Updates and News, Resources
Anti-Antizionism is Hopping
8-7-26
I. UPDATES AND NEWS
(1)
We’re moving forward with the Journal for the Critical Study of Antizionism! Details are evolving as we learn more about what’s required to establish a proper scholarly journal, but we are still inviting submissions as we look to produce our first issue in the near future. There are no specific instructions for authors at this time beyond emailing your submission, identified as such, in .docx format to andrew.pessin@gmail.com. Please submit by August 15.
(2)
I’ve just returned from spending a week (out of the two scheduled!) at the Summer Institute of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). Held on the campus of Cambridge University in the UK, it was an incredible experience, and I urge all academics to apply for next summer. ISGAP has done a lot of first-rate work over the years, but their recent work, exposing both Qatari funding of universities and the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan to infiltrate the West, is particularly potent and game-changing: it led directly to the current administration’s Executive Order declaring some chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, and led directly to this past week’s Senate hearing on the subject.
To learn more about ISGAP’s incredible (and prolific) work, and learn more about the Summer Institute, visit
(3)
Similarly the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies out of Brandeis University is now accepting applications for their 2027 Summer Institute – involving some ten days of intensive study at Brandeis and then a ten-day trip/tour to Israel. This is a great program to help train professors to teach about Israel. I did it back in 2017 and it was transformative. I’d be happy to serve as a reference for the application of any ICSA member.
To find out more and apply, visit:
https://www.brandeis.edu/israel-center/siis/index.html
(4)
Work continues on the upcoming “Infidel Awareness Month: Sept 11 – Oct 7”
“As Charles Small and ISGAP have recently documented, we are at the half-way mark of the hundred-year war declared by Muslims who want the entire world to be Dar al-Islam in 1400 AH (1979 CE) …”
To call attention to Islamic antizionism and antisemitism, as well as to the “hundred-year war” none of us even knew was happening (and which we are losing badly), there is a new movement afoot to designate the period between Sept 11 and Oct 7 every year as “Infidel Awareness Month,” with events scheduled for every day of the interval.
Read about it here: https://icsa.substack.com/p/by-richard-landes-infidel-awareness
To get involved in any way, contact Prof. Richard Landes: rlandes@bu.edu.
(5)
It’s unfortunately becoming time for Jews to do what they always eventually have to do: On being excluded from various institutions they go and build their own, better ones. (Think Hollywood, Brandeis University, and my favorite example: go look up the origin of the bagel.) My friend Howard Lovy in partnership with my other friends, the excellent team at Chai Mitzvah, are launching Canary Publishing, a new publishing house for Jewish voices—the authors, and books, that are being nearly entirely blacklisted over the past couple of years. If you have a manuscript, or you want to get involved financially or otherwise, I can put you in touch with Howard directly.
To learn more, visit:
(6)
Prof. David Patterson, who has been writing about this stuff for a long time, has a new book out for which I was honored to write a blurb. Please check it out, and if it’s a little pricey for you, please request your university and local libraries to order it and then borrow it (that’s what I often do)!
Here’s a blurb:
In the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks a storm of antisemitism spread across the globe. In Redemptive Antisemitism after Ten/Seven, Patterson draws on decades of studying antisemitism to explore the historical background and contemporary narratives that gave rise to this phenomenon. He argues that a new form of antisemitism—steeped in self-righteousness and seen as morally redemptive—has taken hold in public discourse. Just as Hamas framed its violence as holy, so too do some intellectuals and activists treat antisemitic anti-Zionism as a foundation of moral integrity. This book exposes and explains this dangerous transformation and its global implications.
Buy the hardcover here (a kindle version, cheaper, is coming in a few weeks):
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H3NHPPTR
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II. RESOURCES
It’s really quite incredible how much good stuff is starting to appear ….
(1)
Prof Alex Kranjec has a new piece out today that is very disturbing—on our community, and our key institutions, simply failing to identify the main threat against the Jews today (ie antizionism), to the point where they would dismiss the basic principle (universally held across the left) that the target group gets to define the bigotry against them:
A profound failure by a Pittsburgh institution
That was the session’s final explicit message: Jews, as a group, do not get to decide what is anti-Jewish.
By Alex Kranjec
Read it here:
https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/a-profound-failure-by-a-pittsburgh-institution/
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(2)
An excellent piece on rapidly growing right-wing antizionism:
How To Get Right the Woke-Right
The right was supposed to be the safe zone, and recent polling suggests that assumption is weakening.
By Eran Shayshon
Read it here:
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/390825/how-to-get-right-the-woke-right/
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(3)
An excellent response to antizionist Eyal Weizman’s April 2026 article levying the genocide libel:
A Response to Eyal Weizman’s “All they will find is sand”
The Cartography of a Slander
By Verena Buser and Avraham Russell Shalev
Read it here:
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(4)
Really terrible result this week in the UK: Absolutely unambiguously Jew-hating professor David Miller, who lost his job over his Jew-hating antizionism, has won an appeal not only reinstating him but declaring “antizionism” a “protected belief” under UK law (whatever precisely that means). Elder of Ziyon has some of the details, and a very useful analysis:
Everyone is reporting on the David Miller case wrong
The main problem was that Bristol University made the best arguments inadmissible
By Elder of Ziyon
Read it here:
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(5)
Those following these matters know that there’s a real problem in Wikipedia having been taken over by antizionists, which in turn means that major AI systems, which train on Wikipedia among other sources, come to reflect that antizionist bias. In response, a team has built an “AI you can trust on Israel,” RealityCheck AI, based on a much wider array of sources than other AIs, including pro-Israel ones.
Is There an AI You Can Trust on Israel? Yes—From Us!
By Daniel Pomerantz
Check it out here:
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(6)
The Oxford Union recently debated the question: “Is the West Right to be Suspicious of Islam?” (The vote was 57-41 in favor of “no.” In light of ISGAP’s work mentioned above and other sources, I find it a little difficult to agree.)
Jonathan Sacerdoti was very brave to take on the yes answer, and did an impressive job.
Why the West Should be Suspicious of Islam
By Jonathan Sacerdoti
Read a transcript of his remarks here:
By Jonathan Sacerdoti: Why the West Should be Suspicious of Islam
This past week the Oxford Union debated the question “Should the West be Suspicious of Islam?” Jonathan Sacerdoti was one of the brave people daring to take on the yes answer. Here is a rough transcript of his remarks.
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(7)
Shocker! Turns out people who hate Israel also typically hate Jews, and are susceptible to conspiracy theories … Who would have guessed? Still, it’s useful to have the empirical confirmation:
Study Finds Strong Link Between Conspiracy Beliefs, Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Attitudes
Read about it here:
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(8)
An excellent piece by our friends at Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, nailing it:
Radicalized academia is fiercely resisting the self-correction it needs
by Alex Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky
Read it here:
https://romirowsky.com/31496/radicalized-academia
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(9)
Intrepid journalist Melissa Braunstein recently published a piece profiling 9 former antizionists who changed minds. This is something we need to study, to figure out what works and why. Read this article just to see the extremely alarming statistics about just how many Americans really hate the Jews.
Fighting the New Antisemitism
By Melissa Braunstein
Read it here:
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2026/09/fighting-the-new-antisemitism/
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(10)
Finally (for today) I’ve recently discovered some very fine work by substack-blogger Nachum Kaplan. This piece here was actually published on another substack, Future of Jewish, but it led me back to Nachum’s substack. I recommend both. This piece is a master class on dismantling the antizionist idiocy we hear from too many people in our (former) social circles:
“I went to an anti-Israel dinner party. It did not go as planned.”
By Nachum Kaplan
Read it here:
Check out his substack-blog, Moral Clarity, here:
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There’s still plenty more, but that’s it, for now.
Remember: We need teams of scholars producing reams of scholarship about antizionism.
We need ICSA.
Andrew Pessin
ISGAP is great. I'm starting their online certificate program this Fall!
Worth reading and doing something about it:
UNESCO joins Palestinians in rewriting Jewish history in Judea and Samaria
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-904753?utm_source=jpost.app.apple&utm_medium=share