Second-Order Antisemitism - Fixing a Gap in My Definition ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, May 31, 2026

Second-Order Antisemitism - Fixing a Gap in My Definition

In 2021, I created a definition of antisemitism that I believe is both comprehensive and
precise — and short enough to fit in a tweet:

Antisemitism is
hostility toward,
denigration of,
malicious lies about, or
discrimination against

Jews

as individuals,
as a people,
as a religion,
as an ethnic group,
or as a nation (i.e, Israel.)

As I discussed in my last article, this defines its object first. Jews are not just a faith community. They are simultaneously a people, an ethnicity, a civilization, and a nation,
with Israel as the contemporary expression of that last dimension. Any attack on any of
those dimensions is antisemitism. The definition is exhaustive by construction: anything
not covered by it is, by definition, not antisemitism. No “context,” no “mights,” no
“mays” required. without defining what Jews are, you arrive at a mess of a definition of antisemitism.

Over the years, my definition has held up well. It has been quoted in at least one
scholarly book on the topic and has been taught in an Ivy League school.

I recently realized, however, that there is a class of antisemitism it does not cover.

In November 2025, a man approached actress Helen Mirren and her husband Taylor
Hackford on the streets of London, filmed the encounter, and published it. He had done
his research. He was not targeting Mirren because she had played Golda Meir — he was targeting her for a 2023 interview in which she said Israel should exist because of the Holocaust and opposed cultural boycotts of Israeli artists. “An evil Zionist bitch,” he
told her as he backed away. Then, turning to Hackford: “fuck you and all.” The
Metropolitan Police, when the video resurfaced this week, described it as “antisemitic
verbal abuse.”

The police said what is obvious - attacking a non-Jew because of their support of Jews is antisemitic. But none of the definitions, including my own, would have included this
incident as antisemitism.

The missing category might be called second-order antisemitism: hostility toward, or
attacks on, non-Jews specifically because of their association with, defense of, or
solidarity with Jews.

This is not a minor edge case. It is a recognizable and recurring phenomenon. Arab
Zionists get attacked as if they were Jews. Non-Jewish attendees at Jewish events get
targeted. Allies who publicly defend Israel face the same harassment campaigns directed
at Jewish advocates.

Even though this could be termed second-order antisemitism: it is actually more severe
in some ways than direct attacks on Jews. If someone hates Jews enough to attack those
who merely defend them, the hatred of Jews themselves is beyond question. Second-
order antisemitism is a revealed preference — it shows that the hostility is not a reaction
to anything Jews have done or are, but a hatred of Jewish existence and Jewish solidarity as such. The non-Jewish defender becomes a target precisely because their support is
voluntary. They chose the Jews. The antisemite cannot tolerate that choice.

The logic is the classic a fortiori argument if they attack those who stand with Jews, all
the more so do they attack Jews.

There is even a third-order variant worth naming. Ritchie Torres, the congressman from
the Bronx, has been one of the most consistent and vocal defenders of Israel and the
Jewish community in the United States Congress. The attacks on him are not merely
second-order antisemitism.

Torres is, by every marker of progressive identity politics, supposed to be on the
attackers’ side. He is Black. He is gay. He represents a minority-majority district. His
support for Israel is experienced by the haters not just as defending Jews but as a
betrayal of his assigned political identity — a violation of the intersectional framework
that requires members of oppressed groups to stand against Israel. The rage directed at
him is compounded: attacked for defending Jews, and attacked again for refusing to be
the ally the haters assumed they owned.

This is antisemitism operating through the machinery of identity politics. The
assumption that Black, gay, or minority voices belong to the anti-Israel coalition — and
the fury when they don’t — reveals that the coalition’s anti-Zionism is not a political
position derived from principle. It is a tribal demand. Torres’s existence as a defender of
Jews is, to them, a category violation. The intensity of the response reveals the
assumption underneath.

So I need to slightly adjust my definition of antisemitism to be as complete as possible.

I added “and those who defend Jews” in the center column. If even the British police
recognize that as antisemitism, everyone does. A definition that does not cover that case
is not a good enough definition of antisemitism.

When the hatred extends beyond Jews to everyone who refuses to abandon them, what
you are seeing is not a political grievance that got out of hand. It is a hatred of the Jewish
covenant itself — of the idea that anyone, Jewish or not, might choose to stand with the
Jewish people.

That is antisemitism in its most elemental form.

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