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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.

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Credit: Garry Knight via Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
How to misread anti-Semitism
One might counter that not everyone who presents Israel as a “racist endeavor” is driven by the same motives—strategic, diplomatic, ideological—that the USSR was when it adopted anti-Semitism in the name of anti-Zionism.
Aug. 17, 2018
Ben Cohen
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, May 12, 2017. Photo by Chatham House, London/Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘existential threat’
The fear that he has normalized anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, coupled with unwavering loyalty to the Palestine solidarity activists who have dragged Labour into the mire of Jew-baiting, leads many to conclude that what has already happened in the party will unfold next in the country.
Jul. 27, 2018
Ben Cohen
Sarah Halimi. Credit: Confédération des Juifs de France et des amis d'Israël.
Featured Columnist
France’s reputation is at stake again over the murder of Sarah Halimi
France’s leaders should expect to undergo the trial of international public scrutiny if this sadistic, anti-Semitic killer is sent to a psychiatric hospital instead of answering for his crimes.
Jul. 19, 2018
Ben Cohen
Irish Senator Frances Black speaking in favor of her bill to boycott goods from Israeli settlements. Credit: Screenshot.
Featured Columnist
The Irish Senate’s ‘boycott Israel’ debate
The country that will be most damaged will be Ireland itself. See how many Irish politicians are willing to sacrifice the jobs and livelihoods of Irish citizens for the gesture politics of boycotting Israel.
Jul. 13, 2018
Ben Cohen
The Grand Mosque of Copenhagen in Copenhagen is one of the largest mosques in Denmark. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Denmark confronts Islamism and integration
For much of this decade, Jewish residents in the country have endured anti-Semitic attacks and abuse wildly out of proportion to their numbers. Most of that hostility comes from the Muslim community.
Jul. 6, 2018
Ben Cohen
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Polish-Jewish relations step back from the brink
Be confident, though, that the debate about World War II will continue to reverberate into the country’s contemporary politics.
Jun. 29, 2018
Ben Cohen
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives joint press statements with his Macedonian counterpart, Zoran Zaev, at Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem on Sept. 4, 2017. Photo by Marc Israel Sellem/POOL
Featured Columnist
What Macedonia and Israel have in common
Like the Jews, the Macedonians have been in the unusual position of having to justify their status as a nation entitled to join the international society of states.
Jun. 24, 2018
Ben Cohen
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the Capella Hotel in Singapore on June 12, 2018. Photo courtesy of White House via Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Trump, Kim and the ‘good citizen’
We had absorbed the certain knowledge that any political system in which opposition is proscribed and dissidents are locked up in atrocious conditions can never be truly legitimate because, as 1989 reminded us with a jolt, political legitimacy is rooted in the informed consent of the people.
Jun. 15, 2018
Ben Cohen
Head of the Palestinian Football Association Jibril Rajoub speaks during a press conference in Ramallah on June 6, 2018. Photo by Flash90.
Featured Columnist
Why a soccer hooligan is smiling
Israel’s leaders need to think strategically about every major event that is staged in the country, with the first principle being “do no harm.”
Jun. 6, 2018
Ben Cohen
Palestinians clash with security forces during a protest to mark the 70th anniversary of the “nakba” (“catastrophe”), the term used to mark the events leading to Israel’s founding in 1948, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, May 15, 2018. Photo by Wisam ashlamoun/Flash90.
Featured Columnist
‘Nakba,’ ‘Naksa’ . . . nowhere
Both concepts are built around the Palestinian logic that Israel is the eternal enemy. That is why Israel’s creation was a “catastrophe.” But what precisely was the “setback”?
Jun. 1, 2018
Ben Cohen
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Behind Erdoğan’s boycott threat against Israel
Were he to suspend trade with Israel by imposing politically motivated sanctions, the consequences of such a vendetta for Turkey—for its currency, for foreign investor confidence, for its already frayed relations with the United States and Europe, and for the domestic livelihoods that have become reliant on the Israeli market—would be disastrous.
May. 24, 2018
Ben Cohen
The terrace garden at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Another leading Iranian export? Religious persecution
Like the Yezidi and Christian minorities elsewhere in the Middle East, followers of the Baha’i faith have experienced horrendous persecution at the hands of Islamists—in their specific case, the Shi’a disciples of Ayatollah Khomeini who have ruled Iran since 1979.
May. 18, 2018
Ben Cohen
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