Stephanie 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.“We’ve heard the phrase ‘October…
How an evolutionary biologist is taking the fight to the 'mutating virus' of anti-Zionism
DIASPORA AFFAIRS: Challenging the way Jewish communities confront anti-Israel hostility, Stephanie Spielman argues that the time has come to expose the ideology, rather than endlessly defend Israel.
In brief
Stephanie Spielman never planned to spend her career fighting an anti-Jewish ideology. 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.“We’ve heard the phrase ‘October…
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