Ideas

The Pro-Israel Right Is Shifting the Definition of Anti-Semitism

Building a coalition united by total indifference to Palestinian human rights requires teaming up with people who lack a certain moral refinement when it comes to the Jews.

First published in The Atlantic on August 5, 2025

by Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic

August 7, 2025 | reading time: 7 Min.

Whatever quarrels one might have with Senator Bernie Sanders, his thinking would seem to be immune from medieval anti-Semitic influence. Yet last month, after Sanders denounced “the Netanyahu government’s extermination of Gaza,” the pro-Israel group AIPAC attacked Sanders’s statement as a “hate-filled rant” and “despicable blood libel.”