Dara Horn is back on Being Jewish with Jonah Platt, and this time she has a provocative new book and an even bigger argument: what if we have fundamentally misunderstood how antisemitism works?

The acclaimed author of People Love Dead Jews returns to the show with her new book, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, and a framework Jonah says every Jew needs to understand. Dara argues that antisemitism is more than prejudice or bigotry. It is a lie used to gain or maintain power, and the lie is always the same: Jews are destroying whatever you value most.

Thanks to Birthright, the Presenting Title Sponsor of Being Jewish with Jonah Platt.

The views expressed in this video are solely those of the person speaking and do not reflect the views and opinions of the Birthright Israel Foundation.

Dara and Jonah trace that lie across centuries, from blood libels and Nazi propaganda to Soviet anti Zionism, the United Nations, NGOs, college campuses, social media, Wikipedia, Reddit, and artificial intelligence. Dara explains why propaganda works even when people do not realize they are consuming it, how repetition turns falsehoods into accepted truths, and why she believes young people are being deliberately manipulated by what they see on their phones.

They also take on some of the most contentious arguments surrounding Israel today, including accusations of genocide and apartheid, the history of modern anti Zionism, the 2001 Durban conference, the creation of Israel, Palestinian refugees and UNRWA, and why Dara believes the same patterns of information manipulation keep resurfacing under new language.

But this conversation is not just about identifying antisemitism. Dara challenges some of the Jewish community’s own assumptions about how to fight it. She questions conventional Holocaust education, explains why trying to prove that Jews are “just like everyone else” can backfire, and argues that Jews need to stop thinking of themselves as powerless people waiting to be protected. Instead of asking, “Would you hide me?” Dara proposes a very different question: “Would you vote for me?”

And then there is the future. Dara reveals what she learned about efforts to flood Reddit and other online spaces with antisemitic propaganda, how distorted information can make its way into AI systems, and why a 500 year old blood libel offers a surprisingly useful warning about the information wars happening right now.

For all the darkness, Dara’s conclusion is defiantly hopeful. Jewish civilization has survived for thousands of years precisely because Jews refused to bow to tyrants. From Theodor Herzl’s grandfather choosing to remain Jewish to Jews making that same countercultural choice today, Dara argues that every individual has more power than they think.

*** JBS is a non-profit, Jewish educational television and multimedia channel made possible by VIEWERS LIKE YOU! ****
Discover more JBS @ https://jbstv.org
Please help us sustain our programming by CLICKING HERE: https://jbstv.org/jbs-donation-form
Find JBS on your TV Provider, Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku by CLICKING HERE: https://jbstv.org/find-us
Watch Live on our website by CLICKING HERE: https://jbstv.org/watch-live
Download the JBS App or listen on the go wherever you get your Podcasts!