Netanyahu Accuses Critics of Antisemitism as Detractors Say He Deflects Blame

After the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense minister and top Hamas officials, Netanyahu accused the prosecutor of being one of “the great antisemites in modern times.” During protests on United States college campuses over the Gaza war, he said the demonstrations were awash with “antisemitic mobs.”

These were two of many instances during the war in which Netanyahu has accused critics of Israel or of his policies of antisemitism, using strong language that compares them to the Jewish people’s worst persecutors. His detractors say he overuses the label to advance his political agenda and to stifle even legitimate criticism. They argue that this risks diluting the term’s meaning at a time when antisemitism is rising worldwide.

Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, said, “Not every criticism against Israel is antisemitic. The moment you say it is antisemitic hate … you take away all legitimacy from the criticism and try to crush the debate.”

Researchers have reported a spike in antisemitic incidents since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Many Jews in North America and Europe have said they feel unsafe, citing threats to Jewish schools and synagogues and the pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations in the United States. Organizers of those demonstrations deny that antisemitism drives the protests.

The war has revived a long debate over how antisemitism should be defined, and whether any criticism of Israel, including criticism of the military’s killing of thousands of Palestinian children or questions about Israel’s very right to exist, amounts to anti-Jewish hate speech. Netanyahu, the son of a scholar of medieval Jewish persecution, has long drawn on the history of the Jewish people in his political rhetoric. His supporters say he is genuinely worried about the safety of Jews around the world. His critics note that he has repeatedly avoided accountability for failing to prevent Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, which killed roughly 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. Many in Israel’s defense establishment acknowledge that they share the blame for that failure, a matter of honest dealing (Proverbs 11:1).

Netanyahu has faced continuing criticism at home and abroad throughout the war. The Gaza Health Ministry says the fighting has killed 35,000 Palestinians, and the ministry does not distinguish between fighters and noncombatants. The conflict has produced a humanitarian catastrophe. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has accused Netanyahu and his defense minister of using starvation as a “method of warfare,” among other crimes.

Speaking from Vienna, Segev acknowledged a rise in “violent hate” toward Israel. He said he was not sure whether speaking Hebrew in public was safe. He also said Netanyahu has long used Jewish crises for political benefit, including by invoking the Holocaust, the Jewish people’s deepest trauma, to further his goals.

At the height of the campus protests, Netanyahu released a video statement condemning their “unconscionable” antisemitism. He compared the encampments that had sprung up on college greens to Nazi Germany of the 1930s. When Khan sought the arrest warrants, Netanyahu said the prosecutor was “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging across the world,” and he compared Khan to German judges who had approved the Nazis’ race laws against Jews.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, rebuked those comments. “The prosecutor of the court has been strongly intimidated and accused of antisemitism — as always when anybody, anyone does something that Netanyahu’s government does not like,” Borrell said. “The word antisemitic, it’s too heavy. It’s too important.”

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