What Is Antisemitism and What Has Caused It In The Past?

My review of a timely new book on the subject for the Acton Institute

(This is the opening of my review of Sander Gilman’s new book Antisemitisms: A History of Jew Hating. You can find a free link to the whole review below.)

In July 2025, I visited Stanford University. Tacked up all over the campus were leaflets identifying Israel as a leading—possibly, the leading—cause of climate change. The notion that a country of 10 million people could be a principal agent bringing about a global rise in temperatures is, of course, ridiculous. It’s also an ironic assertion in that it singles out a Middle Eastern nation that is not a major oil producer.

Not quite a year later as I am writing this, I see a story in The New York Times that claims that Israel has trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. The source for the article it turns out is a Hamas front group in Switzerland that previously said that Israel was using a secret technology to “vaporize” Palestinians and that it was harvesting Palestinian organs for re-sale. The Times’s columnist neglected to mention all this, instead presenting the outfit as a serious nonprofit research group.

The leaflet and the bizarre assertions of organ harvesting and Israeli prison guards working in tandem with Lassie to rape Palestinians are evidence of something that’s been readily apparent of late. This extends beyond passionate hatred of Israel. Protestations to the contrary, that antipathy is symptomatic of the extent to which anti-Semitism has become chic and acceptable both on the “activist” left and on the far right.

Here’s the whole review, which is free to read: https://blog.acton.org/archives/128495-the-many-faces-of-anti-semitism.html