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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.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party, with Parliament member Andrew Gwynne. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
What’s behind Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘Trump Brexit’ warning?
This phrase is indeed catchy and plays well with those sections of British society on left and right who think that the U.S. president, in common with all his predecessors, is itching for a pretext to launch a new World War.
May. 17, 2019
Ben Cohen
Blue and White co-chairman Yair Lapid, at the Knesset, during the opening session of the new Knesset, following elections, on April 30, 2019. Credit: Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90.
Featured Columnist
Polish anti-Semitism is serious, but Yair Lapid is overreaching
Why are the Poles guiltier for witnessing Jewish victims arrive at concentration camps than are the Dutch or Greeks who watched them being dragged out of their homes to get there?
May. 10, 2019
Ben Cohen
Leaders from the Polish, Catholic and Jewish communities have denounced an anti-Semitic ritual on Good Friday in the small southeastern Polish town of Pruchnik, where residents hanged, burned and beat a dummy of the apostle Judas, stereotypically described as a Jew. Credit: Screenshot.
Featured Columnist
In the flames consuming a ‘Judas’ effigy in Poland, a deadly trope persists
There was nothing benevolent about it, with its hooked nose, its sidelocks, its wide-brimmed hat, and the words “Traitor” and “Judas 2019” scrawled in black ink across its misshapen, straw-filled body.
Apr. 25, 2019
Ben Cohen
Pharaoh Merneptah.
Featured Columnist
The Pharaoh who spoke too soon
In the week that Jews celebrate Pesach, there is something particularly resonant about an Egyptian Pharaoh’s claim to have successfully carried out what these days would be called a genocide.
Apr. 19, 2019
Ben Cohen
Julian Assange. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Assange’s anti-Semitism revisited
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spoken about Jews several times, with plain and heartfelt hostility. What most agitates him about Jews is their notorious practice of smearing critics as “anti-Semites” and their penetration of the establishment.
Apr. 13, 2019
Ben Cohen
University of Cape Town campus. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
In South Africa, one step forward, two steps back
Denying your poorer compatriots economic and educational opportunities is a blessed act when it is presented as part of the war against “Zionism.”
Apr. 5, 2019
Ben Cohen
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party, with Parliament member Andrew Gwynne. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
‘Institutionally anti-Semitic’: The British Labour Party’s cautionary tale
Professor Alan Johnson lays out in excruciating detail the story of how an ostensibly enlightened, pro-European social democratic party became a home for activists trafficking in three distinct types of anti-Semitism.
Mar. 29, 2019
Ben Cohen
Sarah Halimi. Credit: Confédération des Juifs de France et des amis d'Israël.
Featured Columnist
Sarah Halimi’s anti-Semitic murderer disappears behind a smokescreen
Two years after she was murdered, the family of Sarah Halimi rightly remains anxious that the French judicial system will fail them—and fail them wretchedly.
Mar. 22, 2019
Ben Cohen
Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, June 2006. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
The Christchurch mosque massacre and the changing face of extremism
Jews and Muslims find themselves on the same side of the line that separates civilization from barbarism. If we are to achieve greater understanding between our two minority communities, then that is as good a place as any from which to start.
Mar. 15, 2019
Ben Cohen
Part of a core exhibition dedicated to the Jedwabne pogrom at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Leave the graves of Jedwabne alone
Initial exhumations were stopped in 2001 after Jewish organizations pointed out that Jewish religious law forbids the disturbing of graves.
Mar. 8, 2019
Ben Cohen
AMIA Jewish center
Featured Columnist
25 years after the AMIA bombing, justice is again denied
The victims and their families just received yet another kick in the teeth when a court in Buenos Aires acquitted former Argentine President Carlos Menem of engaging in a cover-up during the first, thoroughly discredited AMIA investigation.
Mar. 1, 2019
Ben Cohen
Thousands joined rallies in Paris and across France to oppose a rising wave of antisemitism in the country, Feb. 19, 2019. Source: Screenshot.
Featured Columnist
‘Anti-Zionism’ without the hyphen
It may be the case that the hyphen in that word is playing a similarly obfuscatory role in our understanding of how dangerous this phenomenon really is.
Feb. 22, 2019
Ben Cohen
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