The Jewish people have been blamed for societal ills and subjected to harmful antisemitic myths for millennia while living as a distinct minority in exile from the Jewish homeland of Israel. These false narratives can be both religious and secular in nature and are invoked by those across the ideological spectrum.[1] Most of these myths fall into seven categories: power, greed, disloyalty, blood libels, deicide, Holocaust denial, and anti-Zionism.[2] Around the world and throughout each generation, these myths have been repackaged by the trends of the day, causing severe consequences for the Jewish people, from hatred to persecution and murder. Recognizing the myths and confronting their current resurgence by exposing lies and upholding truth is essential for honoring and protecting the Jewish people.

Historical Roots of Antisemitic Myths

 

Antisemitism, or hate that collectively targets the Jewish people, has its roots in antiquity, and the myths that propagate it have evolved throughout the centuries. These false narratives stem from the religious and political sphere and have grown into more racial and ideological hatred in modern times.[3] Theological supersessionism—where the church is seen as a replacement for Israel—laid the foundation for the myths of deicide and blood libels. This textual approach to the Bible, which views Jewish people as rejected by God and as responsible for Jesus’s death, arose in late first-century Christianity from a misreading of New Testament texts. Those myths took hold and morphed in the Middle Ages to the point that Christians believed Jewish people murdered Gentile children to use their blood for the production of Passover matzo.[4]In the fourteenth century, Jewish people were also falsely accused of carrying out the works of the devil by spreading the Black Death, or Bubonic plague, through the poisoning of wells.[5]

In medieval and early modern Europe, Christians tacked on the secular conspiracies of Jewish greed and power, partly stemming from the political and economic woes of the time. Jewish people were viewed as greedy moneylenders due to their relegation to certain trades like banking, finance, tax-collecting, and rent-collecting.[6] In the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jewish people were also seen as disloyal in the face of growing nationalism, as power seekers, and as responsible for both capitalism and socialism. These stereotypes became deeply ingrained in societies by the twentieth century and helped feed the ideologies that led to the Holocaust.[7]

Antisemitic Myths Persisting Today

Myths of Jewish Power and Greed

The myths of Jewish power and greed persisted and evolved to suit the modern context. While Jewish people make up only 0.2 percent of the current world population,[8] antisemitic conspiracy theorists—propped up by propagandistic literature like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—claim Jewish people control banks, governments, and the media. Today, Jewish people are accused of, among other charges, the 9/11 attacks, the COVID-19 pandemic, controlling the weather, and demographic changes like promoting excessive immigration.[9] Jewish figures like George Soros, or families like the Rothschilds, are perceived as having outsized power with allegations that they own economic institutions like the United States Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund.[10] Soros, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, philanthropist, and billionaire, is depicted by those on the extreme right as attempting to fund a socialist or Marxist agenda that subverts right-wing causes.[11] He was also accused in 2018 by politicians in Washington, D.C., of controlling the weather.[12] Fanciful claims against the Rothschild family, who founded a bank in eighteenth-century Germany, include their use of space lasers to create forest fires in California to make way for high speed rail.[13] The myths of Jewish power and greed are pervasive worldwide.

Disloyalty Myth

The trope of disloyalty maintains that Jewish people cannot be loyal citizens of their home countries while holding a “secret allegiance” to Israel and toward other Jewish people. This myth was born out of the Dreyfus Affair in 1890s France when a Jewish army officer was falsely accused of treason. It also re-emerged during the Cold War when Jewish people were viewed as Zionist spies by Communist regimes in eastern Europe. Most recently, while being vetted for Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential candidate, Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro was asked if he had ever been an agent for Israel.[14] The suspicion of Jewish dual loyalty with Israel persists in many countries.

Blood Libel Myth

The blood libel has also taken on new forms today, especially in relationship to the State of Israel where it is emphasized in the rhetoric of “Palestinian genocide.” Anti-Israel proponents from the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and the United States employ cartoons and social media to falsely accuse Israelis of deliberately murdering Palestinian children, at times to harvest organs.[15] Recently in the United States, performers in Washington, D.C., while wearing masks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and United States President Donald Trump, engaged in drinking mock blood from wine glasses and in eating “Gaza’s children’s limbs.”[16] “The language may have changed, the targets shifted, but the essence is the same: the portrayal of Jews—now collectively represented by their nation-state—as bloodthirsty villains who thrive on the suffering of the innocent,” wrote Catherine Perez-Shakdam, executive director of the Forum for Foreign Relations.[17] Hidden behind the cloak of anti-Zionism, the blood libels are used as a guise for social justice.

Deicide Myth

The narrative that the Jewish people murdered Jesus has been part of the Catholic church’s rhetoric for centuries, despite the New Testament’s assertion that Pontius Pilate and the Romans (Matthew 27:26) crucified him, that Jesus lay His life down of His own accord (John 10:18), and that all humanity are held responsible because of sin (Romans 5:8). While in 1965, Pope Paul VI repudiated the charge through the church’s document Nostra Aetate, some have revived this myth—most recently by equating “crucified” Palestinians to Jesus’s crucifixion and the perpetrators to the Israel Defense Forces and the government of Israel.[18]

Holocaust Denial Narrative

The denial of the murder of six million Jewish people occurred during the Nazi regime when they sought to hide their genocidal intent.[19] Within a short period of time after the Holocaust, deniers claimed that Jewish people were responsible for the Holocaust to gain sympathy, reparations, or a state of their own. Denialism is espoused by those on the far right, especially on their online platforms, and it also permeates Muslim societies.[20]

Anti-Zionism is Never Antisemitism Narrative

Many people today claim that lack of support for the State of Israel is not antisemitic. While criticism of the Israeli government is not necessarily antisemitic, anti-Zionism that demonizes and shuns those who support Israel’s existence can clearly be considered antisemitism.[21] Anti-Zionist rhetoric that calls Israel colonialist, genocidal, and involved in apartheid has now developed into a widespread false narrative consistently used by pro-Palestinian activists. Those on the political far right, like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have also tried to distinguish anti-Zionist rhetoric from antisemitism; however, in doing so, men like Carlson platform Holocaust deniers, and engage in and promote conspiracy theories about Jewish power.[22]

Consequences of Myth Spreading

 

The frenzy of myth-telling both in the past and the present have led to severe consequences for Jewish people—from harassment to persecution and murder—as well as to the recent prolific trend of boycotting Israel. Myths that have endured since the Middle Ages were often catalysts for genocides, like the one that killed nearly 100,000 Jewish people in Ukraine during the seventeenth-century Khmelnytsky Uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[23] Blood libels that tainted European history were used to justify pogroms, expulsions, and massacres of Jewish people from Norwich, England, in the twelfth century to Trent (present-day Italy) in the fifteenth century.[24] Today, boycotting anything related to Israel has caught fire despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Boycotting Israel and the Jewish People

The blacklisting or ostracizing of Jewish people based on false narratives is currently re-emerging in the form of boycotts of Israel and the Jewish people. This trend harkens back to April 1, 1933, when the Nazi regime in Germany boycotted Jewish businesses and professionals, marking the start of deliberate and persistent targeting of Jewish people.[25] Today, anti-Israel activists worldwide are boycotting Israeli (or Jewish) businesses; Israelis within academia; and Israeli films, music, athletes, and literature.[26] This can be seen in the 4,500 film workers signing a pledge to boycott Israeli film companies and festivals, or fans pressuring football (soccer) governing bodies like the International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) to ban Israeli players, or anti-Israel activists blacklisting companies they deem have connections to Israel, like Starbucks, McDonalds, or Coca Cola.[27] While Israel was recently allowed to remain in Europe’s music contest, Eurovision, several countries like Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Slovenia are boycotting the competition because of that decision.[28]

Academic boycotts of Israel currently loom large as well. According to a 2013 statement by the AMCHA Initiative, which investigates antisemitism in higher education, “Today’s academic boycott of the Jewish state and its scholars is no less antisemitic than the academic boycott of Jewish scholars in Germany 70 years ago.”[29]Even though Israeli institutions have been targeted for decades by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, isolating Israel has increased exponentially since October 7, 2023.[30] Countries like the United States, Belgium, Spain, and England rank highest in the amount of academic boycotts recorded, with about 500 incidents reported in a six-month period during 2024–25.[31] Some BDS supporters and campaigns use antisemitic tropes that reference Jewish power, dual loyalty, and Jewish responsibility for various crises.[32]

Encourage Truth-Telling

For centuries, myths and false narratives against the Jewish people often arose out of social changes that societies found challenging, but they were not based in the realistic nature of the Jewish people, according to historian David Brion Davis. For him, those who use myths to target Jewish people revel in a united purpose when engaging together in conspiracy theories against another group.[33]

Educating about these myths, clearly decrying false narratives, and comprehending their toll on Israelis and the Jewish people worldwide are essential tools against the resurgence of antisemitic myths. Those already in the fight advocate “refusing to let them [myths] masquerade as legitimate criticism or intellectual inquiry.”[34] Christians, in particular, who helped lay the theological foundation of supersessionism and the myths of deicide and blood libels, as well as perpetuated antisemitic myth-spreading throughout history, should be at the forefront of undoing those wrongs by engaging in truth-telling. Christians can be motivated to combat antisemitic myths by remembering that the Jewish people are the people through whom the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, blessed the nations and brought salvation to the world (John 4:22; Romans 11:11). At the same time, Christians must uphold the central place that Jewish people continue to have in God’s plan of redemption and in His heart.