He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by actor, singer and director Jonah Platt who has dedicated his energies since Oct. 7 to advocating for Jewish solidarity and unity. Platt, the son of a successful film producer and philanthropist, hosts a podcast called “Being Jewish With Jonah Platt,” points out that most of those Jews who have remained silent were never engaged or committed Jewishly. Nevertheless, he says the failure of those who had often called upon the Jewish community to offer them solidarity on other issues but were then not willing to do so when the Jews needed help after Oct. 7 was noticed. Platt noted that there were people who in the second week of October couldn't put their names on a letter saying free the hostages because they couldn't get involved. “That, I'll never understand and to me that's pretty inexcusable,” he said.

But, he adds, no one should be shocked when those Jewish artists who never opened their mouths on behalf of the Jewish people on a good day didn’t suddenly open their mouths on a really terrible day.

Platt says that those who run the entertainment business are generally worried about politics becoming part of the conversation about their work. Nevertheless, he pointed out that there is no “blacklisting” of pro-Israel artists in Hollywood. Those who have spoken up for Israel like actress Ginnifer Goodwin, who appeared on Platt’s podcast, haven’t suffered in their careers.

Nevertheless, the erasure of Jews from the movies is, he thinks, “an inherited ethos” from the 1930s when the Jewish founders of Hollywood were desperate to assimilate and to avoid the antisemitism of that era. 

Another problem is that even many of those artists who don’t hesitate to identify Jewishly define themselves largely by the ideas of social justice and solidarity with others rather than advocating for Jewish causes. In this way, they are uncomfortable about supporting Israel and Israeli victims without also expressing sympathy for Arabs who have suffered as a result of a war their side started.

With respect to how Jewish families can deal with divisions caused by some family members who have taken sides against Israel, Platt says the most important thing is to preserve relationships with loved ones while being honest about those differences. In this he speaks with experience because his brother, actor Ben Platt has spoken up on behalf of the Palestinians and against Israel.

As for how the community as a whole should deal with those who oppose Israel’s existence, he takes a very different view. He believes there should be room for questions and debate and criticisms of Israel’s government, especially for young people and others who are not fully educated about the issues. But we shouldn’t have to debate about whether we ought to be connected with Israel.

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According to Brent, the reason for the revival of Marxism is, “the hatred of the American system of government and of the West generally that has been inculcated in generation after generation of young people who have gone to our most liberal and our most privileged universities and progressive schools.” This has, he says, created an appetite for a belief in the power of the state to “smash” bourgeois values, liberalism and institute more equality. But Brent points out that all this failed ideology has to offer is “an equality that is actually based on deprivation and enslavement rather than on lifting people up.”

The renewed infatuation with Marxism and the overlooking of its role in the murder of more than 100 million people during the 20th century is, Brent argues, also directly related to the support for Hamas, anti-Zionism and the war against Israel among young people. It also explains the support that an anti-Zionist like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gets from many young people.

Alongside of this trend is a renewed interest in the Jewish Labor Bund, the socialist Jewish movement that thrived in Europe before the Holocaust. Brent believes it is wrong for contemporary anti-Zionists to use it to attack the existence of the state of Israel.

“The back in the 1930s was not between Bundism and Israel,” Brent points out. It was a debate about, “Do we stay here or do we go there? Where do we have the best chance of survival? And by that I don't mean simply physical survival, but the survival of our traditions, the survival of our language, the survival of our customs, our literature, our music, and so on. That was the issue. Bundism, in the classical sense, was never against Israel as such. So, it's a bit dishonest to take that principled intellectual dispute of the 1930s and transport it into the present day.”

Brent also discussed the work of YIVO, which seeks to preserve the record of the Eastern European Jewish civilization that perished in the Holocaust and the Soviet gulags. While the Bundists shouldn’t be blamed for believing that Europe could be a place where Jewish life could continue to flourish, the verdict of history vindicated the belief of the Zionists that it was doomed there.

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Liberal Journalists and members of the foreign policy establishment are so deranged by their hatred of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they’d rather the Iranian Islamist terror regime win a war than see those two leaders get credit for doing the right thing.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Michael Doran, the senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute. Doran believes there are seven myths about the conflict that need to be debunked if Americans are to understand what’s happening in the Middle East.

The first is that it is a “war of choice.” It is not, he argues. The only other option was for the U.S. and Israel to wait for the Iranians to construct a sufficiently strong force of missiles with which they could defend their nuclear program at which point it would have been too late to do anything about it. The second is that President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal would have prevented the threat if Trump hadn’t withdrawn from it. The truth is the opposite. The accord guaranteed that Iran would get a bomb rather than preventing it.

The third is that President Joe Biden had left Trump a peaceful world. That is also false because Biden’s weakness and appeasement efforts empowered Iran and left the Middle East in flames. Another myth was that Iran was ready to compromise with Trump. As with their dealings with Obama and Biden, Tehran’s idea of compromise was the United States tolerating Iran’s terrorism, missiles and nuclear ambitions.

Doran also points out that the idea that stopping Iran is a distraction from the need to contain and confront China is wrong. Conceding victory to Iran will immeasurably strengthen its Chinese ally.

The most damaging myths are the ideas that Israel dragged the United States into war and that Trump and Netanyahu are megalomaniacal warmongers. The claims about the Jewish state deceiving Trump into war are more about the antisemitism of anti-Zionists and other Israel-bashers and completely divorced from the truth. The main purpose of the war is to defend American national interests. Nor are the claims about the two leaders true. They waited until all other avenues for ending the Iranian threat were tried before ordering the strikes on Iranian targets.

Doran also deprecates those who analogize the war to past historical incidents like the 1956 Suez crisis. The United States is, unlike Britain and France in 1956, not a declining power that can be muscled by powerful allies into abandoning their interests. While the outcome of the war and negotiations to end it are unclear, Doran points out that the notion that the U.S. and Israel are doomed to defeat simply isn’t true.

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Lekht argues that to understand what’s happened, we need to realize that current events were catalyzed by the UN’s 2001 Durban Conference, the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the Second Intifada. These events helped introduce into the West an ideological assault on Zionism and Jewish rights for which the organized Jewish community was completely unprepared. What’s more, she says, there is no major Jewish legacy organization that's running a campaign devoted to opposing anti-Zionism.

The anti-Zionist propaganda which is aimed at attacking an essential element of Jewish identity that has been normalized in academia and throughout Western society is not new. It is, she points out, a vestige of Soviet disinformation and propaganda.

Lecht, who emigrated from the former Soviet Union as a child, says that Jews living under Soviet rule were immune to this propaganda because they understood instinctively that what they were hearing from the Communist government’s media was always untrue. By contrast, Americans are vulnerable to such appeals. That’s especially the case when they come packaged as part of fashionable ideologies about race that have been adopted by liberal cultural and media institutions as a new orthodoxy. In this manner, such toxic ideas are accepted even when they are specifically crafted to target Jews.

She teaches that Jew hatred can be understood as part of a “three-era framework,” consisting of three distinct eras, anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism that are all part of a demonization project. The mistake that many Jews and supporters of Israel make is to try and debate the truth of blood libels about Israel such as the claim that it is committing “genocide” or defend the Jewish state’s right to exist. As much as it is important that such blatant lies be refuted, Lekht says what is needed is an effort to stop playing defense and isolate the Jew-haters spreading propaganda.

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Jews around the world are reeling from the unprecedented surge of antisemitism that followed the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They may feel helpless when confronted by the way the Jew-haters have mainstreamed tropes of antisemitism in order to demonize Israel and its supporters. But, says JNS editor-in-chief, the answer to this problem is not to give up. Jews don’t merely need to wake up and fight back but to do so effectively and win.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by JNS columnist Melanie Phillips, who has written a handbook for doing just that, titled, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege.

According to Phillips, many Jews have responded to the post-Oct. 7 tsunami of hate with shock and confusion. She says that Jews have an absolute duty to stand up against lies, against injustice, and to tell the truth. “It seemed to me that there was much that could be done if people had the right ideas about how best to go about this, " said Phillips. “And I thought, and I still think, that the organized Jewish world in the diaspora didn't really have a strategy.”

Instead of playing defense, Phillips believes the Jewish world has to get off the back foot onto the front foot and go on the offensive. Yet too many are ignorant about the conflict with the Palestinians and the way leftist ideologues are spreading Hamas propaganda.

Part of the problem is what she calls, “liberals with moral vertigo.” Phillips says some Jews were so stunned on October 7th by the people that they had thought were being oppressed by the Israelis, but had turned into barbaric, psychopathic, slaughterers for which there was absolutely no reasonable excuse and they can't process it. Yet she believes that the pro-Israel and sane Jewish community can make some headway with them. But, she says, the first thing is you have to park your anger and reach out to those who used to rationalize Palestinian behavior and try to reach them with the truth and the facts.

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by historian and Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead who points out that surges of antisemitism in the United States, such as the one we’re currently experiencing, is a function of other factors which impact national discourse like economics and mass migration.

Mead also says that while antisemitism on the right is highly visible because of celebrity podcasters like Tucker Carlson, the overwhelming majority of Republicans still support Israel and the war in Iran. He argues that changes in attitudes toward Israel and increasing antisemitism are far deeper and more widely spread on the left right now.

While he doesn’t minimize the impact that antisemitic advocacy from podcasters can have on our national discourse, Mead says it's important to remember that not everyone in the country is immersed in online conspiracy theories and listen to extremists on the internet more for entertainment than for news.

American policy toward Iran is, as is the case with all foreign policy decisions, being decided by what the president of the day considers to be in U.S. interests, and not because of what Israel says or wants. As for the outcome of the current war, he admits there’s no way of knowing the outcome for sure. But he believes that the most likely result right now is one which may leave the current Islamist regime in place but with their ability to inflict harm on their neighbors or the world vastly reduced. That may oblige the U.S. and Israel to have to attack it again in the future, invoking the “mowing the grass” metaphor.

That’s in keeping with Mead’s belief that Trump’s foreign policy remains essentially “Jacksonian” in that he isn’t much interested in spreading American values and ideology abroad but is determined to defend the country’s interests aggressively.

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Dara Horn, author of the highly influential 2021 book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present and the recently published Passover-themed graphic novel One Little Goat. Horn is the founder and president of The Tell Institute, which is devoted to educating the public about Jewish civilization. She says the lessons of her previous book still apply in the post-Oct. 7 era.

 She argues that “people tell stories about dead Jews that make them feel good about themselves” and “living Jews have to erase themselves in order for those stories to be told.” But after Oct. 7, it’s clear that it's actually simpler than that. “The message of people who love dead Jews, which unfortunately has only been confirmed in the past two years, is that non-Jewish societies generally only find Jews acceptable when Jews have no power.”

Ultimately, she says, the point of venerating dead Jews while delegitimizing live ones, like those in Israel, “is the goal of working toward a final solution of eliminating Jewish civilization.”

Her graphic novel is aimed primarily at children but is sophisticated enough to have a lot for adults too. It presents a surrealist seder in which a lost afikomen prolongs the evening for six months and prompts a journey through Jewish history for its protagonist while being led by a talking goat. In the course of the story, the essential lesson of Passover that every Jew understands that they were personally liberated from Egypt is brought to life.

According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, at the heart of much of the opposition to the joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran is general ignorance about the fanatical nature of the Tehran Islamist terror regime. Rooted in religious fanaticism, their sponsorship of terrorism and nuclear ambitions are non-negotiable to a government of theocratic tyrants. That makes it imperative that Washington cease allowing them to delay until they get a weapon.

Tobin is joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Retired Israel Defense Forces General Yosef Kuperwasser, the director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. He says the answer to the question about why the regime underestimated President Donald Trump’s determination to stop them from continuing to seek a nuclear weapon and spread terrorism is rooted in its essential nature.

“They couldn't do anything else, because accepting the conditions put forward by the president would have portrayed them as weak, and they cannot afford to be seen weak at home,” says Kuperwasser. He added that they also are really committed to having this nuclear weapon and will never give it up. What’s more, they believed that isolationists within the administration would persuade Trump not to act with Israel to avert the threat. Kuperwasser pointed out that the mullahs’ interpretation of Islam also leads them to believe that it is permissible to deceive foes with compromises that they don’t intend to abide by, rendering more negotiations with Tehran pointless.

Kuperwasser also tempers optimism about the majority of the Iranian people using the U.S. and Israeli attacks on the regime to overthrow it. So long as the minority within the country that are still loyal to the theocrats have a monopoly on armed force and the opposition is deeply divided along ideological and sectarian lines, there is still a good chance that the Islamic government will survive.

Kuperwasser is also deeply worried by the willingness of many Americans on the left and the far right to blame Israel for the war. It is, he says, “a very strange situation where we are attacked from both sides of the aisle.” But he insists that Israel and its supporters must prioritize. “Our first priority is to make sure that the Iran terrorist regime is out of business.” It might, he says, cause Israel to pay a political price for achieving that end in the United States. But before that problem can be addressed, the existential threat from Iran to Israel as well as the West must be eliminated.

Tobin is joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by veteran diplomat and Tikvah Fund head Elliott Abrams. He believes that a negotiated deal between the United States and Iran that might prevent a military conflict are highly unlikely. Abrams asserts that after the severe losses they suffered during last year’s 12-day war on Iran by Israel and the United States, Trump thought Tehran understood that it was in no position to avoid making real concessions on its nuclear program and other issues. But the Iranians clearly are more worried about looking weak in the eyes of its restive population.

The Islamists are also, Abrams says, much like the Palestinians in their thinking about the conflict. They believe that demonstrating their willingness to be steadfast and continue the war against the U.S. and Israel is vital to maintaining their ideological purpose despite it not being in their interest to do so.

On the other hand, Abrams points out that a failure on Trump’s part in following through on his threats against Iran and his promise of help to the Iranian people will have serious consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Trump, too, cannot afford to look weak in the eyes of America’s adversaries.

As for the situation in Gaza in the aftermath of the cease-fire that ended the post-Oct. 7 war on Hamas, Abrams says that Trump’s Board of Peace is “frankly absurd” and “won’t achieve anything.” The situation in which Hamas continues to dig in and strengthen its military position in the portion of Gaza it still controls while Israel attacks and seeks to weaken the Islamists will likely continue until, probably after the next election, Jerusalem decides that it can no longer tolerate a Hamas state in Gaza, even if it is smaller than the one that existed prior to Oct. 7 and not as militarily strong.

Abrams also discussed the surge in antisemitism in the United States, particularly on the right. He said President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are in a position to do something about it. The question is whether they will. Meanwhile, the Tikvah Fund leader said that American Jewry should concentrate more on strengthening their own community than on playing defense against antisemites.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Israeli historian and activist Yoav Heller, the leader of the Fourth Quarter movement that is trying to transcend this divide. Created in 2022 as a reaction to the four stalemated elections that took place after 2019, the group, whose name references the effort to ensure that the Jewish state survives past its 100th birthday, seeks to bring Israelis from across the political, ethnic and religious spectrum together.

Heller, a former journalist and historian of the Holocaust, says the point of the Fourth Quarter, which, he says, has hundreds of thousands of members, is to allow Israelis from different communities to experience each other’s pain rather than just blaming each other for the nation’s problems. In particular, he wants to build support for a party that he may or may not lead that will be pledged only to serve in a unity government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and his centrist and left-wing opponents.

Heller is a critic of Netanyahu but believes that if the prime minister wins re-election, even those who have said they will never serve with him, should join with him to form a unity coalition. Indeed, he is critical of those parties for not agreeing to serve with Netanyahu after the Oct. 7 attacks.

Netanyahu’s efforts to reform the out-of-control and all-powerful Israeli judiciary has been a main point of contention to the point where the government’s critics were prepared to tear the country apart over it in 2023. That may well have encouraged Hamas to attack on Oct. 7. But the Fourth Quarter’s platform features support for judicial reform, albeit in a manner that Heller claims will provide consensus rather than one side of the political divide triumphing over the other.

But according to Heller, the point of the group isn’t just politics. Its real purpose is to awaken a higher degree of civic engagement and local philanthropy and volunteerism among Israelis. It is only by creating that communal spirit that seemingly unsolvable problems can be solved allowing the Jewish state, unlike previous Jewish commonwealths more than two millennia ago, to survive into a second century.

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According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, understanding the anomalous position of the kingdom of Jordan requires balancing distaste for its strident public advocacy against Israel against its role as a strategic ally. Tobin is joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by journalist Aaron Magid, the author of the biography The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan.

Magid, who worked in Amman for several years as a reporter says that it’s hard to measure the popularity of Jordan’s King Abdullah since its people have no say in their government. But he points out that Abdullah has skillfully navigated a dangerous political and strategic landscape by seeking to mollify the approximately half of his country’s population that is Palestinian with criticisms of Israel. At the same time, the half-British and American-educated king (who at the time of his accession to the throne in 1999 spoke better English than Arabic) has managed to closely align his country with the United States. And he is dependent on the close cooperation between his security services and those of the United States and Israel, without which it is unlikely that he would still be on the throne.

The author points out that the regime in Jordan is far less repressive than other Arab and Muslim countries but it is not a democracy. And he has maintained the peace treaty with Israel that his father King Hussein agreed to in 1994 despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Jordanians, both Palestinian Arabs and “East Bankers” would prefer that it be abrogated. Magid says that hatred for Israel and Jews is pervasive in Jordanian society with copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf being sold on the streets of its cities. By contrast, sale of Magid’s book, which is by no means highly critical of Abdullah, is banned in the kingdom.

Jordan receives $1.45 billion a year in aid from the United States and Magid says the reason why Abdullah managed to hold onto power during the Arab Spring protests of 2011 is because, unlike, for example, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, the U.S. didn’t discard him. In return for that money, Jordan allows the American troops to be stationed on its territory and assists the U.S. in dealing with threats, including shooting down Iranian missiles that were aimed at Israel in 2024.

While friends of Israel had good reason to be outraged over some of the statements Jordan has made about the Palestinian war on Israel, such as Queen Rania’s denial of the atrocities committed on Oct. 7, 2023, Magid says that is part of the price Israel pays for having a tacit ally on its border. He also notes that the reason why Jordan hasn’t extradited Palestinian terrorist murderer Ahlam Tamimi to the United States is that Washington has never prioritized the issue. That allows Tamimi, who took part in the 2001 Sbarro Pizza bombing in Jerusalem in which 16 people were murdered, including 15-year-old American Malki Roth, to evade justice.

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Progressives and far right conspiracy mongers have more than just antisemitism in common. According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, those trying to subvert President Donald Trump’s agenda consist of not only the left-wing “resistance” leading an insurrection in Minneapolis. The same goal motivates China and its various allies and  business partners like Qatar.

Tobin is joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by journalist Lee Smith, author of the new book, The China Matrix: The Epic Story of How Donald Trump Shattered a Deadly Pact. Smith believes that over the past quarter-century, a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats have helped the Chinese Communist Party via a disastrous trade deficit and allowing fake CCP companies to list on U.S. capital markets. Trump has sought to address this problem with some success via tariffs. TikTok poses a danger to U.S. national security via its ability to influence Americans. The pending sale of the platform, however, raises questions about whether the interests of large GOP donors who profit from dealings with Beijing will undermine Trump’s efforts to shift the focus of U.S. foreign policy to dealing with the threat from China.

Smith also thinks it’s vital for the U.S. not to let the Islamist regime in Iran, which is a key ally of China, escape from its current predicament caused by mass protests seeking its overthrow. He argues that China’s influence operation in the United States in which officials below the national level, like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are being targeted by them to support their policies, is a real danger.

The author is concerned that lobbying by business interests and others will pressure Trump not to follow up on efforts to exert maximum pressure on Tehran. He also throws cold water on the idea that there is any deal to be made between the United States and Iran. He worries that by giving Tehran time via negotiations that will never lead anywhere, the theocrats will wriggle out of their current predicament.

He’s also worried about the rise of antisemitism on the right and the way those, like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, are seeking to stop American action against Iran is very troubling. Even more dangerous are the questions raised about the intentions of Carlson’s friend Vice President JD Vance, who seems not to understand the role that Israel plays in American interest and in advancing American peace and prosperity in a vitally strategic region of the world.

He’s equally worried about the ability of Qatar not only to buy influence in the United States but to get support inside the Pentagon.

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by investigative journalist Ben Weingarten, Newsmax contributor and author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party. Weingarten says that events in Minnesota demonstrate what he calls the failed “progressive model of governance,” which combines advocacy for open borders and non-enforcement of immigration laws with corruption. Moreover, he says that some of the same forces that are creating mayhem there were similarly part of the activism that produced the “mostly peaceful” riots of the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020 and the pro-Hamas antisemitic protests since Oct. 7, 2023.

Weingarten also breaks down his recent reporting about President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace and the supposedly apolitical Palestinian technocrat that has been tapped to lead the reconstruction of Gaza. According to Weingarten, Ali Shaath is, like all those who have been part of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, not a supporter of peace with Israel. Rather, he is someone who supports the ongoing war to destroy the Jewish state embraced by most Palestinians and is unlikely to do anything that would prevent Gaza from being turned back into a terrorist fortress from which the Jewish state could be attacked.

The journalist also analyzes U.S. policy toward Iran and says that predictions that the Trump administration may be ready to embrace a policy of negotiation and appeasement toward the Islamist regime are premature. He also commented that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s memoir detailing the way he was vetted by the staff of former vice president Kamala Harris for their party’s vice-presidential nomination illustrates the serious antisemitism problem in the Democratic Party, which is even more significant than the troubling outbreak of Jew-hatred on the right.

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Daniel Pearl’s father, UCLA computer scientist Judea Pearl, who became a leading voice for Israel and Jewish identity in the years since his son’s death and the author of the recently published Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl 2002-2025.

Pearl says that in the last 24 years he’s “wised up” about the prospects for peace in the Middle East. A longtime advocate for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, he now believes that any agreement to end the conflict is currently impossible. That’s because even most “moderate” Arabs and Muslims are committed to the eradication of Israel. He says this unalterable demand should not be confused with traditional ideas about antisemitism. Instead, he labels this hatred of Jews and their state as “Zionphobia.”

Zionism is, he says, “a Jewish quest for normalcy” in their own homeland. But in the aftermath of the surge of hatred for Jews rooted in intolerance for Jewish self-determination, since Oct. 7, the West has not internalized this basic truth. According to Pearl, denial that Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel isn’t just wrong, rooted in the myths of settler-colonialism theory is enabling Zionphobia and an atmosphere of hate against all Jews who will not betray their own people. Denying Jewish history is the short path to erasing Jewish rights.

He says Jews, such as those who advocate against Israel or who voted for a rabid anti-Zionist like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are seeking to gain acceptance in society. What American Jews need is leadership that is strong enough to ostracize such people.

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Roberts walked back his denunciation of those who criticized Carlson’s platforming of Holocaust denial as well as neo-Nazi groyper leader Nick Fuentes as being part of a “venomous coalition.” But questions remain about Heritage’s future with many of those involved with the institution leaving as a result of the controversy. But according to Heritage Vice President Victoria Coates, the think tank remains committed to the fight against Jew-hatred and support for Israel.

Coates, who joins Tobin in this week’s episode of Think Twice, credits Roberts for the fact that Heritage has played a leading role on the issue. Its Project Esther helped provide the inspiration for President Donald Trump’s efforts to hold colleges and universities accountable for their toleration and encouragement of Jew-hatred on their campuses. But she admits that Roberts’ initial video expressing solidarity with Carlson was a mistake and that the think tank head understands that too and that he is determined for Heritage to continue to work against the spread of Jew-hatred. As troubling as the growth of hate on the right may be, she says the Bondi Bay Chanukah massacre of Jews is a reminder that the most potent threat to Jews and the West remains Islamist and leftist terror.

Coates, who, like Roberts, knows Carlson well, says she can’t explain his turn toward antisemitism as well as his bizarre willingness to deny that Islamists are persecuting and murdering Christians in Africa. But she says there’s no denying the growth of antisemitic attitudes among younger conservatives which she fears has become widespread. She says that’s a product of the crisis induced by leftist indoctrination in the schools as well as the Covid pandemic, not to mention the misinformation about Israel and the Middle East that is ubiquitous on social media. Coates believes what happened at Heritage will help to focus minds on the right on the threat from antisemitic extremism. 

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Newsweek senior editor-at-large and podcaster Josh Hammer who was personally acquainted with Kirk and other leader conservative figures. He says it’s outrageous that Kirk is being portrayed by some on the right as a foe of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he was, in fact, merely critical of some tactical decisions made by Jerusalem, not its war goals or of Zionism. Moreover, he was a fervent opponent of antisemitism and a friend of the Jewish people.

Hammer is similarly troubled by the way the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think tank and its president Kevin Roberts have refused to disavow Carlson, whom he labeled as “the most dangerous antisemite in American history.” He says Carlson deserves that distinction because of his mainstream appeal and strong connections to Republican leaders. He believes Carlson’s Jew-hatred is made obvious by the fact that antipathy for Israel and even Judaism has become the organizing principle of his advocacy. His goal is not so much to break up the U.S.-Israel alliance but to write Judaism out of Western civilization and, as a result, destroy President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and replace it with something that is openly anti-Israel and antisemitic.

At the heart of the problem with conservative neutrality about Carlson and other even more extreme antisemites is their abhorrence for “gatekeeping” and the left’s tactics of canceling people they disagree with. But Hammer argues that there’s nothing wrong with maintaining boundaries between mainstream opinion and extremists and hatemongers.

Hammer believes that at some point, Vice President JD Vance, who is a close friend of Carlson and whose presidential ambitions for 2028 are no secret, is going to have to make a firm statement about his opposition to antisemitism and distinguish himself from the anti-Israel faction on the far right.

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Benjamin Kerstein, author of the new book, Self-Defense: A Jewish Manifesto. He says it’s time for Diaspora Jews to shake off the constraints of what he calls “learned helplessness,” a mindset that conditions victims to believe they have no recourse but to endure violence without seeking to take action to defend themselves. Historically, this was overcome by the Zionist movement and the founding of the modern state of Israel. But in America, most Jews react to the post-Oct. 7 assault on their rights and safety with passivity. As we saw on college campuses where pro-Hamas mobs terrorized Jewish kids, they were told to shelter in place and to not confront their tormentors.

Kerstein argues that what happened at UCLA in 2024 was a model of how to end the harassment of Jews. There, a group of Jewish students responded to a pro-Hamas encampment by aggressively making it clear that Jews would not be intimidated. Though the action was flawed by violence, this forced the university administration to act to end the encampment. A better idea would have been non-violent action in which Jews confronted the antisemites wherever they sought to block access to campus sites.

He says the model not to follow was that of the Jewish Defense League and its leader Rabbi Meir Kahane. It descended to illegality and violence that not only led to the government shutting it down but also in discrediting the whole idea of Jewish self-defense for generations. Rather, what is needed is a Jewish version of the civil rights era group the Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that confronted racism around the United States and helped usher in an era of equality. 

What is also clear, says Kerstein, is that the Jewish establishment and those organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, whose task it is to defend Jews are not doing their job. Their policies are a product of politics in which they have long preferred to focus on lesser threats like that of neo-Nazis rather than on the greater peril posed by progressives who have effectively imposed their antisemitic beliefs on the education system and much of American culture.

Above all, Jews must, he argues, embrace the anger they feel about what has happened in the last two years and start to make “good trouble”—the phrase coined by civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) who urged African Americans to non-violently stand up to discrimination. Jews must now do the same when it comes to the broad array of antisemitic threats posed by forces on both the political left and right.    

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by scholar Donna Robinson Divine, co-editor of the new book, October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds, a collection of essays exploring issues relating to the war on Israel and how the Jewish state’s opponents have helped turn truth on its head to demonize Israel.

According to Divine, on college campuses across the country, “feelings replaced thinking” as many young persons who know little or nothing about the Middle East, were convinced to believe that supporting a genocidal and antisemitic cause was the right thing to do. The veteran scholar of the Middle East said she was shocked not merely at the distorted nature of the discussion about the post-Oct. 7 war but also because not a single head of an elite university told their students to “go and study” the subject of their protests. She says that compared to student protest movements of the past, the pro-Hamas activists don’t seem to know what they’re talking about or have a clear idea of what they want. Other, that is, than wanting Israel to disappear, though even there they don’t seem to realize that doing so would involve Jewish genocide.

Divine points out that a study of the history of the conflict quickly reveals that the goal of the Palestinian movement isn’t about statehood, it’s the principle of not sharing any part of the land with the Jews.

Redefining terms is also important to the cause of delegitimizing Israel. Divine points out that by changing the meaning of the word “genocide”—coined in the aftermath of the Holocaust to mean an attempt to wipe out an entire people—to merely meaning “depriving them of agency,” the pro-Palestinians have smeared the Jewish state as guilty of genocide. Though she also notes that if the Palestinians have lost the ability to determine their own future, it’s because of their own decisions.

Just as sinister is the way Palestinian employed “extreme violence” and rape on Oct. 7, only to see their supporters deny these crimes happened, despite abundant evidence for them provided by the perpetrators.

Most important, is how the Palestinians and their supporters have worked to demonize the Israeli victims, both to make the terrorists appear as if their atrocities are justified and to depict the Jews as deserving of being murdered, raped or kidnapped.

Divine also says that the willingness of opponents of Israel to delegitimize the Jewish state’s actions when they are no different from those of other countries leads to the inevitable conclusion antisemitism is the explanation for these double standards.

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Hoover Institution scholar Barry Strauss, one of the leading experts on the ancient world and the author of the new book, Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire.

Strauss’s book tells the story of the three rebellions fought by Jews against the Roman Empire over the course of a 70-year period stretching from 66 C.E. to 136 C.E. that included the Great Revolt, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, a little-known Diaspora revolt and the Bar Kochba rebellion. The history of these struggles is integral to the story of the Jews. But some historians call the Jews of the ancient world Judeans rather than Jews. Strauss disagrees with this since, as he says, “this is to write Jews out of Jewish history.”

The historian says there are some important lessons for Jews and Israelis to draw from these tragic episodes.

One is the danger of disunity. The divisions between the Jews fighting the Romans and each other inside besieged Jerusalem were, he says, “absolutely fatal.” He notes that, there should be a lesson that you can only take political disputes during a time of war or in a dangerous period “only so far.” That’s something that Israelis learned from the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, since the Palestinians believed they were too divided to unite and defend their county.

Strauss says another issue is the relationship between faith and politics. Jewish extremists believed that God would save them if they fought Rome no matter how steep the odds. “Faith is essential for Jews and for everyone in their own particular way. But when you are letting it lead you to politically dangerous, unintelligent decisions, then you have to really think things through and you have to be careful of what you're doing.”

Yet another lesson Strauss says that can be drawn from the revolts is that “small states never are fully independent.” In fact, he added, “Even large states are never fully independent. Everyone needs allies, but small states above all need allies. And so, I think Israel today must learn from the lesson of the failure of the rebels in the great revolts.” Speaking of the Jewish rebels, he says, “They had a plan that was an intelligent plan, which involved getting help from Parthia [an independent kingdom located in modern-day Iraq and Iran that successfully resisted Rome]. But they should have been able to do a cost-benefit analysis and say, it's not likely and maybe back down then.”

The author says the failure of America’s education system to teach history is “terrible” and largely the fault of progressives. “The so-called woke people are selling narratives that give a completely different view of American history and of the world, and that makes it easier for people to push the button of the oldest hatred and to cast the Jews as the villains,” Strauss says. “It’s absolutely essential for the next generation, for good people to get control of the educational system and to bring us back to a sensible educational system in which people can study history without fear or favor in an unbiased way. We know as citizens, whether we're Jewish or not, that education is absolutely essential. So, this is something that we have to prioritize.”

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According to Hirsch, the danger from a Mayor Mamdani for New York Jews isn’t necessarily a matter of him downgrading protection for Jewish institutions. Rather, he says, “History demonstrates to us that wherever anti-Zionism is normalized and wherever it has support, anti-Zionism has support from high-level government officials, as night follows day, hostility to Jews increases.” Moreover, as he learned from a meeting between the mayor-elect and a group of rabbis, Mamdani is ideologically committed to the war against Israel, it’s “the core principle of his political ideology. That’s why he can’t explain away his support for “Globalize the intifada.”

Hirsch also notes that the surge of antisemitism since Oct. 7 has traumatized liberal Jewish New Yorkers who have seen their erstwhile allies fail them. “Many of them disappointed us and some of them actually betrayed us.”

The rabbi also noted that the disaffection from Israel on the part of many American Jews, is due in part to the failure of  liberal Jewish religious denominations including his own Reform movement. He says they “mistaught” the concept of tikkun olam by failing to make it clear that while universal values are a vital part of Jewish identity, many of the youngsters didn’t also learn that defending Jewish rights and expressing Jewish particularism, including support for Israel, is also integral to liberal Judaism.

At the core of the problem is, he said, “There's simply a very deep and broad Jewish illiteracy in the American Jewish community” that can only be corrected by increased emphasis and support for Jewish day schools, camps and trips to Israel.

Much of the West has been taught to denigrate the idea of faith in a system of independent sovereign states after World War II and to support systems that undermine them. But the truth is that the most likely source of hate, bigotry and oppression in the 21st century doesn’t come from nationalists, but from liberals and leftists who seek to impose their ideas on the world by any means necessary.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of "Think Twice" by Yoram Hazony, author of the seminal 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism, which has just been republished in an updated edition. He points out that though modern liberals have accepted the idea that Adolf Hitler’s Nazism was a natural consequence of German nationalism, the truth is that it was a scheme for imperial domination, much like the ambitions of Napoleon and Stalin.

It had nothing to do with the notion of an international order of independent sovereign states that, as Hazony writes, is the best recipe for freedom, despite the fact that all countries are flawed. He also points out that the contemporary push to downgrade national freedom in favor of globalism and the rule of international organizations, like the United Nations or the European Union, is another instance of that same desire for imperial rule in which elites in one place seek to dominate other nations.

Hazony believes that the anti-Zionism and antisemitism directed at Israel is, in large measure, derived from the resentment of Marxists and Europeans who have lost faith in the rights of their own countries to national independence and sovereignty feel about the Jewish state’s willingness to fight for its right to exist and thrive. In this way, Israeli nationalism is viewed as unacceptable and paradoxically linked to the intolerance of the Nazis when, in fact, Zionism is a rational and much-needed response to the powerlessness and lack of national sovereignty of the Jews during the Holocaust.

The intolerance of these anti-nationalists on the left for those, like Israelis, who resist their diktats, is similar to the way true believers in an ideological faith regard those who resist their ideas, he said. That, along with traditional antisemitism, is fueling the fires of hatred against Israel.

Hazony, who leads the Edmund Burke Foundation, which has organized several National Conservative conferences in Europe and the United States since his book was first published, acknowledged that he was troubled by the growth of anti-Israel sentiment among some American conservatives since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Most American conservatives have embraced U.S. President Donald Trump’s version of nationalism, which is very supportive of Israel. But some figures, labeled by Hazony as “alt-right,” seek to push Jews out of the conservative movement and are hostile to the Jewish state. That’s creating a problem for the Trump administration. Their need to keep their electoral coalition intact may be setting up a situation where they need to confront people like former Fox News host and current political commentator Tucker Carlson, but are “hesitant” to do so. But the author said he still has hope that it will do so in a firm way.

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Pollak is the author of the newly republished book The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You and believes that instead of demonizing Zionism, the rest of the world, including the Palestinians, ought to learn from it. In his view, it provides a model for empowering and bettering the lives of non-Jewish minorities who are otherwise mired in divisive minority-group woke politics.

He sees anti-Zionism from the left as, in part, derived from anti-American ideas that oppose all successful nations as morally suspect. And the hatred for Israel that has surged in the last two years is rooted in a desire to spread fear among Jews.

The anti-Israel attitudes that are coming from the right are partially the result of traditional antisemitism and also based in envy of Israel as well as delusional conspiracy theories about the Jewish state controlling the United States. Those who oppose Israel are also putting themselves on the wrong side of history and opposing President Donald Trump, which is a certain loser for conservatives.

Tobin and Pollak disagreed about how to handle people like podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the openly antisemitic Candace Owens. Pollak sees Carlson’s anti-Israel attitudes and platforming of antisemitic guests including Holocaust deniers as the result of the Anti-Defamation League’s attacks on him before he was openly antisemitic.

Tobin believes that Carlson was always an opponent of Israel and that his departure from Fox News just removed the guardrails that existed there which deterred him from platforming hatemongers in the way that he does now in his podcast. Tobin believes that prominent conservatives need to denounce antisemitism even when it comes from friends and allies. Pollak prefers to accentuate the positive and thinks it’s not too late for Carlson to change but agrees that even a “big tent” has walls, meaning that some things must always be unacceptable.

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Tobin is joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by JNS contributing editor and columnist Ruthie Blum who believes that while an end to the war with the “barbarians” of Hamas on Trump’s terms is possible, but she said we shouldn’t call that “peace” if it involves releasing more terrorists in exchange for freeing Israeli hostages and believing that the Palestinians are ready to change.

While she was skeptical that Hamas would take this opportunity to end the war, the Trump plan won’t involve trust since nothing will move forward if all of the hostages are not freed first. Still, she feared that any deal that will mandate the release of Palestinian terrorists from prison may lead to more bloodshed in the same way that the 2011 agreement that freed kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit led to the Oct. 7 massacres.

She also agreed with Tobin that the Trump administration’s faith in the good will of Qatar is a mistake since that regime funds terrorism and Islamist fundamentalism around the globe. Blum believes that businessmen like Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff simply don’t understand Muslim fanaticism since they view the world solely through the prism of business deals based on mutual interests. They fail to realize that the war between Jews and Arabs is about much more than real estate.

Blum pointed out that those who claim that Israel can’t achieve its objectives by military means are wrong and that Netanyahu is right. If there is to be any progress toward ending the war it is only because of the military pressure that Israel has exerted on Hamas. What will be needed for Trump’s deal to do more good than harm, as was the case with previous attempts to broker peace, is for him to stick to his word and let Israel “finish the job” of defeating Hamas if they don’t agree to the deal or violate it afterward. That’s not what happened in the past when Israel made concessions to the Palestinians in the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

Blum sympathizes with Netanyahu when he tells his supporters to pipe down about extending Israeli sovereignty to Area C of Judea and Samaria where Jewish communities exist. His priority must be to avoid alienating Trump and showing patience on the issue since that is in Israel’s interests.

He is joined in the latest episode of Think Twice by Wiesel’s son Elisha, who works on Wall Street and for Israeli startups, as well as being a leading human rights activist. Elisha Wiesel said that he and his late mother, who passed away earlier this year, had been searching for a filmmaker to do a documentary about his father before choosing writer/director and producer Oren Rudavsky. He says that acting on his father’s instructions, they have refused to let anyone produce a film based on Wiesel’s classic Holocaust memoir, Night but believed a well-made documentary could help keep his memory alive as well as reintroduce a new generation to his work.

The film traces Wiesel’s Holocaust experience and journey back to life after surviving the camps and then his rise to prominence as an activist and author. But the key incident in it concerns his confrontation with President Ronald Reagan live on national television when he unsuccessfully sought to persuade him not to visit a military cemetery in Bitburg, where German SS soldiers were buried in 1985.

Elisha Wiesel, who was present at the White House for this event says that looking back at it now, he sees how difficult it was for his father, who liked Reagan very much, to lecture him in front of the country. But it was a classic example of how to “speak truth to power,” in the service of a great truth.

He also says that those Jews who speak out against Israel since Oct. 7, 2023 and in favor of “free Palestine” are not following his father’s example. Elie Wiesel was an ardent Zionist and never chose to criticize the Jewish state whether or not he always agreed with its government because he understood how that would be used by antisemites.

“Many of these people think that they're acting in keeping with my father's values. You know, I've seen signs at Israel-hating rallies that actually say, know, Elie Wiesel said, you know, the enemy, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. So, a lot of people go around and they think, you know, ‘I'm being Wieselian. I'm not indifferent. Look at me.’ But of course, I think my father hadn't properly envisioned at the time that he made that statement, how we've gone past, we've gone beyond indifference. We've gone straight to what I like to think of is indignant ignorance.”

He said that the current generation of young American Jews, “Don't feel what I feel in my heart. When Israel is attacked, it's visceral. It's gut level. It's emotional. This is 50% of my brothers and sisters in the Jewish people, so many of whom came, whether fleeing the Farhud in Muslim lands or the Holocaust, you know, to get to Israel. These are my people, my brothers and sisters, who have gotten to a place where they can finally defend themselves and create the state that is transforming the world with its inventions and its ideas.

Elisha Wiesel compared the “Free Palestine” movement and support for Israel-hating New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to the punk rock music he loved as a teenager.
“So much of the free Palestine movement to me, and so much of the tear it down, anarchy, let's end capitalism, has all of the violence of punk rock without the good music. It's just people looking for change without thinking too hard about what they're going to build or what should be built.”

He’s joined on this week’s episode of Think Twice by Michael Masters, the National Director and CEO of the Secure Community Network (SCN), the organization that is responsible for the security organization for the North American Jews. The SCN monitors threats to Jews and advises community organizations on safety issues providing its own version of an Iron Dome for the community.

According to Masters, the antisemitism crisis on college campuses is not the product of spontaneous efforts to support Hamas and attack the pro-Israel community. The immediate mobilization of protesters and materials for them was organized and coordinated. And much of it was funded by foreign state actors, especially Iran. Moreover, he says these efforts were not merely expressions of free speech but took the form of organizing manuals that were clearly aimed at facilitating violence and other illegal acts.

The most ominous development, Masters points out, is that in the wake of pressure from the Trump administration on colleges and universities to stop tolerating and encouraging Jew-hatred, the pro-Hamas activists are switching tactics. Instead of building takeovers, they are now emphasizing the targeting of Jewish individuals, such as professors and students. Their goal is to silence and intimidate people from speaking out on behalf of Israel and in defense of the Jewish community.

The security expert points out that in the current atmosphere, Jew-hatred unites both the extreme left and the extreme right in a “circle” in which white supremacists and Islamists join together to target Jews. As such, he asserts that what is needed is a unified Jewish community that will advocate against antisemitism and also to get the funding needed to adequately protect Jewish institutions.

While the SCN has a list of recommendations for enhancing Jewish safety, Masters emphasizes the need for training for those responsible for security. While Americans have a Second Amendment right to carry firearms, he says the key to protecting the community is putting weapons in the hands of those who are trained to use them in an emergency.

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He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by legal expert Thane Rosenbaum, author of the new book, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.” Rosenbaum argues that the attempt to smear Israel as having committed war crimes or a genocide in Gaza is not only an outrageous lie. He sees the attempt to shape the narrative of the war in this manner as “the intersection between antisemitism and international law.”

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly. Bryen says that those worried about Trump and Israel shouldn’t panic. More than that, she noted that the way so many countries in the Middle East were showing eagerness to be friends of the United States since the start of Trump’s second administration was highly encouraging. 

“The good news is that the United States is perceived now as a strong horse in the region,” said Bryen. And, she added, that's bound to be good for Israel as well as America.

Bryen acknowledged that the fact that the war with Hamas can’t be ended quickly or easily will inevitably create some tensions with the United States since Trump dislikes “forever wars” and doesn’t want to be tied up in them. But she added that Washington has continued to send arms to the Jewish state to prosecute the war and is doing so without the conditions and criticisms that the Biden administration employed to try to hamstring Jerusalem’s efforts.

Bryen agreed that the optics of Trump accepting a plane from Qatar, a “frenemy” of the United States, as a gift were bad. But she explained that it was not something from which the president would personally benefit. The Qataris are untrustworthy and connected to Iran and Hamas and host the Muslim Brotherhood. But she also pointed out that their recent conduct indicated that they knew that Israel’s successful actions in Lebanon and Syria had significantly weakened Tehran. The United States needs to be engaged in the region because the alternative is China, America’s chief geostrategic rival and moderate Arab nations don’t wish to be dominated by Beijing.

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