Jew-hatred is not merely a moral failing. It operates as a strategic weapon – one that corrodes alliance cohesion, weakens deterrence, and undermines the legitimacy on which American power rests
December 17, 2025 16:41
Sunday’s Bondi Beach terrorist attack reminded the world that Jew-hatred can turn lethal. Antisemitism also endangers non-Jews, though, and it now threatens America’s national security.
That frame animated a timely event last Friday. The Hudson Institute, a non-Jewish conservative think tank in Washington DC, hosted a day-long conference entitled “Antisemitism as a National Security Threat”.
“It was important for Hudson to hold this conference because antisemitism strikes at Hudson’s core concern: national security,” Michael Doran, the conference organiser and a senior fellow and director of Hudson’s Centre for Peace and Security in the Middle East, told me. “A revisionist axis led by Beijing, which includes Russia, Iran, and North Korea, seeks to weaken US power and erode the American-led order through coordinated pressure across regions rather than direct confrontation.”
Doran continued: “When Israel is cast as uniquely illegitimate – as ‘genocidal’ or [imposing] ‘apartheid’ – America, its principal defender, is cast the same way. The alliance system the United States leads is re-coded not as stabilising but as malign. Antisemitism is therefore not merely a moral failing or a social pathology. It operates as a strategic weapon – one that corrodes alliance cohesion, weakens deterrence, and undermines the legitimacy on which American power rests. Bottom line: Antisemitism is anti-Americanism.”
Current and former government officials, scholars, and technology practitioners identified varieties of Jew-hatred and how it undermines American strength. Sebastian Gorka, the National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism, dubbed the Muslim Brotherhood “the transmission belt of the most heinous, antisemitic, Jew-hatred today”. Gorka told listeners President Donald Trump’s executive order designating branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organisations is step one: “We are assiduously working on the next tranche of designations right now” and this administration is “committed to one thing: destroying the Brotherhood, its offshoots, and global jihadism writ large.”
Deborah Lipstadt, former US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, deemed antisemitism “a threat to democracy. Anybody who buys into the conspiracy myth, which is the cornerstone of antisemitism, that ‘the Jews’ control the you-fill-in-the-blank – the judiciary, government … has given up on democracy.”
Beyond left-wing and right-wing antisemitism, Lipstadt introduced additional taxonomy. Recalling the surge in “antisemitism on Chinese-controlled websites” after October 7, Lipstadt explained: “China does not have a long tradition of antisemitism … it was functional antisemitism; it was utilitarian antisemitism. Iran is ideological antisemitism. Russia is both ideological and functional. But this is functional.”
This was “the stirring of the pot, to send a message to the Global South … that we, China … are with you. They, the United States, are with them.”
Importantly, Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at Hudson’s Centre for Peace and Security in the Middle East, observed: “The Chinese definitely believe that the West is in decline, and that therefore they are the ones who will inherit the next new world order. And they are the ones who can shape it in a way where Israel knows exactly what its place is.”
Hudson senior fellow Michael Sobolik noted opportunism, the “strategic nature of the Middle East and the Israeli-Iranian dimension, and how that plays into American power. In Chinese discourse, in Chinese Communist Party discourse in particular, antisemitism and focus on Israel is a stand-in for the problem of the United States that the CCP encounters.”
Information warfare is part of the CCP’s response to that “problem”. Another Hudson senior fellow, Aaron MacLean, commented: “We see our adversaries using antisemitism as a tool to divide Americans and advance their own interests.”
Simultaneously, the race for artificial intelligence superiority is underway. AE Studio CEO Judd Rosenblatt labelled AI “quite antisemitic”. It is not known why, and Rosenblatt’s company is seeking solutions before AI “changes everything”. He encouraged others to do more in this area. Meanwhile, Adam Hadley, founder and executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, described antisemitism as “fundamental” to jihadism and “a vector to undermine Western civilisation” that jihadis use “to recruit and radicalise individuals”.
Yes, Jew-hatred is an “everybody problem”. The harm caused by ideological Jew-haters isn’t restricted to Jews, and foreign information operations targeting Jews aim to enfeeble the global hegemon. A weak America is bad for the world. A strong America benefits its allies and supporters, Israel and Jews included.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.
