Fake empathy is fueling antisemitism.
Empathy itself being used as a weapon instead of a bridge. I call this phenomenon “empathicide.”
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This is a guest essay by Dr. Kira Stein, a psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor at UCLA. She is the founder of the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group at UCLA, and the originator of the term “empathicide.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
As a practicing psychiatrist, I have spent my life appreciating and teaching the value of empathy — one of humanity’s most precious tools for healing, connection, and moral growth.
But over the past year-and-a-half, I’ve witnessed something deeply disturbing: Empathy itself being used as a weapon instead of a bridge.
I call this phenomenon “empathicide.”
Empathicide is the social and psychological process where the genuine, healing intent behind empathy is distorted into an instrument that excludes, dehumanizes, or silences.
Most forms of empathicide are unconscious and unintentional and come from a desire to conform or be perceived as compassionate. But two are purposely designed to sway public sentiment: “Strategy-Driven Empathicide” and “Authority-Driven Empathicide.”
“Strategy-Driven Empathicide” involves the intentional exploitation of empathy to silence and demoralize others. This practice is commonly exercised by ideological movements that use emotions to fuel hate. The primary tool of strategy-driven empathicide is disinformation and the manipulation of data to oversimplify and vilify others.
“Authority-Driven Empathicide” happens when those in power (such as university or government leaders) are complicit with agents of strategic empathicide. They do so by appeasing them, even if it means silencing or marginalizing individuals who genuinely need protection.
These forms of empathicide are not abstract theories; they are unfolding before us, particularly in spaces where empathy is claimed as a virtue but wielded as a weapon.
Nowhere is empathicide illustrated more clearly than in the growing acceptance of “anti-Zionism” as a socially sanctioned form of antisemitism.
Antisemitism surged across North American college campuses post-October 7th. At UCLA, masked protesters ran around campus with daggers, tearing down hostage posters. Demonstrators shouted slogans promoting violence against Jews. Others beat a piñata of the Israeli prime minister while yelling, “Kill that f—ing Jew.”
And Jewish faculty were falsely accused of supporting genocide. The trauma and vulnerability were palpable. The “anti-Zionist” movement showed itself to be more fixated on threatening Jews on campus than helping Palestinians.
For months, Jewish faculty and staff at UCLA relentlessly documented these and other incidents of antisemitism. We finally met directly with UCLA leadership in early March 2024, but they failed to respond meaningfully, the chancellor at the time stating that they were “hoping the situation would blow over.”
But things did not blow over. By April, an encampment was established on the UCLA campus that excluded Jewish students and faculty from public spaces and enabled harassment and violence against Jews on campus, under the watchful eyes of campus security.
Three particularly egregious examples of empathicide stand out. First, on March 22, 2024, UCLA protesters masked in keffiyehs built a giant mannequin of a pig holding a bag of money with a collection can marked with a Star of David — a grotesque revival of centuries-old antisemitic tropes. This was a deliberate act of dehumanization and another clear example of Strategy-Driven Empathicide.
Then, on March 27, 2024, a mandatory medical school class on the unhoused was taught by a keffiyeh-wrapped lecturer who led UCLA medical students in chants of “Free Palestine” and prayers to “Mother Earth.” This channeling of compassion for the unhoused into unquestioning solidarity against another group is also an example of empathicide.
Most disturbing to me was when antisemitism invaded my own Department of Psychiatry at UCLA in April 2024 with a public lecture titled “Depathologizing Resistance” in collaboration with its DEI, Community and Global Psychiatry and Ethics offices. This psychiatry presentation actually normalized suicide for a cause. It justified the Hamas massacres and abductions on October 7, 2023, and promoted “anti-Zionist” indoctrination, mischaracterizing Israel as a colonizing, genocidal regime.
The lecturers also referred to Israel as “occupied Palestine for 75 years” — normalizing the erasure of the entire Jewish State of Israel, in any form, in any part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.
By framing suicide and antisemitic violence as “resistance,” the lecture didn’t just distort empathy; it gave moral cover to terror. This is how empathicide can elevate ideology over human life — and even undermine the Hippocratic Oath. The lecture reflected many features of Strategy-Driven Empathicide — in ideological talking points, glorifying violence and minimizing Jewish history and trauma — yet it was presented as medical education. Whether the speakers realized it or not, the event aligned with disinformation found in the propaganda campaigns of organizations like Hamas.
When this lecture was exposed, the backlash swept across the psychiatry department — not against the antisemitic indoctrination, but against Jewish faculty who dared to speak up. A petition demanded our removal. The hostility was so profound that some of us were unable to continue in our teaching and clinical roles. Meanwhile, consistent with Authority-Driven Empathicide, UCLA rewarded the presenters and faculty sponsors with praise, promotions and institutional protection.
To this day, UCLA’s psychiatry department has never publicly corrected or condemned the lecture’s content, which trafficked in antisemitic propaganda and violated core psychiatric principles.
And so we arrive at one of the most troubling consequences of empathicide: Standing against hate is treated as hate, while spreading it is protected and elevated.
Zionism is not a political slogan; it is the Jewish People’s historic movement for self-determination in their homeland of origin, the Land of Israel.
Despite their expulsion by the Romans, Jews have always maintained a physical presence and spiritual bond to the land. Since then, Jews have endured millennia of persecution in the Diaspora for 2,000 years.
Zionism is a core part of Jewish identity through history, faith, language, and a yearning for safety and self-determination. Importantly, Zionism is not about denying anyone else’s place in the land; it’s about guaranteeing that the Jewish People are never again denied theirs and their safety. Zionism is about refusing to be erased while still leaving space for others to belong, too.
While Israel, like any democracy, is subject to critique, “anti-Zionism” often goes far beyond that. It targets Israel’s very existence, denies Jewish history, and questions the very right of Jews to live there.
Slogans like “Zionism is racism” and “Israel commits genocide” may sound like empathy and support for the Palestinian cause, but since they are grounded in disinformation and demonization, they block critical thought and serve as tools of empathicide.
“Anti-Zionism” often portrays the state of Israel as “settler colonialist.” This falsehood denies the very origins of the Jewish people and their rightful return to their ancestral homeland, the only place where they are not considered refugees. In reality, Israel is the most successful example of decolonization.
“Israel is an apartheid state” overlooks the full reality of how Arab Israeli citizens, just like Jewish ones, serve in Israel’s parliament, in its courts as judges and in its hospitals as physicians, pharmacists and nurses.
“Israel is committing genocide” distorts the definition of genocide, which requires the intent to destroy a people. While both Hamas’ charter and the Islamic Republic of Iran have expressed this intent both in words and in action, Israel issues warnings before airstrikes and enables humanitarian aid.
The charge that the International Court of Justice has deemed Israel to be genocidal is also fiction. In actuality, the Court determined that, given the war, it is prudent to ensure that genocide is not occurring — a far cry from the libelous claim being circulated.
The “Zionism is racism” charge is slander rooted in antisemitic regimes like the USSR. Even the United Nations eventually recognized how harmful and false that claim is when it revoked that accusation in 1991. Zionism is about the survival of a multiracial, multiethnic Jewish people, not the supremacy of any race. It is about Jewish People scattered across the world who have faced centuries of persecution and exile, holding on to a shared dream of safety, dignity, and belonging in their biblical place of origin.
In nearly every form we see today, “anti-Zionism” is antisemitic. “Anti-Zionism” that singles out Jews, denies their right to self-determination, and treats their existence as a moral offense is a modern expression of antisemitism. There is one rare exception: “anti-Zionism” rooted in a radical, consistent universalism that rejects all nation-states and religious homelands equally. But this is exceedingly rare. When empathy is selective and not inclusive, it’s exclusion dressed as compassion.
Empathicide goes beyond isolated incidents; it shapes institutional culture. American college campuses have enabled a climate where students feel comfortable weaponizing the term “Zionist” as a slur against Jews to invalidate the core of Jewish identity itself and its connection with the biblical land of Israel. Reducing “Zionist” to a pejorative term used to marginalize Jews is not activism; it is antisemitism.
Like every democracy, Israel has its share of individual leaders who are extreme, even racist — voices that don’t reflect the values or hopes of most Israelis or Jews. The democratic process addresses these extreme voices, albeit imperfectly, in a manner similar to how it functions here in the United States.
But here’s the deeper problem: Those calling for the end of Israel often take these extreme voices and act as if they speak for all Jews, all Israelis. They ignore the millions who long for dignity, safety, and coexistence. They overlook the deep internal debates, the protests in Israel’s streets, and the constant push within Israeli society to do better.
Likewise, we should not hold all Palestinians responsible for the decisions of their leaders. Many are trapped under leadership that has failed them — rejecting peace, diverting international aid and prioritizing violence over their people’s future. Hamas’ use of its own Palestinian civilians as human shields is an empathocidal strategy meant to confuse the world, to make it harder to see who is protecting life and who is assaulting it.
Empathicide is not confined to activist circles or ideological opponents. It also emerges from reactionary overcorrection, even in the name of fighting antisemitism. Empathicide is nonpartisan. It is a ubiquitous human failure — a failure to anchor compassion in truth. It manifests during times of fear, retaliation, or when political movements utilize suffering to advance their agendas.
If the fight against antisemitism becomes an excuse to indiscriminately defund scientific research or blanketly purge international scholars, then empathy has not been restored; it has been corrupted. That, too, is empathicide.
As we’ve seen, empathicide is a phenomenon that takes many forms:
The pressure to conform
The distortion of truth
The manipulation of empathy
The denial of trauma
The justification of martyrdom
So, where do we go from here?
We name and call out empathicide, no matter where it comes from — Left, Right, or anywhere in between. We embrace intellectual honesty and viewpoint diversity in education. We resist the temptation to become what we oppose. If we don’t recognize empathicide, it will keep distorting how we see each other — and what we call right or wrong.
Real empathy sees humanity truthfully. It feels and cares for all pain, yet itself has no agenda.
This essay originally appeared on Ilana’s Substack.
Savages come in all shapes and sizes. Educated savages, professional savages, barbarian savages, ignorant savages, all driven by hatred looking for an object to hate. They find virtuous reasons for their hate but its still hate.
Barbarians have taken over academic institutions.