Barely two weeks after Haaretz English edition editor Esther Solomon argued that her newspaper is an effective force combatting antisemitism and countering media whitewashing of anti-Jewish violence, her newspaper rang in the new year with a textbook example of antisemitism.
As we previously detailed, there’s an abundance of evidence spanning years demonstrating that Solomon’s year-end marketing pitch is fundamentally flawed. Haaretz does not combat antisemitism; it frequently fuels it.
Former Prime Minister Olmert in 2005 (Photo by Agência Brasil, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil License, via Wikimedia)
A statement by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his Jan. 2 Haaretz Op-Ed is 2026’s first chilling validation of this fact “Israel’s Smotrich and His Far-Right Ilk Are Preparing the Ground for the Next Political Murder.” Dispensing a classic antisemitic ploy blaming Israeli actions for prompting attacks on Jews worldwide, Olmert writes:
In Israel there have been numerous complaints about the spread of antisemitic attacks overseas… Antisemitism has always been an integral part of our lives, but the violent displays of it that have characterized recent times are no less, in most cases, than an angry reaction – at times violent and murderous – to what the State of Israel represents today in terms of the awareness of the international community. Between that and traditional, historical antisemitism are Jewish, ultranationalist, fascist terrorists who are awakening it. [Emphasis added.]
Olmert’s characterization of the current wave of violent antisemitism as an “angry reaction” to Israel’s policies, and not a manifestation of ancient hatred, is a direct match to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Adopted by hundreds of countries, institutions, and organizations worldwide, the definition explicitly states that “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” is antisemitism.
Legitimizing violence, Olmert justifies the imposition of collective responsibility on Diaspora Jewry for the actions of the government in Jerusalem.
This grotesque formulation blames the victims of aggression for the violence and hatred directed at them and lets antisemites off the hook for their baseless hatred. It also rests on blatant disregard for the facts.
Ignoring the Factual Timeline
The attempt to link antisemitic violence to “what the State of Israel represents today” (meaning the current government or the war in Gaza) ignores the data. The global eruption of hatred began while the bodies of Jews were still lying in Be’eri and Kfar Aza, before Israel had deployed significant force. The world saw Jews being massacred – and reacted with hatred toward Jews, not toward Israel’s policies.
The explosion of antisemitism began immediately in the first days following Oct. 7, even before the ground maneuver in Gaza commenced late that month. Between Oct. 7 and Oct. 23, 2023, a nearly 400% increase in antisemitic incidents was recorded in the United States.
Similarly, the Community Security Trust (CST) in the UK reported the most severe rise in antisemitic incidents in decades, which began immediately after the massacre. Online antisemitism also surged on the day of the massacre itself and continued to increase in the days that followed. In those days, Israel was occupied with clearing its communities of terrorists and holding funerals, not with supposed manifestations of “fascism.”
In Olmert’s reversed timeline, Israel first becomes “extremist and violent,” and then the world responds with antisemitism and attacks on Jews. The reality is that the world responded with antisemitic violence the moment Israel was at its lowest point and its moment of greatest victimization.
Olmert’s rhetoric is the ultimate “gift” to those who seek to harm Jews, stripping the aggressor of responsibility and placing it squarely on the victim. Far from standing against the tide of hate, as Solomon claimed, Haaretz continues to serve as a platform where the most toxic tropes – including the idea that Jews are responsible for the violence directed at them – are laundered into “legitimate” political discourse. As long as the newspaper encourages and publishes such dangerous inversions of reality, it remains not a solution to antisemitism, but a primary engine of its contemporary legitimization.
For the Hebrew version of this post, see here.