‘Gobblefunk:’ Author Roald Dahl’s antisemitic legacy

In common with many people who spent their childhood in the 1970s, I loved Roald Dahl’s novels for children, especially “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Read more

2022: The year FUD took off

There were many occasions during 2022 when events in the news almost tricked us into thinking that we were living in an earlier time. Read more

BDS versus modern art

“BDS appears here as contemporary art’s foil. BDS undermines contemporaneity’s claims of autonomy and emancipatory effects, fixes its meanings in ways that might make artists bristle, and leaves it only with refusal: either refuse to be a perpetrator or refuse the request made by Palestinian civil society. At this juncture, the latter option should already be unthinkable.” Read more

On Putin, the Jews and the Future of the World

Jews and dictators normally don’t get along. History is replete with examples of strongmen who reviled the Jewish communities in their midst. Read more

The Israeli left’s antisemitism blind spot

A great scholar of antisemitism once told me that there was one country that frustrated him when it came to its understanding of the extent and depth of Jew-hatred: Israel. Read more

What the row over caricatures of Yasser Arafat tells us about Palestinian politics

A perennial discussion in the cauldron that is Middle Eastern politics concerns the degree to which a sovereign Palestinian state, should one ever be created, would be democratic. Read more

Has the time come to bribe the unvaccinated?

“How can we as a society stand by and watch people die when a simple shot could prevent a life-threatening illness?” That was the agonised question asked by a group of nine healthcare providers in Minnesota who took the unprecedented step of publishing an advertisement in local news outlets begging people to get vaccinated last weekend. Read more

German antisemitism, real and perceived

There were more than 2,000 reported antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2020 and just under 2,000 the previous year. That’s around or five or six incidents, some of them involving violence or verbal abuse, every day. Read more

On visible and invisible Jews

During the middle days of the Sukkot festival, small groups of haredi kids can be seen wandering along the thoroughfares of New York City’s Upper West Side, asking passersby whether they are Jewish. Read more

‘Not vaccinated:’ How refusal is spreading the virus of antisemitism

A sad sight has returned to the streets of New York—and doubtless, to other cities around the country in which a growing majority of residents have vaccinated themselves from COVID-19. Read more

‘Jews Always Run Away’: Fighting stereotypes in sports

A non-Jewish professional soccer player in the Netherlands has become the latest example of how the most virulent antisemitism can be directed at someone who isn’t a Jew, and yet is perceived to be one. Read more

The case of Hungary: Anti-Semitism without violence

Is it possible for a country to be the locus of widespread antipathy towards Jews while simultaneously maintaining relatively low levels of antisemitic hate crime? A newly published report by the Jewish community in Hungary demonstrates that it is. 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

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

Designating antisemitism: Positives and pitfalls

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

An Israeli ‘dissident’ demolished

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

The return of populist antisemitism

To the lexicon of new terminology introduced by the coronavirus pandemic, we can add the latest entry: “Zoombombing,” or the practice of hijacking private videoconferencing calls on the Internet by unwanted intruders. Read more

What’s changed since the ‘Black Death’?

The numbers are rolling in, and they make for grim reading. Read more

The Vatican opens its wartime archive

One of the most persistent and controversial debates about the history of World War II concerns the role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, and specifically, the actions of Pope Pius XII. Read more

Truth is not selective: Poland vs. Netflix

Poland’s government won an important victory on the battleground of history last week. Read more

Nabih Berri’s grotesque antisemitism

In a puff piece on Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, published on the occasion of his 80th birthday last year, the broadcaster France 24 headlined its profile, “The Great Survivor of Lebanese Politics.” Read more

Polish antisemitism is serious, but Yair Lapid is overreaching

Over the last year, Yair Lapid, the co-chair of Israel’s opposition Blue and White Party, has made several outspoken statements about Poland, Polish antisemitism and the Holocaust. 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

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

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