Blue-square politics will not save Jewish children.

The truth many are afraid to say out loud is that the blue-square antisemitism campaign is not helping young Jews. It is actively harming them.

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This is a guest essay by Leo Pearlman, who writes about Jewish identity, antisemitism, and Zionism.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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On Sunday night, during the Super Bowl, one of the largest shared cultural moments on the planet, an advert about antisemitism reached tens of millions of homes. Funded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, it set out to “stand up to Jewish hate.” That really matters.

But moments like this are not neutral; they never are. They teach and they imprint. They tell young people, Jewish and non, who they are, how they should see themselves, how they should act, and what kind of future they should expect.

The real issue, then, is not whether the advert meant well. It’s whether it said the right thing for the moment we are living through. Because, in 2026, Jews are not asking society to notice antisemitism. They are asking how to survive it and how to raise a generation that does not shrink, apologise, or wait to be rescued.

When you strip last night’s advert back to its core message, what it models is not courage but dependency, a pattern that has been reinforced not just in culture, but by the very politicians who claim to stand with us, which brings us to the real question: If the goal is to send the right message, then what should that message be in order to inspire Jewish children to be brave, proud, and unafraid?

Zionism, at its core, rejects the model of last night’s message entirely. It is the refusal to outsource Jewish safety, dignity, or future to the goodwill of others. So, how important is it that we continue to call ourselves Zionists? Has it become too loaded, too controversial, or too costly?

The fact that the blue square has tried to replace real action, that symbolism has become a substitute for substance, is not incidental. This pattern has become painfully familiar, and it places even greater emphasis on the need to inspire the next generation.

As Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard University alum who emerged as a prominent Jewish voice after October 7th, noted recently, when American Jewish students lobbied U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer to bring the Antisemitism Awareness Act to the Senate floor, his response was not urgency or resolve, but anecdote. He spoke instead about how close he is to Robert Kraft, about the blue “Stop Hate” pin he wears on his lapel, a symbol offered in place of action.

The bill was never brought forward, the vote never happened, and the students were left with the same hollow reassurance Jews are increasingly offered everywhere: We see you, we support you, look at the pin.

This is the quiet danger of the blue-square politics now dominating the response to antisemitism. Kraft’s organisation — however generous, well meaning, and sincere — has become a shield behind which elected officials hide, a way to signal affection for Jews while refusing to do anything meaningful to protect them. “I love Jews,” they say. “Look, I’ve got the pin.”

The blue square doesn’t protect our children. The truth many are afraid to say out loud is that the campaign is not helping young Jews; it is actively harming them. It offers cover to those who want a performative response to antisemitism — a response that costs nothing, risks nothing, and changes nothing.

Worse still, the advert’s internal message to Jews is profoundly troubling. We are shown an all-too-familiar caricature, a scrawny, bookish Jewish boy, the eternal Eastern European stereotype, being bullied in a school hallway. He is “saved” by an athletic Black teenager, who covers the hate message with a blue square sticky note. They hug, they walk off together into the light, problem solved.

The message is unmistakable: The weak Jew is rescued by the strong non-Jew. Allyship arrives just in time, intersectional harmony prevails, the blue square to the rescue. Except this has never been the Jewish experience. Not historically, not now, and certainly not since October 7, 2023.

This ad misses Jewish reality entirely. No one is slapping stickers on Jewish backpacks that say “Dirty Jew.” They are screaming “Free Palestine!”, calling Jewish students “genocide enablers” and “Zios,” and chanting “Globalise the Intifada!” They are forcing Jews to choose between silence and isolation.

There is no ally running down the hallway to intervene. Young Jews are learning, often painfully, that they are on their own and that their own support for liberal, progressive values and the rights of other minorities do not translate for reciprocal support.

The reason this advert lands so badly is simple: It has no connection to reality. It offers nostalgia where clarity is required, comfort where courage is needed. What worries Jews today is certainly not playground bullying. It is the sustained campaign of intimidation and violence playing out on the streets of London, New York, Toronto, Sydney — hatred nurtured abroad, strategically woven into universities and mainstream media, and too often indulged by the very institutions Jews once believed existed to protect minorities.

In 2026, the primary driver of antisemitism is not coded hatred of Jews as Jews. It is anti-Zionism.

Antisemitism today has a cause. It does not announce itself politely. It arrives wrapped in slogans, moral certainty and megaphones. It is violence justified as activism, murder excused as resistance. Jews are targeted not despite politics, but because of them.

Make no mistake, this is not abstract. It is Paul Kessler, killed after being attacked at an anti-Israel demonstration in Los Angeles. It is Karen Diamond, a Holocaust survivor, incinerated at a rally for hostage release in Colorado. It is Israeli embassy staff murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Jews attacked outside synagogues, on beaches, and on city streets, from Manchester to Bondi.

This is what antisemitism looks like now, our murderers hiding behind the moniker of “anti-Zionism” — and none of it is stopped by a blue square. Which brings us back to the question so many Jews are now being pressured to abandon: Why keep the word Zionist?

Because Zionism names the thing our enemies cannot tolerate: Jewish agency. Not pity, not tolerance, not symbolic protection, but self-determination.

Zionism is not an outdated label; it is a line in the sand. It is the insistence that Jews are not guests in history, nor wards of other people’s morality. We do not say we are Zionists out of nostalgia. We say it because the Jewish right to self-determination is still denied in a way no other nation’s right to exist is questioned. We say it because our children are being told their safety is conditional, acceptable only if they disavow their own homeland, their own history, their own name.

Our people died for that name, in ghettos, in camps, in exile. They were slaughtered because of it. I am a Jew, I am a Zionist, and I walk in that name in freedom because Israel exists. It is this that our children need to hear.

We are not the Jews of trembling knees. We are not the Jews who whisper our identity in the hope of avoiding attention. We are not the Jews who survive by reassurance, symbolism, or borrowed courage. That version of Jewish life belongs to history and history was not kind to it.

Our children do not need to be taught how to seek protection from others; they need to be taught how to stand. They need to know that being Jewish is not a liability to be managed, but a legacy to be carried. That dignity is not granted by society; it is claimed.

Our people did not survive pogroms, camps, and exile so their descendants could be reduced to blue squares and comforting slogans. They did not die so their grandchildren could be told to soften themselves for public consumption. They died with that name on their lips. Zion, our land, our people, our right to exist.

So, no, we do not call ourselves Zionists because we are clinging to an outdated label. We do it because anti-Zionism is now the most socially acceptable form of antisemitism in the modern world, and because pretending otherwise only feeds it.

Our children must be inspired to be unafraid, unapologetic, unreliant and, yes, it does no harm at all for the rest of the world to see who we are. We are Jews, we are Zionists, and we will stand up for ourselves. That is the message a Super Bowl audience should hear, and it is certainly the message our children deserve.

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