“The proposition that criticism of the Netanyahu government is antisemitic is a proposition that has been manufactured, over fifteen years, by the Netanyahu apparatus itself and by the network of American Jewish institutions that has, through a combination of donor capture and ideological alignment, become a delivery mechanism for the Netanyahu government’s preferred framing of Israeli political reality.”
Mike, you had me at hello. I have family and friends—all of whom will support Israel with impunity; I call BS on all of it.
Like you (except I’m Jewish), I want what’s best for America and Israel, but consider myself a humanist first and foremost!
Our republic was build on ideas, compromises and disagreements. Supporting fascist regimes in both Israel and America only makes us all slaves to the system and hypocrites! It’s too bad, too many haven’t gotten the memo.
And ironically, when you say anti-semitism is not only on the rise in the world, but it has been for the past 10 years. The culprit—MAGA and Trump. For a movement that supports Israel, they have mostly anti-Semitic sycophants in positions of power—or at the very least, waiting in the wings (young MAGA). Coincidence?
FYI: I’ve been called a self hating Jew for years, yet, unlike many in my family or and in my circle of friends—I lived and even studied in Israel; a semester in college!University of Tel Aviv, and a year for work. And unfortunately, the two most hated group of people on the planet today are Jews and Americans.
As an American Jew who has spent years naming Donald Trump's cynical weaponization of existential threats for what they are, I read Mike's essay with a profound sense of recognition—and an ache.
He is entirely correct in his diagnosis of the political machinery at work. When he writes that the postliberal project in the U.S. and Netanyahu's agenda are "structurally the same project," he is naming exactly what I see every day, and write about often. Both are led by men willing to dismantle constitutional democracy and the rule of law to evade their own criminal indictments.
Netanyahu did not invent the horrors of October 7. As Mike rightly notes, it was a real attack and the "worst single day of Jewish death since the Holocaust." Netanyahu took that devastating, very real crisis and exploited it to rehabilitate his political survival, expand a brutal war, and shield himself from accountability.
But here is where Mike's self-identified position as a "Gentile writer" speaking from the outside creates a gap between his intellectual precision and our lived reality. By leaning heavily on the "boy crying wolf" analogy — warning that when institutions constantly falsely accuse political critics of being antisemites, the word "loses its diagnostic precision" — he fears that when the real wolf arrives, the broader public will have been trained to roll their eyes and ignore us.
Intellectually, I agree that this is a strategic catastrophe. But to a person with the lived experience of antisemitism, being told we are "crying wolf" hits a different nerve. Trump manufactures existential threats to scare his base; Netanyahu exploits an existential threat that actually exists. The calls for the elimination of a Jewish state are not invented, and the rising tide of hatred is something we feel in our daily lives.
When you — acting as a true ally speaking in the "prophetic tradition" of love — warn us that people will stop listening if the term is overused, you are trying to protect us. But from inside the Jewish experience, that warning unintentionally brushes up against a very old, very painful generational trauma: the demand that we carefully moderate our panic, sit down, and not make too much noise, lest the broader world find our fears tiresome.
We know the wolf is at the door, because we are the ones inside the house.
Ultimately we can hold both truths: we must fiercely reject the exploitation of our trauma by authoritarian leaders like Netanyahu and Trump, and we must do so while vigorously defending ourselves from the very real hatred that continues to hunt us.
I'm writing this today from a nice, safe beach town in LA. Next week I will be in London.
What a beautiful, careful response, Steve Caplan. Thank you. As a progressive Gentile Californian, navigating these roiling waters with my teenage Jewish granddaughters has been so complicated.
Thanks Patti, as always, for your thoughtful response. Delicate issue but like Mike, I've wanted to write about it for awhile to offer a different pov. Maybe I will.
I agree that Netanyahu exploits an existential threat that actually exists. I believe both yourself and Mr. Brock hint at but do not directly acknowledge the other reason why Netanyahu's method of exploitation is so incredibly dangerous, which is directly connected to the fact that existential threats to the safety of Jews actually do exist, and the fact that the very real threat to Jews has historically used anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to justify actions that directly threaten Jewish lives.
In fact its because that threat actually exists, that the decision to conflate the Netanyahu government with Jewishness and criticism of his government as antisemitism becomes so particularly dangerous. By framing the defense of Israeli government actions in this manner, Netanyahu creates a narrative that is basically ready made for the real anti-Semites to latch on to and exploit as evidence to support the anti-Semitic argument that an international Jewish conspiracy exists that controls the world to the detriment of the rest of us. Netanyahu's strategic decision to conflate his government with the Jewish people generally and any criticism of its actions as evidence of anti-Semitism basically gives a gift to the real, truly dangerous anti-Semites, including those who would call for an elimination of the Jewish state. Netanyahu's narrative gives them the ability to point at the state of Israel and declare it to be the physical manifestation of the international Jewish conspiracy, which must then be eliminated. This threatens Jews far more broadly by making an argument for treating Jews as being responsible for Israel's actions far easier for the anti-Semites to make, because the Israeli government is essentially already making that argument for them.
Combine the way Netanyahu's exploitive decision to conflate Jews and Israel does the anti-Semitic conspiracists a narrative favor with the fact that we've seen high ranking American officials in cabinet level roles, including the actual U.S. Secretary of State, publicly claim that the United States attacked Iran on February 28, 2026 because Israel basically pushed them into it, and the logical leap needed for dangerous anti-Semites to get normal people to accept the argument that "there exists an international conspiracy of monied Jewish interests betrayed the United States and forced it to wage war on their behalf" becomes a disturbingly and dangerously short one.
Thus Netanyahu's exploitation of the real anti-Semitic threat that actually exists serves to make that same threat much worse by giving anti-Semitic conspiracy theories all the fuel the anti-Semites pushing them need to make those conspiracies far easier sell to a much larger portion of the suddenly far more persuadable. I would argue that it is these circumstances that the narrative creates which threatens to push this type of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory further into mainstream conscious, which creates the greatest heightened risk and threats the safety of the largest numbers of the Jewish people around the globe, and especially in the United States, while it also maximizes the threat to the state of Israel.
The circumstances he has created on purpose have thus maximized the danger, and Netanyahu continues to directly and dangerously stoke this narrative that conflates his government and Israel with all Jews as part of his continued and ongoing exploitation of crisis for his own personal political gain and survival.
I appreciate your thoughts and I agree with many of your points from a geopolitical standpoint. But my response here is really about the lived, emotional experience of a (mostly) secular Jewish American who has, until now, only experienced this level of antisemitism as a generational memory.
I wrote about crossing that threshold for the very first time here after losing my father just a few months ago:
My main point in responding to Mike's essay is that the 'crying wolf' argument is an incredibly hard one for many to swallow—even those of us who have advocated for a two-state solution for a very long time. Brock's warning feels like a plea for restraint, but historically, we've been told not to speak up and to keep our heads down before.
It didn't go well.
It is also deeply jarring for many of us to try and square the visceral, global hatred directed at Jews right now with how the world reacts to other conflicts. Russia invaded Ukraine with zero cause and has killed tens of thousands. Where is the deep anger in the streets? Why aren't Russian Orthodox churches being attacked? Where are the marches across the UK and Europe calling out those atrocities? That double standard is exactly what makes the threat feel so uniquely existential to us.
To be clear: I agree 100% with Mike’s political diagnosis. When he writes that Netanyahu’s government is an authoritarian project that is 'structurally the same' as the movement surrounding Trump in the U.S., I am in complete agreement. I've never even been to Israel, but if I lived there I would have joined the hundreds of thousands marching in the streets for months calling for Netanyahu's ouster and jailing.
But recognizing that a corrupt leader is exploiting a threat for his own survival does not mean the threat itself isn't real. I'm simply not going to let the terror of the past return for me or those I love while I stay quiet.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. It truly is a shame seeing many of my friends and neighbors made fearful by acts of violent open anti-Semitism in this country, and I am truly sorry you have gone through that experience.
I do think it’s important to recognize that violent and deadly attacks motivated by anti-Semitic Jewish conspiracies were sadly happening in this country prior to October 7th as well, and an uptick of those types of isolated lone wolf attacks, carried out by an unstable hateful person who decides to lash out against American Jews in anger bc of the military actions of a foreign government is precisely the type of reaction and incident I worry would be the type most likely to result in this country from Netanyahu’s conflation of Jewish people as a whole with the actions of the state of Israel.
That is precisely why I worry about the charge of anti-Semitism being casually weaponized to shut down any discussion of US government involvement or the funding of Israel’s military actions, as if this isn’t a legitimate policy matter for public discussion. It absolutely is, and the constant charges of anti-Semitism in response to legitimate criticism threaten to both anger certain radicalized people into the more willing embrace of anti-Semitic ideas, and actions, while numbing others out to the charge entirely.
That’s the lesson of the boy who cried wolf parable after all. The problem with the boy falsely crying wolf is not that wolfs dont exist or aren’t a real threat to the village, it’s that the boy who cries wolf so many times when there was none is less and less likely to have his warning believed and quickly spur the people into the action needed to protect themselves when the warning is real and a big bad wolf really does come around this time. It’s human nature to be numbed out by repeated false alarms and that’s never good preparation for when the real one calls.
I certainly would not wish for you to practice restraint and keep your head down in the face of real acts of anti-Semitism, but I worry that the weaponization of that charge against critics of Israeli government actions makes it more likely that people of good faith will dismiss and not take seriously more and more of the edge cases, which may ultimately lead somewhere worse.
Being called an “anti-Semite” no longer holds the punch it once did. Today people do not have to dig deep to understand the difference between a Jew-hater and an Israeli-critic.
A reasonable person commenting on the government sanctioned starvation in Gaza (as an example) and who is called an anti-Semite is now allowed to be angry by the insult of someone thinking they are so stupid as to accept the insult.
The point remains: Israeli’s are still intentionally starving Gazan’s.
And shame on our governments representatives for enabling such organized slaughter.
Which is why we should vote out such a representative out of office.
You are clearly humble in your attempt to clarify your reasoning. You speak for all of us who love the Jewish people and appreciate their material and cultural contributions to American life and history. For years the US supported Israel as our main democratic ally in the middle east. Currently, however, the MSM is doing a poor job of clarifying the difference between supporting a democracy and supporting Netanyahu’s Zionist ambitions of reclaiming all of the so-called promised land as well as staying out of jail. He and Trump are doing some of the same things to increase their personal power to avoid consequences. The accusations of antisemitism in view of Netanyahu’s fascism and glaring injustices toward the people of Gaza are not justified. Your use of the Jewish scriptures was very effective and a tribute to your scholarship and objectivity. So now issues that still need to be addressed are the US political involvement influenced by AIPAC and the suspected influence of the Epstein class. The personal involvement and enrichment of Trump, Kushner, Witkoff and other special interests is still out there. Things like new budget allocations and various states and municipalities’ purchase of Israel bonds are still political issues hidden from most Americans who see Netanyahu and Trump committing international war crimes. Thank you for addressing this issue so clearly and fairly.
Mike, you're saying something gently, which is appreciated, but I will speak bluntly because it's my moral job as Jew to say what must be said and what must happen. "To be chosen" is that burden to say and act for what is right because it is right and nothing more. Netanyahu and everyone associated to him are not real Jews. I don't recognize their Jewishness, this calls for Herem and my people will not be safe until we deal with the biblical "Cult of Molech" that has destroyed 2,000 years of Jewish identity and good will. Netanyahu's head (figuratively of course) is only justified to be on a pike and it must be by Jewish hands.
It is 25 years since the discovery of the Gaza Marine gas field and this is the prize they were waiting for. Everything else was manufacturing the consent to destroy the one thing that prevented its theft : Palestinian society. With Gaza obliterated and every Gazan labelled Hamas, and everyone one opposing Israel’s violence labelled an “anti-semite” who would stand up for their rights to the gas field? The ownership is upheld by the UN but with them disempowered by vetos they are a toothless hound who it seems can do nothing to prevent the purge of millions from the land.
Thank you for writing this, Mike. The world needs moral clarity more than ever. What you have written is just that.
And what you've embodied is that moral clarity does not come from being dispassionate. It is not merely intellectual or philosophical. It comes from a passion for decency, an inner struggle to risk being misunderstood in order to speak honestly. There are hundreds of glib apologists and liars saturating the media , justifying attacks on Israel, even the destruction of Israel. They confuse ( intentionally or naively) the capture of the Israeli state by its most fanatic and corrupt elements with Israel and Jews.
We all need to separate the tragedy of Israel's current political catastrophe from the essence of Israel as a decent, wholly legitimate state. Both are true; both need to be acknowledged openly. You have done that here, eloquently and lovingly.
Your link is not to Times of Israel journalism but to a blogger using their site. You accuse Mike Brock of 'false assertions'. Do you have better sources for that?
Perhaps more to the point: there is little doubt Hamas is a violent, corrupt and antisemitic organization. But no-one sane expects Hamas to be regarded as a modern democratic state expected to respect human rights and conform to international norms. But how should we regard such a state when it is led by a cabal that is itself violent, corrupt and anti-Islamic? Calling that question 'antisemitic' is obviously a tactic.
There is still a debate in Britain as to whether bombing German cities in WWII was justified. Are they anti-British, those who ask whether the mass incineration of civilians in Hamburg and Dresden and the reduction of historic cities to rubble was necessary or justified for the survival of European democracy and pluralism?
If Netanyahu's country under his leadership remains part of the constitutional democratic world then there are limits to the violence and destruction of life and livelihood that will be widely accepted under any apparent justification. This has nothing to do with being anti-Israel or antisemitic.
The blogger provided many sources in footnotes. Contradicting many assertions in this substack. Numbers. What is civilian. How to fight fascistic terrorists dedicated to Israel’s destruction.
This really isn’t a mystery if you actually want the answer and wish to comply with the laws of war and avoid civilian casualties by not committing war crimes.
Under the Geneva Conventions, a civilian is broadly defined by exclusion as any person who is not a member of a state's armed forces, an organized armed group, or a participant in a spontaneous popular uprising (levée en masse). Anyone who does not fall into any of those three categories of participants is considered a civilian. If there is any doubt about whether a person is a civilian, they must be presumed to be one.
Civilians and civilian objects, like homes, schools, hospitals, and places of worship, may never be direct targets of attack, and the mere presence of individual non-civilians among a civilian population does not strip the broader population of its civilian character.
No. That’s not what the Geneva convention says. Civilian properties lose their civilian classification if they are used by enemy fighters. Geneva convention is not a suicide pact! Also if food will be grabbed by the enemy, the opposing fighters are not required to allow it. Yet Israel at great risk to its soldiers did facilitate 3000 calories a day per individual — most of which was grabbed by Hamas. I am not a GC expert but I have read many works by people who are. There is actually a provision that basically boils down to if the enemy is breaking all the rules, one isn’t required to follow them either! Again, it’s not a Suicide pact. Arguable over half of Gaza population are not civilians by your definition anyway btw
One of many articles on this topic. The website has a search function so that’s how I found it. But if you read it for a few weeks and compare what you read there (fair and nuanced), you can see how much of the other media is false propaganda.
I suggest you start reading some unbiased coverage — especially during a hot period. You will soon see the difference in actual on the ground reporting and blood libel propaganda. For deeper analysis, on war, I recommend John Spencer or Andrew Fox. Spencer is from West Point. Fox is from UK and has a blog, often free tho some publications are just for subscribers.
Also there is a news source Honest Reporting that comes via email. They show the falseness of various stories regarding alleged famine, alleged journalists, regarding UNRWA, regarding false spin on who is attacking whom on the daily! It is very hard to search older articles since I haven’t cataloged all I have read.
Antisemitism is also applying standards to Israel that are not applied to other countries. So boycotting goods from Israel but not Saudi Arabia, China or Russia, for instance. Not that Israel is close to being on their foul level either!
Also the analysis of the causality of Gazan deaths is falling into the ergo hoc propter hoc fallacy. Not only is the civilian to combatant ratio close to 1:1, many of the “extra” deaths are directly attributable to Hamas — not just for starting the war and refusing to surrender, but directly due to Hamas hoarding and reselling donated food (3000 calories per day per individual is imported with assistance of Israel’s COGAT), their own rockets falling short and landing in Gaza on Gazans, and their own boobytrapping of buildings actually accounts for most of the devastation. Not to mention their refusal to let civilians take refuge in their extensive tunnels. Hamas own poor decisions are the main cause of all the death and destruction. Israel almost always warns before demolishing “civilian” buildings. Israel assists with food and medical aid and evacuation and restoring the water pipes as often broken by Hamas as by Israel.
Without closely reading Jewish media week by week and knowing people involved, people don’t know these facts as mainstream media just parroted the corrupt Al Jazeera for the most part. Any famine is down to Hamas and mostly exaggerated if not entirely Pallywood — using images from other conflicts, or of children with wasting diseases who were receiving treatment in Israel before the war, or who had already been evacuated to Italy in one case. That may be the child whose healthy brother was cut out of the picture frame.
Israeli politics are beyond me but Netanyahu is actually middle of the road. Avigdor Lieberman tho not religious is much more fascistic as Russians tend to be or think normal. It’s what they are used to. Bennett govt also was involved with Qatari cash transfers. And there is no proof Netanyahu was aware of women soldiers warning. That was sexism of lower order military men who disregarded them.
Well that’s all just scratching the surface of my itch to respond to misbegotten analysis of Israel. The antisemitism on campus had been prepped well in advance as proved by the movie October 8 with Deborah Messing. “Pro”Palestinian marches erupted before Israel had even finished ejecting or killing the terrorists from Israel. Before any counter strikes.
80% of civilians fatalities were Hamas aligned likely family members found nearby when terrorists were struck. If in bomb shelters for protection from blast waves, most would have survived. But hundreds of miles of tunnels were built with no bomb shelters for civilians. That’s on Hamas — and the people there who mostly support them.
Times of Israel. Jerusalem post. Both have online presences. A bit ad ridden if one doesn’t pay for a subscription. But they are fair minded, not parroting IDF or Likud party lines and so also tend to bashing Netanyahu. They both publish opinion pieces from all perspectives. They don’t always make a point to highlight the extreme measures Israel takes to avoid civilian casualties. That’s why I said weekly reading and gleaning for little facts about Israel repairing water lines etc. Early days there was a detailed article about a Gazan fellow the IDF called on via cell phone (just as they called and texted people there millions of times over the years) and together they evacuated his building and eventually an entire block. The story came and quickly went because to highlight it would endanger him. They skipped the Hamas family apartments as they were evacuating because they likely would have prevented people from evacuating the buildings. Just as Hamas often shot at people trying to flee from areas warned to evacuate.
Thank you for breaking your silence ; I have waited for this piece for a year. Because of this silence I didn’t understand, I’ve kept a distance because of my grief for the Palestinians, compounded by my fears and anger over the dismantling of American democracy and its accompanying cruelty.
In France, Netanyahu’s propaganda ploy of labelling anti Zionist criticism as antisemitism has resulted in the imminent passage of a law that will treat demonstrations in support of Palestine as antisemitism and they will be deemed illegal.
An activist living in France, I have already been called a terrorist by the fascist mayor, who sent the police after me four times for putting a Palestine flag on my balcony and handing out flyers ! I wasn’t arrested, they just wanted to scare me into submission of course.
Protesters have been arrested in the UK and in Germany.
This infringement of human rights in European countries known for freedom to demonstrate, in order to protect Netanyahu who’s a criminal and an architect of genocide, is frightening and dangerous.
Protesters need allies too. Especially in the US. Your work is particularly important, I think, because of your ability to untangle and clarify the illusory and dangerous elements operating in the shadows. No one should be punished for protesting the horrors Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben’gvir are inflicting in Palestine.
Mike Israel is also repeating ancient patterns. You mentioned the prophets, that’s the kingdom of Israel and Judea. I will suggest the next is with the Hasmoneans, the post-script of Hanukkah. No, not the miracle, the kingdom. And the divisions echo the pharisees (the middle class liberals of the day ) and the Saducees, (the temple priesthood) the conservatives of the day.
When you look at history as patterns that repeat, the crisis in modern day Israel has parallels. And you are right, a serious reckoning is coming. Israel is also losing a lot of well educated young Israelis who see no future in this place.
“The proposition that criticism of the Netanyahu government is antisemitic is a proposition that has been manufactured, over fifteen years, by the Netanyahu apparatus itself and by the network of American Jewish institutions that has, through a combination of donor capture and ideological alignment, become a delivery mechanism for the Netanyahu government’s preferred framing of Israeli political reality.”
Mike, you had me at hello. I have family and friends—all of whom will support Israel with impunity; I call BS on all of it.
Like you (except I’m Jewish), I want what’s best for America and Israel, but consider myself a humanist first and foremost!
Our republic was build on ideas, compromises and disagreements. Supporting fascist regimes in both Israel and America only makes us all slaves to the system and hypocrites! It’s too bad, too many haven’t gotten the memo.
And ironically, when you say anti-semitism is not only on the rise in the world, but it has been for the past 10 years. The culprit—MAGA and Trump. For a movement that supports Israel, they have mostly anti-Semitic sycophants in positions of power—or at the very least, waiting in the wings (young MAGA). Coincidence?
FYI: I’ve been called a self hating Jew for years, yet, unlike many in my family or and in my circle of friends—I lived and even studied in Israel; a semester in college!University of Tel Aviv, and a year for work. And unfortunately, the two most hated group of people on the planet today are Jews and Americans.
As an American Jew who has spent years naming Donald Trump's cynical weaponization of existential threats for what they are, I read Mike's essay with a profound sense of recognition—and an ache.
He is entirely correct in his diagnosis of the political machinery at work. When he writes that the postliberal project in the U.S. and Netanyahu's agenda are "structurally the same project," he is naming exactly what I see every day, and write about often. Both are led by men willing to dismantle constitutional democracy and the rule of law to evade their own criminal indictments.
Netanyahu did not invent the horrors of October 7. As Mike rightly notes, it was a real attack and the "worst single day of Jewish death since the Holocaust." Netanyahu took that devastating, very real crisis and exploited it to rehabilitate his political survival, expand a brutal war, and shield himself from accountability.
But here is where Mike's self-identified position as a "Gentile writer" speaking from the outside creates a gap between his intellectual precision and our lived reality. By leaning heavily on the "boy crying wolf" analogy — warning that when institutions constantly falsely accuse political critics of being antisemites, the word "loses its diagnostic precision" — he fears that when the real wolf arrives, the broader public will have been trained to roll their eyes and ignore us.
Intellectually, I agree that this is a strategic catastrophe. But to a person with the lived experience of antisemitism, being told we are "crying wolf" hits a different nerve. Trump manufactures existential threats to scare his base; Netanyahu exploits an existential threat that actually exists. The calls for the elimination of a Jewish state are not invented, and the rising tide of hatred is something we feel in our daily lives.
When you — acting as a true ally speaking in the "prophetic tradition" of love — warn us that people will stop listening if the term is overused, you are trying to protect us. But from inside the Jewish experience, that warning unintentionally brushes up against a very old, very painful generational trauma: the demand that we carefully moderate our panic, sit down, and not make too much noise, lest the broader world find our fears tiresome.
We know the wolf is at the door, because we are the ones inside the house.
Ultimately we can hold both truths: we must fiercely reject the exploitation of our trauma by authoritarian leaders like Netanyahu and Trump, and we must do so while vigorously defending ourselves from the very real hatred that continues to hunt us.
I'm writing this today from a nice, safe beach town in LA. Next week I will be in London.
We will see.
What a beautiful, careful response, Steve Caplan. Thank you. As a progressive Gentile Californian, navigating these roiling waters with my teenage Jewish granddaughters has been so complicated.
Thanks Patti, as always, for your thoughtful response. Delicate issue but like Mike, I've wanted to write about it for awhile to offer a different pov. Maybe I will.
I agree that Netanyahu exploits an existential threat that actually exists. I believe both yourself and Mr. Brock hint at but do not directly acknowledge the other reason why Netanyahu's method of exploitation is so incredibly dangerous, which is directly connected to the fact that existential threats to the safety of Jews actually do exist, and the fact that the very real threat to Jews has historically used anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to justify actions that directly threaten Jewish lives.
In fact its because that threat actually exists, that the decision to conflate the Netanyahu government with Jewishness and criticism of his government as antisemitism becomes so particularly dangerous. By framing the defense of Israeli government actions in this manner, Netanyahu creates a narrative that is basically ready made for the real anti-Semites to latch on to and exploit as evidence to support the anti-Semitic argument that an international Jewish conspiracy exists that controls the world to the detriment of the rest of us. Netanyahu's strategic decision to conflate his government with the Jewish people generally and any criticism of its actions as evidence of anti-Semitism basically gives a gift to the real, truly dangerous anti-Semites, including those who would call for an elimination of the Jewish state. Netanyahu's narrative gives them the ability to point at the state of Israel and declare it to be the physical manifestation of the international Jewish conspiracy, which must then be eliminated. This threatens Jews far more broadly by making an argument for treating Jews as being responsible for Israel's actions far easier for the anti-Semites to make, because the Israeli government is essentially already making that argument for them.
Combine the way Netanyahu's exploitive decision to conflate Jews and Israel does the anti-Semitic conspiracists a narrative favor with the fact that we've seen high ranking American officials in cabinet level roles, including the actual U.S. Secretary of State, publicly claim that the United States attacked Iran on February 28, 2026 because Israel basically pushed them into it, and the logical leap needed for dangerous anti-Semites to get normal people to accept the argument that "there exists an international conspiracy of monied Jewish interests betrayed the United States and forced it to wage war on their behalf" becomes a disturbingly and dangerously short one.
Thus Netanyahu's exploitation of the real anti-Semitic threat that actually exists serves to make that same threat much worse by giving anti-Semitic conspiracy theories all the fuel the anti-Semites pushing them need to make those conspiracies far easier sell to a much larger portion of the suddenly far more persuadable. I would argue that it is these circumstances that the narrative creates which threatens to push this type of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory further into mainstream conscious, which creates the greatest heightened risk and threats the safety of the largest numbers of the Jewish people around the globe, and especially in the United States, while it also maximizes the threat to the state of Israel.
The circumstances he has created on purpose have thus maximized the danger, and Netanyahu continues to directly and dangerously stoke this narrative that conflates his government and Israel with all Jews as part of his continued and ongoing exploitation of crisis for his own personal political gain and survival.
I appreciate your thoughts and I agree with many of your points from a geopolitical standpoint. But my response here is really about the lived, emotional experience of a (mostly) secular Jewish American who has, until now, only experienced this level of antisemitism as a generational memory.
I wrote about crossing that threshold for the very first time here after losing my father just a few months ago:
https://controlaltpersuade.substack.com/p/what-we-found-when-we-opened-the
My main point in responding to Mike's essay is that the 'crying wolf' argument is an incredibly hard one for many to swallow—even those of us who have advocated for a two-state solution for a very long time. Brock's warning feels like a plea for restraint, but historically, we've been told not to speak up and to keep our heads down before.
It didn't go well.
It is also deeply jarring for many of us to try and square the visceral, global hatred directed at Jews right now with how the world reacts to other conflicts. Russia invaded Ukraine with zero cause and has killed tens of thousands. Where is the deep anger in the streets? Why aren't Russian Orthodox churches being attacked? Where are the marches across the UK and Europe calling out those atrocities? That double standard is exactly what makes the threat feel so uniquely existential to us.
To be clear: I agree 100% with Mike’s political diagnosis. When he writes that Netanyahu’s government is an authoritarian project that is 'structurally the same' as the movement surrounding Trump in the U.S., I am in complete agreement. I've never even been to Israel, but if I lived there I would have joined the hundreds of thousands marching in the streets for months calling for Netanyahu's ouster and jailing.
But recognizing that a corrupt leader is exploiting a threat for his own survival does not mean the threat itself isn't real. I'm simply not going to let the terror of the past return for me or those I love while I stay quiet.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. It truly is a shame seeing many of my friends and neighbors made fearful by acts of violent open anti-Semitism in this country, and I am truly sorry you have gone through that experience.
I do think it’s important to recognize that violent and deadly attacks motivated by anti-Semitic Jewish conspiracies were sadly happening in this country prior to October 7th as well, and an uptick of those types of isolated lone wolf attacks, carried out by an unstable hateful person who decides to lash out against American Jews in anger bc of the military actions of a foreign government is precisely the type of reaction and incident I worry would be the type most likely to result in this country from Netanyahu’s conflation of Jewish people as a whole with the actions of the state of Israel.
That is precisely why I worry about the charge of anti-Semitism being casually weaponized to shut down any discussion of US government involvement or the funding of Israel’s military actions, as if this isn’t a legitimate policy matter for public discussion. It absolutely is, and the constant charges of anti-Semitism in response to legitimate criticism threaten to both anger certain radicalized people into the more willing embrace of anti-Semitic ideas, and actions, while numbing others out to the charge entirely.
That’s the lesson of the boy who cried wolf parable after all. The problem with the boy falsely crying wolf is not that wolfs dont exist or aren’t a real threat to the village, it’s that the boy who cries wolf so many times when there was none is less and less likely to have his warning believed and quickly spur the people into the action needed to protect themselves when the warning is real and a big bad wolf really does come around this time. It’s human nature to be numbed out by repeated false alarms and that’s never good preparation for when the real one calls.
I certainly would not wish for you to practice restraint and keep your head down in the face of real acts of anti-Semitism, but I worry that the weaponization of that charge against critics of Israeli government actions makes it more likely that people of good faith will dismiss and not take seriously more and more of the edge cases, which may ultimately lead somewhere worse.
Everyone should read this 🙏
Being called an “anti-Semite” no longer holds the punch it once did. Today people do not have to dig deep to understand the difference between a Jew-hater and an Israeli-critic.
A reasonable person commenting on the government sanctioned starvation in Gaza (as an example) and who is called an anti-Semite is now allowed to be angry by the insult of someone thinking they are so stupid as to accept the insult.
The point remains: Israeli’s are still intentionally starving Gazan’s.
And shame on our governments representatives for enabling such organized slaughter.
Which is why we should vote out such a representative out of office.
Not because we are anti-Semitic.
You are clearly humble in your attempt to clarify your reasoning. You speak for all of us who love the Jewish people and appreciate their material and cultural contributions to American life and history. For years the US supported Israel as our main democratic ally in the middle east. Currently, however, the MSM is doing a poor job of clarifying the difference between supporting a democracy and supporting Netanyahu’s Zionist ambitions of reclaiming all of the so-called promised land as well as staying out of jail. He and Trump are doing some of the same things to increase their personal power to avoid consequences. The accusations of antisemitism in view of Netanyahu’s fascism and glaring injustices toward the people of Gaza are not justified. Your use of the Jewish scriptures was very effective and a tribute to your scholarship and objectivity. So now issues that still need to be addressed are the US political involvement influenced by AIPAC and the suspected influence of the Epstein class. The personal involvement and enrichment of Trump, Kushner, Witkoff and other special interests is still out there. Things like new budget allocations and various states and municipalities’ purchase of Israel bonds are still political issues hidden from most Americans who see Netanyahu and Trump committing international war crimes. Thank you for addressing this issue so clearly and fairly.
War crimes are by Hamas
Mike, you're saying something gently, which is appreciated, but I will speak bluntly because it's my moral job as Jew to say what must be said and what must happen. "To be chosen" is that burden to say and act for what is right because it is right and nothing more. Netanyahu and everyone associated to him are not real Jews. I don't recognize their Jewishness, this calls for Herem and my people will not be safe until we deal with the biblical "Cult of Molech" that has destroyed 2,000 years of Jewish identity and good will. Netanyahu's head (figuratively of course) is only justified to be on a pike and it must be by Jewish hands.
Thank you. You argued eloquently. You did so for a BUNCH of people
Love without truth is no love at all.
Excellent!
It is 25 years since the discovery of the Gaza Marine gas field and this is the prize they were waiting for. Everything else was manufacturing the consent to destroy the one thing that prevented its theft : Palestinian society. With Gaza obliterated and every Gazan labelled Hamas, and everyone one opposing Israel’s violence labelled an “anti-semite” who would stand up for their rights to the gas field? The ownership is upheld by the UN but with them disempowered by vetos they are a toothless hound who it seems can do nothing to prevent the purge of millions from the land.
Thank you for writing this, Mike. The world needs moral clarity more than ever. What you have written is just that.
And what you've embodied is that moral clarity does not come from being dispassionate. It is not merely intellectual or philosophical. It comes from a passion for decency, an inner struggle to risk being misunderstood in order to speak honestly. There are hundreds of glib apologists and liars saturating the media , justifying attacks on Israel, even the destruction of Israel. They confuse ( intentionally or naively) the capture of the Israeli state by its most fanatic and corrupt elements with Israel and Jews.
We all need to separate the tragedy of Israel's current political catastrophe from the essence of Israel as a decent, wholly legitimate state. Both are true; both need to be acknowledged openly. You have done that here, eloquently and lovingly.
Thank you.
Your link is not to Times of Israel journalism but to a blogger using their site. You accuse Mike Brock of 'false assertions'. Do you have better sources for that?
Perhaps more to the point: there is little doubt Hamas is a violent, corrupt and antisemitic organization. But no-one sane expects Hamas to be regarded as a modern democratic state expected to respect human rights and conform to international norms. But how should we regard such a state when it is led by a cabal that is itself violent, corrupt and anti-Islamic? Calling that question 'antisemitic' is obviously a tactic.
There is still a debate in Britain as to whether bombing German cities in WWII was justified. Are they anti-British, those who ask whether the mass incineration of civilians in Hamburg and Dresden and the reduction of historic cities to rubble was necessary or justified for the survival of European democracy and pluralism?
If Netanyahu's country under his leadership remains part of the constitutional democratic world then there are limits to the violence and destruction of life and livelihood that will be widely accepted under any apparent justification. This has nothing to do with being anti-Israel or antisemitic.
The blogger provided many sources in footnotes. Contradicting many assertions in this substack. Numbers. What is civilian. How to fight fascistic terrorists dedicated to Israel’s destruction.
This really isn’t a mystery if you actually want the answer and wish to comply with the laws of war and avoid civilian casualties by not committing war crimes.
Under the Geneva Conventions, a civilian is broadly defined by exclusion as any person who is not a member of a state's armed forces, an organized armed group, or a participant in a spontaneous popular uprising (levée en masse). Anyone who does not fall into any of those three categories of participants is considered a civilian. If there is any doubt about whether a person is a civilian, they must be presumed to be one.
Civilians and civilian objects, like homes, schools, hospitals, and places of worship, may never be direct targets of attack, and the mere presence of individual non-civilians among a civilian population does not strip the broader population of its civilian character.
No. That’s not what the Geneva convention says. Civilian properties lose their civilian classification if they are used by enemy fighters. Geneva convention is not a suicide pact! Also if food will be grabbed by the enemy, the opposing fighters are not required to allow it. Yet Israel at great risk to its soldiers did facilitate 3000 calories a day per individual — most of which was grabbed by Hamas. I am not a GC expert but I have read many works by people who are. There is actually a provision that basically boils down to if the enemy is breaking all the rules, one isn’t required to follow them either! Again, it’s not a Suicide pact. Arguable over half of Gaza population are not civilians by your definition anyway btw
This response is intended for RDW who kindly responded to my query to him below.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/survivors-of-gaza-aid-chaos-say-idf-troops-shot-at-them-a-charge-israel-denies/
One of many articles on this topic. The website has a search function so that’s how I found it. But if you read it for a few weeks and compare what you read there (fair and nuanced), you can see how much of the other media is false propaganda.
It's certainly pretty damning of the situation Netanyahu has created. And you haven't engaged with the main point of my comment.
I suggest you start reading some unbiased coverage — especially during a hot period. You will soon see the difference in actual on the ground reporting and blood libel propaganda. For deeper analysis, on war, I recommend John Spencer or Andrew Fox. Spencer is from West Point. Fox is from UK and has a blog, often free tho some publications are just for subscribers.
Hope these links work.
https://mailchi.mp/honestreporting/hrc2024-13252461?e=033a3f6013
https://us18.campaign-archive.com/?u=15f5d413417cf907bd7699c23&id=c096dee94a
This stuff is not journalism.
It’s an analysis of why Al Jazeera and other msm are actually not journalism either. They can’t accidentally get so much stuff wrong.
Meta journalism
Also there is a news source Honest Reporting that comes via email. They show the falseness of various stories regarding alleged famine, alleged journalists, regarding UNRWA, regarding false spin on who is attacking whom on the daily! It is very hard to search older articles since I haven’t cataloged all I have read.
Antisemitism is also applying standards to Israel that are not applied to other countries. So boycotting goods from Israel but not Saudi Arabia, China or Russia, for instance. Not that Israel is close to being on their foul level either!
Also the analysis of the causality of Gazan deaths is falling into the ergo hoc propter hoc fallacy. Not only is the civilian to combatant ratio close to 1:1, many of the “extra” deaths are directly attributable to Hamas — not just for starting the war and refusing to surrender, but directly due to Hamas hoarding and reselling donated food (3000 calories per day per individual is imported with assistance of Israel’s COGAT), their own rockets falling short and landing in Gaza on Gazans, and their own boobytrapping of buildings actually accounts for most of the devastation. Not to mention their refusal to let civilians take refuge in their extensive tunnels. Hamas own poor decisions are the main cause of all the death and destruction. Israel almost always warns before demolishing “civilian” buildings. Israel assists with food and medical aid and evacuation and restoring the water pipes as often broken by Hamas as by Israel.
Without closely reading Jewish media week by week and knowing people involved, people don’t know these facts as mainstream media just parroted the corrupt Al Jazeera for the most part. Any famine is down to Hamas and mostly exaggerated if not entirely Pallywood — using images from other conflicts, or of children with wasting diseases who were receiving treatment in Israel before the war, or who had already been evacuated to Italy in one case. That may be the child whose healthy brother was cut out of the picture frame.
Israeli politics are beyond me but Netanyahu is actually middle of the road. Avigdor Lieberman tho not religious is much more fascistic as Russians tend to be or think normal. It’s what they are used to. Bennett govt also was involved with Qatari cash transfers. And there is no proof Netanyahu was aware of women soldiers warning. That was sexism of lower order military men who disregarded them.
Well that’s all just scratching the surface of my itch to respond to misbegotten analysis of Israel. The antisemitism on campus had been prepped well in advance as proved by the movie October 8 with Deborah Messing. “Pro”Palestinian marches erupted before Israel had even finished ejecting or killing the terrorists from Israel. Before any counter strikes.
80% of civilians fatalities were Hamas aligned likely family members found nearby when terrorists were struck. If in bomb shelters for protection from blast waves, most would have survived. But hundreds of miles of tunnels were built with no bomb shelters for civilians. That’s on Hamas — and the people there who mostly support them.
Mike was trying to patiently explain that people like you are the problem.
Try arguing from the corrected record then. Hamas and its supporters are the problem. Probably people like you.
'Without closely reading Jewish media'
Can you link to some of the relevant sources?
Here’s a good recent article.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-hidden-curriculum-of-antizionism-what-the-slogans-hide/
Times of Israel. Jerusalem post. Both have online presences. A bit ad ridden if one doesn’t pay for a subscription. But they are fair minded, not parroting IDF or Likud party lines and so also tend to bashing Netanyahu. They both publish opinion pieces from all perspectives. They don’t always make a point to highlight the extreme measures Israel takes to avoid civilian casualties. That’s why I said weekly reading and gleaning for little facts about Israel repairing water lines etc. Early days there was a detailed article about a Gazan fellow the IDF called on via cell phone (just as they called and texted people there millions of times over the years) and together they evacuated his building and eventually an entire block. The story came and quickly went because to highlight it would endanger him. They skipped the Hamas family apartments as they were evacuating because they likely would have prevented people from evacuating the buildings. Just as Hamas often shot at people trying to flee from areas warned to evacuate.
I responded to this but it ended up on the main thread above.
Oh and the 35k Gazans executed in retribution when they took back over their side of the strip.
Just as the Iranians killed 35k of their own protesting them before our attack that killed not even a tenth of that, mostly all military.
Lots of mistaken assertions here.
Thank you for breaking your silence ; I have waited for this piece for a year. Because of this silence I didn’t understand, I’ve kept a distance because of my grief for the Palestinians, compounded by my fears and anger over the dismantling of American democracy and its accompanying cruelty.
In France, Netanyahu’s propaganda ploy of labelling anti Zionist criticism as antisemitism has resulted in the imminent passage of a law that will treat demonstrations in support of Palestine as antisemitism and they will be deemed illegal.
An activist living in France, I have already been called a terrorist by the fascist mayor, who sent the police after me four times for putting a Palestine flag on my balcony and handing out flyers ! I wasn’t arrested, they just wanted to scare me into submission of course.
Protesters have been arrested in the UK and in Germany.
This infringement of human rights in European countries known for freedom to demonstrate, in order to protect Netanyahu who’s a criminal and an architect of genocide, is frightening and dangerous.
Protesters need allies too. Especially in the US. Your work is particularly important, I think, because of your ability to untangle and clarify the illusory and dangerous elements operating in the shadows. No one should be punished for protesting the horrors Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben’gvir are inflicting in Palestine.
Mike Israel is also repeating ancient patterns. You mentioned the prophets, that’s the kingdom of Israel and Judea. I will suggest the next is with the Hasmoneans, the post-script of Hanukkah. No, not the miracle, the kingdom. And the divisions echo the pharisees (the middle class liberals of the day ) and the Saducees, (the temple priesthood) the conservatives of the day.
When you look at history as patterns that repeat, the crisis in modern day Israel has parallels. And you are right, a serious reckoning is coming. Israel is also losing a lot of well educated young Israelis who see no future in this place.
For what?