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Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism
As antisemitism rages yet again, it has become impossible to talk about it truthfully. Instead we find ourselves in a storm of misinformation, accusation and bad faith. Picking apart our polarised politics, Rachel Shabi reveals the obscured and entangled histories of racism and antisemitism. She looks at questions of whiteness, Christian Zionism, pro-Israel antisemitism, the Palestinian struggle against colonialism and the untapped potential of the Left in coalition building.
Off-White is an essential, nuanced analysis of one of the most divisive issues of our time, demonstrating how this quagmire of confusion is often entirely by design. And how there might be a hopeful way forward for progressive politics.
Off-White is an essential, nuanced analysis of one of the most divisive issues of our time, demonstrating how this quagmire of confusion is often entirely by design. And how there might be a hopeful way forward for progressive politics.
248 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 7, 2024
45 people are currently reading
519 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
July 30, 2025
Shabi rehashes a lot of Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger, +972 magazine, Jewish Currents, progressive reporting from events of the past 3-5 years, and talking points from more liberal/centrist sources such as The Forward and Tablet. So I felt like I wasn’t getting much new. What I appreciated the most was understanding anti-semitism as a conspiracy theory separate from systemic racism. As a white Ashanazi Jewish progressive activist, I’ve had a hard time taking antisemitism as seriously as anti-Black racism, and still do to an extent when I think about mass incarceration, maternal mortality rates etc. But Shabi spelling out what makes antisemitism different from systemic prejudice by dint of being a conspiracy theory about who holds power was helpful. Also, there was so much filler with the Black Klansman movie review, but ultimately, the point that white presenting Jews have “skin in the game” and aren’t allies/saviors in but instead are part of the white supremacy framework, and ergo need to be stood with as well as standing with fellow outsiders to dismantle the master’s house is a powerful thesis. I don’t know why we have to tread through so much filler throughout the book to get there.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 12, 2024
“My hope for this book is that it sheds some light on why the subject of antisemitism has become such a horrible, divisive battleground, an ugly, distorted mess of claims and counterclaims; why it has torn progressive movements apart. What we have been struggling with is a jumble of contradictory, but separate and identifiable problems: a comprehension gap in understanding antisemitism as a live structure of racism; divisions over the way claims of antisemitism get deployed in our politics; confusions caused by the way we understand Israel, or the way different elements of the far right use both Israel and antisemitism. When we get right down to it, very little of our conversation is actually about Jewish people or their lived experiences, so much as it is about 'The Jews', as the antisemitic conspiracy and as the victims of it, and how both factors manifest in our society and in our political ecosystems.”
Essential resource for movements and thinkers who are trying to hold multiple truths at once while moving towards a world of justice, freedom, dignity and equality for all, a world so far from where we stand today, but a world that we must try to read and write into existence
Essential resource for movements and thinkers who are trying to hold multiple truths at once while moving towards a world of justice, freedom, dignity and equality for all, a world so far from where we stand today, but a world that we must try to read and write into existence
March 2, 2025
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½ (3.5 stars)
Rachel Shabi’s Off-White is a thoughtful, deeply engaging examination of antisemitism and the complexities surrounding its discussion in modern political and social discourse. Tackling an issue that is both urgent and fraught, Shabi unpacks the ways in which antisemitism is often downplayed, misunderstood, or co-opted for political ends, making honest conversation about it incredibly difficult.
One of the book’s strengths is Shabi’s careful and nuanced approach. She does not shy away from the ways antisemitism differs from other forms of racism, particularly in how it does not always fit within conventional understandings of structural oppression. She highlights how the left’s reluctance to confront antisemitism has led to blind spots, resulting in a lack of empathy for Jewish experiences and a weakening of broader solidarity against racism. At the same time, she acknowledges the troubling reality that charges of antisemitism are frequently weaponised to deflect legitimate criticism of Israel’s actions against Palestinians.
This is where Off-White is at its most powerful—wading into the difficult space where multiple truths exist at once, resisting simplistic narratives and binary thinking. Shabi’s background as an Israeli-born journalist of Iraqi Jewish descent adds an important perspective, making her a compelling and credible guide through these thorny discussions.
While the book’s subtitle, The Truth About Antisemitism, might suggest a singular, definitive answer, what Shabi actually presents is a web of histories, identities, and tensions that cannot be neatly resolved. At times, this complexity makes the book feel a little overwhelming, and while her analysis is insightful, the structure occasionally meanders. That said, this is an important, necessary book—one that invites deep reflection and encourages more honest, good-faith engagement with a topic too often clouded by misinformation and political posturing.
It’s always difficult to “rate” a book chosen for self-education, but Off-White is certainly a valuable contribution to discussions of racism, identity, and solidarity. It’s sharp, earnest, and honest, and while it doesn’t provide easy answers, it offers a vital framework for engaging with antisemitism in a way that serves justice rather than division.
Rachel Shabi’s Off-White is a thoughtful, deeply engaging examination of antisemitism and the complexities surrounding its discussion in modern political and social discourse. Tackling an issue that is both urgent and fraught, Shabi unpacks the ways in which antisemitism is often downplayed, misunderstood, or co-opted for political ends, making honest conversation about it incredibly difficult.
One of the book’s strengths is Shabi’s careful and nuanced approach. She does not shy away from the ways antisemitism differs from other forms of racism, particularly in how it does not always fit within conventional understandings of structural oppression. She highlights how the left’s reluctance to confront antisemitism has led to blind spots, resulting in a lack of empathy for Jewish experiences and a weakening of broader solidarity against racism. At the same time, she acknowledges the troubling reality that charges of antisemitism are frequently weaponised to deflect legitimate criticism of Israel’s actions against Palestinians.
This is where Off-White is at its most powerful—wading into the difficult space where multiple truths exist at once, resisting simplistic narratives and binary thinking. Shabi’s background as an Israeli-born journalist of Iraqi Jewish descent adds an important perspective, making her a compelling and credible guide through these thorny discussions.
While the book’s subtitle, The Truth About Antisemitism, might suggest a singular, definitive answer, what Shabi actually presents is a web of histories, identities, and tensions that cannot be neatly resolved. At times, this complexity makes the book feel a little overwhelming, and while her analysis is insightful, the structure occasionally meanders. That said, this is an important, necessary book—one that invites deep reflection and encourages more honest, good-faith engagement with a topic too often clouded by misinformation and political posturing.
It’s always difficult to “rate” a book chosen for self-education, but Off-White is certainly a valuable contribution to discussions of racism, identity, and solidarity. It’s sharp, earnest, and honest, and while it doesn’t provide easy answers, it offers a vital framework for engaging with antisemitism in a way that serves justice rather than division.
May 19, 2025
This brilliant and much-needed forensic analysis by Iraqi-born Jewish writer Rachel Shabi focuses on the complex and confusing dynamics around the concept of anti-semitism and how it has been weaponised by the far right to shut down criticism of Israel, divide the left and undermine progressive causes.
Just about every day now in western democracies someone - usually on the left side of politics - is accused of being anti-semitic. Many of these accusers are of the far-right - people like the vile Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orban or his biggest fan, Donald Trump, who see a political utility in allying themselves with Zionists seeking to wipe out an entire people in Gaza.
Others who form an alliance of convenience with Israel are the white nationalist Christians, like far-right Australian Catholic politician Tony Abbott, who ritually bring up a mythical ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage. This is a term, Shabi argues, that the West has invented to absolve its own failures over the Holocaust. It is, she argues, an exercise in Western ‘rebranding’.
“The same supposedly ‘civilised’ countries that had either carried out or turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, while not providing refuge to Jews trying to flee the Nazis, were giving themselves a makeover – while also throwing Jews a bone,” she writes. “It really wasn’t the Jewish side of the so-called Judeo-Christian heritage that needed the label, so much as the Christian Western side looking for a redemption story.”
As has become clear since 9/11, ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ is a protective shield used by the far right to demonise a supposedly alien and violent Islam. It is also a device used by reality-deprived fundamentalist Christians - in the US mainly - to proclaim an imminent ‘Second Coming’. These frankly deranged people cite Old Testament prophecies of the Jews returning to the Holy Land as a necessary precursor to their longed-for End Times.
The bottom line, argues the author, is the Jewish people are now ritually co-opted by the REAL anti-semites (people like Trump and Orban) into a bogus shared narrative and given honorary ‘white status’ (hence the full title of this book ‘Off-White: The Truth of Anti-Semitism’). This is all to create the spectre of a battle to save western civilization and destroy progressive politics.
“There is a clear geopolitical strategy behind all this, a recognised advantage in binding the state of Israel, in its identity, outlook and values, to Europe and to the West,” Shabi writes. “Israeli leaders know that Western buy-in and impunity is available in part through this constructed shared-heritage narrative; that’s why they keep banging on about it.”
In the meantime, many Jewish diaspora communities in the West who typically skew liberal and left on domestic issues find themselves yoked to defending an Israel that is careering rightwards and turning increasingly illiberal.
As one of those progressives, Shabi’s most important plea in this book is for the left to take back the fight against anti-semitism from a cynical right, which has weaponised the concept to justify Israel doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews.
“My hope for this book is that it sheds some light on why the subject of antisemitism has become such a horrible, divisive battleground, an ugly, distorted mess of claims and counterclaims; why it has torn progressive movements apart,” she writes.
“What we have been struggling with is a jumble of contradictory, but separate and identifiable problems: a comprehension gap in understanding antisemitism as a live structure of racism; divisions over the way claims of antisemitism get deployed in our politics; confusions caused by the way we understand Israel, or the way different elements of the far right use both Israel and antisemitism.
“When we get right down to it, very little of our conversation is actually about Jewish people or their lived experiences, so much as it is about ‘The Jews’, as the antisemitic conspiracy and as the victims of it, and how both factors manifest in our society and in our political ecosystems.”
This for me was an eye-opening book. So much of the weaponisation of ‘anti-semitism’ has been disquieting and disorientating to the point where one finds oneself holding one’s tongue about the horrors in Gaza for fear of being declared a Jew-hating racist.
As Shabi writes, there is only racism. And injustice and anti-semitism are all part of that.
Just about every day now in western democracies someone - usually on the left side of politics - is accused of being anti-semitic. Many of these accusers are of the far-right - people like the vile Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orban or his biggest fan, Donald Trump, who see a political utility in allying themselves with Zionists seeking to wipe out an entire people in Gaza.
Others who form an alliance of convenience with Israel are the white nationalist Christians, like far-right Australian Catholic politician Tony Abbott, who ritually bring up a mythical ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage. This is a term, Shabi argues, that the West has invented to absolve its own failures over the Holocaust. It is, she argues, an exercise in Western ‘rebranding’.
“The same supposedly ‘civilised’ countries that had either carried out or turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, while not providing refuge to Jews trying to flee the Nazis, were giving themselves a makeover – while also throwing Jews a bone,” she writes. “It really wasn’t the Jewish side of the so-called Judeo-Christian heritage that needed the label, so much as the Christian Western side looking for a redemption story.”
As has become clear since 9/11, ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ is a protective shield used by the far right to demonise a supposedly alien and violent Islam. It is also a device used by reality-deprived fundamentalist Christians - in the US mainly - to proclaim an imminent ‘Second Coming’. These frankly deranged people cite Old Testament prophecies of the Jews returning to the Holy Land as a necessary precursor to their longed-for End Times.
The bottom line, argues the author, is the Jewish people are now ritually co-opted by the REAL anti-semites (people like Trump and Orban) into a bogus shared narrative and given honorary ‘white status’ (hence the full title of this book ‘Off-White: The Truth of Anti-Semitism’). This is all to create the spectre of a battle to save western civilization and destroy progressive politics.
“There is a clear geopolitical strategy behind all this, a recognised advantage in binding the state of Israel, in its identity, outlook and values, to Europe and to the West,” Shabi writes. “Israeli leaders know that Western buy-in and impunity is available in part through this constructed shared-heritage narrative; that’s why they keep banging on about it.”
In the meantime, many Jewish diaspora communities in the West who typically skew liberal and left on domestic issues find themselves yoked to defending an Israel that is careering rightwards and turning increasingly illiberal.
As one of those progressives, Shabi’s most important plea in this book is for the left to take back the fight against anti-semitism from a cynical right, which has weaponised the concept to justify Israel doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews.
“My hope for this book is that it sheds some light on why the subject of antisemitism has become such a horrible, divisive battleground, an ugly, distorted mess of claims and counterclaims; why it has torn progressive movements apart,” she writes.
“What we have been struggling with is a jumble of contradictory, but separate and identifiable problems: a comprehension gap in understanding antisemitism as a live structure of racism; divisions over the way claims of antisemitism get deployed in our politics; confusions caused by the way we understand Israel, or the way different elements of the far right use both Israel and antisemitism.
“When we get right down to it, very little of our conversation is actually about Jewish people or their lived experiences, so much as it is about ‘The Jews’, as the antisemitic conspiracy and as the victims of it, and how both factors manifest in our society and in our political ecosystems.”
This for me was an eye-opening book. So much of the weaponisation of ‘anti-semitism’ has been disquieting and disorientating to the point where one finds oneself holding one’s tongue about the horrors in Gaza for fear of being declared a Jew-hating racist.
As Shabi writes, there is only racism. And injustice and anti-semitism are all part of that.
February 12, 2025
I have been trying to articulate what this book covers for the last year. I’ve read book after book, each one adding a piece of the puzzle. It all comes together here. There’s so much confusion surrounding Israel and antisemitism. In such critical times, this knowledge is essential.
August 4, 2025
I did learn from this book but I felt it was a shame that the author pushes her discussion of antisemitism through the lens of Western partisan politics with a clear preference for the left. She goes out of her way to say that the right's support for Israel is unwanted because they are rooted in racism but fails to notice the racism of the left. She is making an appeal to the left to reject Israel in order to combat antisemitism and, in my opinion, that is like washing your laundry in mud.
Her critique of Israel is sound and honest. She rightly points out how support for the war in Gaza forces intellectual dishonesty — particularly from those who would otherwise claim to uphold human rights and international law. This is where the book is strongest: exposing the moral gymnastics required to defend indefensible violence while claiming moral superiority.
She rejects an expanding definition of antisemitism, which I found intellectually honest, but then equates criticism of George Soros as antisemitism, which I found contradicting. Even if Soros cannot be blamed for mass migration, he can certainly be criticized for funding drug programs that have had devastating effects on urban centers. That's not antisemitism any more than it would be anti-American to blame Bill Gates for pushing vaccines on poor populations. The reflex to shield certain public figures from accountability by invoking antisemitism ultimately undermines serious conversations about both racism and power.
At times, I felt that she was tribal signaling to the left for self preservation. This may be unfair because you can never know someone's true intentions but I read it is as, "Hey, I'm still a progressive lefty, even if I oppose the war." But the antiwar stance was once a stalwart of the leftist platform. The fact that it now has uniparty support in most Western countries should tell you that partisan loyalty is a dead end. Had the author not played this game, I would have felt like we could have had a far more productive conversation about the antisemitism that is still real and problematic in a world that has deflated the notion with criticism of foreign policy.
Her critique of Israel is sound and honest. She rightly points out how support for the war in Gaza forces intellectual dishonesty — particularly from those who would otherwise claim to uphold human rights and international law. This is where the book is strongest: exposing the moral gymnastics required to defend indefensible violence while claiming moral superiority.
She rejects an expanding definition of antisemitism, which I found intellectually honest, but then equates criticism of George Soros as antisemitism, which I found contradicting. Even if Soros cannot be blamed for mass migration, he can certainly be criticized for funding drug programs that have had devastating effects on urban centers. That's not antisemitism any more than it would be anti-American to blame Bill Gates for pushing vaccines on poor populations. The reflex to shield certain public figures from accountability by invoking antisemitism ultimately undermines serious conversations about both racism and power.
At times, I felt that she was tribal signaling to the left for self preservation. This may be unfair because you can never know someone's true intentions but I read it is as, "Hey, I'm still a progressive lefty, even if I oppose the war." But the antiwar stance was once a stalwart of the leftist platform. The fact that it now has uniparty support in most Western countries should tell you that partisan loyalty is a dead end. Had the author not played this game, I would have felt like we could have had a far more productive conversation about the antisemitism that is still real and problematic in a world that has deflated the notion with criticism of foreign policy.
June 25, 2025
Worth reading. I enjoyed the chapter on the Judeo-Christian civilization myth, and learned a lot about Christian Zionism.
August 14, 2025
I had issues.
But it did provide an interesting insight into anti-semitism from an Mizrahi Jewish perspective.
But it did provide an interesting insight into anti-semitism from an Mizrahi Jewish perspective.
June 10, 2025
The truth about antisemitism is that there is a double standard in the way that accusations of it are made. If spurious claims of antisemitism are undermining the fight against it… then so, too, is the grim fact that this fight is steeped in hypocrisy. Screaming examples of anti-Jewish hatred get waved along, as long as the bigotry is coming from die-hard, right-or-wrong supporters of Israel… Shifting the spotlight onto the left… has the effect of giving a hall pass to the dangerous antisemitism of the right. And with the focus on the political left, the Israeli government and its hardline supporters can freely form alliances with far-right groups that might otherwise be deemed beyond the pale. Backing for a right-wing, expansionist Israel seems to be given primacy over everything else. Including antisemitism.
While at-times kind of meandering and overstuffed, Off-White is overall a deeply engaging, nuanced examination of ‘new’ antisemitism and the complex, oft contradictory, dynamics abound in current cultural and political discourses in an environment of a hard-right, genocidal coalition of Israel and the West and a steadily growing, anti-zionist left. In a fractured world where questions of Jewish safety and security has been co-opted by bad-faith actors and far-right demagogues of fascist and messianic evangelical tendencies to serve their own profoundly antisemitic agendas; where weaponizing of ‘new’ antisemitism is wielded by state powers against Palestinians and activists to silence criticism of Israel’s apartheid and genocide, Shabi cuts through the fog to give a powerful and insightful reminder that all this obfuscating, messy discourse fails to truly centre or address the material needs of the very people these groups claim to protect: Jews.
Shabi addresses a lot in the book and truthfully, I’m not sure I have the bandwidth to properly articulate and express all the ideas she tackles throughout the chapters. What I will say is that she gave words to confounding, confusing things I have long seen and defeatedly accepted as simple paradoxical truths. It’s a hard read, but very needed and very, very crucial for any modern leftist movement. I’ll probably need a reread or two to truly get everything she’s talking about. Maybe even take notes.
Free Palestine. From the River to the Sea.
September 14, 2025
her definitions and conceptions of antisemitism are quite researched and explained until it becomes about israel and palestine. she talks about not taking sides but consistently prioritizes palestinian deaths while also actively minimizing their government’s acts of terrorism against jews. she peddles a perpetual victimhood of palestinians that becomes quite clear the more she defines her perceptions of intifadas and pro palestine slogans that align with hamas and their charter (which is to eliminate jews and israel). overall disappointed as this book could’ve been a great critique of the lefts antisemitism but instead justified it. shabi also works for al jazeera (funded by multiple terrorist organizations in the middle east) which publishes articles by hamas officials that spew hatred against jews.
October 25, 2025
A very important book for this moment in time. It is written by an Iraqi Jewish woman as a challenge to those who identify as progressive and antiracist to ensure that our antiracism radars are as finally tuned to antisemitism as they are to other forms of racism, especially in the call for peace and justice in Palestine. A sober reminder not to use the gross weaponisation and over-deployment of accusations of antisemitism as some sort of reassurance that antisemitism does not truly exist. Smart, nuanced, provocative, confronting, delicately balanced. I strongly recommend it - especially to those committed to anti racism.
May 12, 2025
I listened to this on the airport on the way home from Las Vegas and the drive to go to Nelson county and to Stuart’s Draft to get flowers.
This is the book about anti-semitism and Israel current events that after a little disconnect about Zionism resonated with me. Both the left and the hard right are subject to racism. And when we act on the left people consider us privileged white and not Jewish so why would they care about anti-semitism.
Lots to unpack but this one rings true. Is read by the author. An Iraqi Jewish woman.
This is the book about anti-semitism and Israel current events that after a little disconnect about Zionism resonated with me. Both the left and the hard right are subject to racism. And when we act on the left people consider us privileged white and not Jewish so why would they care about anti-semitism.
Lots to unpack but this one rings true. Is read by the author. An Iraqi Jewish woman.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 2, 2025
At its best, Off White is a coherent nuanced yet compact description of modern antisemitism. Focusing on the post WW2 era, Shabi explores the role of whiteness, colonization, Israel, etc. The author is at her strength when she discusses the interaction of the Israeli government, Christian Zionism and traditional right wing antisemitism. The discussion of the left and antisemitism is rather weak and inconclusive but doesn't take away the value of reading the book especially in light of Palestine and current events.
July 22, 2025
I first found out about Shabi's work through Peter Beinart's excellent Substack, so I was excited for this book. I found it to be more of an all-encompassing, dense, history of antisemitism rather than having a viewpoint, a definitive, "the truth" about the subject. I found my views represented--left, progressive, pro-Palestine, but I still wished it was more definitive and clear where she stood.
March 9, 2025
Such an incredible dissection of antisemitism that really pulls all the changing forms of british jewry and antisemitism together to enable jews and non jews to come together in the fight for compassion for all people and minorities in an increasing right leaning political landscape.
November 29, 2025
This is excellent, a really thought provoking, challenging and interesting read. An investigation of antisemitism from a left perspective, exploring the contradictions and asserting the importance of anti semitism being an integral part of anti racist struggles.
January 4, 2025
A masterpiece. Wow.
February 17, 2025
Incredible book, everyone should read, truly talks about the complexity of anti-semitism, how it plays out in this world, and how we can do better as a society and a race to counteract it
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April 30, 2025Actually, as a professional translator, I believe this none-fictional & politicised book is worth translating into other languages, due to its highly important value.
July 26, 2025
An extremely nuanced intervention in the ongoing global conversation regarding the ongoing events in Palestine.
August 18, 2025
Fantastic, nuanced analysis. Shabi's insights and moral clarity are much-needed in the current moment.
August 26, 2025
(dnf @ 38% bc i had to return to the library lol)
this book was so amazing & insightful!! writing was tea, as was the way the subject manner was handled
this book was so amazing & insightful!! writing was tea, as was the way the subject manner was handled
November 30, 2025
A good primer for anyone new to the topic.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews