“The virtual environment has clearly played a key role in the spread of antisemitic incidents for a long time. In 2023, 4,242 incidents originated online, i.e. 98.01%. In 2022, this figure was 97.01%; in 2021, 97.4%,” Michael Pelisek, executive director of the group, told JNS.

The total incidents represent a 90% increase from 2022.

Pelisek said that “social media remains the primary tool for spreading antisemitism. In terms of content, the registered incidents included the entire spectrum of antisemitism. Czech users often share and repost comments and graphic materials originating from foreign‐language posts.”

The Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 have fueled online bigotry, Pelisek told JNS. “Hateful content was spread by both individuals on their personal profiles and by like‐minded groups. For some, anti‐Jewish rhetoric is a stable part of their virtual identity and long‐term cultivated image,” he said.

Examples of antisemitic online content featured in the report include the Israeli flag in a waste bin with the slogan “keep the world clean,” a toilet inserted into the center of an Israeli flag and a variety of iterations of the “happy merchant” cartoon meme. A photo also shows graffiti on a brick wall. The statement made with white spray paint reads “Israel is a Nazi state.”

For the report, each complaint of antisemitism online qualifies as one incident. Pelisek explained that this standard also applies to in-person incidents. “Same with demonstrations, public meetings, lectures, debates, cultural and social events, several antisemitic incidents often appear simultaneously, e.g. speakers’ statements, banners and chants, etc. Regardless of the number of these incidents, each public event is included in the database as one incident.”

For the second year in a row, the report did not include instances of physical violence targeting Jews; however, the number of antisemitic threats, harassment and verbal insults doubled to 18.

According to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Czechia’s Jewish population includes a minimum “core” of 3,900 people and a maximum of 10,000 who would qualify as Jews under Israel’s Law of Return. The population of the entire country is 10,850,620 as of March 31, 2023, per the European Union.

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“I said, ‘Yeah, bring it on.’ What are you going to do about it? Come at me, you know,” Weissbluth told JNS on the sidelines of the recent Israel on Campus Coalition summit in Washington, D.C. “I’ve become more and more confident in my own skin, and I’m trying to pass along that strength to my fellow Jews.”

About a dozen other students who spoke with JNS at the event felt somewhat differently.

Elisha Baker, a junior studying Middle East history at Columbia University in New York City, told JNS that he figured he could handle the situation until the anti-Israel encampments surfaced.

“Once that shifted to kind of a 24/7 protest, where there were also not just insiders but outsiders mixing and sneaking things and people through the gates, it was dangerous,” he said. “Jewish students were assaulted on campus.”

‘Proud of my identity’

Netanel Crispe, who studies U.S. history at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., said that he knows “that it’s likely I will deal with some kind of physical confrontation at some point.”

“Many of our members of our community, including myself, have received death threats and different things on social media or in person,” he added.

Imani Chung, a psychology and women’s studies double major at Stony Brook University on Long Island, N.Y., who is a Jamaican Jew, told JNS that she felt unsafe presenting before a class on “Jamaican Jewish ancestry.”

“The people that were in my class were at the encampment calling for intifadas,” Chung said.

Bali Lavine, a senior double-majoring in public health and Jewish studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, is president of the school’s Students Supporting Israel chapter. “Everybody should be able to live in peace, both in the Middle East and on campus, and everybody deserves to feel safe,” she said. “It’s really hard when Zionists feel unsafe on campus, when riots do break out and when there is violence at these encampments and rallies.”

“There have been numerous times where I don’t feel physically safe,” she added. “Mentally for the past 10 months, this has taken a huge toll on me.”

“I don’t feel like I’m welcomed on my campus,” Lavine said. “I feel maybe that my Asian heritage is, but not my Jewish identity, and I think that’s what’s really hard is I deserve to walk on this campus and be a student, and be proud of every aspect of my identity.”

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On June 18th, the organization announced the WJC Institute for Technology and Human Rights, along with its first contribution towards the work numerous organizations are pursuing to understand growing antisemitism on social media and the Internet.

The institute “will supercharge our vital work defending pluralism and protecting human dignity in the digital age,” inaugural director Yfat Barak-Cheney told JNS. “We’ll provide strategic guidance, research insights and a moral voice rooted in Jewish perspectives and lived experiences confronting hatred.”

In partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) the institute released a 26-page report, “AI and the Holocaust: Rewriting History–The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Understanding the Holocaust.”

The analysis came to numerous conclusions about what the WJC described in a statement as “significant risks in misrepresenting or distorting Holocaust history.” Examples offered included creating fake content, generating “deep fake” images intended to undermine authentic historical evidence and spreading antisemitic ideologies.

The report urged greater regulation and ethical guidelines as AI projects move forward in development. It called for collaboration across multiple sectors from the technology developers to politicians to teachers and the communities impacted by the hate.

Audrey Azoulay, the director-general of UNESCO, described how “through the irresponsible use of AI, we risk the explosive spread of antisemitism.” She called implementing the body’s recommendations on ethical AI “urgent so that younger generations grow up with facts, not fabrications.”

Karel Fracapane, a UNESCO expert on Holocaust education, said the report shows “a manifestation of what is happening in society—it leads to very real political consequences.”

WJC president Ronald S. Lauder said the institute “marks a significant step forward in our efforts to ensure that online manifestations of antisemitism are addressed with the seriousness they deserve.”

Lauder warned that leaving antisemitism “unchecked in the digital world” could result in “real-world harm for Jewish communities around the globe. A coordinated and robust response is urgently needed.”

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Rabbi Moshe Reuven Sheradsky, 31, has hit the No. 1 spot on the Israeli musical charts with his song “Red and Yellow.” He spoke with JNS about the spiritual influences on his music and whether the antisemitism of Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) signified a potential trend in hip-hop.

Lyrics in his hit song reference the near-death experience (someone spiked his drink at a party when he was 16) that Reuven credits with changing the course of his life, putting him onto the path that brought him to Orthodox Judaism and now pop-music acclaim.

“I remember the day I almost died/Laying down in the corner looking straight at the sky/And I’m in this room asking why/Can I live till tomorrow and give life another try?” Sheradsky raps.

He then vows to “live a purpose” and that he himself, like Jacob (Israel), “had to fight an angel.”

Sheradsky told JNS that “part of why and how I changed my life as a teenager was because I saw how evil things can be.”

In an interview with Jewish News, Sheradsky said that almost dying “was a turning point” in the realization that “my life had to be better than this. I felt God was giving me an ultimatum that I must embark on a more meaningful path or it would be wasted.”

Sheradsky grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in Hollywood, Fla. Following his traumatic party experience, he “stopped going out on Friday nights, fully observed Shabbat, only ate kosher and grew a beard which my brothers constantly teased me about.” He said that “being at Chabad had a profound influence in igniting a quest to find out more about Judaism.”

Sheradsky went on to study at a yeshivah in Israel and at the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, N.J., earning his semicha in 2021 and becoming a rabbi affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

Discussing biblical figures who influenced his music, Sheradsky told JNS that “when it comes to writing, Moses and King David stand out. Moses was always for the people. He was the embodiment of what a true leader really should be—completely given over, complete self-sacrifice.”

Sheradsky said that when he writes his songs, “I’m not just writing for myself, but I consider that my personal experience is also the listener’s.”

He says his inspiration comes from “a personal place that details my journey with Hashem in a way that the listener can relate to and resonate with.” He said people have told him that “they are inspired by the lyrics and that they connect through them.”

King David also looms large as “very impactful on my writing,” Sheradsky told JNS. “He was a poet and a king, and the way he was open to Hashem, even about his enemies, his concerns, his worries, his troubles, his shortcomings. He’s inspired a lot of that in my relationship with Hashem and in my writings.”

Sheradsky noted his parents’ pride in his accomplishments—and their surprise. “My brothers and friends are amazed,” he said. “Nobody could have expected things to turn out this way … not even me.”

He acknowledges that “it has taken a lot of time and a lot of work to get to where I am now, and I feel blessed that God was behind me to give me a push in this direction.”

‘Antisemitism in hip-hop has been a concern’

On social media, the rapper-rabbi has grown a following of 1.7 million on Instagram. “I just thank God that people from all backgrounds have gravitated to my music,” Sheradsky said. “I just have a goal to make this world a better place, to make it a more positive place with my music. To make it a more Godly place.”

Sheradsky sees the darker tendencies in the world of hip-hop, telling JNS that Ye’s statements “had an impact and a negative one. You see antisemitic statements from people that resonate with that culture more, to be more acceptable and frequent.”

Yet at the same time, Sheradsky said “people also see through it; many have seen how ridiculous such statements are.”

He added that when people admire celebrities, “they tend to also adopt their viewpoints about the world or life, or even just repeat them for the sake of fitting in or being with the times. The youth of the world has a large impact on what’s socially acceptable, and the problem of antisemitism in hip-hop has definitely been a concern.”

Sheradsky lamented “how misinformed and thoughtless it all is,” especially when it comes to Israel. “They don’t know what sea and what river. And to them, it’s irrelevant. What’s the truth have to do with fitting in or sounding like a humanitarian or trying to sound like you’re ahead of the times?” he asked rhetorically.

Still, like the Chabad rabbi he now is, he expressed optimism, saying “I do believe many people have a lot more sense. The majority of America and most age demographics side with Israel primarily.”

The biggest problem appears with “the younger groups, the ones that are most interested in pop culture, on social media—those are the groups where there’s the most misinformation,” he said.

“Since forever, Esau hated Yaakov [Jacob],” Sheradsky told JNS. “But for the most part, Israel and the Jewish people are stronger than ever, and people are seeing the reality of how mistreated we’ve been more than ever, and thereby showing support.”

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Sakowitz performed in Efrat, Kiryat Gat, Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem and Beitar, doing 26 shows from Oct. 26 through Nov. 7. In Efrat, his audience exceeded 960, which he noted amounted to nearly 9% of the total community’s population of 10,800.

“It was the experience of a lifetime to meet so many children and spouses of our brave soldiers, and inform them how proud we are of our heroes, their parents and their spouses,” Sakowitz told JNS.

Some of the tricks most enjoyed by the audience, he said, involved him seeming to read their minds.

One illusion requires the participant to pick one of five colored balls, show it to the audience and replace it in a case. “I would be facing the opposite direction and then get the child to concentrate on the color, and I would guess which ball they picked,” Sakowitz said. “They were amazed when I was consistently correct.”

Another favorite illusion involved children coloring a picture, only to discover that Sakowtiz had guessed how they would draw it and then showed a matching outfit hidden under his clothes.

“The children seemed to enjoy the magic, but the message I had for them was far more critical than the magic,” Sakowitz said. “About a dozen members of a first- or second-grade class came up and hugged me after a show since they spoke only Hebrew, and I spoke only English. I knew they understood my message.”

Sakowitz said after realizing how more than 70% of his audience had a parent in the Israel Defense Forces, “I had to fight back tears.” He told the kids that “many of their fathers or mothers stepped forward to try to fix the world. They are my heroes.”

The performer also brought bags of items to resupply soldiers, including “tourniquets, knee pads, camelback drinking containers, hand warmers, markers, face masks, rain suits, audio cables, blister pads, air protectors and other items.” He gave a nod to El Al for helping the goods get there.

“I know I am not a professional magician or even an amateur. I am more of a wartime magician,” the attorney and real estate developer acknowledged with a touch of self-deprecation.

“The audience members feel my love and concern for them, and under the circumstances, it makes up for my shortcomings as a performer,” he said.

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“We have more in common than we have apart,” Miller, a junior studying web design, education and French at Butler University in Indianapolis, told JNS. She cited three speakers who shared “their belief in the power of building connections.”

“They proved that not only on the international level but also on the personal level, the way to solve conflict is by building connections and acting on the other’s interests,” she said.

The summit was ICC’s largest in-person gathering since the COVID-19 pandemic. Held in the nation’s capital, it is the largest domestic gathering of pro-Israel college students, with more than 400 young men and women attending, according to the Israel on Campus Coalition.

Among speakers on the docket were Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador in Washington; and Jason Greenblatt, former White House special representative for international negotiations and a key player in the formation of the Abraham Accords.

A panel with Greenblatt and Saudi social-media influencer Loay Alshareef, who lives in the United Arab Emirates and is an advocate of the accords, stood out to Miller. So did a class run by Aviva Klompas, co-founder of the nonprofit Boundless Israel, on speaking up for Israel.

Half-a-dozen other students who attended the summit told JNS that they were already benefiting from the conference on its first day.

Jarvis Prewitt, a mechanical engineering and math double-major at Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, told JNS that he relished a discussion on combating antisemitism and anti-Zionism through normalization with Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as with the other two signees, Morocco and Sudan.

“The session laid the foundation of the workings that are needed to take action on our respective campuses to engage students about the Abraham Accords,” he said.

“A pro-Israel base from Athens to Atlanta”

Keron Campbell, a recent graduate of Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, was one of three young people whom Jacob Baime, CEO of ICC, interviewed during the opening session. He was also recognized for his involvement in campus activism.

“Being honored with this award was truly humbling,” Campbell, an associate for political and community engagement at the American Jewish Committee, told JNS. “I have a passion for building coalitions of diverse people to take on our greatest challenges.”

Morgan Ames, a political science and religion double-major at Emory University in Atlanta, also received an award. She told JNS that she is thankful for her friends “across Georgia” who helped “build a pro-Israel base from Athens to Atlanta.”

“It goes to show that students can build coalitions from the ground up and that we are always more successful when we work together,” she said.

Her fellow Emory student, Sophie Kalmin, who double majors in American and in Middle East studies, told JNS that she enjoyed hearing about the projects of the awardees. “They do so much, and they deserve it,” she said.

Hailey Todd, a government major at the Christian school Regent University in Virginia Beach, found the session with Herzog the most memorable. “What an amazing opportunity to hear from such an influential man,” she told JNS. “I loved hearing his vision for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Clara Calavia Sarnago, a student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, told JNS that she was inspired to hear from Herzog since she hopes to work in diplomacy. Carlos Vasquez, an aspiring lawyer who studies at Oral Roberts University, an evangelical school in Tulsa, Okla., also appreciated Herzog’s talk.

“I really enjoyed getting the Israeli ambassador’s insight on the judicial reform in Israel right now and what the next few weeks may look like,” he told JNS.

Other students, like Micah Gritz, an international security student at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., who is the chief operating officer of a group called Jewish on Campus, told JNS that they made good use of the networking opportunities.

Gritz said it was “really empowering” to be surrounded by fellow Zionists. At Tufts, in the Boston area, that’s “something I’m very much not used to,” he said.

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“This tremendous influx of resources will be used to bolster our emergency food program, allowing us to touch the lives of so many more individuals and families grappling with food insecurity,” David Greenfield, Met Council CEO, told JNS.

“This isn’t just about numbers,” he added. “It’s about making a profound, tangible difference in our communities, providing a lifeline in the form of food for those who need it most.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House Democratic leader, announced the $1 million in funding at an event in Brooklyn during which 500 boxes of food were distributed.

“Met Council has done tremendous work—but that work was urgently necessary when a once-in-a-century pandemic struck our community, struck the nation and struck the world,” Jeffries said. “Met Council has really been a shelter in the time of storm.”

Met Council is the largest U.S. distributor of free kosher food, providing more than 21 million pounds of food to more than 250,000 New Yorkers last year.

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IHRA, which then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson formed in 1998, unites 35 member and 10 observer countries. Citing security concerns, IHRA would not confirm the exact location of its Berlin offices, but a reported address appears to be some five blocks from the Brandenburg Gate. A staff of 20 works at the Berlin office and 411 active delegates can be found in IHRA’s member countries, according to IHRA.

While the alliance’s presidency changes annually, since March 1, Terezija Gras and Sara Lustig, both of Croatia, have been co-presidents. Gras is the republic’s state secretary for European affairs, international relations and E.U. funds in the interior ministry, and Lustig is special adviser to the Croatian prime minister for Holocaust issues, combating antisemitism and relations with Jewish organizations and communities.

In an exclusive interview with JNS from Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, each outlined her priorities and hopes for the organization.

Lustig said she hopes that more countries become IHRA member states in both the near and long term, and she also hopes that they, and organizations, adopt not only the antisemitism working definition, but also IHRA’s working definitions on Holocaust denial and distortion, and antigypsyism/anti-Roma discrimination.

IHRA was prescient in realizing 10 years ago that Holocaust denial and distortion were on the rise, according to Lustig. She said those troubling views and actions were already moving from the academy—as in the much-publicized libel lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt, now U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the State Department—to the mainstream, including social media.

Since 2018, IHRA has held “countering distortion” and “safeguarding the record” as strategic priorities. With the global pandemic and with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the distortion of facts is becoming more common in public, Lustig told JNS.

“My biggest hope is for countering distortion to become part of how we collectively remember the future of remembrance,” she said.

The “future of remembrance” initiative is the “overarching theme of our presidency,” Gras told JNS. It responds to aging Holocaust survivors and the need to plan for the time when there will no longer be living survivors to testify to their experiences during World War II and the Holocaust.

“We all have to think how we will preserve their memory in the future,” she said. The initiative uses digital tools to preserve survivors’ stories with plans underway to convene a conference and other events.

“What it is and what it does”

JNS asked if the IHRA co-presidents worry that some might misunderstand the term “working definition” and think it suggests tentativeness or some other form of hedging.

“It’s called the ‘working definition’ for it to be what it is—and that is an action-based tool, a practical tool,” Lustig told JNS. “The fact that it’s called a ‘working definition’ does not mean that it’s a work in progress, so much as it’s very clear what it is and clear what it does.”

Lustig also reflected on another part of the working definition that she said people misconstrue—that it muzzles legitimate criticism of Israel. Acknowledging that an individual can criticize Israel without being antisemitic is one of the “contemporary examples” that IHRA appends to the working definition, she said.

“One of the examples is denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by saying that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” she explained. “That’s what the definition says. I personally would say that does not stifle the criticism of Israel. All it says is that Israel is allowed to exist and have the right to self-determination. Those are two very different things.”

Gras told JNS that the working definition, like all the items in IHRA’s toolkit, “is the product of international and interdisciplinary consensus, and it provides practical, real-world guidance for educators and others who hope to understand and monitor antisemitism.”

Antisemitism is a problem “present in all of our societies and states, so we all have a responsibility to act, to really speak out when we see such forms of discrimination,” Gras added. “Much has been done, but I think there is still much more to do.”

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