Silent majority needs encouragement in fight against antisemitism

For anyone unaware of Europe’s antisemitism problem, CNN’s “Anti-Semitism in Europe Poll 2018,” released this week, would have made for grim reading on many levels. Read more

On the Yazidi genocide, a bad day for the Knesset

Something rather unexpected and disturbing occurred in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Nov. 21. A bill recognizing the 2014 slaughter of the Yazidi minority in Iraq by ISIS terrorists as a “genocide” was voted down by a margin of 58-38 against. Read more

Putin plays with the Holocaust

Back in January, the unlikely figure of Paddington Bear—the cuddly, bright-eyed cub much adored by young children down the years—ran afoul of the Russian government. Read more

From Bosnia to the world: Bernard-Henri Lévy’s latest Jewish reflections

In the summer of 1993, I found myself at one of the most unsettling dinner engagements that I have yet experienced…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

‘Anti-Semitism upholds white supremacy’

On a sunny afternoon last Tuesday in Pittsburgh, about 200 demonstrators gathered outside the JCC in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood, a short distance from the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh where, on the previous Shabbat, the neo-Nazi assailant Robert Bowers gunned down 11 Jews who had gone there to pray…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Robert Faurisson: The liar and his legacy

“He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool,” opines one character about another in William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Yahya Sinwar explains how Hamas hasn’t changed

In the weeks since footage emerged of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn insinuating that native-born British Jews have a feeble grasp of English irony, lo and behold, I’ve been spotting ironies everywhere…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Mideast realities: Abbas and Netanyahu at the UN

There was one corner of New York City last Thursday where the Senate Judicial Committee hearings into the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh went largely unnoticed: the United Nations building perched on the East River, where the 73rd General Assembly has been in full swing this week…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Vanessa Redgrave: Still hating after all these years

The spectacle of thespians making political interventions is rarely a dignified one. But that hasn’t stopped Hollywood’s elite from radical posturing; from the old days, Marlon Brando is one example, Jane Fonda another, while in our own time we can give a mention to Sean Penn, for his embrace of the late Venezuelan dictator (and the author of that country’s present misery) Hugo Chávez…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

New York’s ‘last Nazi’ is finally deported to Germany

During my formal interview for U.S. citizenship, not so long ago, I remember the interviewing officer looking me in the eye and asking if I’d ever had any affiliations with the Nazi German regime…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘existential threat’

On the evening of Monday, July 23, the parliamentary group of the British Labour Party held what Sky News called an “emotionally charged meeting,” during which they endorsed the definition of antisemitism used by hundreds of government departments, law-enforcement agencies, municipal authorities and community associations around the world…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

France’s reputation is at stake again over the murder of Sarah Halimi

For the second time in 20 years, France basked in the accomplishment of winning the World Cup with a team whose diverse backgrounds were as much a symbol of national unity as the creative brand of soccer they played. Read more

The Irish Senate’s ‘boycott Israel’ debate

Reading the transcript of the debate that took place in the Irish Senate on July 11 before that body voted, by 25-20, to criminalise commercial relations with Jewish communities in the West Bank, I was struck by how the arguments that were traded fell neatly into one of two categories…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Denmark confronts Islamism and integration

Imam Mundhir Abdallah is a good example of the dilemmas that have confronted politicians in Denmark in their response to Islamist extremism among the country’s 300,000 Muslims, the large majority of whom are first- or second-generation immigrants…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Trump, Kim and the ‘good citizen’

One of the many memorable scenes in “The Lives of Others”—an exemplary German movie whose plot centers on the Stasi secret police in the late, unlamented German Democratic Republic—involves the indiscreet telling of a joke about Erich Honecker, the Soviet puppet who served as the GDR’s head of state…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Why a soccer hooligan is smiling

Jibril Rajoub is many things—a convicted terrorist, a former West Bank security chief, a former confidante of the late Yasser Arafat, and now the head of both the Palestinian Football Association and the Palestinian Olympic Committee…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

‘Nakba,’ ‘Naksa’ . . . nowhere

When it comes to the Palestinian “original sin” theory of Israel’s creation, there are two key milestones: the flight of approximately 750,000 Arab refugees during the 1948 War of Independence and the 1967 conquest of eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Behind Erdoğan’s boycott threat against Israel

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is in the midst of one of his periodic bouts of Israel-hatred, lashing out at the Jewish state and its leaders with all the insults (“Nazi,” “apartheid,” “child-killers” and so forth) that he has deployed with such aplomb in the past…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

‘Trump’s war’ isn’t coming

A few hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that the United States had exited the Iran nuclear deal, the doyenne of progressive political-action committees, MoveOn.org, sent out a fundraising email to supporters warning that “Trump’s war is coming”….writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Time to abandon the ‘original sin’ theory

As welcome as the remarkably diverse condemnations of Mahmoud Abbas’s latest antisemitic speech have been over the last few days—with UNESCO’s new director-general, The New York Times, J Street and the German-Palestinian Association all joining the list—there’s a deeper point about the Palestinian Authority leader’s remarks to the Palestinian National Council that is still to be grasped…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

‘Anti-Zionist and Jew:’ Behind Jeremy Corbyn’s apology

“I refuse to characterise as opinion,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in Anti-Semite and Jew, “a doctrine that is aimed directly at particular persons and that seeks to suppress their rights or to exterminate them.” Read more

The Warsaw Ghetto: The epitome of rightful resistance

It’s hard to say for sure whether the following fable was really told in the Warsaw Ghetto, but it’s grimly funny enough to warrant repeating…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

On Zionism, progressives take a page out of the socialist playbook

There is a tragic account of the last moments of Grigori Zinoviev, the veteran Russian Bolshevik leader of Jewish descent who was executed by Stalin in 1936…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Putin an anti-Semite? It really doesn’t matter…writes Ben Cohen/JNS

Among Sephardic Jews of my grandmother’s generation, there was a popular, if unproven, belief that Gen. Francisco Franco—the military dictator who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975—was of Jewish parentage, and that this explained why he granted refuge to several thousand Jews fleeing the Nazis. Read more

The secrets of happiness (or unhappiness) revealed

What makes us happy—or unhappy?…asks Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

The House of Windsor’s Israel problem

Queen Elizabeth II is marking her 66th year of reign in 2018, which by any standards is an extraordinarily long time for a single individual to be a head of state. (By comparison, King David is said to have reigned for 40 years, and Queen Victoria—comfortably overtaken now by Elizabeth—managed 64.)..writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

From Holocaust to ‘Polocaust’: A change in common parlance doesn’t change the facts

I interviewed Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister of Poland, during his September visit to New York…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

No hate of Halimi? French won’t see antisemitism for what it is

Flush from his victory over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the French elections last July, President Emmanuel Macron decided to address head on the horrific murder of a Jewish pensioner in Paris three months earlier…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Who owns the Holocaust?…writes Ben Cohen/JNS.org

Who owns the Holocaust? That, ultimately, is the key question posed by the impending legislation in Poland that will criminalise any discussion, or investigation, or mere mention, of incidents of Polish collusion with the Nazi occupiers during World War Two. Read more

Israel cannot deny the reality that BDS is in decline

Recently, I’ve been nursing some concerns about the way the Israeli government is handling its response to the BDS campaign against the Jewish state, and with it the wider challenges of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the Western world…writes Ben Cohen/JNS.org. Read more

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