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Ben Cohen. Credit: Courtesy.

Ben Cohen

Featured Columnist

Ben Cohen is a senior analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and director of FDD’s rapid response outreach, specializing in global antisemitism, anti-Zionism and Middle East/European Union relations. A London-born journalist with 30 years of experience, he previously worked for BBC World and has contributed to Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, Tablet and Congressional Quarterly. He was a senior correspondent at The Algemeiner for more than a decade and is a weekly columnist for JNS. Cohen has reported from conflict zones worldwide and held leadership roles at the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. His books include Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through 21st Century Antisemitism.

If it turns out that accusations by singer Gil Ofarim aren’t as he says, then it will be a gift to those who believe that anti-Semitism is just a cynical means for Jews to morally blackmail non-Jews.
When it comes to anti-Semitic barbs and dog whistles, the overlaps between the two men who denounced their Jewish identity are again all too apparent.
Anything that dents the appeal of Jew-hatred in the public imagination is to be welcomed; however, no national government or transnational body can exercise full control over a free society.
The lot of political dissidents has always been a brutal one, and so there is every reason to fear that a combination of arrests and propaganda will be unleashed to crush the nascent movement for peace with Israel.
We all know that raw prejudice among Jews against those who are visibly Jewish—that they are loud, rude, unwashed, contemptuous towards outsiders and all the rest of that baggage—is our community’s dirty secret.
As with any kind of hate speech, context is key. Tell that to the French judiciary.
We are bound to engage in soul-searching about how we might balance the duty to our own safety and the safety of those in our care with the impulse to defend our integrity from those who want to humiliate us.
Across the Middle East, extremist regimes and terrorist groups are rejoicing in the fact that the U.S. presence and reputation in their region is a shadow of what it was just 10 years ago.
If robustly applied, the pain caused by sanctions could push the Pakistanis into curbing the worst tendencies of the Taliban.
Like COVID-19 seeping around the world, anti-Semitism whipped up during the pandemic, with its echo of the medieval slander that Jews spread the Black Death by poisoning wells, remains with us.
As the world tunes in to the Olympics in Tokyo, watching an enormous variety of sports in which athletes of all nationalities compete, it’s evident that these ideas connecting race with sporting ability belong in the garbage can of history.
Why can Jews walk safely to synagogue in Budapest as opposed to peering over their shoulders when doing the same in Paris or Vienna?