When did the current wave of antisemitism begin?

In nearly 30 years of writing and speaking about global antisemitism, I’ve been asked more than once if it’s possible to pinpoint when this present wave of hatred first reared its head. Read more

Kneecap get kneecapped

The most successful musicians are those who understand that their art is about spectacle as well as sound. When it comes to popular music, the more controversy there is, the greater the spectacle becomes. Read more

A fake genocide meets a real one

For more than a year, Jews inside and outside the State of Israel have been besieged by false claims of the “genocide” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Read more

Welcome to ‘Paddystine’

The other day, during a discussion with a colleague about the wave of pro-Hamas, antisemitic hysteria sweeping the Republic of Ireland, I unthinkingly quipped that the people of Eire should rename themselves “Paddystinians.” Read more

War fatigue settles among Palestinians

One year after the Hamas atrocities in southern Israel ignited a multi-front war between the Jewish state and Iran’s regional proxies, a discernible trend is emerging among many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza. They are getting tired of the war. Read more

The Nazification of anti-Zionism

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Aug. 28, Yonathan Arfi, the head of the French Jewish umbrella body Crif, complained that most of his fellow citizens have an understanding of antisemitism that is rooted in the memory of the Second World War. Read more

An ‘abject, squalid, shameless’ debate at the Oxford Union

In an era dominated by social media and defined by short attention spans, it’s striking that longer, more involved debates hosted by elite institutions still matter. Read more

How António Guterres betrayed the Jews

Back in February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a speech at the Ohel Jakob synagogue in Munich in which he struck most of the right notes. Read more

Why the pro-Hamas demonstrations are different and more dangerous

Over the last eight months, Jewish communities around the world have been both intimidated and repulsed by the surge in pro-Hamas demonstrations. Read more

UNRWA meets the Spanish Inquisition

The collaboration between UNRWA, the U.N. agency solely dedicated to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and the Hamas rulers of Gaza continues unabated. Read more

War is hell. Everywhere.

“War,” the Union Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman is famously said to have told a group of army cadets some years after the American Civil War, “is hell.” Read more

October 7: Rape as an instrument of genocide

As the world marked International Women’s Day on March 8, the various social media platforms lit up with posts from pro-Israel celebrities and influencers demanding the release of the female hostages who remain in the captivity of the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Read more

An ideology of violence

When all is said and done, antisemitism is fundamentally an ideology of violence. Read more

The myth of British exceptionalism

That old image of the Jewish family with a packed suitcase at the ready in case they are compelled to leave their home suddenly has returned with a vengeance across Europe. Read more

You’re not antisemitic? Sure?

Amid the current debate over whether a new front will open up in Israel’s war against Hamas and its regional allies, it might be observed that this is already happening. Read more

Ben Cohen: A letter to the rest of the world

Dear non-Jews, Read more

The Mireille Knoll murder trial: Will France deliver justice this time?

Under different circumstances, it might have been the stuff of a modern fairy tale with two principal characters. Read more

Chile: The peril of Daniel Jadue

The anti-Zionist activist Roger Waters, who also doubles up as the bassist of veteran rockers Pink Floyd, gave a ringing endorsement last week to one of the candidates in the Chilean presidential election, which takes place later this year on Nov. 21. Read more

After latest legislation on stolen Jewish property, it’s time to cut ties with Poland’s government

Poland is awash in antisemitism, and it is the government in Warsaw that is setting the hateful tone amid the worst breakdown in Polish-Jewish relations since the fall of Communism more than 30 years ago. Read more

The antisemitism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon

In the first round of the French presidential election in 2017, nearly one in five voters marked their ballots for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the newly formed far-left “La France Insoumise” (“France Rising”) party. Read more

What does ‘justice for Sarah Halimi’ mean?

There was a particularly nasty incident that was reported in the crime sections of the French press this week. Read more

The return of the anti-Jewish mob

The left-wing French parliamentarian Danièle Obono stormed out of a live debate on May 13 about the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities hosted by the French-language channel of the Israeli broadcaster, i24 News. Read more

For Palestinians, the past remains the future

Judging by the present pattern, the next conflagration over Gaza—and by extension, the still-unresolved Palestinian question—will occur in 2028 or so, just in time for the 80th anniversary of Israel’s creation. And judging by the present mood, the seven years until then will yield as little political progress as have the past 13, a period in which we’ve witnessed two full-scale wars between Israel and Hamas, with a third now in the offing. Read more

Is the truth a casualty of the Abraham Accords?

There’s an old adage of disputed authorship that has travelled down the centuries: In times of war, truth is the first casualty. As the English writer Samuel Johnson explained it in the 18th century, war breeds “the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” That has always been the case. Read more

America has made a serious mistake on UNRWA

The Biden administration’s regressive decision to include $150 million for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as part of its restoration of more than $200 million of financial aid to the Palestinians symbolizes its deeper refusal to recognize the gargantuan obstacle this agency has placed in the way of resolving their ongoing conflict with Israel. Read more

Anti-Semitic or just ‘strident’?

There is a curious sentence that appears in the definition of antisemitism currently being tested by a group of progressive Jewish Americans. Read more

South Africa’s chief justice confronts the apartheid analogy

As of this writing, South Africa’s Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng was on day seven of a 10-day deadline to publicly apologize for a speech he made last year in which he offered a full-throated defence of Israel, and still, he stood fast—no apology was forthcoming. Read more

History, the Holocaust and hatred in Turkey’s school textbooks

Time and again, the Middle East has taught us that whatever political problems or challenges a given regime may be facing, it always has at its disposal an antisemitic explanation for how these came about in the first place. Read more

Remembering Manfred Gerstenfeld: Truth against myth

There is an acerbic joke that you sometimes hear in the Netherlands to the effect that most Dutch people were part of the anti-Nazi resistance, but that they joined “after the war.” Read more

Engaging with the UN Human Rights Council

Many people who have never heard of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) might reasonably ask why this body has the name that it does, upon learning that one of its members, China, is currently engaged in genocide against its Uyghur Muslim minority. Read more

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