A new analysis from Tel Aviv University delivers a dual warning. Antisemitism is not only rising — it is hardening. Deadly attacks reached a 30-year high in 2025, and rhetoric that once lived at the margins is edging into the mainstream. At the same time, the report offers a more uncomfortable critique: In the effort to fight antisemitism, some Israeli politicians and media voices may be expanding the definition so broadly that it risks losing meaning.
That tension sits at the heart of the current debate. On one hand, antisemitism has evolved. It often appears today in coded language, in obsessive double standards applied to Israel, or in conspiratorial narratives dressed up as politics. Any serious effort to confront it must grapple with those forms.
On the other hand, not every criticism of Israel — even harsh or unfair criticism — is antisemitic. When the label is applied too readily, it begins to look less like a moral judgment and more like a political tactic. And once that perception takes hold, the accusation itself weakens.
This is the paradox: Expanding the definition may feel like strengthening the fight, but it can have the opposite effect.
There are good reasons to define antisemitism. Governments need standards to track hate crimes. Universities need guidance to police harassment. International bodies require a common language to coordinate responses. Without definitions, enforcement becomes arbitrary, and the problem is easier to deny.
Frameworks like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance attempt to meet that need, especially by addressing the blurry line where anti-Israel rhetoric can slip into antisemitism. That effort is not misguided. Much contemporary antisemitism does, in fact, operate through the language of Israel.
But definitions are tools, not weapons. When they are stretched to capture speech that is better understood as political disagreement, they lose precision. And when they lose precision, they lose credibility — not among committed antisemites, who are rarely persuaded by definitions, but among the broader public whose support is essential to confronting the problem.
The data suggest this approach is not working as intended. Antisemitic incidents remain elevated, even as the label is invoked more frequently. Meanwhile, critics who feel unfairly accused are more likely to dismiss the charge altogether, blurring the line between bad-faith denial and understandable skepticism.
None of this argues for retreat. Antisemitism is real, persistent, and in some places intensifying. The answer is not to narrow the definition to the point of blindness. It is to apply it with discipline.
A useful definition should do three things: distinguish clearly between hatred of Jews and criticism of states; apply consistently across political contexts; and reserve the charge of antisemitism for cases where the evidence is compelling. That kind of restraint is not weakness. It is what gives the accusation its force.
“We know it when we see it” may capture an instinct, but it cannot guide policy. Yet a definition that tries to capture everything risks capturing nothing at all.
The fight against antisemitism depends not just on vigilance, but on credibility. If the term becomes elastic, it will snap. And when it does, those who most need its protection will be left with a label that no longer persuades — or protects.
