Response to high volume of social media memes that are anti-Israel

 

Mark Kaplan

Oct 9 2026

I have been noticing an extraordinary amount of anti-Israel rhetoric and memes on FB these days. I’m sure this has been going on for a while but I am not consistently on social media.  Most of what I am seeing is posts from colleagues and friends who are progressive and left of center in their views. Both the content and volume are algorithm-driven, so for progressives or even those on the center-left, there is a large volume of these, and it creates a warped perspective and generates a lot of emotion.  It appears to be getting worse.

My profession is diversity & inclusion, inclusive leadership, DEI if you prefer. I've noticed that when I post about antisemitism and Jew-hatred the people I hear the least from are people who have similar backgrounds. This is very painful to me, and it brings home the crisis that I see.

I’m in the middle of writing an essay about what I think is a serious problem with antisemitism and Jew-hatred on parts of the progressive social justice left. One of my concerns is that legitimate criticism of the Israeli government can quickly cross a line into anti-Jewish rhetoric, often without that line even being acknowledged.

The huge increase in antisemitic incidents AFTER October 7, after antisemitism had already been rising for years, should alarm everyone, not just Jews. History has shown us repeatedly that when anti-Jewish sentiment takes hold in a society, something much larger is going wrong. That’s why I find the simplistic, polarizing, disingenuous memes on social media to be so disturbing. They cover all of the slogans: Zionism is racism, apartheid, colonialism, genocide, nazis, and so on. Israel absolutely should be scrutinized and criticized for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank. But there is a huge difference between criticizing an Israeli government and treating the existence of Israel itself as illegitimate, which much of this rhetoric does. And I think those of us who have spent our lives working in DEI and social justice should understand this better than most.

There are about 16 million Jews in the world, roughly 0.2% of humanity. For more than 2,000 years, Jews have experienced virtually every dynamic of difference that we talk about in DEI: assimilation, exclusion, structural inequality, stereotyping, scapegoating, conspiracy theories, expulsions, mass violence, and genocide. We have been living the “melting pot versus salad bowl” dilemma for centuries.

Jews have repeatedly served as a place for societies to put their fears and anxieties. Jews have somehow been blamed for both capitalism and communism, for being outsiders who won’t assimilate and insiders who secretly control everything, and even more ironically, for being an inferior or evil race and an uber-privileged group of whites. This tiny group can become an obsession, particularly when societies are polarized or in crisis. That history is part of why I am troubled by the extraordinary amount of attention and energy focused on this one conflict, and by the increasingly expansive rhetoric around Israel and Zionism. It should make us extremely careful when Israel and “Zionism” start becoming explanations for an enormous range of what is wrong with the world.

None of this means Israel is above criticism. I believe Israel should be held accountable, where appropriate, for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians deserve dignity, safety, self-determination, and justice. But saying Israel shouldn’t exist is something different. Israel has existed for nearly 80 years and is home to roughly half of the world’s Jews, most of whom were born there. So when someone says Israel shouldn’t exist, I think we have to ask a very basic question: What exactly happens to half of the world’s Jews who live there?

October 7 makes that a very real question, not an abstract one.

There’s also something much more personal that troubles me. In DEI, when members of a group tell us that something feels racist, sexist, or homophobic, our first response is generally to take that seriously and listen. We may ultimately disagree about a particular incident, but we don’t begin by telling them that what they are experiencing isn’t real. Yet I increasingly feel that Jews are treated differently. As a gay person, I know what it feels like not to be understood or believed when something seems painfully obvious from inside my own experience. And as a Jew today, I frequently feel unheard or discounted by people who, given everything we have taught about DEI, I would have expected to listen.

This is where I think parts of the progressive social justice movement are losing their way. We should be able to hold two ideas at the same time: Palestinians deserve dignity, safety, self-determination, and justice. So do Jews. And it leaves me with a question I keep coming back to: How did a field that I have devoted so much of my professional life to, and that has become so sophisticated about virtually every form of group prejudice, develop such a profound blind spot when it comes to Jews?