

According to Iraqi historian Omar Mohammed, attempts to discuss Islamic antisemitism with Muslims or Arabic speakers are frequently met with accusations of "being pro-Israel or attempting to whitewash Israel’s policies", sometimes in the form of the Livingstone Formulation, with those who raise the issue of antisemitism being accused of being "Westernized" and "attempting to impose a Western problem onto Muslim communities, which purportedly have no connection to hatred against Jews". Mohammed writes that this makes discussions of the matter of Islamic antisemitism in Muslim or Arabic-speaking social contexts difficult and potentially dangerous. Esther Webman wrote in 2010 that Arab leaders have responded to increasing charges of antisemitism "mainly by denial and accusing Israel of using it as a ploy to mute criticism."

Political scientist Gideon Botsch has said that because anti-Zionist antisemitism is often associated with the left and Muslims, the German far-right's claims of weaponization of antisemitism have often been overlooked. Daniel Sugarman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews has said that while the left downplays antisemitism as criticism of Israel, the right often denies or downplays its antisemitism by citing its support for Israel.

Psychologists Miri Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman say the propagation of the notion that "Jews weaponize antisemitism to stifle criticism of Israel" is an example of traumatic invalidation for Jews since the October 7 attacks. Lili Levi writes that some progressives in the U.S. Democratic party deny that anti-Israel rhetoric can have an antisemitic character, and that those progressives "may ignore the threat of growing antisemitism to American democracy".

Fine and Philip Spencer say that while antisemitism may be weaponized to stifle criticism of Israel in some cases, "the reverse is more plausible: that there are many who cry 'Israel' in order to shut down debate on antisemitism". Bernard Harrison says this "stock" rebuttal attempts to portray complaints of antisemitism as "putatively absurd".

In 2021, religion scholar Atalia Omer said that weaponization of antisemitism is bad for all involved, including Israel and the broader Jewish community. Nick Riemer, a Palestine solidarity activist and linguist, said in 2022 that antisemitism "provides the excuse for a heavy-handed and highly irrational assault on fundamental democratic liberties", comparing it to how "Islamophobia has been politically instrumentalized in the service of neocolonial control of Muslim populations".