Signs at a pro-BDS protest in New York following the US decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri.

A new report on progressive antisemitism was released Tuesday by a top Israeli think tank, arguing that a new form of antisemitism is becoming increasingly powerful in left-wing ideology and activism.

The Reut Group — which works in areas of national security, Israeli-Jewish relations, and socio-economic development — issued the paper on a new form of “erasive antisemitism,” a term coined by writer and activist Ben M. Freeman, that is gaining traction in progressive discourse.

“Erasive anti-Semitism is a de-facto undermining of Jewish narrative self-determination: the very right to define Jewish identity, experience, and vulnerability according to concepts and language that reflect the unique nature of Jewish vulnerability, including that it tracks differently from other dominant experiences of oppression,” lead author Daphna Kaufman told The Algemeiner. 

This brand of antisemitism “negates the rights of Jews individually or collectively to define their own identity, experience, and vulnerability,” the paper argues — in part, because of paradigms that frame Jews as “powerful white oppressors,” it “lumps them within the dominant majorities it delineates.”

“Erasive anti-Semitism does not necessarily feed on hatred,” Kaufman said, and is often an unintentional consequence of accepting those paradigms. “However, a marginal fringe does purposefully advance anti-Jewish and anti-Israel agendas utilizing its tenets, exploiting contemporary progressive paradigms to challenge Jewish inclusion and support for Jewish and pro-Israel agendas on the left.”

Eran Shayshon, CEO of the Reut Group, told The Algemeiner that Jewish communities and pro-Israel groups had found some success combating anti-Zionist activities and the campaigns to boycott Israel that have gained a foothold on US college campuses. But he argued that efforts like support for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Anti-Semitism would not be as effective against the “erasive” strain of antisemitism.

“This is because it is often not an intentional assault, but a byproduct of the current progressive discourse,” he said. “The current manifestation of identity politics has eroded the cultural norms that used to protect the Jewish community. What makes this challenge so difficult to meet, is that while the Jewish communities occasionally experience the words and deeds of progressive leaders as an assault on the Jewish way of life, the latter usually cannot be classified as antisemites.”

“As a result, even within the Jewish community there is no notable effort in sight to address this challenge systematically, nor to generate a cohesive and united front of Jewish communities to address it,” he said.

The authors call for consensus on what constitutes this new strand of antisemitism, led by progressive Jewish communities that find themselves on the “front lines” of the issue.

The founder and President of Reut, Gidi Grinstein, told the Algemeiner, “The rise of the far-left progressive movement in American politics is an assault on the place of American Jewry in American society, on the place of Israel among the nations, and on the ability of the United States to be a great nation in a complex and nuanced world. That movement is evolving intellectually and politically, and so must we.”

“‘Erasive antisemitism’ is our attempt to capture the way in which members of the organized Jewish community and those who support Israel are effectively being silenced by this movement,” he explained.