Why is the media obsessed with violent Israelis?

Jonathan S. Tobin

Damage to a car set on fire by Jews in the Arab village of Deir al-Hatab, east of Nablus, on March 23, 2026. Photo by Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90.

The images from the Knesset shocked many around the world. When Israeli Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate the passage of a law imposing the death penalty on terrorists whose goal is to destroy the State of Israel, he was widely condemned for demonstrating execrable taste, for which he was admonished by Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana. Indeed, the blowback against the 62-47 vote in favor of the measure in its final readings went beyond disgust with the always-controversial Ben-Gvir. The law itself was widely denounced as an act of discrimination against Palestinian Arabs, who were, critics claimed, being singled out for punishment.

The international outrage about the so-called “racist” death penalty law is part of a familiar narrative about Israel that has become normalized in mainstream media coverage of the Jewish state in recent years. It fits in with the torrent of stories about an alleged epidemic of “settler” violence targeting innocent Palestinians and the ongoing effort to depict the war against Hamas in Gaza as a nonstop war crime if not an outright “genocide.”

A claim of moral equivalence

Taken together, such coverage paints a dismal picture of the political culture of a country dominated by right-wingers. It applies to all those who support the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but, in particular, those like Ben-Gvir, who are identified as settlers in Judea and Samaria. They are seen as not merely callous about the taking of life, but also as somehow the moral equivalent to terrorists and morally inferior to ordinary Palestinians.

In doing so, a press that is inherently hostile to the Jewish state can dismiss the arguments about the danger posed not just to Israel but to the West in general from Arab and Islamist terrorism. After all, if Israelis are racists eager to hang Palestinians and complicit in a wave of violence seeking to terrorize their Arab neighbors, then why should Americans or anyone else, for that matter, support the Jewish state?

The “genocide” blood libels about the war against Hamas have worked their way into mainstream discourse, rather than being dismissed as just another antisemitic attempt to delegitimize Israel. Claims that the capital punishment law is racist as well as barbaric, and that settlers are engaged in pogroms tolerated by the Netanyahu government, are just as dangerous.

Unlike the campaign to delegitimize a war against terrorists in Gaza that the overwhelming majority of Israelis support, many Israelis oppose the death penalty and take a dim view of the residents of Judea and Samaria for a variety of reasons. And even if they refute the “genocide” lies because they know them to be false, the Israeli left and even some centrists are all too ready to go along with the assertions that a government in which Ben-Gvir has an important cabinet post is dominated by extremists who have no place in government, let alone passing laws that offend their sensibilities and alienate the international community.

Demonizing the ‘settlers’

A considerable portion of the Israeli electorate also views settlers as religious fanatics who are an obstacle to peace, even while acknowledging that no Palestinian peace partner exists. They are willing to believe that some of those living across the so-called Green Line are likely guilty of everything that the Palestinians and their cheerleaders in the press and non-governmental organization allies say they’ve done. And that, in turn, generates a wave of criticism from liberal American Jews, who are easily persuaded to condemn what they see as Israeli wrongdoers betraying ideas about Jewish ethics and morality.

If the death-penalty law really was as racist as its critics claim—and if the reality of life in the “West Bank” really was one of routine Jewish violence in which Palestinians were living in fear—then those making these assertions might have a leg to stand on. The truth is that whatever one feels about the death penalty and how it might be implemented, the new Israeli law is not racist. It is a reasonable, if debatable, attempt to deal with a real problem.

At the same time, the narrative about “settler violence” isn’t merely false but also a bizarre inversion of reality. It is the Jews who live in the territories who are the victims of a daily tsunami of often murderous Palestinian violence. Indeed, most of the incidents in which such residents are supposedly engaged in thuggish behavior are either acts of self-defense against Arab attacks or Palestinian information operations designed to falsely claim ownership over land to which they have no right.

And yet, the Palestinian terror campaign being waged against Jews living in the territories is ignored by both the secular and Jewish media. Jewish groups, including some that are otherwise supportive of Israel, blindly accept the claims of biased observers like the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) or far-left-wing Jewish groups like B’Tselem, which are the sources for most of the allegations of settler violence.

As Liel Leibovitz wrote in Tablet, “Why They Lie About Jewish Terrorists,” and Gadi Taub detailed in “The Settler Violence Myth,” the assertions that thuggish extremist Jews have been allowed by the Israeli government to run riot in Judea and Samaria are simply false.

Not every claim of Jewish misconduct against Palestinians is necessarily untrue. Supporters of Israel don’t have to apologize for the fact that a few people out of a Jewish population of several hundred thousand residents of the territories might be guilty of illegal behavior. But as Leibovitz and Taub make clear, the assertions that the settlers are engaged in an indiscriminate and unprovoked campaign of violence against Arabs is out and out wrong.

An epidemic of Palestinian terror

Breaking down the incidents cited as definitive proof of misconduct, the assumptions about settler violence are easily exploded. Most of these alleged crimes turn out to be the opposite of what is often asserted. Rather than Jews seeking to intimidate Arabs, most recorded instances of Jewish violence turn out to be cases of the so-called settlers defending themselves against rock-throwing or worse. The same is true for contentions that Jews are stealing Palestinian land, uprooting olive orchards of long standing and using force to pressure Arabs to flee their homes.

As Leibovitz points out, “In 2024, there were more than 6,300 Palestinian terror attacks against Jews in Judea and Samaria, leading to 27 murdered Israelis and more than 300 wounded. The deadly trend continued last year, too, with 5,051 attacks by Palestinians, during which 24 Israelis were murdered and 400 wounded. Those included 458 attacks with Molotov cocktails, 655 attempts to blind drivers with laser pointers, 286 explosive charges and 19 terrorist shooting assaults.”

Compare that to OCHA’s claims that 1,400 incidents of settler violence occurred in 2024 and 1,700 such crimes occurred in 2025.

Even if OCHA’s data is to be believed, when lining up the two sets of numbers, the story comes across very differently than the headlines in outlets like The New York Times, The Guardian, PBS or even the liberal Times of Israel about a troubling rise in Jewish gangsterism in Judea and Samaria.

But the point is, no one should believe claims put forth by the United Nations about Jews behaving badly in the territories any more than they should accept the world body’s skewed accusations about Israeli actions in Gaza or any other topic concerning the Jewish state. Taking a deep dive into these statistics, as Leibovitz and Taub have done, shows a thinly veiled effort to gin up a scandal for which there is little or no evidence.

The Jews residing in the territories which form the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland are living in a state of virtual siege, and rather than being encouraged or enabled in violence by the government in Jerusalem or the Israel Defense Forces, many living in these communities feel they are not given adequate protection. That is why a small minority of them sometimes engage in actions that are either misconstrued as “Jewish terrorism” or are, in fact, cases of illegal retaliation against those who are trying to make their lives hell.

But rather than condoning wrongdoing, the IDF seeks to stop them and arrest Jewish perpetrators. That stands in stark contrast to the policy of the Palestinian Authority, which rewards terrorism against Jews with salaries and/or pensions for those who commit such crimes, as well as to their families. In Israeli society, those accused of misbehavior against Arabs are pariahs and derided as extremists. Palestinians who shed Jewish blood are treated as heroes.

An Israeli conundrum

And that is also the context in which the new death-penalty law should be understood.

Rather than being considered as nothing more than evidence of Jewish lust for violence or even revenge, it is an attempt to solve a serious problem for which Israel’s critics have no solution.

In just the last decade, there have been several thousand incidents of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. Even if you treat the Oct. 7 attacks—the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—as a singular event, the total of every other such event in which hundreds of Jews were murdered and thousands maimed and wounded amounts to several thousand.

Yet each time a Palestinian Arab commits an act of cold-blooded murder, he or she can be confident that sooner or later, they will avoid punishment. That’s because they know that Hamas and other terror groups are always seeking to kidnap Israelis in an effort to force Jerusalem to free terrorists in exchange for ransoming them. Even those who have committed the most bestial of crimes, including those that occurred on Oct. 7, when the slaughter was particularly depraved and involved what American legal scholars call “aggravating factors” in death-penalty cases such as rape, torture and kidnapping, have been let loose. They return to their homes or go into comfortable exiles, acclaimed as heroes and paid generous sums as a reward for their terrorism. Applying the death penalty to those who committed such despicable crimes may be controversial but it would certainly be justice.

The death penalty exists in Israel, but to date, only one person—Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann—has been executed in the Jewish state. Many in Israel, as is true elsewhere, oppose capital punishment in principle. Even Jewish religious law, which allows for the death penalty, places rigorous limits on its application.

But as long as terrorists who commit murder are given, at best, life sentences for their crimes, that sets up a situation not only in which they will eventually be freed, but also a situation in which Palestinians are incentivized to kidnap Jews. And that is exactly what happened on Oct. 7.

Many Israelis believe that the only solution is to execute the terrorists before they can be freed in hostage exchanges.

Will that deter terrorism? That is far from clear, especially since many of those who murder Israelis are motivated by thoughts of martyrdom in the jihad against the Jews.

Nor is it likely that Israel’s liberal-dominated Supreme Court will allow the death-penalty law to be implemented, though, as in many of their other egregious interventions and power grabs, their assertion of a right to overrule the legislation is entirely unsupported by law and inherently anti-democratic.

Still, creating a legal mechanism that removes one major incentive for murders of Jews is not racist. It is simply an attempt to find a way to avoid a cycle of violence in which terrorism is rewarded.

Nevertheless, the argument that this law is more evidence of Israeli barbarism is absurd. While many democratic countries have outlawed the death penalty, the practice is far from rare around the world. In the United States, where some states allow the death penalty and others do not, fewer than two dozen murderers are executed on an annual basis. But executions for a variety of crimes (including for sexual preferences and behavior that is defended as a basic human right in the West) are widespread in Arab and Muslim countries, including in Palestinian-controlled territory, as well as elsewhere in the Third World. China executes thousands of people every year for an unspecified series of offenses against its tyrannical regime, as well as keeps approximately a million prisoners in the laogai, Beijing’s own modern version of the Soviet “gulag archipelago.”

Seen in that context, Israel’s efforts to deter a wave of terrorist murders against its citizens ought not to be considered an outrage or even controversial.

An ideological agenda

So, why are mainstream and even liberal Jewish news outlets treating the death-penalty law, as well as the often distorted if not outright false reports about an epidemic of “settler violence,” as a major issue? And why are they doing this while also refusing to cover the far larger incidence of Palestinian and Islamist terrorism against Israelis in Judea and Samaria?

The answer is simple. It’s part of the general ideological assault on Israel and Jewish rights that has its roots in Soviet disinformation. It has been amplified and weaponized by woke ideological advocates of toxic ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that treat Israelis and Jews as “white” oppressors of Palestinian “people of color.” In this formulation, the former are always in the wrong, no matter what they do, and the latter are always the victims, regardless of their commitment to terrorist violence in their genocidal war against the Jewish state.

Seen in that light, people of good faith and conscience ought not to be duped into believing this false narrative about Israeli violence and moral equivalence to Palestinian crimes. It’s not just based on out-of-context reasoning and unreliable statistics. The claims about the death penalty and the settlers are rooted in antisemitic tropes and false arguments. To lend them credibility isn’t an example of principle, whether on the part of Jews or others. It’s evidence of either bad judgment or bad faith.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.

Anna Grabowska (Źródło zdjęcia – Facebook)

Kto ma wejść do tunelu?

Anna Grabowska (Anne Goldschmid)

Asking the wrong questions about antisemitism

Jonathan S. Tobin

British novelist Roald Dahl (1916-1990) at home in the United Kingdom, Dec. 10, 1971. Photo by Ronald Dumont/Daily Express/Getty Images.

If only every person who hates Jews were as open about their biases as author Roald Dahl (1916-1990). The famed children’s writer, who earned literary immortality with books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The BFG, was widely acclaimed as one of the 20th century’s greatest storytellers, as well as among its best-selling authors. A cultural icon in his own time, his fame has continued decades after his death. So, too, has his notoriety; he was also an unabashed and self-identified antisemite.

That aspect of his life story is given a thorough examination in the hit play “Giant” by British playwright Mark Rosenblatt, which recently opened on Broadway at New York’s Music Box Theater after an award-winning run on London’s West End.

Ripped from the headlines

Antisemitism has been surging throughout the West since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It has only grown during the two-and-a-half years since then as the Jewish state has been waging war on those terrorists, their Hezbollah allies and their Iranian sponsors. That has made the play’s topic even more relevant, as those flocking to sold-out performances to see actor John Lithgow’s brilliant star turn as Dahl are asked to absorb more than two hours of the title character’s mix of charm, wit and monstrous bile. Audience members walk away contemplating the difficult dilemma that his behavior posed for those who profited from publishing his books or lived with him. Indeed, with Israel being blasted for bombing Gaza, Iran and Lebanon—just as was true more than 40 years ago, when the events of the drama unfolded, and Israel was in the world’s crosshairs—it could be said to be ripped from the headlines.

“Giant” presents the truth about the author in a way that leaves no wiggle room about acknowledging the depths of his hatred. We can wonder what caused a man who was responsible for so much work that was as life-affirming as it was delightful to go down that dark road. And we can also puzzle over the questions about how to separate a decent person’s disgust with his views from how they feel about his books and whether they can think about them the same way once they witness his antisemitism.

Even as the play basks in generally well-earned praise from critics as well as audiences, its topicality is deceptive. For all of the skills of the playwright, director and cast, it doesn’t offer much that is of use in navigating a world in which many of Dahl’s horrible ideas about Israel and Jews, which were considered beyond the pale in his lifetime (these days, no longer considered disqualifying), have been mainstreamed. They have become not merely commonplace, but are now a fashionable orthodoxy whose adherents dominate the worlds of academia and culture while also gaining an increasingly secure foothold in politics.

Respectable antisemitism

The trouble is that, unlike Dahl, most of those who are currently spreading hatred of Jews in academia, popular culture and politics are doing so while also claiming to oppose such prejudice. They are, they insist, just “criticizing” the Israeli government and its leaders, calling into question their right to self-defense.

But peel away that veneer, and the real issue becomes transparent: their battle is against the existence of Israel itself. While seeking to legitimize the war to eliminate the one Jewish state on the planet and oppose efforts to strip its enemies of the means to achieve that vile goal (such as the Iranian nuclear program), they tell us that they like Jews and wish to defend them—or, at least, the “good” ones who condemn Israel, rather than the “bad” pro-Israel or Zionist ones.

Even as they float conspiracy theories that could have been lifted out of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, popular podcasters on the right, like Tucker Carlson, and those on the left, like Hasan Piker, deny that they are antisemites. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose entire career has revolved around his obsession with destroying Israel and stigmatizing its Jewish supporters, does so while attending Passover seders that conveniently leave out any message of the essential element of Jewish identity relating to the land of Israel.

But not so Dahl. He was ahead of his time in terms of a popular figure taking up the cause of Jew-hatred. That marked him as an outlier in polite society during his lifetime. Meanwhile, much of what he believed is now so prevalent that it is a surprise when one encounters a famous writer or artist who resists the demand to virtue-signal their animus for Israel.

Escaping cancellation

Dahl made clear his hatred for the State of Israel—and all Jews, for that matter—in 1983, when he wrote a review praising a book about the 1982 Lebanon War and again in an equally infamous interview with The New Statesman magazine. In an essay published in the Literary Review, he didn’t just engage in one-sided and unfair criticisms of Israel’s part in that conflict; he also vented his belief that the Jewish state and its supporters were analogous to the Nazis. Indeed, he aimed his poison pen at a broad array of targets in such a way as to blame Jews everywhere for the supposed crimes of Israel, not the least of which was its creation.

For this, he was widely criticized. Still, despite his own conviction that Jews ruthlessly silenced and punished their opponents, he didn’t suffer much, if at all, for exposing his bigotry so brazenly. His books continue to sell briskly—with many having been made into movies—and he was never accorded the pariah status that one might otherwise think would be given to someone who utters such vile language and holds such hateful views. The worst of the repercussions was that he was denied a knighthood from the British government and offered a lesser honor instead, which he refused. Nor did Tom Maschler, the Jewish publisher who had championed his work and considered him a friend—himself a child survivor of the Holocaust—disavow him.

In 2020, some 30 years after his death, his family and the Roald Dahl Story Company that controls the rights to his work issued an apology for his antisemitism. The admission was prompted by a belief that amid the ex-post facto cancellations of many famous figures for past sins of racism, real or otherwise, amid the moral panic that swept the West after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Dahl’s legacy might also suffer.

But they were wrong to think that the mobs toppling statues during the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020 were interested in punishing Jew-hatred or wanted retrospective atonement for it. And in the wake of Oct. 7, Dahl’s anti-Israel diatribes don’t seem as shocking as they did back in the 1980s.

The author’s reaction to the 1982 First Lebanon War, in which Israeli forces sought to push the terrorists of the Palestine Liberation Organization out of their strongholds in Southern Lebanon and Beirut, was, after all, a preview for the fighting now going on with Hezbollah. Until then, the PLO operated as a state within a state, using Lebanon as a base from which it could launch both deadly terrorist raids and missile attacks on Israel, as Hezbollah terrorists also did.

Lebanon in 1982 was the moment when the tiny, embattled and besieged Jewish state started being viewed as the “Goliath” of the Middle East while the Palestinians, who stubbornly refused to make peace with the Jews, were dubbed the new “David.”

The screed was, in equal turns, ignorant about the Jews, Israel and the Middle East conflict. But Dahl’s controversial essay didn’t just engage in the usual bashing of the Israeli government and its efforts to fend off terrorist opponents. He saw the creation of the Jewish state as illegitimate and wrong. He wrote that the Jews were sympathetic when they were the victims of the Nazis, but had become a race of “barbarous murderers.”

He raged at their temerity for acting in the same way any sovereign state would behave when placed in a similar situation. He viewed any Jew who would not join him in supporting Israel’s destruction as being equally guilty. Dahl’s boundless sympathy for Palestinian and Lebanese killed or injured in the war against Israel was rooted in complete indifference to Israeli victims of Arab terrorism.

As respected historian Paul Johnson wrote at the time in The Spectator, it was “the most disgraceful item to appear in a respectable British publication for a very long time.”

Antisemitic hypocrisy

Some 43 years after its publication, what ought to strike the reader is how similar much of it is to so much contemporary “criticism” of Israel. Indeed, how different is it from contemporary attacks on Israel published in “respectable” publications in Britain or the United States about Jerusalem’s efforts to ensure that Hamas, and its Hezbollah and Iranian allies, can’t perpetrate another Oct. 7? The writers who denounce Israel’s existence in The New York Times or The Guardian are perhaps more cautious about also venting age-old tropes of antisemitism. But the podcast conspiracy-mongers on both left and right who speak to far larger audiences are not.

In “Giant,” a fictional character—a Jewish woman who works for Dahl’s American publisher—is assigned the task of pushing back at the author. She is a “good” “progressive” Jew who sees Israel as flawed and agrees with its government’s detractors. But she does point out that Israel didn’t behave any differently than Britain did when it was attacked in World War II.

The mention of the fire-bombing of Dresden is also telling. It was an arguably defensible military raid in the context of a total war against Adolf Hitler’s Germany, albeit one that resulted in indiscriminate slaughter that was far worse than anything Israel has ever done. Had someone actually said that to Dahl, it might have stung a man who was a decorated pilot in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, and thus a hypocrite for saying that only “barbarous” Jews and Nazis behave in this manner. More of that would have made the analogy between Dahl’s rants and today’s “criticism” of Israel even more obvious.

But Dahl’s real sin in the play is for merging his loathing of Israel with his equally venomous animus toward all Jews.

The version of Maschler depicted in the play is eager to downplay his friend’s indiscreet signaling of his prejudices and allow them both to get on with the business of publishing books and making money. He also wants nothing to do with Israel or the struggles of the Jews, even as his pal Roald goads him, like the playground bullies the publisher encountered as a child. He believes that Dahl’s brilliance justifies any effort to make the controversy go away with minimal gestures of contrition that the author doesn’t want to make.

The play’s Maschler is the sort of Jew whose complaint about the post-Oct. 7 wave of antisemitism is that it leaves so little room for those who just want to get on with their lives, without being drawn into the drama of Israel-related hate. Like the American sales rep, he may even agree with some of Dahl’s Israel-bashing, even if it goes too far for their taste. But the author’s pathological need to bully and demean Jews is too great to accommodate them.

It is only in the play’s final scenes, when Lithgow acts out the actual transcript of Dahl’s New Statesman interview, that the full portrait of his character is revealed. Having indulged in the crudest of stereotyping and claiming that Hitler was likely justified in thinking ill of the Jews, he owns the label of antisemite. That leaves neither the audience nor those in Dahl’s life with the ability to deny that he is anything other than a hate-monger.

It may be, as some critics have noted of Lithgow’s performance, that Dahl was a Shakespearean character who is a mix of good and evil that epitomizes the complexity of the human condition. As I wrote at the time of his family’s apology, his antisemitism shouldn’t mean that we ought to cancel his books. Great art has nothing to do with good character. That is something that is proved over and over again in the examination of the lives of great musicians, painters, and, yes, the authors of beloved children’s books.

A distinction without a difference

Dahl was also living proof that once you remove the thin veneer of justifiable concern about any misdeed that Israelis are supposed to have committed, the gap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is revealed to be a distinction without a difference. And that is why so much of the commentary about this play and antisemitism in general is still asking the wrong questions about the subject.

Some 78 years after the birth of the modern-day State of Israel, we should no longer be trying to draw distinctions that will allow Israel-bashers to avoid being tagged as what they really are: antisemites. Instead, we should be noticing the painfully obvious similarities that unite all anti-Zionists, whether they are as uncivil as Dahl or not.

Those who cheer for or rationalize attacks and violence, including the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust that took place on Oct. 7, as well as deny Israelis the right to defend themselves against those who pledge its repeat, are on the same level as Dahl.

Are students or college professors who chant for Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”) or terrorism against Jews wherever they live (“Globalize the intifada”) really idealists who should be accorded the respect that sophisticated theater-goers are forced to retrospectively deny to a nasty old man who thinks the Jews deserved the Holocaust?

Is the contemporary journalist or politician who traffics in blood libels about Israelis committing a mythical “genocide” someone to agree to disagree with? Is that akin to how we are expected to react to an open neo-Nazi who does so in a less dignified manner?

The real lesson to be drawn from “Giant” isn’t the answer to the age-old debate about what to think about good art created by bad people. Nor is it a guide about how to behave when a favorite childhood author turns out to be a rotten bigot.

It is this: Those who embrace the cause of Israel’s destruction and the genocide of half of the world’s Jewish population that goes with that belief don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to evaluating their character. Some may act in a less repugnant manner than Dahl and pretend to oppose antisemitism even as they support it, as is the case with the mayor of New York. Others are less civil or arguably even crazier, as might be said of some anti-Israel podcasters. But they are all part of the same evil cause. And they all deserve the same opprobrium a decent society should accord to antisemites like Roald Dahl.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.

America’s Real ‘Special Relationship’ When the Pageantry Is Stripped Away

Jonathan Sacerdoti

US soldiers stand next to a Patriot anti-missile battery (not seen) west of Jerusalem, Oct. 23, 2012. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

„Twoi żydowscy dziadkowie zagłosowaliby na Zohrana”

Jill

O zawłaszczaniu postępowej kultury żydowskiej przez antysemitów

Pomnik bohaterów powstania w getcie warszawskim autorstwa rzeźbiarza Nathana Rapaporta. Monument wzniesiono na terenie zniszczonego getta. Jego kopia znajduje się w Yad Vashem w Jerozolimie.

Pisałam już wcześniej o antysemickiej publikacji Mehdiego Hasana, kiedy to we właściwy dla niego sposób przywołał rodzinę Bibasów w służbie swojej podłej agendy. Nie planowałam robić tego ponownie, po prostu dlatego, że nie chcę dostarczać temu żałosnemu oportuniście kolejnych kliknięć czy polubień. Ale ponieważ tym razem dotyczy to mojej własnej rodziny, czuję, że muszę się odnieść:

Zeteo
@zeteo_news
„Twoi [żydowscy] dziadkowie zagłosowaliby na Zohrana. Twoi dziadkowie prawdopodobnie byli socjalistami, bo tym właśnie była większość Żydów z Europy Wschodniej w Nowym Jorku na przełomie wieków.”

@mollycrabapple rozmawia z @simonerzim o historii żydowskiego socjalizmu w Nowym Jorku.
18:06 · 24 kwietnia 2026 · 86,1 tys. Wyświetleń

Mamy tu Simone Zimmerman, która wystąpiła w żałosnym antyizraelskim filmie, który już zrecenzowałam, żebyście nie musieli go oglądać, oraz Molly Crabapple, autorkę książki Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. Nie będę twierdzić, że ją przeczytałam (bo nie przeczytałam), jednak na podstawie tego, co o niej widziałam (tj. zapowiedzi na Amazonie i blurbu Naomi Klein wychwalającego jej wspaniałość), sądzę, że jej ogólna teza brzmi: dobrzy Żydzi nie muszą być syjonistami, bo bundowcy nimi nie byli.

Od czasów studiów sporo czasu poświęciłam myśleniu o bundowcach. Po pierwsze, miałam profesora, który urodził się w getcie warszawskim, a jego ojciec — lider tego ruchu — zginął w powstaniu w getcie. Gdy w 2022 roku odwiedziłam Polskę, znalazłam w Warszawie lśniący pomnik poświęcony jego pamięci. Po drugie, jestem prawnuczką rosyjskiego socjalisty mówiącego w jidysz, który wyemigrował do Stanów Zjednoczonych na początku XX wieku. Nie był on bundowcem per se (ani też antysyjonistą), ale należał do tej samej ogólnej kategorii demograficznej. Ta historia zdecydowanie zasługuje na badanie i dyskusję, ale musi to być robione we właściwym kontekście historycznym.

Antysyjonizm Bundu z początku XX wieku był w istocie aktem oporu — wobec nazistów i innych nazistopodobnych bytów, a nie wobec innych Żydów. Ich antysyjonizm wynikał z przekonania, że mają pełne prawo żyć w Europie Wschodniej i zachować kulturę oraz język jidysz, tak jak ich rodziny czyniły to przez setki lat. Była to piękna idea — ale po niemal całkowitej zagładzie podczas Holokaustu okazała się całkowicie nieskuteczna. W okresie świetności Bundu Polska miała drugą co do wielkości populację żydowską na świecie (pierwsze miejsce zajmował Nowy Jork) — ponad 3 miliony. Prawie osiemdziesiąt lat po powstaniu państwa żydowskiego pozostało tam zaledwie kilka tysięcy. Polska reprezentuje to, co zostało utracone. Izrael reprezentuje to, co zostało zyskane.

Bundowcy i ich rodziny doświadczali autentycznych trudów życia w sztetlu — pogromów, biedy, surowych zim. Ich przywódcy, podobnie jak przywódcy syjonistyczni w okresie przedpaństwowym i w pierwszych latach istnienia Izraela, byli również niezwykle ofiarni. Nie dołączali do tego ruchu dla sławy czy bogactwa. W przypadku mojego socjalistycznego pradziadka było to proste: był Żydem, który dorastał w cieniu Imperium Rosyjskiego. W tamtych czasach albo było się za carem, albo nie. On nie był — i podjął decyzję o emigracji z tego przeklętego terytorium trzy dekady przed dojściem nazistów do władzy. Przenieśmy się o pokolenie dalej, do bundowców, którzy stanęli na pierwszej linii frontu przeciwko silnie uzbrojonemu najeźdźcy, wiedząc, że najpewniej nie wygrają. Może gdyby mieli lepszą broń… ale to dygresja.

Zrównywanie moich socjalistycznych przodków z Zohranem Mamdanim i jego zwolennikami jest nie tylko błędne, ale i obraźliwe. Zohran może się określać jako socjalista, ale wszystko, co robi, wskazuje na to, że jest po prostu bogatym dzieciakiem popierającym przemoc wobec Żydów. Myślę, że mogę mówić w imieniu moich własnych dziadków, gdy powiem, że by go nie poparli. Mogliby poprzeć Berniego Sandersa w czasie, gdy ja to zrobiłam, ale to było niemal dekadę temu i zbyt wiele się zmieniło. Moi przodkowie nie byli głupi. Rozpoznawali wroga, gdy go widzieli. Gdyby nie, nie pisałabym teraz tych słów po angielsku, siedząc na kanapie w Stanach Zjednoczonych.

Oto pytanie istotne dla tego tematu, którego Mehdi i jego żydowscy goście nie podejmą, ale ja tak: dlaczego 7 października Hamas celowo zaatakował mieszkańców kibuców — społeczności będących być może jedynym udanym przejawem socjalizmu w naszej współczesnej epoce? Dlaczego nie uderzono w osadników albo entuzjastów Bibiego? Według tych oportunistów z Zeteo socjalizm i „postępowe” zasady mają stanowić tarczę przeciw nienawiści do Żydów. Szkoda, że w praktyce to nie zadziałało (ani w 1939 roku, ani w 2023) w społecznościach żydowskich, które opierały całe swoje istnienie na tych ideach.

W kibucu Nir Oz, jednej ze społeczności w rejonie przygranicznym Gazy zmasakrowanych w ten Czarny Szabat, jeden z izraelskich ratowników przydzielonych do zajmowania się ciałami przeglądał tablicę ogłoszeń, brnąc przez zniszczenia. Widniała na niej ulotka: „dołącz do nas w Jerozolimie, aby protestować przeciwko Netanjahu i nielegalnej okupacji Zachodniego Brzegu przez rząd”. Planowana data wydarzenia? 7 października 2023 roku, godz. 18:00.

Nie trzeba dodawać, że tam nie dotarli.

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Link do oryginału:

The Liberal Jew

“Your Jewish Grandparents Would Have Voted For Zohran”

I have written on Mehdi Hasan’s antisemitic publication before, when he inappropriately brought up the Bibas family in the service of his vile agenda. I didn’t plan to do so again, simply because I do not wish to give this pathetic grifter more clicks or likes. But since this one involves my own family, I fee…