יום רביעי, א׳ אב תשפ״וWednesday, July 15, 2026
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Ben Cohen writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications.
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By Ben Cohen
A new report on Hamas’s atrocities offers an impressive counterweight for undecided readers who will encounter the deniers as they seek the truth.
By Ben Cohen
Not very. Unlike the PLO, Hamas doesn’t care whether it has Jewish cheerleaders since its goal is to eradicate Jews from the face of the earth.
By Ben Cohen
Dublin’s goal, according to Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, has been to undermine the Jewish state’s ability to defend itself by launching 'lawfare'
By Ben Cohen
Turkey and Qatar, net gains; Iran and its Palestinian and Lebanese proxies, net losses; Syria is a big loser; For Israel, the jury is out
By Ben Cohen
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy captures the essence of the Jewish people—and their intense love for a tiny strip of land—in his latest book, in which he deconstructs the significance of Oct. 7.
By Ben Cohen
The act of misogyny is a grotesque means for men to remind women of their physical power. It’s also an act of dehumanization, like it was on Oct. 7.
By Ben Cohen
There was one small yet welcome development on that front when the United States announced sanctions against an ostensible environmentalist NGO (actually, a front for Hezbollah) called “Green Without Borders.”
By Ben Cohen
A weak regime can still be a dangerous one, particularly when said regime is armed with nuclear weapons.
By Ben Cohen
There it was again: the classic Jewish 'infiltrator.' in the form of a man with a fleshy face, hooked nose and scheming expression, carrying a box labeled “Goldman Sachs.”
By Ben Cohen
The energy and the intensity shown by the 700 poorly armed young Jewish fighters reflected the understanding, deep in their hearts, that the battle for the ghetto was not ultimately one in which they would prevail.
By Ben Cohen
Antisemitic ideology is highly adaptive, reinventing its obsession with supposed Jewish malignancy in almost any situation and winning supporters accordingly.
By Ben Cohen
Jenin was the location, in April 2002, of one of the most treacherous myths about Israel’s military conduct that spilled over into open antisemitism. Sadly, the lessons of that sordid episode more than 20 years ago do not appear to have been learned.
By Ben Cohen
No one should pretend that Charles will easily fit his mother’s outsized shoes, and he now faces the formidable task of winning the affections of the British people alongside their respect.
By Ben Cohen
The country’s rejection of anti-Semitism largely consists of official rhetoric, as opposed to outright condemnation and uncompromising action against the scourge.
By Ben Cohen
The depiction of Israel as an apartheid state is wrong and immoral, but it shouldn’t be illegal, for the simple reason that banning certain types of speech is a gateway to further, unexpected restrictions.
By Ben Cohen
Islam is not the only faith to dress up superstition as credible assertion. Still, the significance of such beliefs is better gauged by measuring their popularity rather than debating their contents.
By Ben Cohen
If the European Union wants to reduce its dependency on Russian gas by turning to Israel as an alternative supplier, then Israel is entitled to attach some political conditions to the arrangement.
By Ben Cohen
The Farhud (“violent dispossession” (in Arabic), the two-day pogrom that befell the Jews of Baghdad occurred 75 years ago on Shavuot in 1941.
By Ben Cohen
When you examine the impact of the various anti-Zionist initiatives in the United States and Europe over the last 20 years, it quickly becomes apparent that their principle effect has been to diminish the security of Diaspora Jewish communities.
By Ben Cohen
However sympathetic they feel towards the beleaguered Ukrainians, Americans are still reluctant to place their troops in combat roles absent a direct threat to this country. That reality gives succor to Russia and China, neither of whom have to worry about the twists and turns of public opinion.
By Ben Cohen
For them, the cause of attacks lies ultimately with the government’s policies in the Palestinian territories, which is not seeing the situation in its entirety.
By Ben Cohen
The poisoning of our society's discourse with pseudo-scientific claims and conspiracy theories, often rooted in medieval prejudices about Jews, is destroying trust in education, in government and worst of all, in each other.
By Ben Cohen
We cannot prevent the cycles of history from returning to batter us with the same discredited tropes, but we can prepare ourselves more astutely.
By Ben Cohen
President Andrzej Duda likening the demonstrators’ actions in Kalisz to “treason,” and several members of parliament expressed an almost physical disgust. It’s clear that these far-right nationalists do not speak for the majority of Polish citizens.
By Ben Cohen
Even if it does, it won’t be forgotten that it took place in the shadow of the violent anti-Semitic murder of another Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, who killer was set free.
By Ben Cohen
Anything that dents the appeal of Jew-hatred in the public imagination is to be welcomed; however, no national government or transnational body can exercise full control over a free society.
By Ben Cohen
We all know that raw prejudice among Jews against those who are visibly Jewish—that they are loud, rude, unwashed, contemptuous towards outsiders and all the rest of that baggage—is our community’s dirty secret.
By Ben Cohen
Like COVID-19 seeping around the world, anti-Semitism whipped up during the pandemic, with its echo of the medieval slander that Jews spread the Black Death by poisoning wells, remains with us.
By Ben Cohen
As the world tunes in to the Olympics in Tokyo, watching an enormous variety of sports in which athletes of all nationalities compete, it’s evident that these ideas connecting race with sporting ability belong in the garbage can of history.
By Ben Cohen
It is ironic that a political party named “Law and Justice” should be so wedded to outright theft and discrimination, but that is the present-day reality in Poland.
By Ben Cohen
The assailants in Los Angeles were referred to merely as “a group,” while the attackers in New York City were simply “assailants.” No more detail was provided.
By Ben Cohen
The pattern of recent history suggests that once the Mideast hostilities end this time around, the legal and political warfare directed against Israel will only intensify.
By Ben Cohen
Coronavirus anti-Semitism remains lethal Political paranoia variously holds the Jews responsible for the death of the Messiah, spreading the bubonic plague during the medieval period and sparking two world wars.
By Ben Cohen
He talked about Israel positively while at the same time shining a light on the double standard that enables his government to cozy up to repressive regimes around the world, from Iran to China, while depicting Israel as a rogue apartheid state.
By Ben Cohen
When what some observers called the “new anti-Semitism” began to gather pace at the turn of this century, there were a handful of scholars, Gerstenfeld among them, who were equipped to explain that while the wine was new, the bottles were old.
By Ben Cohen
With Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel as with businessman and philanthropist Adelson, far-left invective was soaked in hostility to the Zionist movement that seeped into a frankly disturbing detestation of the deceased person.
By Ben Cohen
The method of “shechita” has been twisted and distorted by anti-Semites for various tales of blood libel and theologically mandated cruelty allegedly practiced by Jews down the ages.
By Ben Cohen
Had the terrorists targeted non-kosher establishments with non-Jewish victims, Amman would likely have been cooperative.
By Ben Cohen
U.S. President Donald Trump’s vocal rejection of the removal of Southern memorials might seem patriotic, but in reality, it isn’t.
By Ben Cohen
The fact that the Communist regime has been included on a panel to decide some of the world’s human-rights issues is just another example of how the various agencies that compose the U.N. system can be twisted to favor one member state even as they discriminate against another.
By Ben Cohen
The fact the overwhelming majority of the companies are Israeli indicates that there is a more sinister aim at work here.
By Ben Cohen
The three most common stereotypes neatly encapsulate the triangular denunciation of the Jews: They dominate the economy and financial markets; they are more loyal to the State of Israel than they are to the continent; and they talk endlessly of their suffering during the Holocaust.
By Ben Cohen
If the neo-Nazi gunman in Halle hadn't been prevented from entering the synagogue by its robust security system, Germany would have been confronted with the most atrocious act of anti-Semitism on its soil since the Nazi era.
By Ben Cohen
The goal in both? To lampoon and disgrace those in the offensive images—one adult, the other a child—by way of their Jewishness.
By Ben Cohen
That Robert Mugabe died without ever having to answer for his crimes will come as a boost to the world’s remaining tyrannies, from the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
By Ben Cohen
If we’ve learned anything from the torrid, often ill-informed debates about anti-Semitism over the last year—whether inside or outside our borders—it’s that the hatred of Jews comes in bewildering varieties.
By Ben Cohen
The British Labour Party offers a weak response to the BBC’s anti-Semitism investigation.
By Ben Cohen
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spoken about Jews several times, with plain and heartfelt hostility. What most agitates him about Jews is their notorious practice of smearing critics as “anti-Semites” and their penetra tion of the establishment.
By Ben Cohen
Prof. Alan Johnson lays out in excruciating detail the story of how an ostensibly enlightened, pro-European social democratic party became a home for activists trafficking in three distinct types of anti-Semitism.
By Ben Cohen
Jews and Muslims find themselves on the same side of the line that separates civilization from barbarism. If we are to achieve greater understanding between our two minority communities, then that is as good a place as any from which to start.
By Ben Cohen
It may be the case that the hyphen in that word is playing a similarly obfuscatory role in our understanding of how dangerous this phenomenon really is.
By Ben Cohen
Ilhan Omar is not the first U.S. legislator to have trafficked in this image, which is rooted in the anti-Semitic idea that Jewish power is, by definition, financially driven, tribal in interest and ruthless in the effects that it has upon non-Jews
By Ben Cohen
The correct observation that the situation in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., is an exception, and not the rule, for most American Jews shouldn't lead us to complacency.
By Ben Cohen
Disturbing confirmation that opinion in Europe about “the Jews” and their troubles is much more divided than one might have hoped.
By Ben Cohen
Given the documented evidence of ISIS crimes against the Yazidis and the specific wording used by the United Nations, to argue that the international body does not consider this to be a genocide is to raise pedantry and diplomatic caution above principle.
By Ben Cohen
Increasingly, students are taught that the veracity of a particular claim cannot be separated from the identity of the person making it—and that suggesting otherwise is a surrender to patriarchy and racism.
By Ben Cohen
Abbas’s speech to the U.N. confirmed that the P.A. and the PLO are returning to their old game of undermining Israel’s legitimacy at every turn. Netanyahu’s speech demonstrated that while Israel is aware of the Palestinian retreat into maximalism, there are bigger problems that his country is facing
By Ben Cohen
Both men ventured onto territory similar to that under the spotlight in Washington, with its underlying themes of unanswered-for aggression and injustice, punctuated by reputational smears and factual distortions.
By Ben Cohen
One might counter that not everyone who presents Israel as a “racist endeavor” is driven by the same motives—strategic, diplomatic, ideological—that the USSR was when it adopted anti-Semitism in the name of anti-Zionism.
By Ben Cohen
The fear that he has normalized anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, coupled with unwavering loyalty to the Palestine solidarity activists who have dragged Labour into the mire of Jew-baiting, leads many to conclude that what has already happened in the party will unfold next in the country.
By Ben Cohen
The country that will be most damaged will be Ireland itself. See how many Irish politicians are willing to sacrifice the jobs and livelihoods of Irish citizens for the gesture politics of boycotting Israel.
By Ben Cohen
Israel’s leaders need to think strategically about every major event that is staged in the country, with the first principle being “do no harm.”
By Ben Cohen
Both concepts are built around the Palestinian logic that Israel is the eternal enemy. That is why Israel’s creation was a “catastrophe.” But what precisely was the “setback”?
By Ben Cohen
Israel just misses making the top 10, but still ranks an impressive No. 11 out of 156 nations rated on the annual World Happiness Report, a testament to its internal spirit.
By Ben Cohen
It beggars belief that the shrewd Elizabeth, for whatever reason, has willingly complied with a stance of pretending that Israel doesn’t exist.
By Ben Cohen
Sarah Halimi’s Jewish affiliation will be, at most, a subsidiary element in a trial that will become a cautionary tale about drug use, rather than the anti-Semitic hatred that has established itself as an integral part of the culture of France’s Muslim immigrant communities.
By Ben Cohen
This dispute is about who sets the parameters for our understanding of what the Holocaust was and what it represented – and it is a problem that extends far beyond Poland's borders.
By Ben Cohen
For the first time in nearly a decade, one dares to believe that the Islamist clerics who have ruled Iran since 1979 will not be in power by the time the 40th anniversary of their revolution rolls around in 2019.
By Ben Cohen
For all of Trump’s bluster about Iran, he chose appeasement; thus the Kurds are plunged into crisis once more. The current plight of the Kurds is nothing other than a Western, and especially American, disgrace.
By Ben Cohen
A VERY different perspective on Charlottesville.
By Ben Cohen
For all theie differences, they had 3 important things in common. They were proud Jews. They died because they were Jews. And in both of their cases, that latter fact has yet to be recognized, let alone acted upon, by the investigating authorities.
By Ben Cohen
As we can see (pictured), Ambassador Friedman's heart and HEAD are in the right place.
By Ben Cohen
Trump’s peacemaking ambitions have created a shared dilemma for both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Palestinian Authority
By Ben Cohen
It follows logically that even in a modern democracy, a ban on the core rituals making Jews Jewish—and Muslims Muslim—effectively ends the conditions for a separate existence as a Jewish community
By Ben Cohen
I have never met Gorka, have never spoken with him, and can’t say I’m hugely familiar with his work. That said, there is very little evidence out there justifying the accusation of anti-Semitism.
By Ben Cohen
Depending on where you sit, a Le Pen victory would signal either the demise of fascism or its rebirth.
By Ben Cohen
Anti-Semitism is politically and theologically promiscuous, penetrating the nationalist right and the progressive left, creeping into churches and leading the thundering discourse of political Islam.
By Ben Cohen
If the Holocaust is now primarily an instrument to be deployed in politics, rather than a central historical memory with a direct bearing upon politics & ethics, we can expect its further manipulation
By Ben Cohen
Many of the world's illiberal and authoritarian states will become our friends and trading partners and our newfound tolerance of their norms will eventually come into conflict with preserving our own
By Ben Cohen
If Hizbullah comes out of the Syrian war with its prestige strengthened and its threat level boosted, there’s every reason to fear the next target will be Israel.
By Ben Cohen
What is worrying is that measures to protect the Yazidis from future brutalities have been set back by the Iraqi parliament decision.
By Ben Cohen
While the war against Islamic State has, for Russia and Iran, been a war to keep Assad in power for Turkey the real agenda in Syria is to crush the burgeoning Kurdish national movement at its borders.
By Ben Cohen
Never mind the absence of a bipartisan consensus about what we should do; our politicians are engaged in unsightly squabbling about the nature of the problem itself, divisions abound,
By Ben Cohen
Prof. Wistrich’s passing has deprived the world of the most cogent analyst of anti-Semitism, perhaps ever, {Prof. Wistrich, in a word, is irreplaceable.
By Ben Cohen
The depictions of Jews in this exhibit are straight out of Nazi propaganda, The Islamist barbarians who run Iran may be many things, but creators of pathbreaking art they are definitely not.
By Ben Cohen
Trump has shown himself to be a master communicator. In every tussle and confrontation he has proved that whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.
By Ben Cohen
Sanders is largely indifferent to Judaism and Jewish identity So what?
By Ben Cohen
Since the deal with Iran, there has been active lobbying to normalize relations between US & Iran
By Ben Cohen
Corbyn leading the Britain's Labour Party polls, describes Hamas & Hizbullah as England's “friends.”
By Ben Cohen
The Middle East has rapidly changed for the worse the past five years. The worst may be yet come.
By Ben Cohen
UN Amb Prosor: Anti-Semitism “can even be found in the halls of UN disguised as umanitarian concern”
By Ben Cohen
The Holocaust Educational Trust Ireland informed the host he could not say “Israel or Jewish state”
By Ben Cohen
The coalition the US has assembled to fight ISIS is based on an immediate coincidence of interest.
By Ben Cohen
A growing chorus of influential voices is arguing that Israel needs to finish the job in Gaza.
By Ben Cohen
Should Jews in Europe take more responsibility in self-defense of community and property?
By Ben Cohen
As of this moment, the Kurds have little reason to hold back from declaring independence.
By Ben Cohen
While Jews are just one percent of the French population, 40 percent of French racist assaults target Jews.
By Ben Cohen
Even if Egyptian pressure lead to the collapse of Hamas, Gaza’s problems are unlikely to be solved overnight.
By Ben Cohen
This new mood among Christian Arabs has worried the communists and Arab nationalist.
By Ben Cohen
In this drama, J Street, much like other left-wing groups, is an enthusiastic cheerleader, nothing more.
July 10, 2026 
