69% of Jews Feel Unsafe Hearing "Globalize the Intifada." Why Doesn't That Matter? ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, February 12, 2026

69% of Jews Feel Unsafe Hearing "Globalize the Intifada." Why Doesn't That Matter?

Yesterday, I wrote about a lecture by Magda Teter that noted a major difference between antisemitism and racism studies: Antisemitism studies tends to focus on perpetrators , while racism studies tends to focus on the harmed.

This seems to be empirically true.

When Black communities or other victims of racism experience language as being hurtful, it is taken very seriously, even when the language itself is contested or ambiguous.

The real estate industry replaced "master bedroom" with "primary bedroom" across major MLS systems, with HGTV and homebuilders following suit, because it could evoke the pain of slavery for Black Americans.

The tech industry replaced "master/slave" with "primary/replica" and "blacklist/whitelist" with "blocklist/allowlist." Twitter, JPMorgan, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology all made the switch.

The Washington Redskins became the Commanders.

In each case, the same logic applied: the affected community said this language causes pain, and institutions deferred to that experience — even when others disagreed, even when the etymology was contested, even when the original intent was benign.

That is, by any measure, a healthy institutional response. It reflects decades of scholarship in racism studies that trained institutions to take the lived experience of targeted communities seriously.

But when Jews are offended by words or phrases, their opinions are not considered to be nearly as important.

The AJC just released its 2025 State of Antisemitism in America Report, and two numbers jumped out at me.

When asked how hearing the phrase "Globalize the Intifada" would make them feel as a Jewish person in the United States, 69% of American Jews said it would make them feel either somewhat or very unsafe.

83% of American Jews consider the phrase "Israel has no right to exist" to be antisemitic.

These are overwhelming supermajorities of the affected community telling you what causes them fear and pain.

The people who are extra sensitive to hurting the feelings of other minorities seem more often to defend phrases or words that Jews say explicitly make them feel unsafe.

This is a concrete example of Teter's observation. And it shows that people simply don't care about quantifiable Jewish pain and fear.

The AJC survey finds that 55% of American Jews report changing their behavior out of fear of antisemitism — avoiding events, hiding Jewish symbols, self-censoring online. 91% say they feel less safe after the violent attacks on Jews in America in 2025.

These numbers describe a community in distress. And yet the institutional response is not to defer to Jewish experience. It is to debate it.

News media fight to find the fringe Jews who support those statements and try to normalize them as mainstream. You never see them do that for Blacks.

There is a methodological inconsistency in how each minority group is treated by our institutions, and it has real consequences.

If the standard is that the affected community's experience of a phrase matters — and I think that's a reasonable standard — then it should apply consistently. You cannot defer to Black communal experience on "master bedroom" while dismissing Jewish communal experience on "Globalize the Intifada."

If 69% of a targeted minority says a phrase makes them feel unsafe, that should at minimum be taken as seriously as a real estate term with a debatable etymological connection to slavery.

When a supermajority of Jews says a phrase is threatening, universities should not need a two-year committee process to decide if they agree.

When Jewish students say campus slogans make them feel unsafe, the response should not be "that's just political speech" any more than "master bedroom" was "just a real estate term."

The double standard isn't about free speech. The KKK has the right to protest and use racist language, but the response to those demonstrations is quite different to that of speech that most Jews consider hurtful. I'm not arguing to restrict free speech. I'm saying that the media, universities, and other institutions should treat those phrases as offensive.

There is a big difference between allowed speech and legitimate speech. Too many antizionists pretend that they are the same for their offensive speech but different for speech they find offensive.

When 83% of Jews say denying Israel's right to exist is antisemitic, that communal consensus should carry at least as much institutional weight as the consensus that led to renaming a bedroom.

The AJC data tells us what Jews experience. The question is whether anyone is listening.