Earlier this year, in the heavily saturated world of commentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a new name started to appear everywhere, though it seemed to come out of nowhere: Adam Louis-Klein, an anthropology Ph.D. student at McGill University. Until this past spring, he had hardly said anything about Israel publicly. He was too busy studying a remote Amazonian tribe. 

But then Louis-Klein, 32, built a platform and started writing — first on Facebook and X; then in Times of Israel blog posts; on podcasts, including one from the American Jewish Committee, and a show hosted by the Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur; and in articles published in The Free Press and Tablet. 

Anywhere he could, Louis-Klein was making the bold claim that American Jews need to stop arguing about when anti-Zionism crosses a line into antisemitism. In fact, he thinks they need to give up on their efforts to convince people that anti-Zionism is an antisemitic movement. 

His thesis — the idea he is trying to get out into the world everyday, alternating between attention-catching social media graphics designed to go viral and lengthy posts using the dense academic jargon of anthropology — is that anti-Zionism should be considered a hate movement, something that is worthy of condemnation on its own, regardless of whether it is deemed antisemitic or not. 

“When someone’s marked as a Zionist, anti-Zionists treat those Zionists differently. They treat them in unequal ways. They advocate for violence, or they advocate for discriminating or boycotting them, or excluding them or purging them. Anti-Zionists stigmatize Zionists. They spread libels about Zionists. They call Zionists slurs,” Louis-Klein told Jewish Insider in an interview last week. “It’s its own way of discriminating, and it’s hiding in plain sight. It’s there for everyone to see.”

The perpetual fighting over whether anti-Zionism should be considered antisemitism misses the point, Louis-Klein said — and it might actually make things worse for Jews.

“You’re going to get this continual problem across the line of turning it into some endless debate over ‘is it really antisemitic or not?’” Louis-Klein stated. “This is something that fuels anti-Zionists, because they can tell the Jewish community is not clear and is not setting a clear boundary against anti-Zionism, and is saying, ‘Well, anti-Zionism may be legitimate,’ and so that’s leaving an open space.” 

Louis-Klein is the last person who expected that he would be contributing to the highly contentious public discourse surrounding Zionism. 

As a Jewish anthropology student, he chose to focus his studies on a tiny Amazonian tribe in the Colombian rainforest. He devoted his research to understanding the Desana people and their relationship to Christian missionaries. It was work that occasionally involved Jews, insofar as Jews, of course, appear in the Bible. Otherwise, though, Judaism did not factor heavily in Louis-Klein’s academic research — and Israel even less so. 

The Jewish state was a topic to be avoided if you were a budding anthropologist with an eye toward a successful career in academia, and Louis-Klein was quickly progressing down that path. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale and master’s degrees at The New School and the University of Chicago before enrolling at McGill. 

He had visited Israel with his family when he was in college, but later drifted away from feeling connected to the country when he became a self-described “radical leftist” after graduating. But Louis-Klein didn’t entirely abandon Israel. And when he walked out of the Amazon on Oct. 9, 2023, after three months living with the Desana tribe, he quickly discovered that the world had changed two days earlier, when Hamas attacked Israel. 

“Am Yisrael Chai,” Louis-Klein wrote on social media, unknowingly drawing a line that split his life as an academic into a before and after. His peers were shocked that he was not using the opportunity to distance himself from Israel.

“I’d never witnessed anything like this in my life. Just the way in which people were talking to me was something I’d never seen before. The aggression, the hostility, the gaslighting from people I thought were my friends,” Louis-Klein said. “I was removed from WhatsApp groups. I was bullied, people just being like, ‘Shut up, you’re white,’ kind of thing. I mean, it’s not a story that’s uncommon. now. There are so many Jewish students at universities who’ve experienced this.” 

What came next for Louis-Klein was a newfound connection to his Jewish identity and to Israel. But the identity crisis also brought about an intellectual shift, too, one in which Louis-Klein decided that he could use his academic background to investigate the roots of the hatred he was experiencing. His dissertation is now more of a comparative project, looking at both the Desana people and the Jewish people. He has already experienced pushback from colleagues.

“The reaction is obviously extremely negative, and I don’t have any expectations of being able to have an official career within anthropology, but so far, I expect to be able to complete my dissertation,” Louis-Klein said. “Trying to make Jewishness visible, trying to make the experience of antisemitism or anti-Jewish oppression and discrimination visible, was perceived as violent and aggressive to others.” 

Louis-Klein founded an organization this fall called Movement Against Anti-Zionism to put forth a more organized push for his message that a stronger campaign against anti-Zionism is needed to make life better for American Jews. 

Alongside more than 1,000 health-care professionals, the organization signed onto an open letter last week decrying the reach of anti-Zionist ideology in the medical field. Louis-Klein told JI he wants to see legacy Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League “launch a full-scale campaign against anti-Zionism.”

“Educate about anti-Zionist libels as their own libels and tropes. They are the ‘colonizer,’ ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ libels. They’re used to stigmatize and attack Jews who are marked as Zionists,” he explained. His social media accounts attempt to make these points in the snappy, bright graphics that are now the touchstone of social media activism.

“Antizionism is a hate movement,” one faded pink image says, meant to be liked and shared for an audience that will scroll past it in no more than a second or two. 

“If someone is an anti-Israeli racist, let’s put it this way: they hate Israelis for their national identity. That’s clearly a bigotry. And if someone else says, ‘Well, they don’t hate all Jews, it’s not antisemitic.’ … That’s basically a way of legitimizing anti-Israeli racism,” Louis-Klein explained. “The need to prove that something is antisemitic [in order] to prove that it’s bad is a way of legitimizing a bunch of racism.” 

Even with a ceasefire in effect in Gaza, Louis-Klein does not anticipate university campuses to go back to business as usual from before Oct. 7. 

“What we can do is recognize the historical moment we’re living in and recognize that the only way out is through, so to speak,” he said. “We have to talk about anti-Zionism.”

Speaking at the Israel Hayom summit in Manhattan on Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of the influence of social media in shaping young people’s perceptions on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“There is a great deal of valid concern about how Israel is viewed, not just around the world, but from the United States, how Jewish Americans are viewed, and what is being seen as a significant increase in antisemitism in real life and online,” said Clinton. “It’s time now that the hostages are back and people can breathe again, that everyone needs to take stock of where we are, both in Israel and in this country, learn the lessons that perhaps can help us determine a more productive future.”

Clinton said she believes growing hostility toward Israel is a “generational” issue, rather than a “Republican versus Democrat” divide.

“A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50% of young people in America get their news from social media,” said Clinton, who added that the problem lies in the information users are receiving “and the conclusions they are drawing from it.” 

Clinton recalled teaching at Columbia University, where she is a professor of practice at the School of International and Public Affairs, during and after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and seeing this impact firsthand.

“We began to realize that our students — smart, well-educated young people from our own country, from around the world — where were they getting their information? They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok. That is where they were learning about what happened on Oct. 7,” said Clinton. “What they were being told on social media was not just one sided, it was pure propaganda.”

Clinton said it was often difficult to engage in “reasonable discussion” in such a climate because students lacked historical knowledge and “had very little context,” calling it “frankly shocking.” She also warned that in addition to social media, she saw immediate and planned efforts to distort the context of the Oct. 7 attacks.

“There was an organized effort that was prepared literally on Oct. 8 to begin to try to both provide mis- and disinformation about what had happened on Oct. 7, what the meaning was, what the history between the Israelis and the Palestinians [was],” said Clinton. 

A key way forward, according to Clinton, is finding an effective way to talk about Israel to the younger generation. She added that Israel has “the worst PR.”

“The story that needed to be told was not getting told as effectively as I thought it should. And I think that’s only worse now,” said Clinton. “We have to do a better job of talking through the importance of supporting Israel and Israel’s security in a way that crosses generations.”

Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur and former presidential longshot, said his experience navigating the fraught politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last spring as a Democratic candidate for New York City mayor — when escalating violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza coincided with an uptick in antisemitic incidents — informed his decision to launch a third party that he hopes will act as a moderating force in American politics.

“We’re seeing antisemitism arise in different ways now, and that’s something that I find very worrisome,” Yang said in an interview with Jewish Insider. “I believe that’s another reason why we should have a more robust, multi-polar system.”

Yang, who recently registered as an independent after decades as a Democrat, recently revealed that he was starting the Forward Party in an effort to reshape what he views as an entrenched political system in thrall to various forms of extremism and groupthink. The announcement appears in the final chapter of his eponymously titled new book, Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, published by Crown.

“I believe the Forward Party is, in many ways, a natural response to many of the concerns of the Jewish community,” Yang said. 

The 46-year-old businessman turned politician, who is ultimately aiming to attract 20 million members to his new party, lays out six “key principles” in his book, touching on such procedural ambitions as “ranked-choice voting and open primaries” as well as broad policy initiatives like “human-centered capitalism” and “universal basic income.”

While guaranteed monthly payments of $1,000 for American citizens 18 and older was the central proposal of his 2020 presidential campaign — helping him garner a sizable fan base of enthusiastic young followers — Yang emphasized that he is now largely focused on ballot initiatives that will enable ranked-choice voting and open primaries in states around the country ahead of the 2022 midterms. 

“There’s not a whole lot of time,” he told JI.

Yang placed fourth in the June New York City mayoral primary, which used a ranked-choice voting system. But instituting such changes more expansively, he argued, would help create the conditions for new coalitions — such as the one he forged with the Jewish community during his mayoral campaign — capable of loosening the current two-party framework that he views as “very vulnerable to authoritarianism.”

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang places his hands on the shoulders of Assembly Member Simcha Eichenstein during a press conference on June 21, 2021 in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

“I think if you have certain ideas, and you only have two parties, that those ideas can become more pernicious and widespread and powerful than if you have more parties that represent different points of view,” Yang told JI. “The last thing that you’d want is certain points of view that are in a subset of the Democratic Party to become more prevalent.”

Yang was alluding, at least in part, to what he characterized as a “strong narrative” among progressive Democrats “that tries to separate everyone into either oppressor or oppressed” — a sorting mechanism that, he suggested, takes a particularly malevolent turn when coupled with growing anti-Israel sentiment on the far left.

“In this narrative, the people of Israel are the oppressors, and what’s interesting is that when you have conversations with other people in other contexts, you could make the case that Jews are actually historically the most oppressed people in the history of the world,” Yang said. “There’s this narrative that’s taking place that’s very binary that will give rise to antisemitism, and that oppressor versus oppressed narrative leaves no room for nuance.”

Yang indicated that he had “encountered people who very much held” that view when his mayoral campaign overlapped with the conflict between Israel and Hamas. As violence intensified last May, Yang weighed in with a supportive statement for the Jewish state. “I’m standing with the people of Israel who are coming under bombardment attacks,” he wrote on Twitter, “and condemn the Hamas terrorists.”

Though his pro-Israel statement echoed those of a number of leading Democratic candidates in the crowded field, Yang found himself subject to the most intense scrutiny from critics who protested that he had excluded Palestinians impacted by the conflict. Over the following days, Yang was uninvited from a Ramadan event and heckled by pro-Palestinian activists at a campaign stop in Queens. 

“Utterly shameful,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) declared of Yang’s comments.

Seeking to quell the backlash, Yang released a lengthy note of contrition in which he clarified his initial remarks. “I mourn for every Palestinian life taken before its time as I do for every Israeli,” he said at the time. His statement, however, appeared to do little to appease his detractors, many of whom excoriated the follow-up on social media.

“There were very, very strong emotions and exchanges, certainly around Israel, and some of the sentiments I encountered I did disagree with very significantly,” Yang recalled. He declined to elaborate, simply remarking that he “had exchanges with people who have extreme points of view that I don’t think should be mainstream.”

“I was brought up to believe that the U.S. and Israel are the best of friends, and I was also brought up to believe that your friend can do something that you disagree with and they’re still your friend,” Yang said. “Those are some of the principles that I grew up with that I’ve taken for granted my entire adult life.”

But if Yang was disoriented by the intense pushback elicited by his social media message, he was more alarmed by the string of antisemitic attacks that had many Jews in New York on high alert during the May conflict..

“During my mayoral campaign, I became aware of just how much a rising danger antisemitism is, and it’s genuinely frightening to me,” he told JI. “I saw that antisemitism is getting stronger on a level that, I imagine, Jewish people are very aware of and sensitive to. I’m not sure other people would realize.”

Despite his newcomer’s status in the mayoral primary field, Yang, who lives in Manhattan, earned widespread support from the local Orthodox Jewish community thanks in part to his laissez-faire approach to the yeshiva education system as well as his unequivocal rejection of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. Yang described the movement as “rooted in antisemitic thought” in an opinion piece at the beginning of his mayoral campaign.

Yang said his newfound relationships with Jewish leaders in Brooklyn and Queens have imbued the Forward Party with a “different urgency,” highlighting “some of the excesses” on “the Democratic side,” most recently including a House vote last month in which an outspoken cohort of progressive Democrats opposed the approval of $1 billion in supplemental funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. “I thought that vote was deeply troubling,” he said.

“I learned a lot from the Jewish community,” Yang told JI. “There’s an integrity to the community I just really adored and appreciated and I’m very grateful for. It’s something that’s missing in far too many parts of this country.”

As he embarks on his latest political project, Yang said he has spoken with Jewish supporters who are disenchanted by the Democratic Party. “They’ve expressed a number of concerns that have made them excited about the Forward Party,” he told JI. “Number one, they see that there is a strain within the Democratic Party that will make support for Israel more and more contentious moving forward — a strain that does, unfortunately, include antisemitism.”

The other element, he said, “is that they see that right now the system is not designed for success, and it’s subject to very negative and authoritarian impulses.”

“I just had a call today with someone who’s the child of Holocaust survivors, and he said to me that the Forward Party is the most important thing going right now because it has a chance to preserve a stable system and that most people don’t see it,” Yang told JI. “Most people are trapped in the bipartisan back and forth. It’s like, OK, this party wins, that party wins. But then my Jewish friend who I just spoke to said, ‘No, the issue is really whether democracy itself will maintain integrity and survive.’ And that’s what the Forward Party’s laser-focused on.”

Yang, who is Taiwanese-American, believes that Jews and Asians in particular represent a natural coalition for the Forward Party amid a rise in hate crimes against both groups. “A lot of this stuff I discovered during the mayoral [campaign],” he said. “I didn’t realize how tied together the Jewish community is with my community and the survival of the system.”

“Jews and Asians are kind of in a similar boat in terms of, like, we need a functioning system of integrity to stand the test of time or else our communities are among those that will be targeted,” he said. “Truly.”

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 22: Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang greets supporters at a Manhattan hotel as he concedes in his campaign for mayor on June 22, 2021 in New York City. Early polls showed Yang, who has never held a political office before, far behind other candidates in the Democratic primary. Ranked choice voting is being used for the first time, a system that lets voters prioritize more than one candidate on their ballot. The winner of the Democratic primary will face off against the Republican candidate in the fall (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Yang recalled attending an anti-Asian hate rally when he was running for mayor that helped clarify why he now believes forming a third party is necessary. “People started chanting ‘defund the police,’” he told JI. “I said to a friend at the time, ‘If someone thinks that defunding the police would be a good thing for Asians, they need to have their head examined.’”

“The Forward Party is going to build a very significant coalition of Americans who are typically more moderate, more practical, less ideological and want the system to work,” Yang claimed. “I think that will have high overlap with the Jewish communities and the Asian communities who, I think, tend to be a little bit more moderate and practical.”

More broadly, Yang speculated that his party would also appeal to business people and those who work in the tech industry. “Business people right now look at our current political system and are like, ‘Where am I supposed to fall in this?’ — in part because the two parties are hewing toward various extremes,” he said. “I have a lot of friends in the tech community, and many of them are very excited about trying to upgrade the system itself.”

“It’s going to be a really interesting, diverse coalition, and I’m super excited about it.”

Asked if he would run for office again as a member of his own party after two failed Democratic campaigns, Yang said he is currently dedicated to liberalizing electoral systems at the state level. 

But he didn’t explicitly rule out the possibility either.

“Right now, I’m focused on 2022,” he said. “We have to try and make the system stronger. I’ll do whatever I think I’m called to do, but I’m genuinely laser-focused on trying to use the time we have, because we don’t have limitless time.”