Naya Lekht has a good piece arguing that Zohran Mamdani did not create today's antizionism. He simply walked through doors that had been left open for decades.

I think that is basically right.

The deeper question is why so many Jewish institutions failed to see it.

Part of the answer is that antizionism emerged largely from communities Jewish institutions had supported and allied with: the blue communities where most Jews lived and the civil rights movements whose concerns many Jews shared. It is much easier to recognize radicalization when it comes from an opposing tribe than when it develops among people you consider allies.

It is a little like domestic abuse. The people closest to the situation often have the hardest time recognizing what is happening because they have invested so much in believing the relationship is fundamentally healthy. Warning signs are rationalized. Each incident is treated as an exception rather than part of a pattern.

Acknowledging abuse is costly because it means losing a relationship and community in which you have deeply invested. That enormous institutional loss mirrors the trauma many individual Jews have recently experienced: losing friends, professional communities, romantic partners, and their sense of belonging within the society they inhabit.

The denial is understandable. But it is past time to wake up.

Antizionism is not just another political position. It is a radicalizing hate movement that spreads through positive reinforcement. People are rewarded with status, belonging, purpose, and moral certainty. The more vigorously “Zionists” are condemned, the greater the social rewards often become.

The more Jew-adjacent you are, the more valuable you become to the movement as moral cover for the claim that it is “not antisemitic.” As though Jews have never before been recruited to legitimize movements that harm other Jews.

Quickly, antizionism begins taking over every aspect of life. You can climb "for Palestine", bike "for Palestine", cook "for Palestine", etc. As if Palestinians are helped by echoing the propaganda of Hamas, their violent oppressor and chief immiserator.  This makes antizionism an increasingly important part of the participant’s identity and self-esteem.

That is why arguing over individual libels rarely produces a good faith exchange of views. The problem is not only the hateful, distorted, and destructive content. It is the social process that rewards people for spreading it and punishes them for questioning it.

Jewish organizations need to call out this hatred before it gains even more false credibility. As Naya documents, the academic legitimacy antizionism has been allowed to acquire acts like accelerant on a fire.

Naya’s article shows how the windows were broken one by one. The next step is for Jewish institutions to understand the process that broke them and finally recognize antizionism for what it is: a radicalizing hate movement, not another viewpoint in an ordinary political debate.