Dressing Like an Auschwitz Prisoner Isn’t Antisemitic - Supporting Palestinians Is
Western activists are quick to condemn tasteless Holocaust analogies, but stay silent when a movement dedicated to erasing Jewish self-determination gains sympathy and support
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A few days ago, at a protest in the UK, a white British woman stood before the cameras dressed as a prisoner from Auschwitz. It was a grotesque, disturbing display, supposedly meant to draw a parallel between Gaza and Nazi-occupied Europe—an ahistorical and morally bankrupt comparison.
The implication was clear: that Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians mirror the industrial genocide of European Jewry during the Holocaust. The performance was not only ignorant; it was indecent.
But what struck me more than the act itself was the reaction to it. In the video that circulated, another woman confronted her, calling the display "antisemitic." I was surprised. Not because the act wasn’t vile, but because I’m not sure this is where antisemitism truly lies.
What exactly was antisemitic about this tasteless display? Where in this absurd stunt lies Jew-hatred? The answer isn't obvious.
Trivializing Jewish Suffering?
Minimizing the Holocaust?
Perhaps to a level of outright denial of its unique nature?
All sure and true. but not indicative of Jew-Hatred as much as the entire idea of Palestinian nationalism.
What is obvious, however, is that this woman supports a political movement whose core narrative denies the Jewish right to exist as a nation in its ancestral homeland. Isn't that enough?
This is the point we must begin to reckon with: Palestinian nationalism, in its ideological essence, is antisemitism. Not metaphorically, not occasionally, but fundamentally. It is a movement that insists the Jews have no right to self-determination in the land of their origin. That belief is not anti-Zionist in the abstract. It is anti-jewish. Ironically, while we obsess over identifying microaggressions and poorly worded criticisms of Israel, we often miss the larger picture. We conflate everything under the umbrella of antisemitism, sometimes rightly, often reflexively.
Take another example: Curtis Sliwa, a conservative candidate in New York's mayoral race, was recorded speaking critically about how certain ultra-Orthodox families interact with the welfare system. Predictably, cries of antisemitism followed. Were they warranted? Hardly. His comments were uncomfortable, maybe even inaccurate, but they were not antisemitic.
We need clarity. Criticism of Israel is not always antisemitism. Holocaust distortion, while despicable, is not always driven by Jew-hatred. But support for a national cause, Palestinian nationalism, that explicitly rejects the Jewish right to sovereignty? That is antisemitism in its purest political form.
And yet, we have become so attuned to victimhood, understandably so, that we’ve lost the ability to discriminate between what is offensive, what is dangerous, and what is antisemitic. We've collapsed the categories into one.
It’s time we sort them out again. Because if everything is antisemitism, then ultimately, nothing is.