How an evolutionary biologist is taking the fight to the 'mutating virus' of anti-Zionism

NOVEMBER 14, 2026 23:53Stephanie Spielman never planned to spend her career fighting an anti-Jewish ideology. Holding a PhD in computational molecular evolution, she spent years publishing over 30 peer-reviewed papers in bioinformatics focused on statistical modeling of how DNA and protein sequences evolve.Today, Spielman has stepped away from academia to launch Expose Antizionism Now, a nonprofit built to reframe how we confront modern anti-Israel hostility. Her foundational thesis is that anti-Zionism is not an abstract political disagreement, but an adapting, destructive system of bigotry that mutates to fit its environment.“I am, of course, an evolutionary biologist,” Spielman said. “So whoever comes to my talks is going to get a little bit of talk about evolution. I’m partial to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s concept of the mutating virus.... It’s the same virus, but it’s attacking you in a different way. So we have to respond to it in a different way.”Speaking with The Jerusalem Post, Spielman said that rather than endlessly defending Israel against bad-faith attacks, the Jewish community must shift strategy entirely. The era of playing defense on Israel’s flaws must end; exposing anti-Zionism as a destructive ideology in its own right must begin.‘A July 2014 Jew’While many across the Diaspora trace their awakening to October 7, 2023, Spielman’s inflection point came over a decade earlier during Operation Protective Edge.WHITE NATIONALISTS and neo-Nazis march through Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Spielman contrasts the widespread condemnation of the rally with what she describes as the growing social acceptance of anti-Zionism. (credit: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)“We’ve heard the phrase ‘October 8 Jew.’ I would not consider myself an October 8 Jew,” she reflected. “If anything, I’ve always had this strong connection, but I would call myself a July 2014 Jew.”During the 2014 Gaza war, Spielman witnessed a jarring shift in public discourse.“That war broke me in a lot of ways that I was not really ready for,” she recalled. “Seeing the distortions, inversions, and lies circulating about Israel, I spent years trying to debate and debunk, but never made headway outside of my bubble.”At the same time, identity politics surged in America, marked by slogans like “From Ferguson to Palestine” bridging domestic police brutality with the Middle Eastern conflict – a convergence Spielman watched with growing alarm.When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, years of built-up anti-Zionist rhetoric surfaced instantly.But Spielman’s most acute pain came from inside her personal circle. That day, a close family member posted an Instagram graphic featuring the disappearing map meme with Palestine flags and a “Free Palestine” caption.“This gutted me,” Spielman shared. “And I said: How do I have a real conversation with an actual person I know and love, whose heart is in the right place, but who is grossly misinformed and has no idea they’ve been influenced by this propaganda? How does this phenomenon, ‘antizionism’ without a hyphen, fit into the landscape of Jew-hatred, and how do we talk about it with the people in our lives?”The historical blind spotSpielman spent the next two years immersing herself in the history and underpinnings of anti-Zionism. What she discovered shocked her, not because of how complex it was, but because of how thoroughly it had been omitted from mainstream Jewish education.“It was shocking how this was never part of my Jewish education, the history of anti-Zionism as a movement in and of itself,” she said.Part of that historical fog, Spielman noted, stems from how we talk about Jew-hatred itself.She pointed out that the word “antisemitism” is relatively modern, popularized in the late 19th century, whereas historical terms for the phenomenon were far more direct, such as “Judenhaß,” “Jew-hate,” or the “Jew-baiting” crowds that drove early pogroms.Because modern discussions collapse millennia of hostility into the single umbrella of antisemitism, which average people indelibly associate strictly with Nazi concentration camps, contemporary anti-Zionism easily hides behind the claim that it is merely political dissent rather than a continuation of ancient bigotry.“Because we don’t have that context, we don’t know how to situate what we’re experiencing and how to navigate it. The only metaphor we have is Germany, 1930. The Holocaust is among the absolute worst things to ever happen to Jews, but there are a lot of other bad things that have happened. Just because something isn’t the worst thing ever doesn’t mean it’s benign or that it hasn’t been exceptionally dangerous.”Spielman pointed to historical precedents that mirror today’s environment, such as the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party in the early 20th century.Tasked with dismantling traditional Jewish life, religious education, and Zionist activity from within, the Yevsektsiya demonstrated how Jews themselves could be leveraged to enforce state-sponsored bigotry, Spielman said.“Two years ago, I learned for the first time through someone at my synagogue about the Yevsektsiya, which I had never heard of in my life,” Spielman noted. “It was a lot of Jews who led this charge to decimate Jewish communities.“This hostility within the Jewish community towards other Jews is not new. Anti-Zionism, like other forms of bigotry, isn’t just someone sitting around saying ‘I hate Zionists.’ It is a systematic structure that undergirds society.”Evaluating outcomes: Anti-Zionism vs coexistenceThe core hurdle in addressing anti-Zionism today, according to Spielman, is the endless, muddy debate over definitions and semantics. Is anti-Zionism antisemitism? Are they separate? Is it merely harsh political dissent?Spielman argues that these abstract debates trap the Jewish community in a defensive crouch. Instead of getting bogged down in terminology, she advocates evaluating anti-Zionism by its real-world results.“When we want to understand something that exists in the real world, we look at what it does,” Spielman explained. “What outcomes has anti-Zionism produced? What outcomes has it not produced? If you look across the 20th century and today, anti-Zionism consistently has one outcome: the purging, harassing, ethnic cleansing, and murder of Jews, the total social and professional ostracization of Jews, and the destruction of open, free Jewish life.”Spielman draws a firm distinction between legitimate political criticism and eliminationist hostility.“Criticism is what you do when you want something to improve,” Spielman said. “If I’m saying ‘I think you could have done a better job in that meeting,’ that’s feedback. If I’m saying ‘I want you dead,’ that’s eliminationist. That’s not a form of criticism.”Spielman argued that anti-Zionism is not only destructive to Jewish life but actively harmful to Palestinians as well. Drawing on her own youth volunteering in Jaffa on coexistence building between Jewish and Arab children, she contrasted genuine coexistence with the zero-sum nature of modern anti-Zionist activism.“You do not have to be anti-Zionist to support Palestinian freedoms and rights; those do not have to go hand in hand,” Spielman said. “In fact, by being anti-Zionist, you are putting Palestinians in a much worse position.“Look at who the anti-Zionist movement celebrates. They hold vigils for Yahya Sinwar, the Butcher of Gaza, who made his name murdering Palestinians. They reject and silence Palestinian voices advocating for a prosperous future and peaceful coexistence. Anti-Zionism as an ideology is actively opposed to coexistence.”Spielman also highlighted the selective blind spots in public rallies.In Charlottesville in 2017 at the Unite the Right rally, “anyone at that march with neo-Nazis chanting ‘Jews shall not replace us’ was rightfully regarded as complicit,” she recalled. “Yet today, we have people who feel perfectly fine joining marches where participants carry Hamas, Hezbollah, or Houthi flags. Nobody seems to have a problem joining marches with ISIS-level extremists, and that blind spot needs to be exposed.”The workplace HR double standard and social traumaAnother key area Spielman targets is how mainstream institutions, particularly corporate human resources departments, treat anti-Zionist harassment compared to other forms of hate speech.“If someone comes up to me in a corporate office and says ‘Heil Hitler,’ I will have no issue going to my HR department... there will be consequences; that is recognized,” Spielman observed. “But if someone said to me, ‘Why do you support the killing of children?’ and I went to my HR department, they’d say, ‘Well, you have to understand the politics; everyone’s entitled to their own opinions.’ There’s going to be a lot of hedging and not a lot of action. That status quo is dangerous and unsustainable.”This institutional failure, combined with pervasive social hostility, leaves many Diaspora Jews navigating severe psychological strain. Facing the threat of social isolation, lost friendships, or professional retaliation, many end up rationalizing anti-Zionist hostility simply to protect themselves and preserve their social circles.“We have interesting psychological coping mechanisms,” Spielman explained. “When confronted with anti-Zionism today, we try to rationalize it, as a way to feel safe, as a way to kind of manage our baggage of trauma.”In progressive social and professional environments, she noted, “Zionism” has increasingly been weaponized as a slur, creating intense pressure to disavow the term.“People are going to tell you you support genocide; people are going to call you a baby killer,” Spielman said. “That’s a very psychologically painful thing to go through, and a lot of people aren’t going to do that on their own. So they engage in cognitive dissonance to manage that.”Flipping the script and building the tool-kitRather than trying to convert every casual critic into an ardent Zionist, Expose Antizionism Now aims to equip ordinary people with the language, confidence, and conversational strategies needed to challenge anti-Zionist premises in daily life, whether at a PTA meeting, an HR office, or the dinner table.“From the position of our organization, we do not need you to be a Zionist,” Spielman clarified. “We just need you to be against anti-Zionism. I’m not trying to convert you to Zionism; I’m trying to get you to recognize that there’s something a little bit sick about the anti-Zionist movement, and that that is a problem.“We have been taking the bait for a long time,” Spielman continued. “Someone levels an accusation against Israel or Zionism, and because we feel passionately, we launch into a defense. That feels really good to us, but it doesn’t move the needle at all, because the person we’re talking to operates in a completely different factual and emotional universe. By accepting the premise that Israel needs to be defended, we validate the accusation.”Spielman’s approach focuses on shifting the power dynamic of the interaction.“Instead of launching into a defense, ask them: ‘Where did you get that idea? Do you know what anti-Zionism is? Do you know where that concept comes from?’” she suggested. “All of a sudden, they have to answer something instead of you. You aren’t going to change someone’s mind in one conversation, but you plant a seed. You make a crack in their worldview.”To operationalize this approach, Spielman is building a comprehensive tool kit with her volunteer team, which includes their academic adviser, Prof. Andrew Pessin, founder of the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism. This includes downloadable community discussion kits, local training modules, and an AI-driven educational tool called Azaryah.Azaryah allows users to chat interactively with an AI trained on the history, rhetoric, and tropes of anti-Zionism.“It’s a partner for engaging on these issues,” Spielman explains. “You can chat with it about anti-Zionism’s history, how it functions as an ideology, and get feedback on how to have strategic conversations, set boundaries, or determine if you’re in a safe conversation. It democratizes the learning so people can engage with this information at their own schedule.”Stripping the social permission: A strategic campaignOperating in the Philadelphia area, a region experiencing acute political friction over anti-Israel activism, Spielman’s effort is scaling up as a grassroots start-up. Currently run by dedicated volunteers, Expose Antizionism Now is seeking seed funding and donor backing to expand its operations and deploy Azaryah at scale.For Spielman, the battle against anti-Zionism requires walking away from superficial media outrage and focusing on long-term cultural change.“We have to embark on that process in a very intentional, strategic way,” Spielman emphasized.“Instead of playing Whack-A-Mole with whatever Ed Sheeran story of the week there is, we need to focus on what anti-Zionism actually gives people today. It feels good to them. It gives them a social community, a sense of righteousness, and access to elite spaces. It takes a long time for that to be beaten back, but we have to start beating it back.”To those hesitant to confront anti-Zionist activism directly, she offers a stark historical parallel.“A lot of the pushback that you sometimes get is, ‘Oh, well, I can’t condemn anti-Zionism because the anti-Zionists are proud of it,’” she noted. “Yeah, they are, because they think it’s a moral stance. But we have shown in the past that the Ku Klux Klan is not a moral stance. We can do this, too. We have that ability.”Removing that social cover remains the ultimate goal.“We need a reality where there is no more social permission, and certainly no social benefits, to being anti-Zionist,” Spielman concluded.“Anti-Zionism’s outcomes are not freedom for Palestinians; its outcomes are the decimation of Jewish communities. It’s time we start beating it back in a deliberate, intentional, and strategic way.Follow us on Google