Thread by @JewishWonk

It's gonna be a thing again, so I am juts putting the take here in advance:

The problem with the antisemitism ad is it's not capturing the reality of how Jews are experiencing antisemitism in America today.

It is not mean kids in the hallway putting well written post it notes on backpacks.

The dominant experience now is social, institutional, and cultural pressure. It shows up in schools, workplaces, activist spaces, and elite institutions that claim moral authority.

Jews are told, by these people in positions of power over them and claiming moral authority over them, that Jews are safe, privileged, and powerful, even as Jews are excluded, harassed, or asked to disavow their identity and ties to our people to participate.

Antisemitism is being laundered through respectable language.

“Anti-Zionism,” “decolonization,” and “human rights” rhetoric are used to justify things that would be unacceptable against any other minority with cultural ties to another country.

An ad that frames antisemitism as a universally condemned moral failing misses the point.

The problem is precisely that large parts of society, particularly people on the left who imagine themselves to be morally driven, do not see what they’re doing as antisemitic.

This kind of messaging, aimed at educating non-Jews about rising antisemitism, avoids the uncomfortable reality that the problem is now mainstreamed and from culturally dominant players, not immature teenagers.