The movement for Palestinian rights has long been one of the least antisemitic spaces in US politics. It is highly conscious of the dangers of antisemitism, because of its vile similarity to racism against Palestinians, because of the large Jewish presence among anti-genocide forces, and because of awareness that pro-genocide forces constantly smear anyone supporting Palestinian rights as antisemitic. Anyone who has worked for Palestinian rights very long has encountered crude attempts to trick people into accepting antisemitic libels. If you are reading this, you probably know what I mean: the counter-protestor at a demonstration against genocide who sidles away from his buddies, and slides in amongst the protestors, then tries to start a chant of “kill the Jews.” Or, a reply guy on social media you have never seen before, who tries to slip in “maybe that Hitler guy wasn’t so bad.” I don’t have to tell anybody how to deal with that sort of thing. Advocates for Palestinian rights know what to do, whether the perpetrators are supporters of Israel, or fringe idiots from groups with the words “National Socialist” in their names. But, I have seen old antisemitic slanders pop up lately in slightly different forms in Palestinian rights spaces, usually pretending to be antiracist, and not always slapped down immediately. I thought I’d write a short guide to these new disguises.

None of this is about “tone.” It is about self-defense. Anyone can have a moment of weakness and fall for a hasbara (Israeli propaganda) line they have never encountered before.

As you read this, if you have fallen for some of what I am about to describe, you do not need to feel guilty or “sit on this” or engage in deep self-reflection. At least, you don’t unless you actually hate or distrust Jews, or think they are in some way other, less trustworthy, better with money, etc.

To show that anyone can fall for hasbara, before discussing slanders I’ve encountered recently, let me give examples of Jews accidentally accepting antisemitic propaganda. One example: the claim that the word “goy” is derived from the word “cattle;” that claim is used to support assertions that Jews look upon non-Jews as animals. This libel was widely spread in Nazi Germany through means such as the Nazi children’s book Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) by Ernst Hiemer. “Goy” derives from the Hebrew word for “nation” and gradually developed in Yiddish and English into a term for “gentile.” It is usually derogatory, and many Jews try to avoid using it, but it does not mean cattle. I’m proud to be Jewish, but my mind tends to collect trivia; I heard this myth when I was a kid in a majority Jewish elementary school. I believed it until, as an adult, I brought it up to a friend who speaks Hebrew; she immediately corrected me.

I also have an intelligent Jewish friend, one whose brother is a rabbi, who briefly joined “Jews for Jesus” in college. It took him a little time to realize they were not a group of Jews who respected the ethics Jesus preached, but Christians trying to get Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah and convert to Christianity.

I’ve actually heard the “goy” thing in antigenocide circles. Usually I’ve encountered it as part of the idea that there is Jewish Supremacy in the United States or worldwide.

The accusation of Jewish Supremacy has roots in an extremely important truth. Whether the term is your preferred language or not, Israel is, by definition, by law, and in practice a Jewish Supremacist state. (That is not all it is, and some of the other accurate descriptions for it are far harsher, and more comprehensive.) It officially declares itself a state for Jews, where “The realization of the national right to self-determination within the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish people(UNHCR, 2018) .” Long before the official declaration, exclusionary institutions, discriminatory laws, military and paramilitary violence all made sure that Jewish Supremacist principles prevailed in everyday practice. But, that is Israel. There may be people with a Jewish Supremacist ideology outside Israel, but there is no place else in the world where Jews, as Jews, have power to dominate society.

Accusations of “Jewish Supremacy” outside of Israel are just an attempt to put antiracist gloss on the old “Jewish bankers run the world! Rothschild! Rothschild!” libel. For example, antisemites claim that since the number of US Jewish billionaires is disproportionate to the Jewish population in the US, that alone gives Jews supremacy. But there are not that many billionaires in existence. Fewer than 200 US Jewish billionaires (Forbes Israel, 2025) does not do squat for the rest of US Jews. Jews, as Jews don’t get preferred access to jobs compared to non-Jews. (Most US Jews are white; so we get standard white privilege when job seeking, but the Jewish part is no advantage.) US Jews don’t get preferred access to education over non-Jews. Nobody ever looked at a college application and said “Moishe Goldstein? With a name like that we know he will be a good fit. Find a way give him an acceptance.”

Some of these billionaires do put a lot of money into pro-Israel organizations, such as AIPAC, which use that money to punch above their weight politically. But that benefits Israel; it does nothing for Jews domestically. That money has also corrupted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL always included a certain amount of red-baiting and was problematic in other ways, but used to spend a significant portion of its energy fighting actual antisemitism. Today it is essentially an Israeli lobbying group, with minor Potemkin efforts directed towards opposing real antisemitism, often ignoring actual swastika wielding Nazis. That does not exactly benefit US Jews.

In general, the money spigot pouring into conflating anti-Zionism (or even mild criticism of Israel) with antisemitism hurts Jews a great deal. As in the ADL example it diverts resources from fighting genuine antisemitism into supporting genocide against the Palestinians. That conflation also encourages growth in antisemitism, since it paints non-Israeli Jews as responsible for Israeli genocide, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Another longstanding part of the same antisemitic libel, that Jewish supremacy dominates the US, riffs off the fact that even non-billionaire Jews are statistically higher income than the average American. 54% of Jews live in households with incomes above $100,000 per year compared to 30% of all Americans(Pew Research Center, 2025). But according to the same source, this statistical divergence occurs in other ethnic groups. 57% of Hindus live in households with incomes above $100,000 per year. Further, 34% of Muslims live in households above that $100,000 per year income threshold. While that percentage is lower than that of Jews, it is still well above the US average. So does the US have Hindu supremacy? Muslim Supremacy?

Another argument made for Jewish Supremacy is the (true) claim that Jews get listened to more on the issues of Palestine than non-Jews. I will note it is a lot more true for pro-genocide Jews than anti-genocide Jews. But I will also note that is a privilege extended on only one issue, and only because powerful and rich people, most of whom are not Jewish, find it in their interest to extend that privilege. It can be withdrawn at any time, and will exist only so long as various reactionary interests, such as war industries, and right-wing Christians, want Israel continuing to contribute to chaos in the Middle East.

Another old antisemitic libel is that Jews are not really Jewish. The current “antiracist” form is: Ashkenazi Jews and light skinned Sephardic Jews are not real Jews, only the Mizrahi and darker skinned Sephardic Jews. (In this bit of propaganda, other Jewish subgroups are ignored.) Ashkenazi and light skinned Sephardic Jews, it is claimed, are white people culturally appropriating Judaism from “real” dark-skinned Jews. But genetic studies indicate that Jews worldwide, including but not limited to these three populations, show close genetic ties to one another as well as to Palestinians and Italians(Katsnelson, 2010). The last two shows the silliness of trying to define religion genetically.

Something that is erroneous, but not by itself antisemitic, is the assertion that the word “antisemitism” is being used wrongly when it is applied only to Jews, that harm to Palestinians or Arabs is also antisemitism. I mention it in this context because, while it is not antisemitic when used alone, it frequently accompanies antisemitic assertions and tends to be antisemitism adjacent. Even when not antisemitic, it does look like the assertion of a condescending hairsplitting boor who focuses on semantics, and does not even get those semantics right. Today, we are looking at a genocide, carried out largely through starvation and dehydration. Israel is starving men, women, children, even infants to death, depriving them of water, depriving them of basic sanitation, the most elementary medical care, and bombing people in tents. Taking the longer view, slow genocide has been carried out in Gaza for decades via malnutrition rather than outright starvation, via deprivation of clean water rather than cutting off all water, deprivation of some essential medical care rather than deprivation of all medical care, and constant exposure to disease via the dirty water previously mentioned. Is it really necessary to take the focus away from all this, and from the clear racism against Palestinian people to label it “antisemitism?”

The thing is, the term “antisemitism” was only invented in 1860, and meant “hatred of, or desire to oppress, Jews” from the first day it existed. The term “Semite” was coined in the 18th century to describe languages related to Hebrew. Soon, the term Semite came to be applied to some of the people who spoke Semitic languages, Arabs and Jews. The term, however, was seldom applied to the Maltese or the people of Eritrea. Thus, before the term “antisemitic” was invented to apply specifically to Jews, it was never used. Nobody thought about hatred of people in language groups. Nobody thought of a form of hatred that applied to Arabs and Jews and nobody else.

Moritz Steinschneider, a Jewish scholar, coined the term in 1860 in response to Ernest Renan, a French philosopher claiming a scientific basis for Jewish racial inferiority. Wilhelm Marr, a Jew-hating demagogue loved the word “antisemite,” because it sounded objective and scientific rather than emotional! He and other Jew haters soon adapted it.

Thus, when somebody uses the root of the word “antisemitic” as a gotcha, they are not only engaging in hair splitting semantics. They are doing so, and getting their semantics wrong! Even though the root of the word “antisemitic” is “Semite”, which can refer to both Arabs and Jews, the word itself is not based on the root. It was invented as a criticism of anti-Jewish prejudice, and then adapted by people who hated Jews. The word never took its meaning from its root. Making that mistake undermines credibility by playing erroneous semantic games that distract from much more serious issues of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.

I hope this will be helpful. And again, falling for one of these is something that can happen to anyone. If it has happened you, you did nothing malicious. Some bastard deliberately tripped you, or deliberately tripped your source, while you (or that source) were concentrating on stopping a genocide; that bastard is the one who should be ashamed.

Forbes – Israel. 2025. “The World’s Jewish Billionaires -2025” Forbes Israel: January 7, 2025. https://forbes.co.il/e/rankings/2025-jewish-billionaires/

Katsnelson, Alla. 2010. “Jews worldwide share genetic ties.” Nature: June 3, 2010 . https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2010.277

Pew Research Center. 2025. “24. Age, race, education and other demographic traits of U.S. religious groups.” In Religious Landscape Study: Feb 26, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/age-race-education-and-other-demographic-traits-of-us-religious-groups/

UNHCR. 2018. “Israel: Basic Law of 2018, Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People [translation].” The UN Refugee Agency refworld Global Law and Policy Data Base: 19-Jul-2018. https://www.refworld.org/legal/legislation/natlegbod/2018/en/150024