For many of the international academics visiting Haifa University earlier this month, the chance to network with others in their field was a rare opportunity.

Scholars said the conference on Contemporary Antisemitism, which ran from July 7-9, gave them a sense of kinship and support (made all the better by the sweeping views of the Mediterranean coast from the top of Mount Carmel), even as many in academia would prefer to ignore or deny the problem of antisemitism.

Some said they have been on the receiving end of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel harassment, which has skyrocketed on university campuses since Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023. Others have had their work dismissed because academics regard antisemitism studies as a “soft” field, or because people are afraid of the political sensitivities, said the conference’s organizer, Jacob Dallal, who serves as the managing director of the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa.

Organizers also launched the Contemporary Antisemitism Studies Association (CASA), an international academic initiative dedicated to advancing scholarship on contemporary antisemitism and building a professional network for scholars studying the subject.

The Times of Israel went to hear some of the field’s leading thinkers exchange ideas about the anti-Jewish hatred that has exploded across the world over the last three years.

“This is a dangerous conference in many ways, and I think people are here to talk about ideas that are sometimes taboo in academic settings,” said Sara Hirschhorn, a senior researcher at the Comper Center, who helped organize the event. “There are plenty of academic conferences on medieval antisemitism or the Holocaust, but when it comes to contemporary antisemitism, there is a lot that you usually aren’t allowed to say out loud.”

There have been many new and compelling thoughts about antisemitism as it spikes globally, including horseshoe theory, calls for rethinking Jewish education and coalition building, analyses of the anti-Zionism paradigm, fears of Muslim influence, and an examination of post-Holocaust guilt.

However, some researchers expressed concerns that scholars were just “spinning their wheels.”

“We’re all working really hard to fight antisemitism here and save the Jews,” said Dov Maimon, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute. “But I’m not sure we’re actually succeeding or making much of a difference.”

Follow the money trail

Bar-Ilan University political scientist Gerald Steinberg, founder of watchdog group NGO Monitor, estimates that about 80 percent of the antisemitism being experienced around the world is the product of heavily funded campaigns organized by anti-Israel institutions. Steinberg said that his research on funding networks shows that relatively little of it actually originates from individuals.

“Behind all those ideas out there is always a large amount of money,” he said. “These actions against Jews after October 7 weren’t spontaneous. They were all carefully prepared using a playbook that has evolved over at least the past two decades.”

Steinberg pointed fingers at a wide range of international organizations, ranging from NGOs to United Nations bodies. He singled out Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders for what he called a coordinated push in December 2024 to brand Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

“In a period of two and a half weeks, these three massive organizations all came out with big reports and large media campaigns proclaiming that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza,” he said. “These reports look very detailed and scientific, with lots of footnotes, but they are all bogus.”

The organizations have rejected accusations that their criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

Meanwhile, university groups like Students for Justice in Palestine are well-funded operations employing many career activists running “mob violence encampments” on more than 200 campuses around the US, Steinberg said. And in the UN, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese uses funds at her disposal to support ideological views hostile to Israel, he said.

The money trail, which Steinberg has spent much of his career tracking, leads to a mix of Gulf states and anti-Western foundations and institutions, he said.

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