We’ve All Been Fighting Antisemitism Wrong (Including Me)

It isn't about facts. It's about psychology.

Have you ever noticed that the modern antisemites prioritize active commitment to their cause - attending rallies, signing pledges, sending money? This isn’t accidental. It’s part of a strategy that takes advantage of human nature: people who publicly commit to a cause almost never change their minds.

Psychologists have shown this for decades. Once you’ve stood up in public, raised your hand, or posted your pledge online, the cost of reversing yourself skyrockets. You’re not just admitting you were wrong - you’re admitting it to your peers, your community, and even your opponents. Most people won’t do it. In fact, the research shows something worse: when people who are publicly committed are confronted with facts, they often become more committed. They interpret the correction as an attack, and doubling down feels safer than walking away.

This isn’t about truth - it’s about psychology. And the haters are way ahead of us.

If you look closely, every method used by modern anti-Israel and antisemitic activists is not primarily about spreading information, but about creating loyalty. It’s about binding people to the cause through visible, repeated, identity-shaping actions. Here are just some examples:

• Pledges and petitions. Whether online or in person, a signature is cheap in content but expensive in psychology. Signing marks you as “one of us,” and very few people later rip up their signature.

• Demonstrations. Marches and rallies are not informational seminars. They’re loyalty rituals. The shouting, the costumes, the banners - every element is designed to make participants feel they’ve crossed a line and joined a movement they can’t easily leave.

• Artist boycotts. When a singer or actor signs a pledge not to work with Israelis, the point isn’t Israeli ticket sales. It’s about forcing a public position. Once an artist signs, reversing course would mean being branded a traitor by the very crowd that cheered them. The psychological cost for admitting they are wrong is immense, and no amount of facts can change their position.

• Responding to social media posts. Activists demand that followers comment “Free Palestine” or flood hashtags. The information value is zero; the psychological value is immense. Each post is a miniature loyalty oath.

• Chanting slogans. Chanting “From the river to the sea” isn’t about debate. It’s about rhythm, synchronization, and collective reinforcement. Psychologists know that synchronized movement and sound bond people more powerfully than arguments ever could.

• Joining groups and clubs. Campus “Students for Justice in Palestine” or “Jewish Voice for Peace” chapters are less about education than about belonging. Once your social circle comes from a group, leaving the cause means leaving your friends. That’s not information - it’s entanglement.

• Fundraising. Even a five-dollar donation changes the way the brain processes commitment. You paid into the cause - now you’re invested. To admit the cause is wrong is to admit you wasted your money.

None of this is new. Cults, radical movements, even advertising executives have known for decades that commitment creates belief, not the other way around. Modern antisemitic movements have mastered this playbook.

Jews tend to believe that truth is the ultimate defense. Blame the Talmud - arguments are how we are wired. We arm ourselves with fact sheets, timelines, and historical evidence. And yes, truth matters. But against those who have already signed, marched, donated, and staked their identity, truth is nearly useless.

This explains why fact sheets rarely work. You can prove that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, or that casualty numbers are manipulated by Hamas, or that Jewish history in the land goes back millennia. If the audience has already marched, pledged, donated, and shouted, your facts don’t just bounce off - they often harden the opposition.

To them, rejecting your facts isn’t just an intellectual choice - it’s a way to protect their self-perception, their pride, and their social standing. That’s why they often double down.

So what can we do?

We can copy the haters’ methods, by creating spaces and groups. But let’s face it - that might work for Jews but there is not much incentive for non-Jews to join Zionist groups. The issue is much bigger than Zionism, which is why the haters will link anti-Zionism with the environment, racism or other social justice issues. Even though true social justice would support Zionism as an indigenous rights movement, the larger causes have already been mostly hijacked.

More effective is to expose the manipulation before people get sucked in. Point out the methods. Ask: Why do they want you to sign a pledge before you even know the details? Why do they want you to chant instead of debate? Nobody likes to feel they’re being used. We are manipulated all the time, by the media, by advertisers, by our political leaders. Teaching people how these manipulations work and how to recognize when we are being played is an essential skill for this century, and most people have no idea they are being played.

Another important method is to reframe the debate around shared values. Show how the methods betray the very principles activists claim to uphold. If they say they stand for dignity, why are they teaching people to chant genocidal slogans? If they say they stand for justice, why are they coercing artists and companies into political loyalty tests? If they care about free speech, why do they drown out any Israeli speakers on campus?

This becomes more important when the haters use the language of morality to push immoral aims. If you can claim that October 7 was moral, you can claim that anything is moral and the word loses all meaning. We need a new moral framework that applies values consistently. Without that, ‘morality’ itself becomes just another tool for manipulation.

We’ve all been fighting antisemitism wrong - including me. We’ve treated it as a battle of facts when our opponents have treated it as a battle of psychology. They know that commitment creates belief. We’ve relied on the truth, while they’ve relied on human nature.

If we want to win, we need to stop assuming the truth will defend itself. We need to inoculate people against manipulation. We need to fight where the battle is actually being waged: not in fact sheets, but in the deeper battlefield of commitment, belonging, and identity..