Old-fashioned antisemitic tropes and trendy anti-Zionism converge at US Quds Day rallies

NEW YORK — On Friday, at an Al Quds Day protest in Times Square, a protest leader directed the crowd to chant “Stop eating babies” toward a handful of mostly Jewish counter-protesters.

As surprising as it was to hear the charge that Zionists “eat babies” in New York City in 2026, equally surprising was the willingness with which the crowd took up the chant. There was no confusion or hesitancy about the outlandish allegation — the hundreds in attendance repeated the chant with enthusiasm, without skipping a beat.

“Stop eating babies! Stop raping kids!” they chanted toward counter-protesters holding Israeli flags across the street behind a line of police officers and metal barricades, recalling the age-old blood libel that says Jews murder and consume children for ritual purposes.

The rally illustrated how anti-Israel activists incorporate historical manifestations of anti-Jewish discrimination under the guise of anti-Zionist political activism, from the blood libel to Nazi-era tropes, mixed with contemporary academic theories. Anti-Zionism acts as a container for these historical tropes, blending them together with progressive talking points.

A cadre of scholar-activists has argued that anti-Zionism is the third major iteration of discrimination against Jews. The first was anti-Judaism, based on religion, the second was antisemitism, focused on race, and the third, anti-Zionism, is a hatred of Jewish peoplehood, the activists say.

Anti-Zionism is marked by three core “libels” — that “Zionists” are colonizers, guilty of apartheid, and committing genocide, say the scholars, such as anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein and researcher Naya Lekht, who have each launched groups opposed to anti-Zionism. The claims are used as insults and cudgels, repeated ad nauseam, and are largely irrefutable. Activists have redefined crimes like genocide and apartheid and reworked academic concepts to accuse Israel, and arguments from Israel’s advocates are mostly ignored.

At NYC Al-Quds Day Rally Protesters Chant: “U.S.A., Go to Hell!,” “Khamenei Is the Leader,” “Death to Israel,” “Stop Eating Babies,” Praise Sinwar, Nasrallah, IRGC, and Houthis, Call on Iran and Hizbullah to Strike Tel Aviv pic.twitter.com/A2tYmEMgrW

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) March 16, 2026

Anti-Zionist rhetoric was prominent at the Times Square rally, with speakers repeatedly accusing Zionism of “imperialism” and “colonialism,” calling Israel a “genocidal entity,” heralding the “decolonization of West Asia” in the Iran war, and accusing Israel of apartheid.

Minutes before the blood libel chant, a protest leader derided Israel as the “Zionist, colonist, terrorist state.”

While anti-Zionism has its own tropes and framework, it does not exclude previous forms of antisemitism, but incorporates them, which was also evident at the protest.

The charge that Jews murder and consume children is based on the blood libel, a centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy that has sparked repeated mass violence against Jews for centuries. It falsely claims that Jews murder non-Jewish children to consume their blood.

The myth took on a central role in the persecution of Jews in Europe with accusations against the Jewish community in Norwich, England, in 1144.

The false accusation spread through Europe, causing outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in medieval France, Spain, Italy and Germany. The libel continued into the 20th century, igniting pogroms in Eastern Europe before and after the Holocaust, and becoming a motif in Nazi propaganda.

Speakers’ portrayal of Zionists as an invasive, biological threat was, in fact, akin to Nazi ideology.

“America is under occupation. The parasites have taken over the host’s body. The fetus has taken control of the umbilical cord and wrapped it around its mother’s neck,” a protest leader told the crowd in a speech. “They infiltrated the Oval Office, they infiltrated our legislature, they infiltrated our courts, they’re even trying to take ownership of the media. One single Zionist billionaire is taking ownership of TikTok.”

The Nazis often portrayed Jews as parasites, such as lice, as well as vermin or disease.

“Victory over Bolshevism and plutocracy means being freed from the Jewish parasite!” one Nazi-era propaganda poster said.

Anti-Zionist demonstrators have previously incorporated anti-Jewish historical tropes. Protesters’ portrayal of Jesus as a Palestinian killed by Israelis recalls the historical charge of Jewish deicide, calling Zionism a “cancer” echoes Nazi rhetoric, and Soviet imagery, such as intertwining the Star of David with a swastika, has reappeared at Gaza war rallies.

Other historical antisemitic imagery, such as depicting Israel as an octopus or spider, has also resurfaced. Protesters have brandished signs depicting Israel as an octopus and the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians, Francesca Albanese, published a cartoon that appeared to show Israel at the center of a globe-spanning spiderweb, its threads draped with money and weapons, similar to images used by the Nazis or the antisemitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (Albanese said the image showed Israel at the center of a net.)

Anti-Zionist activists in Washington, DC, have set up two blood libel displays in recent months, showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leading American leaders in a feast of dead babies and drinking blood from wine glasses at tables draped with Israeli flags.

Other Al Quds Day rallies over the weekend also deployed historical antisemitic imagery.

In Toronto, protesters held signs that showed rats crawling out of a Star of David, depicting a Jewish man as a goblin-like creature emerging from a cave, and showing a Jewish man as a hook-nosed caricature — all images that echoed Nazi propaganda.

B’nai Brith, together with @CIJAinfo and @UJAFederation, have written to the Chief of the Toronto Police Service regarding the antisemitic placards displayed on Bathurst Street in Toronto this weekend.

The signs included a Star of David covered in rats crawling across the Jewish… pic.twitter.com/QsmtXG5X19

— B'nai Brith Canada (@bnaibrithcanada) March 16, 2026

Pro-Israel advocates have argued that charges such as genocide, that Israel targets children, and the unfounded accusation that Israel “harvests Palestinian organs” also echo the blood libel.

Friday’s rally stood out, though, in how explicit the connections were, how seamlessly the different eras of discrimination blended together, and the enthusiasm with which the crowd of hundreds embraced the tropes.

The protesters also incorporated Middle Eastern influences, chanting in support of the antisemitic Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, the Iranian regime, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and waved flags for Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Other chants included “Death to America, death to Israel” in Persian, and “Khaybar, khaybar,” a reference to an ancient Muslim battle victory over a Jewish tribe that is often seen as a threat of antisemitic violence. Several demonstrators shouted “Khaybar, khayar, O Jews,” in Arabic.

Anti-Zionism is often seen as political disagreement, not discrimination, a distinction pioneered and promulgated by a vast Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda campaign that started in the mid-20th century. This distinguishing allows the activists to usher in historical anti-Jewish tropes under the guise of political activism.

Anti-Zionism can, in theory, remain political, but the ideology results in discrimination against Jews. Anti-Zionist attackers murdered Jews last year in Washington, DC, and Boulder, Colorado, saying they killed to “Free Palestine.” Societies that embraced anti-Zionism, like the Soviet Union and Iran, have become inhospitable to communal Jewish life.

The city’s thousands of anti-Israel rallies in recent years have also normalized the events, even as the rhetoric has become increasingly extreme.

If white supremacists marched through Manhattan, calling Jews parasites and chanting for the Goyim Defense League, the city’s press and political leaders would have likely taken note.

Friday’s rally was largely ignored, though. The sole non-Jewish media outlet’s article on the protest characterized the rhetoric as “pro-Palestinian arguments.”