When the Covid pandemic first emerged, there were those who claimed we were simply facing a severe strain of flu rather than recognising that a novel virus had emerged.
Had we accepted that assumption, we would never have understood that we were dealing with an entirely different threat requiring an original and tailored response. We would have failed to commission specialised research, adapt public health measures and develop dedicated vaccines.
No matter how much money would have been invested in fighting it, and no matter how serious the intentions were, we could never have defeated the new virus while insisting on treating it as the old one. Fortunately, we did not accept this dangerously mistaken assumption. In so doing, we saved countless lives around the world.
Antisemitism is a pandemic that has taken different forms throughout history: racial, religious, social, and financial. Over the past decade, however, a new mutation has spread rapidly around us while many continue treating it as though we are still dealing with the older versions of the disease.
Western societies have become highly adept at confronting “classical” antisemitism. Democratic societies worked hard to counter the poisonous racial supremacy that preceded the Holocaust through education, anti-racism laws, and public and political condemnation whenever it reared its vicious head. That fight remains essential and must never stop.
But much of the antisemitism spreading today comes from an altogether different ideological strain.
Modern antisemitism sees Jews targeted on political and national grounds rather than religion or ethnicity. It denies Jews their right to sovereignty in their ancestral homeland and calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Instead of the religious claim that the Jew sins against God, we now hear the secular claim that the Zionist regime sins against “universal morality.” The greedy Jew has become the “colonialist” stealing land and resources. The dangerous Jew threatening society has become the Jewish state allegedly threatening world peace.
We are facing a new virus: political antisemitism. This has been cynically packaged as “antizionism” by its superspreader adherents.
Political antisemitism disguises itself in the language of progressive democracy itself. Much like a virus that confuses the immune system into believing it should not be attacked, political antisemitism manipulates democratic societies into believing that confronting it means attacking democracy, freedom of speech, human rights, or legitimate political expression.
Many institutions genuinely believe they are fighting antisemitism while the reality on the ground is only getting worse. Instead of recognising that a new form of antisemitism has emerged, many treat political antisemitism as though it were merely a harsher version of the old one.
If the industrial scale political demonisation of Jews and Israel continues being treated as legitimate political discourse or ordinary policy debate, this new virus will continue spreading while Britain convinces itself it is fighting it.
There are those, of course, who genuinely misidentify the problem. While well-intentioned, they believe that what we see today is the same antisemitism that dominated previous generations and so forlornly persist in using old frameworks and tools.
The second group is far more troubling. These people understand that modern antisemitism has become centred around hostility to Jewish sovereignty yet choose not to confront it because doing so carries social, political, and professional costs. It means entering ideological minefields involving activism, academia, and media narratives that disguise hostility toward Jewish self-determination as progressive morality or “anti-colonialism”.
As part of denying the problem, we have repeatedly heard claims that attackers in Heaton Park and Golders Green did not ask their Jewish victims about Israel before attacking them, supposedly proving this was “just” hatred of Jews rather than political antisemitism.
But that misses the point entirely. They did not ask because, in their minds, Jewish identity already represents Israel, Zionism, and Jewish sovereignty. The Jew himself becomes the political target.
As an education-focused charity, StandWithUs UK has witnessed political antisemitism evolve and spread rapidly across British campuses. We are watching with alarm as parts of Britain’s university system increasingly resemble hubs for radicalism and ideological intolerance, targeting not only Jews but anyone unwilling to conform to a violent victimhood culture.
Jewish students and their allies urgently need protection. Too many university leaders have abandoned their responsibilities, making our work more vital than ever. Conditions on campus become increasingly intolerable.
This week, we published our second annual StandWithUs UK “Voice of Students” report, documenting raw first-hand testimonies of political antisemitism across universities and raising a clear red flag: we are witnessing an accelerated shift from hateful rhetoric into violence, and without urgent action, human lives will be at risk.
Without recognising this new form of antisemitism for what it truly is, efforts to defeat it will fail. The government must act decisively and ensure democratic values can no longer serve as a shield for radical and lethal ideologies.
This epidemic can be beaten but clear-eyed understanding of reality and strong leadership is needed.
Isaac Zarfati is the Executive Director of StandWithUs UK
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