The Blue Square is Back
What’s up with the billionaire-backed “Stop Jewish Hate” social media campaign?
Over the past week, my Instagram feed has been flooded with ads from a campaign called “Stand Up to Hate.” The advertisements feature famous athletes, including Shaquille O’Neal, “calling a time-out on hate.” Shaq says: “hate is winning out there,” and then a number of non-famous people chime in with “we need to stop it!” The ad piqued my interest in part because its vagueness was striking: there was no mention of who is spreading hate, who the victims are, or what we can do to stop it. I did a little digging and discovered that the ‘stop hate’ advertisement campaign is a spinoff of The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, a non-profit run by billionaire Trump donor, Robert Kraft.
Some of us might recall the Stop Jewish Hate advertisement that aired during the super bowl last year, a $7 million investment by Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS). The ad featured a small blue square, a symbol for the disproportionate number of hate crimes that Jews are victim to in America. Images of burning swastikas and grieving Jewish people flashed on the screen before closing with a message reading: “#standuptojewishhate.”
I had done some research on the blue square campaign and was aware of the political motivation behind it: equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. However, this was not apparent in what aired on television: Israel was not mentioned nor was anti-Zionism depicted.
So why did Robert Kraft spend $7 million for this advertisement? And why is his spinoff “Stand Up to Hate” campaign surfacing on Instagram today?
What is the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism and who is Robert Kraft?
The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) was founded in 2019, immediately after Robert Kraft received the “Genesis Prize” in Jerusalem. The Genesis Prize is an annual $1 million award given to a “supporter of the Jewish people”; however, it has only ever been granted to ardent Zionists who unequivocally support Israel.
During the 2019 ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Kraft by sharing:
“I am delighted to welcome Robert Kraft to the august family of Genesis Prize Laureates. This prestigious award honors Robert’s generous life-long philanthropy, his commitment to the Jewish people, and his love for Israel. It also recognizes his principled stand against antisemitism and efforts by our enemies to undermine the State of Israel through BDS and other similar campaigns. Israel does not have a more loyal friend than Robert Kraft.”
What had Kraft done to earn this title? For one, he routinely writes 7 figure checks for AIPAC, America’s pro-Israel lobbying wing that contributes to both political parties. Kraft is the founder of many other Zionist initiatives, including the “Touchdown in Israel” program, which pays NFL players to visit Israel and upon return, promote Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Kraft also consistently attends IDF fundraisers, contributing to Israel’s military operations.
Perhaps the most revealing component of Kraft’s Israel advocacy is how he uses his platform as the New England Patriots owner to spread racist rhetoric about the Palestine solidarity movement. In a recent CNBC interview, Kraft compared Gaza solidarity encampments to pre-Holocaust Nazi Germany. He then applauded the NYPD for their brutal arrests of campus protesters and called for the deployment of more militarized policing. Unsurprisingly, Kraft failed to mention the role of Jewish organizers in pro-Palestine campus demonstrations, nor did he mention the reason why people are protesting: Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Kraft’s statements are at the core of FCAS’ mission: conflating Zionism with Judaism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Back at the Genesis Prize ceremony, Kraft declared he would forgo the $1 million prize, instead asking Netanyahu to use the funds for efforts to undermine the BDS movement. But the surprises weren’t over. During his acceptance speech, Kraft announced he was founding an organization called The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, whose goal would be:
“To counter the normalization of anti-Semitic narratives that question Israel’s right to exist, disguised as part of legitimate debate on campuses and in the media.”
Why is FCAS focused on social media?
FCAS uses social media advertisements to make this conflation. The super bowl ad, and the broader FCAS social media campaign come at a time when pro-Palestine sentiment on social media is at an all time high. Young people are more likely than ever to support the Palestine solidarity movement, as evidenced by a recent study showing 35 times more positive engagement on TikTok for anti-Zionist content than Zionist content.
One reason for this is that social media has granted people unprecedented access to on-the-ground journalism, coming directly from Palestinians in Gaza. In the past, mainstream media outlets had more control in filtering the information that the public received–leaving Palestinians out of the conversation–but social media has shifted this power dynamic. Palestinian journalists documenting “the first ever live streamed genocide” has resulted in young people widely supporting Palestine. The majority of American Jews also have an unfavorable opinion towards the Israeli government, according to a recent poll by Israeli news outlet Haaretz.
This is the dynamic that the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism attempts to disrupt.
What is FCAS really combatting?
Despite Israel’s lack of presence in FCAS ads, their website is more explicit. The facts about antisemitism page states: “A growing proportion of antisemitic incidents incorporate anti-Israel of anti-Zionist elements, such as graffiti. Students are sometimes targeted for perceived support of, or loyalty to, Israel.” This “fact” references an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) antisemitism study, in which the ADL claims that anti-Israel related antisemitism outpaces all other forms of antisemitism. However, this is a contested claim. A recent audit of the ADL’s study conducted by journalists at Jewish Currents found that while there were occasional antisemitic incidents in the pro-Palestine movement, the ADL was counting criticism of Israel and their actions in Gaza as antisemitic. The plurality of these “anti-Israel related antisemitism” incidents consisted of protest slogans chanted at pro-Palestine rallies, such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”
The audit by Jewish Currents journalists, Shane Burley and Jonah ben Avraham, stated:
“Since we found that most alleged antisemitic incidents in the Palestine solidarity movement lacked merit, the legitimately antisemitic Palestine-related incidents would appear as mere statistical noise when compared with the stunning growth of organized white nationalism.”
This second point about downplaying the threat of white-nationalist antisemitism is interesting in the context of Kraft’s advocacy, because Kraft is a supporter and major donor of Donald Trump, a white-nationalist antisemite. From his infamous “good guys on both sides” statement following the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rally, to his friendship with Nick Fuentes, a Neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist, Trump has spread antisemitic rhetoric throughout his political career. Yet this seems to not be a red line for Kraft, nor the ADL who congratulated Trump on his recent election victory. The antisemitism that Kraft, the ADL, and the FCAS are most concerned with is largely a euphemism for anti-Zionism.
Subtlety and symbolism
The underlying message of Foundation to Combat Antisemitism advertisements that depict celebrities “calling out hate” can seem opaque. Israel is seldom mentioned, nor are Palestinians named as the perpetrators of hate. Yet we know that Robert Kraft’s overt goal is to combat anti-Zionist sentiment, that he supports Israel’s genocide in Gaza and that he sees anti-Zionist social media content as a threat. So how are these ads and the $100 million Kraft has spent funding FCAS in service of Kraft’s mission? This is the question I set out to answer as I watched all of FCAS’s advertisements.
My first observation was that the subtlety of these ads afford them potential validity among social media users who support Palestine. In the current social media landscape where critiques of Israel are pervasive, openly depicting anti-Zionism as “hate” might spur an immediate (and justified) shut-down for many. Using celebrities such as Shaquille O’Neal as a messenger and a vague “anti-hate” message disarms the instinct. After all, who doesn’t agree with: “let’s stop hate together?”
FCAS also uses symbolism to impart its message. Instead of explicit pro-Israel content, FCAS ads rely on an elicit association between ‘stopping Jewish hate’ and stopping ‘anti-Zionism.’ The blue square serves as a symbol to trigger this association, supposedly representing solidarity with Jewish people, but as we know from Kraft’s background, with the primary goal of supporting Israel. Because the conflation between Judaism and Zionism is automatic for many, FCAS ads don’t have to make the connection themselves, instead allowing the viewer to make this association.
Supporters of Israel understand that the “hate” being addressed is “anti-Zionist hate” (the comment section of the FCAS Instagram is full of Israeli flags). While I question the effectiveness of such subtlety in moving the needle on young people’s support for Palestine, I have no doubt that Shaq’s presence gets these ads plenty of engagement.
I put my phone down with a lingering feeling that there was more than meets the eye to this advertisement campaign. Was this really worth $100 million?
The hidden function of FCAS
The next day, I opened Instagram for my daily morning doom-scroll. And that’s when it happened. Advertisement after advertisement, my feed was full of pro-Israel propaganda. I got an ad for a youth “mission to Israel”, a group called the Global Israel Alliance, a fundraiser for an Israeli settler hospital, an IDF influencer account, before landing on a promotion for Israel Bonds investments. Only a few hours after initially scrolling through the FCAS Instagram page, I was solicited by the government of Israel to invest in their military.
My Instagram algorithm had completely reversed. Despite my bio having the word “anti-Zionist” and following dozens of pro-Palestine organizations/journalists, Instagram had decided I was the target audience for promoting Zionist propaganda. Obviously, they were wrong in this assumption about me personally. But if the goal of FCAS was to promote a Zionist counter-narrative to impressionable young people on social media, then a Shaquille O’Neill “say no to hate” advertisement was as good a place as any to begin this pipeline.
Social media algorithms work in mysterious ways and I was unsure whether this was a deliberate tactic or a coincidence. So I created a burner Instagram account, clicked through the FCAS posts and sure enough, after just a few minutes I was receiving a similar slew of Zionist ads. Is my personal experience conclusive enough to declare this an official strategy of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism? Probably not, yet it does fit a little too conveniently with FCAS’s mission to be a coincidence.
Getting real on antisemitism
Earlier this week, a swastika was spray-painted outside of the largest synagogue in Minnesota. This act of hate is a reminder that antisemitism is a real threat in our communities. Despite what Kraft, the ADL, and FCAS would like you to think, white-supremacy, not the pro-Palestine movement, poses the most danger to Jews. History proves this to be true, from the Christian Crusades, to the Nazi Holocaust, the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre, and white-supremacist symbols painted on sacred sites. Fixating on anti-Zionism as the primary mode of antisemitism—and allying with white-supremacists in the process—waters down the real threat of white-nationalism.
It is not lost on me that at times when Israel is committing heinous acts of violence in Palestine, some number of unprincipled anti-Zionists act on misguided assumptions that all Jews support and are responsible for Israel’s crimes. This is indeed an antisemitic reaction, in part coaxed by Zionist claims–and repeated by President Biden–that ‘Israel represents all Jewish people globally.’ For this reason, showing a strong Jewish opposition to Zionism is not only an act of solidarity with Palestinians, but also dispels this notion and combats antisemitism. Standing up to Jewish hate means fighting for a free Palestine.
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