With a new avowedly anti-Zionist mayor taking office in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, following two years of rising anti-Jewish incidents internationally, Jewish donors have become increasingly interested in efforts to combat antisemitism. But as antisemitism rates show no signs of abating, even as the number of initiatives to address it balloons, along with budgets to support them, it forces the question: Are these efforts productive?

That was one of the core issues that experts attempted to answer yesterday at a webinar titled “Fighting Smarter: The Playbook for Professionals and Data Driven Philanthropy.” Hosted by Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, resource development manager at Anu Museum of the Jewish People, and co-organized by Global Jewry, the event featured Eran Shayshon, founder of the Israel-based Atchalta think tank, and Andrés Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network. Shayshon and Spokoiny presented findings from recent studies their organizations conducted related to initiatives that are combating antisemitism, something nearly every funder wants to target, even though there is little proof that initiatives are fruitful or efficient. 

Even before the Oct. 7 massacres, for over 10 years, Jewish funders and organizations have seen antisemitism as a priority, Spokoiny said at the webinar. “The problem was precisely that there’s too much interest, and that interest is not matched by a strategic approach on how to fight this fight.”

Every day, two new funders contact Spokoiny to start a new antisemitism initiative, he said. “When people come and say, ‘Nobody is doing X,’ I can tell you they are.”

The JFN study, titled “Fight Smarter,” was led by Eitan Hersh, professor of political science at Tufts University, who looked at 160 American organizations and 25 funders who all claim to be fighting antisemitism. Not only do the organizations not have clear goals on what it means to combat antisemitism, over 50% of the organizations have no goals at all, and 50% of organizations don’t clearly define the field they work in, Hersh’s study found. There has especially been a rush of funding to combat campus antisemitism post-Oct. 7, which can mean anything from working with faculty to allowing diverse viewpoints.

To set goals, Spokoiny said, funders must have realistic expectations. “There is a key difference between changing hearts and minds, as in fighting antisemitism, which [has been around for over 3,000 years and will never be solved], and there is a different set of goals that [has] to do with changing realities on the ground, those you can measure.”

While a funder cannot quantify whether they changed the culture on a campus, they can measure if a legal strategy is working to protect Jewish students. Examples of other movements that have set and met firm goals include the LGBTQ community aiming for marriage equality, and anti-abortion activists striving to repeal Roe v. Wade. Those are firm, measurable goals, unlike, for instance, “curbing homophobia.”

The data that many organizations collect isn’t necessarily relevant, Spokoiny said. It doesn’t matter if an Instagram post has a million views because that statistic doesn’t show if it changed anyone’s perception or behavior. 

There is a gap in coordination between organizations, he said, but just screaming for unity won’t help.

“When people tell you that [we need to unite], generally, what they are saying is everybody should follow me,” Spokoiny said. Instead, the field should take inventory of who is doing what.

“Maybe it’s OK to have 35 organizations calling out bad behavior,” he said, “but it’s not OK for each of them to have their own IT operation and their own research area and their own infrastructure. Sharing infrastructure can definitely be a way to make the system much more efficient…There may be an AI tool that every content provider can use. They don’t have to develop it by themselves.”

Instead of everyone combating campus antisemitism, Spokoiny said, funders should focus on neglected areas, such as antisemitism in gaming and K-12 education. Additionally, there needs to be better studies on what initiatives work, and the studies should not be done by the people providing the initiatives, he said. “I’m not saying [funders are] dishonest,” Spokoiny said. “Most of them are great people, very honest and very trustworthy, but, by definition, the research they commission is going to be biased.” Especially since most funders lean either left or right politically and want to affirm their worldview.

At the event, Shayshon presented findings from Atchalta’s report “October 8th Conceptsia” — conceptsia being a term used in Israel to refer to a fundamental belief system, normally a wrong one. This is generally used to describe the flawed belief ahead of the 1973 Yom Kippur War that a surprise offensive by multiple Arab armies was impossible and, before the Oct. 7 attacks, that a terrorist organization like Hamas could never outwit or overpower Israeli security services.

“We’re not saying that antisemitism was a blind spot, but we feel there was a lack of appreciation for the unique attributes of this unique blend of antisemitism that erupted following Oct. 7, 2023,” Shayshon said.

Atchalta was founded in 2023, before the Oct. 7 attacks, to strengthen the resilience of the State of Israel, Israeli society and world Jewry. Post-Oct. 7, it too found itself focused more on antisemitism — which in its paper overlaps with anti-Zionism — than its officials expected.

Today, Israel is a villain in the American zeitgeist, Shayshon said. There are many reasons for this: media paying disproportionate attention to the country due to guilt over the Holocaust and Israel being the birthplace of Judaism, Islam and Christianity; brutal images flooding out of Gaza; and “The crisis in liberal democracies in the Western world, which is fueled by polarization, immigration, the rise of identity politics,” he said. The fourth reason is because of anti-Israel, antisemitic campaigns led by Islamists and radical leftists — who he called the Red-Green Alliance — which “connect all the dots of the first three.”

Because Israel has become a pariah state, it is easy for people to believe every awful thing people say about it, Shayshon said, especially since society makes it feel like everyone believes Israel is the villain, so it must be true. 

This idea, that everyone hates Israel, is simply not factual, he said, pointing to studies showing that the majority of people in the Western world favor Israel over Hamas. He specifically referenced a recent Harvard Harris study (That study, along with most others on the topic, show that respondents’ views of Israel is shifting over time, becoming more negative, especially as the country’s war in Gaza raged on.)

Social media adds fuel to the idea that everyone is against Israel, as people get lost in their feeds. Additionally, many people who do value Israel are afraid to speak up, especially Jews who are disconnected from the community.

“There are 50 shades of antisemitism that come in many different shapes and forms,” Shayshon said. “The dominant blend since Oct. 7 has been an antisemitism that is entangled with the framework of identity politics. It is based on the framing of Jews as white and privileged, as part of this binary framing in which progressives describe the world [as] oppressed versus oppressors…The Jewish state is framed as a white state — white and therefore colonial.”

Depending on a person’s country, anti-Israel advocacy will look different. In the U.S., it’s framed under identity politics. In the U.K., it’s framed within trade unions and academia. In South Africa, it’s framed under apartheid.

“When an American student shouts ‘from the river to the sea’ and when a Spanish parliament member [asks] ‘Where’s the Palestinian flag in the parliament?’ it is very likely that they are not doing so because they dream about the destruction of the State of Israel at night,” Shayshon said. Instead, they have connected the Palestinian cause to their system of values.

To combat current antisemitism and anti-Zionism, individuals need to show others that it’s not a minority view to support Israel, he said. Advocates should frame Israel within the values of society, reminding others that antisemitism is a danger to all liberal, democratic ideals.

Today, the Jewish world is in danger of forming their Jewish identity around antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Spokoiny said. “Part of the comprehensive solution to antisemitism is [to] double down on Jewish education… Make Jewish day schools affordable for every Jewish family in America.”

Luckily, Spokoiny said, the antisemitism people face today is nothing compared to that of the past. If Jews today talked to their great-grandparents, their elders would be shocked at everything the Jewish world has, such as Jewish members of Congress and a country of their own in their ancestral homeland. 

“As a people, we’re better and stronger and safer and richer and more powerful than we’ve ever been in our history,” Spokoiny said. “Yes, there are challenges, but this is nothing we can’t overcome if we really do our best.”