David J. Butler
Walk across a college campus today and you will see phrases that would have been unfamiliar to most Americans a generation ago: settler colonialism, decolonization, resistance. They now appear on protest signs, in student manifestos and in mainstream language, each carrying a worldview — one that often portrays Israel as illegitimate, Zionism as suspect and Jewish identity as uniquely problematic.
These ideas did not emerge spontaneously. They are the result of decades of disciplined messaging. Across universities, activist networks and social media, the same narrative has been repeated relentlessly: Israel is colonial. Zionism is racism. Jewish power is suspect. Over time, repetition does its work. What begins as argument becomes assumption.
This is how narrative ecosystems form. Ideas settle into public discourse, shaping how events are interpreted before debate even begins. By the time Jewish students are shouted down, a synagogue is vandalized or conspiracy theories circulate online, the groundwork has already been laid.
The Jewish response has largely been reactive. When antisemitism spikes, organizations document incidents, issue condemnations and publish reports explaining why accusations are false. Necessary work — but incomplete. Research reports rarely compete with slogans.
The architects of these narratives understand something essential: Ideas spread through repetition, emotional shorthand and moral framing. “Settler colonialism” compresses an entire interpretation into two words. Claims about hidden “Jewish influence” do the same. Once familiar, such ideas shape how everything else is understood.
Jewish advocacy often responds with nuance and explanation. Those are virtues. But culture does not move through footnotes. It moves through language people recognize — and repeat.
If antisemitism is partly the product of long-term narrative conditioning, combating it requires something equally deliberate: reshaping the language through which the Jewish story is understood. Not propaganda, but discipline — the steady repetition of historically grounded truths until they become familiar.
What might that look like? Not a single message, but a small set of clear, repeatable truths — crafted by people who understand messaging and persuasion.
Here are four possibilities — not as a final playbook, but as illustrations.
Jews are not just a religion. They are a people bound by shared history, law and identity.
Judaism carried that people across centuries of exile and return — shaping belief, belonging and memory. You can see it in how Jews who share no common language can enter the same synagogue anywhere in the world and recognize what is happening. And that is precisely why Jews have so often been treated as outsiders.
The Jewish story never broke. Empires rose and fell, borders shifted, languages disappeared — but the same Hebrew prayers were carried across continents. At the end of every Passover Seder, Jews said the same words: Next year in Jerusalem. It’s not a metaphor — it’s a continuous line of memory. In a world where most identities dissolve, the Jewish one refused to disappear.
Jews are from the land of Israel. Not metaphorically, but historically. The Jewish story begins there — and never fully ended. Jewish communities lived continuously in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias long before modern politics. Hebrew is spoken there today. Zionism did not create a connection. It restored one. What is treated as modern politics is, in fact, ancient history.
Jews are often described as uniquely powerful, echoing one of the oldest antisemitic myths. The reality is more grounded. Jews have built strong communities, achieved outsized success and, in Israel, created a resilient state. But success is not control. Jews are less than two-tenths of 1% of the world’s population. And here is the paradox: visibility has often made Jews more, not less, vulnerable. Over the centuries, they were expelled, hunted and murdered. The pattern is not dominance, but endurance. What looks like power from the outside has often been experienced as exposure from within.
These examples are illustrative, not definitive. The point is not the specific language, but the discipline behind it. Which points to a quieter problem: Across the Jewish world, there is no shortage of effort — but much of it is diffuse, reactive and uncoordinated.
Organizations track antisemitism, respond to incidents, produce educational materials and push back against false narratives. Much of that work is serious and necessary. There are also emerging efforts focused on the framing problem, but multiple organizations working independently, each with its own messaging and voice, do not create a coherent narrative. What is missing is not effort, but alignment — focus, consistency and a shared strategic direction.
If narrative is the battlefield — and it is — then it cannot be a side function. It requires a sustained, well-funded, professional effort dedicated to shaping how the Jewish story is understood over time. That means fewer silos and more alignment. Fewer reactive responses and more proactive messaging. Fewer short-term campaigns and more long-term discipline.
It also means bringing in people who know how to do this — strategists, communicators and creatives who understand how ideas take hold. This is not a volunteer effort. It is a professional one.
Narratives are built through persistence. Repeat an idea often enough and it begins to feel like common sense. Right now, the ideas that circulate most easily distort the Jewish story. They frame the debate before it even begins.
That is the real challenge. Not winning arguments but shaping the ground on which arguments are heard. Because if we do not define our story clearly, consistently and together, others will define it for us — and they will not define it kindly.
David J. Butler is an attorney. He is president of Dvash Consulting, LLC and a member of the ownership group of Mid-Atlantic Media, which owns and publishes Washington Jewish Week.