Editor’s Note: Anti-Zionism in the American Jewish community is not new. The Reform movement in the nineteenth century opposed, on theological grounds, the idea that the Jews are a nation or wish to return to their ancestral homeland. During World War II, the American Council for Judaism was founded to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state.
In a new book, Z3 Institute associate fellow Benjamin Kerstein makes the case that today’s prominent anti-Zionists like Peter Beinart, Bernie Sanders, and Ben Rhodes represent a phenomenon that is more about class than theology: A collection of privileged Jews from wealthy backgrounds who have joined forces with the global anti-Israel movement—a movement that, since October 7, has grown increasingly supportive of terrorism, dismissive of the rights of Israelis, and opposed to peace. In the current essay, Kerstein shows just how far they have gone in the last three years—and how much it reveals about their true intentions. Jews of Privilege: Elites, Anti-Zionists, and Our Secret Civil War is available now at Amazon.
—David Hazony
What October 7 Meant for the Jews of Privilege
Benjamin Kerstein
Since the genocidal October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in southern Israel, world Jewry has faced the worst outbreak of global antisemitism since the Nazi era. So pervasive is this tidal wave of hate that, with sudden and terrible force, it has reached even the United States, long considered one of the world’s few safe havens.
This eruption of antisemitism is not a coincidence. It was planned and executed by a mass movement, led by the so-called “Red-Green Alliance” between radical progressives and Muslim activists. These strange bedfellows, soldered together by antisemitism, heavily financed and expertly organized, knew that they could not break Israel without also breaking the Jews, so they gleefully unleashed war on the American Jewish community.
This antisemitic movement is not unique. Modern societies based on mass participation and mass politics have often seen the emergence of such movements. What is somewhat new about the antisemitic movement we face today is that it relies, to an enormous extent, on the endorsement of a tiny minority of American Jews and, as a conscious strategy, pushes them to the forefront.
Benjamin Kerstein will be speaking at the Z3 Conference
in Palo Alto on November 1. Click here for tickets.
Indeed, the movement has made a fetish of its Jews, including politicians like Bernie Sanders, talking heads like Peter Beinart, political operatives like former Obama administration foreign policy czar Ben Rhodes, peripheral left-wing activist groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, pseudo-intellectuals like Norman Finkelstein, perennial members of the diplomatic establishment like Richard Falk, and many others.
On the surface, these might seem like typical liberal-left Jews critical of Israel’s human rights record. They are not. They are a very particular kind of Jew, and they come from a very particular class of Jews with a specific history and ideology—one that is defined, above all, by privilege.
Put simply, the Jews who indulge in, or run interference for, today’s left-wing and Muslim antisemitism are Jews of Privilege: Jews of a highly specific economic, cultural, social, and political status. They constitute the heirs of the American Jewish elite; an elite that can be traced back more than a century and a half, into the heart of Europe itself.
Wealthier, better educated and connected, and much more entitled than other Jews, the Jews of Privilege have, generally speaking, always regarded the Jewish masses with at best contempt and at worst horror and hatred. As a result, they have eternally stood in contention with the lower classes of the Jewish community over which the privileged believe, with perfect faith, they have the right to rule.
For over a century, this right has been contested by non-privileged Jews, and one of the most contentious battle lines has been over Zionism. Indeed, it is telling that, despite the best efforts of the Jews of Privilege, the overwhelming majority of Jews—possibly upwards of 90 percent—remain resolutely Zionist, even if they do not use the word itself. This is because Zionism is and always has been a movement of the Jewish masses, with the upper class generally viewing it with skepticism and hostility.
The Jews of Privilege have always hated Zionism, feared its potential impact on their chances of assimilation and the preservation of their privilege, and have turned the lack of solidarity with other Jews into an article of faith.
The likes of Beinart, Rhodes, Falk, Roth, and so on are all perfect Jews of Privilege. For the most part, they went to the top schools, acquired the cushy jobs, and rose to the highest levels of their professions. They got in the door, passed, and are forever dependent on the embrace of non-Jews, especially those who don’t particularly care for Jews. They rose with such ease, such seeming inevitability, that they likely think they earned their privilege.
They didn’t. It was handed to them by virtue of their pedigree, their family wealth, their expensive degrees, their impeccable connections, and their willingness to compromise to win acceptance.
This acceptance, however, is always conditional, and they know it. They will do anything—literally anything—to preserve it, even if, in the end, acceptance is contingent on suicide.
If the Jews of Privilege want to commit suicide, that is their right. But they have no right of any kind to demand that we do the same, let alone assert that it is morally incumbent upon us to do so. This assertion is, above all, the great danger presented by the Jews of Privilege and why they must be defeated.
***
Since the October 7 massacre, the Jews of Privilege have reached their moral nadir. Their reaction to the massacre, the war that followed, and the wave of antisemitism that came in its wake has been marked by denial or minimization of the massacre, attacks on the Jewish community’s reaction to it, false charges of “genocide” and other atrocities, apologetics for antisemitism, and total prostration before their people’s worst enemies.
Richard Falk, for example, partially denied the massacre while simultaneously justifying it. “To the extent that there is real evidence of atrocities accompanying the October 7 attack,” he said, “those would constitute violations, but the attack itself is something that, in context, appears entirely justifiable and long overdue” (emphasis mine).
Falk mooted the possibility that Israel allowed the massacre to happen:
The complete absence of self-scrutiny involving the obvious lapse of Israeli border security helped shift exclusive responsibility to the attackers. This pattern gave rise to suspicions because of widespread reports of reliable warnings given personally to Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in the days and months before October 7. In light of this it seems highly improbable that the impending Hamas attack was unknown to Israeli intelligence, likely supplemented by surveillance capabilities that could not have missed the training and rehearsals that almost openly preceded the attack.
Of all the Jews of Privilege in question, Falk goes the farthest, heavily implying that the atrocities of Oct. 7 were faked and that, even if real, they were entirely justifiable. Indeed, he hints at total exoneration of the perpetrators. In effect, he is saying, the October 7 victims did it to themselves.
Norman Finkelstein is not quite that extreme, but he also attempted to cast doubt on the authenticity of Hamas’s atrocities and, indeed, expressed disinterest in what they were in the first place. “I don’t claim to have any special knowledge here that many of you have, because what happened on October 7 basically depends on digital evidence,” he said.
The Jews of Privilege have always hated Zionism, feared its potential impact on their chances of assimilation and the preservation of their privilege, and have turned the lack of solidarity with other Jews into an article of faith.
Despite Hamas’s widespread and deliberate dissemination of this evidence, Finkelstein admitted, “I haven’t watched any digital evidence from October 7 on. I occasionally look at a picture, but I have not looked at the digital evidence, not by the Israeli side, not by Al Jazeera. I haven’t watched it. But from what I’m told, the digital evidence isn’t definitive on things like numbers.” Moreover, Finkelstein admitted to having no interest in any other evidence, saying, “And also the other kind of evidence would be forensic evidence, but there’s been relatively little forensic evidence on October 7,” which was false.
Hamas has consistently stated since it was founded that its goal is the destruction of the Jewish state and has pledged to commit more October 7-style massacres until that goal is realized. Nonetheless, Finkelstein refused to acknowledge that this was the obvious motive behind the massacre:
One basic question where I think the evidence is completely murky is, what exactly was Hamas’ goal? Was the goal to take combatants hostage? Was the goal to take combatants and civilians hostage? Was the goal to take combatants and civilians hostage and also to commit a large-scale massacre of civilians? I don’t believe the evidence is at all clear, and I think it’s quite possible. We’ll never know what their goals were.
There are obvious reasons for such denials and obfuscations. As members of the antisemitic mass movement that arose after the massacre, the Jews of Privilege must find some way to deny or at least obfuscate the true nature of that movement. They must demonstrate that this movement is not what it is. If they cannot do so, they are faced with the possibility that, in their efforts, they are aiding and abetting evil.
Evil, of course, is not something they can allow. The Jews of Privilege largely consider themselves a caste of saints, the finest and most moral people who have ever existed. This moral arrogance is punctured daily by their statements and actions, but it is supremely important to them, and without it, they could never justify what they say and do.
The October 7 massacre is the ultimate proof that their pretensions of sainthood are a very bitter joke. Its perpetrators may have considered it a holy act, but it was clearly a crime against humanity of satanic proportions. Thus, it puts the lie to the claims of moral authority not only of the perpetrators and their supporters, but also the Jews who are their sword and shield, who serve as ostensible proof of the perpetrators and supporters’ rectitude. The lie demonstrates that, in embracing the inhuman, they have removed themselves from the realm of legitimate human discourse.
Their minimization of the massacre is necessary, however, because it is the only way the Jews of Privilege can condemn the defensive war that followed. To acknowledge the full nature of the massacre is to acknowledge the nature of Islamist terror and the threat it represents. To deny it conveniently renders Israel’s response an act of inexplicable evil, rather than what it is: a reasonable response to a genocidal threat.
For example, IfNotNow initially condemned the massacre, but a year later, alongside a perfunctory acknowledgement, sought to put the slaughter in exculpatory context, saying, “October 7 is not where the story begins or ends, and the pain we feel today has spanned generations. We reject the lie that decades of occupation, apartheid, and siege that has subjugated Palestinians will ever keep Jews or Israelis safe.” All this has disturbing implications beyond the obvious, because removing or minimizing the massacre as the obvious cause of the Israeli defensive response means erasing the massacre itself.
The Jews of Privilege seek to convince us that October 7 did not and cannot have happened as we know it did. It does not exist. This, in effect, reenacts the massacre on another level, destroying the victims a second time in the realm of politics and media spectacle.
***
The need to delegitimize the October 7 war has led the Jews of Privilege into troublingly defamatory rhetoric and incitement, in particular the charge of “genocide,” which many, quite rightly, consider a blood libel.
Falk, for example, has asserted that Israel may have let the attack happen to justify slaughtering the Palestinians and stealing their land: “The Hamas attack provided Israel with a pretext for genocide and increasingly supported an interpretation of this severe violence as ethnic cleansing that should be understood as a prelude to land-grabbing.”
Ben Rhodes has been unequivocal and surprisingly hyperbolic in this regard, claiming, “Like, the death toll [in Gaza] is much higher than you know they can report anymore. It’s probably like somewhere over 100,000 people,” a claim even Hamas has not made. “[The Israelis have] not let any food into the Gaza Strip,” he said, which was true only for brief periods, before and after which Hamas was regularly looting aid deliveries. Despite Israel’s evacuation of hundreds of thousands of civilians from the Gaza combat zones, Rhodes declared, “That’s a genocide. People don’t like to hear that term, but I don’t really know what other what the military rationale is to starve children and bomb innocent people in tents.”
The motivations behind the use of the libel to deny the legitimacy of the war is obvious, but it is, in some ways, worse than that, because it is clearly a weapon intended to delegitimize Israel itself. Many, such as Beinart, openly support dissolving Israel as a Jewish state, and others like Finkelstein, Rhodes, IfNotNow, and Jewish Voice for Peace likely believe in some occluded version of the creed. This is because, as Palestinian nationalists, they must also believe in the ultimate goal of Palestinian nationalism, which has always been and still is the destruction of the Jewish state. Moreover, based on Hamas’s own actions on October 7, as well as decades of Palestinian terrorism by all parties that preceded it, the method of doing so would be genocide.
Thus, whether Israel’s enemies really believe the “genocide” charge or not, it is absolutely essential for them, because there is no other way to draw up their own writ of genocide while simultaneously claiming it is not genocidal. Since the goal of Palestinian nationalism is to destroy the Jewish state, one can only adhere to it by convincing oneself that the Jewish state ought to be destroyed, that it deserves to be destroyed.
Jewish Voice for Peace has gone even further than this by implying a desire to enable such a genocide, claiming, “Now, after a year of genocide against Palestinians, the Israeli government is waging a campaign of death and destruction that has brought the Middle East to a state of war, with millions fleeing bombs—the vast majority supplied by the U.S.—in terror for their lives.” It then called for “an end to U.S. bombs and funding to the Israeli military, for a ceasefire and the release of 100 Israeli and 10,000 Palestinian hostages [a reference to terrorist prisoners], and for an end to Israeli genocide and apartheid.”
An end to American funding and arms supplies, of course, would render Israel unable to defend itself effectively, allowing not only Hamas but also Fatah, Hezbollah, and Iran to go much further towards achieving their exterminatory goals than they already have.
Other Jews of Privilege have sought to use the genocide charge to their political advantage. Bernie Sanders, for example, became one of the first U.S. senators to claim, “The [Israeli] intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”
As one of the leading voices of the Red-Green Alliance, Sanders in many ways had to do this. It was the only way for him to retain his privilege. The “genocide” libel is the primary rhetorical weapon wielded by the Alliance, and if Sanders had not adopted it, he would have quickly found himself expelled from his own movement and politically homeless. It is frankly impossible that he was not consciously aware of this, and he acted accordingly.
Sanders is not alone in his self-awareness. One of the most effective methods employed by totalitarian movements to keep the troops in line—and the Red-Green Alliance is a totalitarian movement—is the purge. The Jews of Privilege know that if they deny the genocide libel, they would be next to go to the block, and having sacrificed so much on behalf of the movement, this is an unthinkable catastrophe. So, they toe the line.
In doing so, however, they are consciously ignoring what the blood libel inevitably leads to: the murder of Jews. Indeed, it has done so for centuries. Such murders have already occurred, and there is every reason to think that the genocide charge will incite more of them. The Jews of Privilege appear not to care.
***
Another important role played by the Jews of Privilege—perhaps the most important to the Red-Green Alliance—is leading the war on the American Jewish community. Ironically, they sometimes claim to speak for that community, which they allege is represented by right-wing extremists who do not reflect its genuine sentiments. This is belied, however, by the likes of Beinart and Rhodes, who clearly loathe the values of the Jewish community—especially its sympathies for Israel and Zionism.
Indeed, Beinart has criticized the Jewish community almost in its entirety for its reaction to the massacre, saying, “What’s happened in much Jewish discourse—though this is not unique to Jews—is that a kind of ethnonationalism, a form of tribalism, has swallowed much of the public discourse. That ethno-nationalism does not come from nowhere; one can find citations and sources to support it. But it erases the other voice—the universalistic voice.”
He went further than this, however, claiming that this “ethnonationalism” has resulted in a “deep-rooted dehumanization of Palestinians in American and American Jewish discourse.”
This obfuscates the fact that the Palestinian national movement—and Beinart is a Palestinian nationalist—is an ethnonationalist movement of the most violent, chauvinist, and irredentist kind. Without such obfuscation, the Jews of Privilege could never justify, even to themselves, their support for the movement.
As for Rhodes, he has dedicated himself to dismantling Democratic Party support for Israel and, presumably, marginalizing the Jewish Democrats who continue to support Israel. Given that the vast majority of American Jews are both Democrats and supporters of Israel, this means, in effect, the removal of the Jewish community from the party.
Yet Rhodes has pursued his campaign with considerable rhetorical intensity. For example, he has portrayed American Jewish activists as a direct threat to American democracy. “Yes, there must be a big tent over the movement to restore American democracy,” he said. “But that movement cannot succeed if it is beholden to groups like AIPAC that finance far-right politics.”
Rhodes, who was appointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in the final days of the Obama Administration, then effectively blamed the Jewish community itself for the rising antisemitism spearheaded by Rhodes’s own movement, claiming that support for Israel actually endangers Jews. “Some will argue that these positions endanger Israel and the Jewish diaspora,” he said. “But that only holds if you believe that the current course will keep Israel and the Jewish diaspora safe. I believe the opposite is true.”
There is a good reason for the Jews of Privilege’s attacks on the Jewish community: to exonerate themselves and their movement. They must condemn the Jewish community in order to imply that it is so morally bankrupt that it deserves what it gets, as Rhodes did in his remarks on AIPAC and Beinart in his claim that American Jews dehumanize Palestinians. In effect, the Jews of Privilege claim that their allies’ war on the Jewish community is either justified or invented in bad faith by the community itself.
This is likely rooted in the fact that the Jews of Privilege, throughout history, have always loathed the values of their non-privileged brethren. They are especially hostile to any hint of Jewish particularism and difference, constantly privileging universalist values that, while they certainly exist in Judaism, coexist with very particularist values.
Thus, whether Israel’s enemies really believe the “genocide” charge or not, it is absolutely essential for them, because there is no other way to draw up their own writ of genocide while simultaneously claiming it is not genocidal.
The reason for this privileging of universalist values is that the Jews of Privilege have always embraced a fundamentally assimilationist creed. Their goal is to become just like everybody else, which ignores the fact that, while they are like everybody else in being human beings, the Jews are also not like everybody else, because, as much of the world seems to realize intuitively, they are Jews and the overwhelming majority of human beings are not. Such awareness, however, threatens the Jews of Privilege’s ability to pass into non-Jewish society and the worldly success it brings with it. This makes the Jewish community itself a threat to their privilege, and thus it must be condemned.
Inevitably, this bleeds into outright apologetics for antisemitism. After all, once one has transformed Israel and the American Jewish community into an enemy, antisemitism cannot be far behind.
Beinart did this explicitly after an attempted suicide bombing on a Michigan synagogue in March 2026. He briefly condemned the attack and then proceeded to justify it due to the presence of a “We Stand with Israel” sign on the synagogue lawn:
Synagogues in the United States should take down the signs that many have on their lawn that say, “We stand with Israel.” They should take them down, because those signs make the congregants less safe, and because they are immoral. … Now, if it were morally correct for our synagogues to say in this moment, “We stand with Israel,” then I think you could make an argument that even though those signs may make the congregants less safe, that it would be legitimate to do so…. [But] how could one possibly argue that this is the right thing to do in this moment? That it is morally right to put yourself at risk by conflating yourself with the Israeli government when the Israeli government is doing the things that it is doing now.
This statement is, to say the least, problematic. First, it ignores the fact that antisemitism—like any other form of bigotry—is always the fault of antisemites, not the Jews. Moreover, it not only justifies the most egregious acts of antisemitic terrorism based on lawn signs but also blames the Jews for that terrorism. It raises up the perpetrator and hurls down the victim. It is, in other words, not just apologetics for antisemitism but antisemitic in and of itself.
Rhodes does acknowledge the issue of antisemitism, but not on his own side of the political divide, citing only the prejudices of the right. “The Trump administration’s relentless claims that Israel’s critics are antisemitic also obscure the danger posed by the ascent of right-wing ethnonationalists across the West,” he said. “If you believe a 19-year-old Jewish college student chanting ‘Free Palestine’ is more dangerous than the vice president of the United States implying that Germans should embrace the far-right party Alternative for Germany, then you’re drawing the wrong lessons from history.”
This is a particularly illogical claim, as it asserts that because right-wing antisemitism is a threat, Red-Green Alliance antisemitism is somehow not a threat. This is, to say the least, a false dichotomy, and at worst outright deception. Moreover, while the assertion is likely made in bad faith, it is no less dangerous for all that, because it denies the reality of antisemitism itself. It asserts that antisemitism of a politically and ideologically inconvenient kind does not exist. It exonerates the antisemites and indicts the Jews who attempt to fight them. It is the gaslighting of an entire people.
Whether the Jews of Privilege really believe all this or are simply reassuring their antisemitic sponsors and allies is not clear, but the reason behind their actions is not a mystery: It is to deny outright the essential nature of their own movement. It is to pretend that a movement that targets Jews, celebrates their slaughter, demonizes their most cherished values, and harasses, assaults, and murders them is somehow not antisemitic.
Antisemitism, to be sure, is still stigmatized in Western societies. As a result, the antisemitism of the Red-Green Alliance must be denied, and this is, in fact, the Jews of Privilege’s primary role in the movement. After all, the movement can claim, if Jews are saying we’re not antisemitic, then it must be true. The fact that antisemitism is not a biological trait, but an ideology to which anyone can subscribe is lost on them and those who reflexively believe them.
***
The saddest thing, however, is that the Jews of Privilege are playing a losing game. They think that their defense and obfuscation of antisemitism protects them from antisemitism. But the truth is that they are embraced by the antisemites solely because they are useful and, as such, they cannot be respected. Indeed, it is impossible to respect someone who prostrates themselves before their worst enemies. The Red-Green Alliance, despite its protestations, cannot but regard the Jews of Privilege with silent but absolute contempt, and when the time comes, it will cast them aside and throw them down with the rest of us—as totalitarian movements inevitably do.
Behind the Jews of Privilege’s belief in their acceptance lies what is perhaps their most cherished principle, which is absolute faith in the kindness of gentiles. This delusion is an easy one for the Jews of Privilege to fall into. After all, the gentiles have generally been kind to them. That this is only because of their usefulness is lost on the Jews of Privilege, as it must be, but the self-deception is immensely powerful.
It is self-deception because the kindness of gentiles has a price. On some level the Jews of Privilege know this, and they are willing to pay it. That price is, in part, to privilege non-Jews over the Jews, to view non-Jews as morally superior to the Jews, and to render the proper deference to that superiority, even unto apologetics for antisemitism, terrorism, and murder. In the end, the price is the abandonment of all self-respect and dignity.
If anything is proof of this, it is the ultimate fate of Peter Beinart. His slow descent came to its natural end in late 2025, when he spoke at Tel Aviv University.
I am an alumnus of TAU and can testify to the fact that there are enough leftist academics and administrators present to give Beinart at least a sympathetic hearing. This, however, was not nearly enough for the Red-Green Alliance, and Beinart was faced with an avalanche of rhetorical violence that, eventually, forced him to issue a craven apology.
“It’s embarrassing to admit such a serious mistake,” he wrote on X. “I dearly wish I had not made this one, which has caused particular harm because international pressure is crucial to ensuring Palestinian freedom. This was a failure of judgment. I am sorry.”
This act of penance was almost enough to prompt sympathy for Beinart, had he not already done so much damage to Israel and the Jewish people. Nonetheless, it was instructive: It was the act of a man forced to genuflect before those who believe that Israelis are so subhuman that even to talk to them is too much to be borne. A man whose last vestige of dignity and personal courage has been decimated. A man who has submitted to self-emasculation, a seppuku of the soul. No Jew, nor indeed any human being, should desire this fate.
It is also a kind of final proof against the Jews of Privilege, because it irrefutably lays bare the dark gift they proffer: a life without the possibility of hope, and certainly not empowerment or liberation. What the Jews of Privilege offer is submission, a constant beating of the breast, and the conviction that one must forever suffer for a sin that is original and eternal.
All of this is distinctly ugly and disturbing stuff. It is a privileged class’s declaration of moral bankruptcy and contempt for their own people. But, in a sense, there is a silver lining to it: Since October 7, the Jews of Privilege have mostly stopped hedging their bets. They have come out of the closet as partisans of their own brethren’s worst enemies, prepared to do anything to justify the antisemitic movement that has erupted across the United States and the world, as well as the genocidal ideology behind it. We now know them for what they really are, and this is a good thing.
Benjamin Kerstein is an Associate Fellow at the Z3 Institute and author of Jews of Privilege: Elites, Anti-Zionists, and Our Secret Civil War (2026) and Self-Defense: A Jewish Manifesto (2025). Born in Boston, he moved to Israel in 2002, where he received degrees in Jewish history from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Tel Aviv University. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Azure, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, the Algemeiner, Quillette and others. He is a Featured Columnist at JNS.org and writes the Substack journal No Delusions, No Despair. In 2024, he received the Louis Rappoport Award for Excellence in Commentary from the American Jewish Press Association.
Tickets Available: Z3 Conference 2026
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Sadly, the phenomenon of the self hating “token Jew” is not uncommon throughout Jewish history. Whether through profound ignorance or some deep seated psychological need (ie Stockholm Syndrome) such individuals turn their backs on their own people, land, culture and history. What they never understand until it is too late is that there is no great success in being on the last train to Auschwitz.