By Channah Yurovsky, Staff Writer
There was a time when seeing a swastika was supposed to shock us. To some, it still does. But today it can appear on a poster, a social media feed, a college campus or, apparently, at a Kickboxing match in a city-owned arena in Orlando, Florida.
Last month, spectators at Orlando’s Kia Center watched a fighter known online as “GypsyCrusader” defeat his Jewish opponent before appearing to give Nazi salutes from the ring and directing an antisemitic insult at him. In the crowd, a spectator unfurled a swastika flag while others appeared to return the salute. The flag was eventually confiscated by security, and Orlando officials condemned what happened, while noting that as the operator of a public venue, it is also bound by the First Amendment.
That distinction is exactly what makes this conversation so complicated. Something can be legal without being normal or moral. Something can be protected without being harmless. And something can still shock us while somehow becoming increasingly familiar.
This past Tzom Gedalia, I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Walking through the museum, I saw the posters, the newspapers, the propaganda and the slow dehumanization of Jews that preceded the Holocaust. One poster displayed by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reads, “Jews are lice; they cause typhus.” The message is horrifyingly simple. If Jews could first be transformed from people into pests and diseases, their persecution could be transformed from cruelty into something its perpetrators justified as necessary. Just like killing bugs — not immoral, necessarily.
America in 2026 is not Nazi Germany. But it is worth asking what the events we are living through now will look like with the clarity of hindsight.
On his first day in office, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani revoked a 2025 executive order that had formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism for city agencies. Mamdani defended the decision by pointing to concerns that the definition could conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, while maintaining the city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.The decision grew criticism from seven prominent Jewish Organizations, including the Anti-defamation League (ADL), UJA Federation of New York, and the Orthodox Union, which argued that the reversal weakened significant protection against antisemitism. This disagreement reflects a larger debate over where legitimate criticism of Israel ends and antisemitism begins.
This disagreement itself is important because, while we debate definitions, strategy and what deserves our outrage, the larger question remains: How do we recognize when something around us is changing while still living through it? And once we do recognize it, what are we supposed to do?
The obvious answer would be to speak up, which Jews certainly have. Since October 7, Jewish advocacy has become almost impossible to avoid online. Influencers dedicate entire platforms to fighting antisemitism, students testify before Congress, organizations track incidents and lawsuits challenge universities. The question is no longer whether Jews are speaking up, but what all of that advocacy is actually accomplishing. Visibility can amplify a response, but it does not necessarily change the attitudes or behavior that made the response necessary in the first place. Speaking up and succeeding are not necessarily the same thing.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2025. That was a 33% decline from 2024, but it was still the third-highest annual total since it began tracking incidents in 1979 and more than five times the number recorded a decade earlier. Physical assaults reached a record high.
Jews are responding, and antisemitism is still here. That raises a more difficult question: What exactly are we trying to accomplish when we respond? Are we fighting antisemitism, or have we become so focused on defending ourselves to the outside world that our success begins to depend on their approval?
We spend too much time measuring Jewish advocacy by the people outside of it. We challenge universities because institutions should be held accountable. We educate people who genuinely do not know better because ignorance and hatred are not always the same thing. But there’s a difference between educating someone willing to listen and repeatedly defending our existence and someone determined not to.
Jewish and pro-Israel influencer Lizzy Savetsky put that distinction into words during a controversy in 2025. After sharing a clip of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Savetsky faced criticism over both the post and the ideology associated with him. “I speak to my own people,” Savetsky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “When I make my videos, I’m talking to my fellow Jews.”
There is an enormous difference between asking, “How do we make them understand us?” and asking, “How do we make ourselves stronger?” The first question has dominated much of Jewish advocacy. Explain why the post is antisemitic. Explain why the statistic is misleading. Explain Israel. Explain Zionism. Explain why a Jewish student feels unsafe. Explain why the swastika is different. Explain, prove, defend, repeat.
There’s value in that work, but there’s also a limit to what explanation can accomplish when the person on the other side has no interest in being convinced. The controversy surrounding Braden Peters, known online as Clavicular, shows how hard that limit can be to define.
Before traveling through Israel this summer, Peters had appeared alongside white supremacist Nick Fuentes and others singing along to Ye’s “Heil Hitler.” When confronted afterward, Peters didn’t distance himself. “I am not sorry. I don’t apologize for what I did,” he said. “I would do it again today.” Yet when Peters arrived in Israel, Jewish and pro-Israel influencers chose to engage with him. Their reasoning deserves to be taken seriously. Peters commands a large online audience, including young viewers who may otherwise encounter Jews and Israel primarily through hostile online spaces.
Engaging with someone like Peters during his visit to Israel, introducing him to Jewish communities and allowing his audience to watch those interactions creates the possibility that exposure can disrupt prejudice in a way another infographic about antisemitism never will.
The strategic argument for engaging him is understandable, but it reveals a problem. There has to be a point at which access to Jews is not the reward for disrespecting them. If the goal of Jewish advocacy becomes converting every antisemite, we give every antisemite an extraordinary amount of power. Their transformation becomes our victory. Their approval becomes evidence that we argued well enough. Their willingness to tolerate us becomes something worth celebrating, as if Jews are guests who must keep earning a seat. And that is not what combating antisemitism looks like.
That doesn’t mean we disengage from the world around us; it means recognizing that persuasion is only one form of response.
Shabbos Kestenbaum chose another. As a student at Harvard Divinity School, Kestenbaum became one of the Jewish students who sued Harvard over allegations that the university failed to adequately address antisemitism on its campus. He also took that fight to Congress. At a 2024 congressional roundtable on campus antisemitism, Kestenbaum said, “When I say that Congress is our last hope, it’s because Harvard has refused to take any responsibility and accountability, and to help Jewish students.”
Kestenbaum’s strategy is instructive. He was not asking an anonymous commentator to understand why antisemitism hurts; he was asking an institution with power to be accountable for how it used that power.
That’s a distinction that is worth emphasizing. Education has a place. Conversation has a place. Changing minds has a place. But combating antisemitism cannot depend exclusively on our ability to make antisemites like Jews; some never will. Sometimes the response is not another explanation. It’s demanding that universities, workplaces and governments do their jobs.
And sometimes the response has nothing to do with them at all.
Jewish strength shouldn’t be measured only by how effectively we respond when somebody attacks us. A community that only reacts lets its attackers set the agenda. Part of winning is building a Jewish identity strong enough to exist when nobody is asking us to defend it.
I view the swastika I started with differently now.
The goal cannot be to become accustomed to seeing it. But the goal also cannot be to let everyone who displays one decide what Jewish life looks like the next morning. We should confront hatred. We should hold institutions accountable. We should educate people willing to listen. We should know when dialogue can accomplish something and when it cannot.
We have the ability to decide what strength looks like before hindsight decides it for us.
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