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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.

Police photos of Grigori Zinoviev, the veteran Russian Bolshevik leader of Jewish descent, taken after his arrest in 1934. Two years later, he was executed by Stalin. (Wikimedia Commons)
Opinion
On Zionism, progressives take a page out of the socialist playbook
As comforting as it may be for many Jews to observe the rhetorical and thematic overlaps between biblical prophets and modern-day socialists, the bald truth is that the revolutionaries themselves never saw it that way.
April 8, 2018
Ben Cohen
Marchers honor the memory of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll, 85, who was murdered in March 2018 in an anti-Semitic attack. Credit: European Jewish Press.
Featured Columnist
French Jews spend another Passover under anti-Semitism’s shadow
There was the gruesome death of 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll, followed by a 30,000-strong march against anti-Semitism in Paris and the discovery of a serial killer . . . all this on the heels of a horrific Jewish murder last spring.
March 30, 2018
Ben Cohen
From left: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Environmental Protection Minister Ze'ev Elkin and Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar meet in Moscow at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Jan. 29, 2018. Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO.
Featured Columnist
Putin an anti-Semite? It really doesn’t matter
There are few signs that Vladimir Putin is pursuing policies abroad that would lead him to turn on the Jews of Russia, as happened more than once under his Soviet predecessors.
March 23, 2018
Ben Cohen
Israelis and tourists enjoy the beach in Tel Aviv on a summer day. Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90.
Opinion
The secrets of happiness (or unhappiness) revealed
Israel just misses making the top 10, but still ranks an impressive No. 11 out of 156 nations rated on the annual World Happiness Report, a testament to its internal spirit.
March 18, 2018
Ben Cohen
Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
‘Céline’ redux? France’s publishing problem
No one could possibly believe that Céline’s words can be read dispassionately in France today, where anti-Semitic attacks of the most brutal kind occur with disturbing frequency.
March 9, 2018
Ben Cohen
Queen Elizabeth visiting Birmingham in July 2012 as part of her Diamond Jubilee tour. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Opinion
The House of Windsor’s Israel problem
It beggars belief that the shrewd Elizabeth, for whatever reason, has willingly complied with a stance of pretending that Israel doesn’t exist.
March 2, 2018
Ben Cohen
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Credit: Flickr.
Opinion
From Holocaust to ‘Polocaust’: A change in common parlance doesn’t change the facts
Only one other country today wields the Holocaust as a weapon to bash Israel and the Jews: Iran. That a member state of the European Union now finds itself in the company of Tehran’s deniers and revisionists should give pause.
Feb. 22, 2018
Ben Cohen
Emmanuel Macron
Opinion
No hate of Halimi? French won’t see anti-Semitism for what it is
Sarah Halimi’s Jewish affiliation will be, at most, a subsidiary element in a trial that will become a cautionary tale about drug use, rather than the anti-Semitic hatred that has established itself as an integral part of the culture of France’s Muslim immigrant communities.
Feb. 16, 2018
Ben Cohen
The Jewish cemetery in Lodz, Poland. May 11, 2017. Photo by Isaac Harari/Flash90.
Opinion
Who owns the Holocaust?
This dispute is about who sets the parameters for our understanding of what the Holocaust was and what it represented – and it is a problem that extends far beyond Poland’s borders.
Feb. 1, 2018
Ben Cohen
A BDS movement protest against Israel. Credit: Mohamed Ouda via Wikimedia Commons.
Featured Columnist
Israel cannot deny the reality that BDS is in decline
Nothing can hide the BDS movement’s abject failure to persuade the citizens of Western democracies that Israel is the new South Africa
Jan. 26, 2018
Ben Cohen
Sheikh Raed Saleh Al-Rousan delivers an anti-Semitic sermon in Houston on Dec. 8, 2017. Credit: Middle East Media Research Institute.
Opinion
Islam’s Jewish dilemma revisited
In “Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition,” scholar David Nirenberg argues that on the one hand, Islam regards Jews as “enemies” of Muhammad’s prophecy, but on the other, Islam realizes only too well that without the existence of Jews and their practices, there would have been no subsequent prophetic tradition and faith to follow.
Jan. 19, 2018
Ben Cohen
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 20, 2017. Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak.
Opinion
Iran has a foreign-policy doctrine
Through its own words, the Iranian regime gives the lie to Western claims of “moderation.” The doctrine might also turn out to be the source of the Islamic Republic’s coming collapse.
Jan. 17, 2018
Ben Cohen
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