(RNS) — A friend asked me in a text message yesterday, “So, Jeff, you’ve been talking and writing about the antisemitism on all sides of the political spectrum. Which side do you think is the most dangerous?” It was just a few days after Menachem Rosensaft and I wrote about the “horseshoe” effect of antisemitism – how it exists both on the left and the right. 

For that op-ed, we recalled the passage from Exodus that describes how the Red Sea split for the Israelites, creating a wall of water on both sides and a metaphor for what we are experiencing today. Here’s another Passover-related image — and my answer to my friend.

For a variety of arcane reasons, medieval illustrators would often include rabbit-hunting scenes in their haggadot: dogs or hunters chasing rabbits into a huge net.

Jews would interpret themselves as the rabbit. The hunters are chasing us into a net.

The hunters also come from both sides. 

Today, the hunters on the left are the anti-Zionists who promote their positions using antisemitic images and ideas. Anti-Zionism/antisemitism fosters a climate in which Jews feel unwelcome, suspect or morally compromised. Those hunters have created interlocking intifadas. Entertainers like Javier Bardem and other A-listers take anti-Israel stands; academic and literary Jews cannot get books published; therapists refuse to treat patients who identify with Zionism; and men are attacked for speaking Hebrew in a San Jose restaurant.

When Israel becomes the world’s singular villain; when Jewish identity becomes synonymous with oppression; when nuance disappears and slogans replace thought; when this movement that claims the mantle of social justice borrows the language and motifs of classic anti-Judaism, something toxic takes hold. Cultural elites — in academia, media and entertainment — amplify those messages. They shape discourse. They influence how younger generations understand Jews and Jewish power.

In other words, the haters have cultural power. To quote Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic:

In late 2024, the Democratic data scientist David Shor surveyed nearly 130,000 voters at the behest of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. He found that a quarter of those younger than 25 — with negligible differences among Trump and Harris supporters — held an “unfavorable opinion” of “Jewish people.” (Jewish people — not Israelis or Zionists.) By contrast, the older a person was, the less likely they were to express such sentiments.

We must also look to the hunters on the right. Rabbi Jay Michaelson recently wrote in The Forward that while Jews and their defense organizations tend to fixate on the antisemitism of the left, it is exploding on the right — in political circles, online ecosystems and, increasingly, within the halls of government itself.

Consider Kingsley Wilson, now serving as press secretary at the U.S. Department of Defense. Less than a year before her appointment, she repeated a grotesque antisemitic lie about Leo Frank, a Jewish man who had been wrongly convicted of murdering a young girl in Atlanta in 1913, and subsequently lynched. 

Or Paul Ingrassia, a senior legal official in the Trump administration, who once admitted — casually — that he had “a Nazi streak.” Despite those comments — along with his praise of extremist figures — he continues to hold a significant government role as acting general counsel of the General Services Administration.

Or Joe Kent, who recently resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, after he alleged that Israel had manipulated the United States into the war with Iran – as well as the war with Iraq. Those views align with classic antisemitic conspiracy theories. Kent has repeatedly engaged with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. 

A November 2025 study by the Manhattan Institute — not exactly a bastion of left-wing ideology — found that nearly 4 in 10 Republicans believe the Holocaust was exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe. Among younger Republican men, more than half said they believed that the Holocaust was exaggerated. Another poll found that 64% of young voters who considered themselves “extremely conservative” agreed with at least one antisemitic statement.

Leaked group chats among young Republican leaders reveal a culture of racism, misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism. And James Fishback, a 31-year-old man who is running for governor in Florida, is openly antisemitic. Not to mention the “manosphere,” a loosely related collection of masculinist movements, many of which overlap with antisemitic conspiracy theories and white supremacist ideologies.

Remember the young Germans in “Cabaret,” singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”? They appear to be the conservative future. 

These young Republicans are imbibing a steady diet of right-wing influencers like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. Podcaster Joe Rogan has welcomed guests who claim that Jews control governments, manipulate the Holocaust and dominate the media. His podcast reaches an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, making him one of the most popular podcasters in the world.

Yes, anti-Zionism on the left can give cover to antisemitism. It has created a climate that alienates and excludes Jews. It has cultural power.

But the antisemitism on the right is different. With the right-wing drift of the Republican Party, these antisemites are proximate to the halls of political power. 

The American Jewish community has the resources to fight the antisemitisms that come from all sides. But at this particularly crucial moment, the haters on the right are more dangerous, and require more attention.

Back to the rabbit hunters and the net — made of strong fibers, woven together into a strong tapestry, put together to create a structure strong enough to catch its prey.

The net of antisemitism is a tapestry of strong fibers — mythologies, ideologies, libels, deliberate misinterpretations of histories — all with one intent: to trap the Jews, to deny them their agency, to deny the very nature of Jewish peoplehood and their faith.

We stand in a common battle against that net.