The Mireille Knoll murder trial: Will France deliver justice this time?
November 7, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
July 18, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
July 4, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
June 13, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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?
May 30, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
May 23, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
May 16, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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?
April 25, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
April 12, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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’?
March 21, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
March 14, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
March 7, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
February 28, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
February 21, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
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
‘Shaun on P13:’ Ordinary Norwegians expose the anti-Semite in their midst
February 14, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
If Shaun Henrik Matheson was an American radio presenter rather than a Norwegian one, it’s highly unlikely that he’d still have a job this week. Read more
Joe Biden, Anne Neuberger and dual loyalty
February 1, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
Lost amid the whirlwind of anger, violence and recrimination that followed the November 2020 presidential election in the United States was the singular concern over where Joe Biden’s ultimate loyalties might lie, as voiced by a group of conservative voices across the pond in Britain. Read more
‘Freedom for Humanity:’ A Cautionary Tale
January 24, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
What follows here is a story about a politician from the extreme left, a politician from the far-right and a painting replete with antisemitic tropes that has travelled around the Internet for around a decade, and still does. Read more
‘Your suffering is our pleasure’: The anti-Zionist glee at Sheldon Adelson’s death
January 17, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
When the former Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died in 2013, there were some on the left who regarded her passing as a moment for celebration. Read more
Donald Trump: The un-American president
January 10, 2021 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
Move over, James Buchanan. The 15th president of the United States of America is regularly ranked by historians as the worst-ever holder of that hallowed office—a one-term commander-in-chief whose unctuous appeasement of pro-slavery forces did nothing to prevent Southern states from declaring war on the Union one year after he left office. Read more
European hypocrisy laid bare in kosher-slaughter legal judgement
December 20, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
Last time I checked, the French were still preparing their famed foie gras delicacy using the method of “gavage.” Read more
The declining credibility of Palestinian objections to the IHRA definition of antisemitism
December 5, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
A group of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals, 122 in all, endorsed a statement last week published by The Guardian newspaper that attacked the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Read more
Designating antisemitism: Positives and pitfalls
November 14, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
One of the more reprehensible aspects of the global campaign to strip Israel of its legitimacy is the fact that so many leading human-rights organizations have been co-opted by it. Read more
Still stuck in a time warp
November 9, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
Some of you will probably be familiar with a charming German movie called “Goodbye, Lenin,” the story of which concerns a woman in Communist-ruled East Germany who falls into a coma and wakes up a few months later in a unified, democratic Federal Republic of Germany. Read more
Oh, the irony, Jeremy!
November 1, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
During Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure at the helm of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, one of the many antisemitism scandals that enveloped the party revolved around a speech he had given while still a backbench member of parliament, in which he ventured that British-born “Zionists … despite having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives … don’t understand English irony.” Read more
‘So what’? Foreign policy and the 2020 election
October 25, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
Not so long ago, presidential debates were vital occasions for an exchange on American foreign policy and its priorities, as well as this country’s broader place in the world. Read more
Can France’s courts learn from Facebook in the fight against antisemitism?
October 18, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
Who is more effective in the fight against resurgent antisemitism: Facebook or the French judiciary? Read more
An Israeli ‘dissident’ demolished
October 11, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
The most scathing book review I have read in a very long time appears in the Sept.18 edition of the London-based journal, the Times Literary Supplement. Read more
Lift the US ban on journalist Jonathan Spyer
October 5, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
There is no role in journalism that is more mentally and physically punishing than that of a war correspondent. Read more
UK Labour leader Keir Starmer is drawing a line under the Corbyn years
September 27, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
That old cliché about the media preferring a news cycle dominated by conflict rather than reconciliation has some merit when you look at the amount of attention received by the British Labour Party before and after the disastrous leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Read more
The Holocaust vs. the rest: A new threat
September 21, 2020 by Ben Cohen - JNS.org
“Then again I got a story that’s harder than the hardcore cost of the Holocaust/I’m talkin’ ‘bout the one still goin’ on.” Read more