Yaakov Menken

Originally published in the Daily Wire.

Stereotyping is always wrong, but there is no epidemic of Americans attacking Muslims as Muslims.

Last week, I was honored to be appointed by President Donald Trump to serve on the Advisory Board of Religious Leaders for the newly established U.S. Religious Liberty Commission.

The commission is tasked with an issue I’ve thought a lot about in my capacity as a Jewish leader: I believe that all Americans have the freedom to worship as they choose, and think it’s crucial we protect religious freedom for all — including Muslim Americans who love this country and support its values.

I am proud to call many of them my friends, and I viscerally deplore any bigotry directed against them. But pretending that “Islamophobia” is a widespread national crisis is a dangerous lie that protects the wrong people and only fuels hatred.

“Islamophobia” may sound like a civil rights concern. But in practice, that term is wielded as a dangerous and repressive weapon. While peaceful Muslim citizens deserve protection from discrimination, Islamist pressure groups and progressive elites cry “Islamophobia” to blur moral lines, suppress condemnation of terrorism, and discount the reality of antisemitism in America and the West.

There is simply no parallel to the plague of antisemitism in human history. But while Jews are orders of magnitude more likely to find themselves targeted than members of any other minority group in America, the same advocates for “tolerance” who demeaned “all lives matter” as a racist slogan typically feel compelled, after every performative condemnation of antisemitic harassment and violence, to append “Islamophobia, and all forms of hate.”

In reality, bias against Muslims as Muslims is no more common than bias against other minority faiths. There is no major effort or large-scale advertising campaign to combat discrimination against Hindus, Sikhs, or Buddhists — even though each of those communities faces prejudice. It is not widespread or socially acceptable to display animus against people of a particular faith or ethnicity — except Jews.

What, then, is “Islamophobia?” It is most frequently not an aversion to Islam or peaceful Muslims, but a perfectly rational fear of radical Islamism, its desire for dominance, and its support for terrorism. To call that fear a “phobia” inverts the hater and the victim.

Consider Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) claim that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was started to combat anti-Muslim bias after September 11.

The facts are starkly different. Not only was CAIR founded seven years prior, but a French think tank identified over 48,000 Islamist terror attacks in less than half a century, causing over 210,000 deaths.

That’s not a minor footnote in history: it is the defining threat of the modern age. And while most Muslims are not extremists, a troubling percentage of them support radical ideas and justify attacks upon American and Western civilians. Studies consistently show that Muslims in the West are several times more likely than the general public to hold antisemitic views.

Furthermore, the most prominent Muslim advocacy organizations in America, including CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, and American Muslims for Palestine, are not merely apologists for terror. CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America owe their existence to members of the Muslim Brotherhood; both organizations were unindicted co-conspiratorswho aided the Holy Land Foundation in providing funding for Hamas terrorism.

CAIR’s Executive Director declared that he was “happy” to see the massacre of Jews in Israel on October 7, 2023, which he called“self-defense.” And American Muslims for Palestine, a group closely tied to the antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine and its discriminatory and often-violent activities on college campuses, is currently under investigation by a Senate committee for its own ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

Despite this, we are told that criticizing radical Islamic terrorism or calling out antisemitism within the Muslim community is itself a form of “Islamophobia.” This is exemplified by CAIR itself, which in 2024 depicted antisemitic violence against Jews on campus as a “movement opposing the Gaza genocide,” and claimed that university administrators who halted the harassment and vandalism were “a primary perpetrator of anti-Muslim racism.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center labels as “Islamophobic” such organizations as Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT for America, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and Jihad Watch. It once also included Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, an Evangelical Christian Zionist cause, among those groups.

None of these organizations opposes Islam; only the radical Islamic theology, which is one of the leading drivers of hateful violence today. Condemning them is not tolerance, but gaslighting.

After a wave of antisemitic protests, harassment, and vandalism on its campus, Harvard formed a Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias. The university started from the premise that these students and faculty were victims, not perpetrators, although it couldn’t identify a unifying explanation for why they were targeted.

In actuality, the one characteristic that all of the purported victims shared in common was quite obvious: antisemitism.

This is why the term “Islamophobia” is so dangerous. It isn’t employed to protect innocent Muslims, but guilty ideologies. It shifts the blame, silences critics, and gives cover to those who cheer as Jews and other “infidels” are slaughtered.

Radical Islamists and their allies cannot be granted leave to rewrite reality. There is no moral equivalence between a Jewish student targeted for wearing a yarmulke and a keffiyeh-clad Muslim activist condemned for cheering Hamas. Stereotyping is always wrong, but there is no epidemic of Americans attacking Muslims as Muslims. There is, instead, a well-funded, well-organized campaign to shield Jew-hatred by claiming that those combating radical Islamic antisemitism are motivated by “Islamophobia.”

This moment demands moral clarity. Not all hate is the same, and not all ideas deserve protection. It’s time to stop pretending that bigotry against Muslims is the crisis, when that false charge is being used to defend and enable radical Islamism, antisemitism, and those who endanger Western civilization.

Photo Credit: Copyright Montecruz Foto. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Originally published in JNS

Listening to members of the party, which claims to stand for “inclusion,” downplaying Jew-hatred because it doesn’t fit their desired narrative or identity politics was offensive.

Fighting hate should never be a partisan issue. Yet a recent House committee hearing on antisemitism on college campuses showed how embarrassingly one-sided that fight against bigotry has become. With Jew-hatred being normalized in universities across the country, Republicans have focused on the problem while Democrats have demonstrated, to a truly stunning degree, that they didn’t care.

It follows a pattern of indifference. In January 2024, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Columbia University’s then-president, Minouche Shafik, that despite rampant obstruction, harassment and even violence against Jewish students since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, universities’ “political problems are really only with Republicans.”

The May 7 hearing on campus antisemitism, “Beyond the Ivy League,” hosted by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, demonstrated that his remark was no exaggeration.

The hearing was a spectacle as university presidents from Haverford College, DePaul University and California Polytechnic State University fumbled their attempts to justify inaction in the face of calls for genocide, harassment of Jewish students and vandalism. Yet only Republican members of the education committee called out the lack of a cogent, purposeful response from university administrators as Jewish students were assaulted, intimidated and harassed daily—not for their politics or support for Israel, but for being Jewish.

For instance, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) noted that students at Haverford College had called for the violent eradication of Israel and its Jews without consequence. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) pointed out that Haverford investigated, not the professors who incited violence, but the Israeli professor who called attention to “the horrors … taking place on the campus.” Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), questioned why the school still employed a professor who believes that “Zionist” students should be denied access to education, while committee’s chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) read into the record a letter from Haverford’s Chabad on Campus rabbi declaring that although “Jewish students have been marginalized, ostracized, and at times outright attacked, … their pain has been met with indifference.”

What these House members share is an “R” after their names.

Their Democratic colleagues, for the most part, used their time to deflect. They paid lip service to the “undeniable” rise in hatred and offered mandatory proclamations that “Jewish students deserve to be safe and feel safe.” But instead of confronting university presidents for failing to address the rise in antisemitism and the lack of safety for Jews on campus, they returned to tired talking points about “performative hearings” that are part of a “battle against higher education,” implying that the hearing was unnecessary and inappropriate.

Only Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) distinguished herself, saying that “exploding” antisemitism must be treated as a nonpartisan issue and rebuking her fellow Democrats for implying that their multiple hearings on the crisis were a “false obsession.” She demanded they ask why a yarmulke-clad Jewish student was attacked on campus despite never having visited Israel, and she even had the temerity to point out that while anti-Zionism might not be antisemitism at some theoretical level, “We haven’t yet really seen that exist.”

She is, of course, objectively correct. When a Jewish student ends up needing surgery after a violent antisemitic attack, only someone as gleefully mendacious as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) would assert that the hearing on campus antisemitism was targeting “protected speech.”

Omar, though, was not alone. Her colleague, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), likewise claimed that students were being deported “for writing op-eds … advocating for peace.” He also referenced “killing and starvation in Gaza,” but failed to note that the only emaciated people in Gaza are the Jewish hostages who are being deliberately starved by Hamas. For that matter, he failed to mention that there are Jewish hostages in Gaza at all.

Casar also called President Donald Trump “the most antisemitic president in modern American history,” said that hearings about antisemitic violence on campus were intended to protect the Israeli government from criticism and, for good measure, opined that it is the Republicans who are “distorting the definition of antisemitism.”

This was not the only way that Democrats attempted to haul the conversation off-topic. Even though blacks aren’t being denied access to libraries, gays are not surrounded by hostile classmates and no professor has refused to speak to Muslim students due to their faith, Democratic members of the committee claimed that anti-Jewish bigotry deserved no special attention, though it has uniquely manifested itself in all these ways and more. Listening to members of the Democratic Party, which claims to stand for “inclusion,” downplaying antisemitism because it doesn’t fit their desired narrative or identity politics was offensive.

And then there was the Democrats’ chosen witness, former ACLU’s national legal director David Cole, who at every opportunity compared the committee’s investigation of unchecked antisemitic harassment and violence to the infamous McCarthy hearings on Communist activities. Cole offered no logical connection between efforts to impugn the innocent during the McCarthy era and today’s documentation of the wholesale violations of Jewish students’ basic rights. Cole, now a professor at Georgetown Law, also made clear that the ACLU’s vaunted concern for civil liberties does not extend to Jews.

Antisemitism is too real and dangerous a crisis to deserve obfuscation and sidestepping. It is shameful that only one political side was willing to address it directly. When mandatory civil-rights protections are withheld from Jewish students and the campus environment has long since descended into open incitement of violence and calls for genocide, to cry about “free speech” is not advocacy for justice; it’s gaslighting. History will not remember those who stayed silent. But Jewish students, the Jewish community and the American voters will remember those who stood up against Jew-hatred on campus.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Originally published in the Daily Caller

Antisemitism is not a political tool; it is an enduring and deadly threat that has plagued Jewish communities for millennia. Yet rabbis on the left—whom, almost to a one, lack traditional Jewish training—have chosen to minimize its severity and distort its reality. This is evidenced in a series of competing epistles by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, HIAS, and a partnership of T’ruah and J Street, each demanding the spotlight for overlapping collections of left-wing movements, rabbis, and cantors proclaiming essentially the same thing: the Trump Administration’s legal efforts to combat antisemitism are “undermin[ing] democratic norms,” engaging in “immoral use of law,” and using Jew-hatred as a “political wedge.”

The rise in antisemitic incitement, from violent attacks across America to open calls for Jewish genocide on campus, represents an existential danger to Jews and American civilization. Yet rather than acknowledging the threat posed by contemporary sources of antisemitism—especially the purported “anti-Israel” voices that demonize Jewish life in the Jewish homeland—the signatories chose to fixate on their opposition to Trump while pretending that support for terrorism is merely a “political view.”

Such pronouncements invert reality. Students are indeed being arrested and detained, but this is due to their threatening conduct, in violation of the conditions under which they received student and residential visas. Study by non-citizens in the United States is a privilege, not a right. To permit terror-supporting activists to remain on campus who foment hatred against their Jewish peers, much less those who engineer takeovers of buildings and walkways to preclude classes from proceeding normally and Jewish students from getting to them, is harmful to students, faculty, and the educational mission of those schools.

When Jewish students are actively being excluded, driven from universities by antisemitic hostility, withholding federal funds is the only moral option. Jews are no less deserving of protection than other minorities, such as the black community on whose behalf the government nixed the tax deduction of Bob Jones University in the 1970s. Harvard may believe that it is more important to oppose the Administration’s cogent demands than to preserve Jewish life on its campus, but that is hardly a Jewish or moral position in any normative sense. As its resident Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi said, “You know when change is gonna happen on this campus? When we don’t have to pack up the menorah” — the Jewish religious symbol that Harvard officials forced him to take down each night of the Chanukah holiday, rather than protecting it from vandals.

One is forced to suspect that had Presidents Obama, Biden or, hypothetically, Harris executed these same actions, the same left-wing bodies and clergy would be praising their actions and touting the president’s support for defending Jews. But because it is President Trump who is actually making the required efforts that his predecessors ignored, their attitude is diametrically different.

By politicizing the fight against antisemitism in this way, the signatories willingly alienate allies who are otherwise anxious to join the fight. Jew-hatred is not confined to one political ideology or party; it is a persistent problem that requires an impartial, nonpartisan focus to combat effectively. Their divisive approach undermines Jewish unity and emboldens those who seek to harm Jewish communities.

Jewish leaders have historically possessed deep knowledge, scholarship, and moral clarity. It is notable that although media sources imply that these letters represent all Jewish denominations, the range of signatories reaches only the very left fringe of Orthodoxy. In other words, although traditional, mainstream Orthodox rabbis comprise the vast majority of American rabbis by any definition, and that by several orders of magnitude, none of them joined any of these letters.

This matters a great deal. The signatories claim to represent moral leadership and rabbinic scholarship, but have failed spectacularly to understand the historical and contemporary nature of antisemitism.

Those trained in traditional Judaism do not, generally speaking, suffer from the ideological fog that characterizes these letters. Demands for civil rights for Jews are not “cynical attacks on higher education” as they claim. Detaining foreign nationals engaged in antisemitic activity is not “undermining of the rights and security of immigrants.” And it is the institutions from which Jews are being driven away that are weakening “free academic inquiry,” not the government that halts taxpayer funding for hate.

The fight against antisemitism must be rooted in truth and unwavering commitment to Jewish safety, not political grandstanding. It is true that the fight against antisemitism is being politicized in an unconscionable way—but the party doing so is not Donald Trump or his administration.

When leftist rabbis and groups dismiss genuine concerns about antisemitism, this only emboldens those who seek to harm the Jewish people. Their betrayal of the fundamental responsibility to protect and defend Jewish lives must be condemned unequivocally by the Jewish community.

Originally published in The Daily Signal

Protesters are getting exactly what they asked for when they waved Hamas flags, burned American flags, and turned college campuses into breeding grounds for extremism. They wanted attention, and now they’ve got it—in the form of overdue accountability.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is doing what weak leadership failed to do for years: enforce our laws, protect our national security, and call out academic institutions that have turned a blind eye to terror apologists in their midst. Without exaggeration, he is removing a profound threat to American civilization.

America’s strength is its commitment to fairness, tolerance, and freedom to both live our lives and express our opinions. George Washington characterized America by using a passage from the prophet Micha, “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.”

Speech intended to intimidate, silence, instill fear, and incite mob violence is not the free expression called for by America’s Founding Fathers—just the opposite.

University administrators mistakenly thought that the new Trump administration would continue tolerating open support for violent extremists under the guise of academic freedom. But that is not something the United States, or any civilized country, can long tolerate without losing its first-world status.

Let’s be clear—this isn’t about stifling dissent. It’s about protecting the American dream of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. When a foreign national sides with Hamas, a terrorist organization responsible for murdering Israeli and American men, women, and children, he or she forfeits the privilege of living, learning, and working on American soil. That’s not a violation of rights—it’s the logical outcome of abusing them.

Foreign nationals are guests in our country. When they promote terrorism or justify acts of barbarism, they prove they do not belong in a nation founded on freedom and the rule of law. By remaining here, they endanger its continued existence.

These students weren’t innocents engaged in peaceful protest. They chose to not merely align themselves with, but actually join, the group that committed the atrocities of Oct. 7. That’s not “anti-colonial resistance”—it’s direct support for terrorism. And under President Donald Trump, and now Rubio’s lead, America finally has the courage to treat it as such.

It is astounding how quickly the radical Left pauses from shouting down speakers with different opinions to call for respect for the First Amendment when they’re called out. But the Constitution does not guarantee a foreigner the right to a student visa. Nor does it protect speech that crosses the line into incitement of violence or active support for foreign terrorist groups. Free speech has never meant freedom from consequences—especially when national security is at stake.

Universities have long been hotbeds for ideological radicalism, but the recent glorification of Hamas marks a dangerous escalation. When students construct encampments that praise terrorists, when they chant genocidal slogans, when they intimidate Jewish students and threaten violence, that is no longer just speech. That is active support for an agenda that is incompatible with civilized society.

And where are the university administrators? Mostly cowering in silence, or worse, enabling the chaos. Their failure to stand up for American values has left a vacuum that leaders like Rubio and Trump are now filling. Rubio and Trump are reminding the country that strength and moral clarity are not dirty words—they are requirements for a functioning republic.

The Biden administration tiptoed around these issues, unwilling to alienate its far-left base. But leadership is not about appeasing radicals—it’s about protecting the people you serve. Trump understood this, and Rubio is demonstrating that same principle now. For this, they deserve our thanks.

We must never forget that visa revocation is not punishment—it is policy. It is a tool, legally enshrined in the Immigration and Nationality Act, that allows our government to expel those who pose a threat to public safety and national security. Praising or promoting a terrorist group falls squarely into that category.

The government’s actions are not just appropriate, they are essential. They are a message to the world that the United States will not be used as a platform for the propaganda of our enemies. They reaffirm that citizenship, residence, and even student visas are privileges, not entitlements.

Since the protesters’ hatred is being directed primarily against Jews, it is worth noting the additional danger that this represents. History shows that when the positive contribution of Jews to society is met with bigotry and hate, it is that society that eventually suffers.

Today, the term “Nazi” is the worst of epithets; Nazi culture, like that of the Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians, are artifacts of history. Economists claim that areas of Europe that persecuted and expelled Jews still show the detrimental effects of those acts today. America was founded on the pursuit of a better dream than that.

In a time when our national resolve is constantly tested by enemies both foreign and domestic, we need leaders who are unafraid to draw lines and enforce them. The current administration is now carrying that torch.

And to those who now cry foul because they’re facing consequences for waving the flag of a murderous terrorist group—you knew exactly what you were doing. You made your bed. Now lie in it.

Photo credit: Student rioters vandalize Hamilton Hall, Columbia. Video still from student video.

by Rabbi Yaakov Menken and Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld in Daily Caller.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has a new book out, titled “Antisemitism in America: A Warning.” He describes therein how bigotry against Jews is growing on both political sides, and writes that he felt a change in his responsibility as a Jewish American leader after the antisemitic Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7.

In his words, he “had to act.” But when it came time to introduce his book to the public, he abruptly postponed his publicity tour due to “security concerns.” This illustrates not only the prominence in America of the antisemitism he decries, but his failure to confront it with courage.

Throughout his career Sen. Schumer has claimed to be a guardian of Jewish interests, but his public statements and actions have frequently conveyed a very different message. This was especially on display during the last year—after the same Oct. 7 attacks that he claims motivated him to do more.

As Israel worked frantically to rescue hostages and neutralize the Hamas terror organization in March of last year, Schumer attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the Senate floor, calling for elections and new leadership in Israel.

Even fellow Democrats criticized his remarks, while Republicans asserted correctly that they caused “enormous damage.” To label the Israeli leader an “obstacle to peace” while facing a genocidal threat was akin to blaming Jews for failing to appease the Nazis, while hinting that Israel was losing American support certainly gave bloodthirsty Hamas fighters a morale boost.

A recent House Republican Staff report from the Committee on Education and the Workforce revealed that Schumer responded with a similarly stunning lack of concern to the surge of antisemitic protests and violence at Columbia University. He advised Columbia’s former president, Minouche Shafik, to “keep heads down,” because their “political problems are really only among Republicans.” This, from a self-proclaimed guardian of the Jewish community.

Earlier this year, Schumer blocked efforts to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its prejudiced and lawless arrest warrants against Israeli officials. The ICC has a pattern of transgressing its own authority to harm American and allied interests, but Schumer claimed the sanctions bill was “poorly drafted” and would have “many unintended consequences.” On the contrary, those consequences were designed to deter even the most woke of American companies and foreign governments from working with the ICC or complying with its anti-Israel and anti-American rulings.

Despite all of the foregoing, Schumer has stepped forward this year to be a key Senate sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which defines when anti-Israel or “anti-Zionist” language ventures into antisemitism.

This act will help ensure the safety of Jewish students on campus, and prevent universities from sliding further into bigotry and hate. But when he led the Senate as Majority Leader last year, Schumer failed to bring this same bill to the floor despite assuring Jewish audiences that he would.

Did Schumer genuinely have a change of heart about the bill’s importance? Or, alternatively, did he bury it as Majority Leader in order to hide the sharp divide within his caucus, but now, knowing that the bill will be introduced and will surely pass, is finally voting his conscience, especially as his book goes on sale? Sadly, it seems far more likely that for Schumer, protection of the Jewish community took a back seat to political expediency.

Sen. Schumer must now demonstrate that he has genuinely had a change of heart, and that he will oppose antisemitism and other forms of hatred even when it requires moral courage to do so. Instead of castigating Netanyahu, he could begin by repudiating the terror-supporting Democrats in both houses and call for them to be expelled from the caucus he leads.

George Washington recalled the biblical prophet, Micah, when he envisioned an America in which “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

It is imperative that leaders of both parties share that vision; if Sen. Schumer cannot clearly and emphatically provide that leadership for Senate Democrats, it is time for him to not merely flee from protesters, but to turn over the leadership to a Senator who can face them down.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is Executive Vice President and Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld is President of the Coalition for Jewish Values.

Photo Credit: Sen. Chuck Schumer by Senate Democrats, with CC BY 2.0 license on Flickr.

Originally published in Townhall

President Trump’s airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels send a powerful message, far beyond preventing the harassment of U.S. ships and commerce in the Red Sea. Without exaggeration, the president is responding to a serious threat to global stability.

The Houthis and their main sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, aim to reduce civilization to an Islamic caliphate, and would then simply fight among themselves for dominance. Appeasement was never the answer.

Unlike his predecessor’s weak posture, President Trump understands that strength deters aggression. The Houthis, backed by the Mullahs of Iran, have been targeting Red Sea shipping, endangering international commerce and emboldening Tehran’s broader destabilization efforts.

By taking swift military action, Trump is protecting American interests, standing with our most trusted ally in the Middle East, Israel, standing up for free navigation, and restoring deterrence in a region where Biden’s appeasement policies only invited more chaos. This is the leadership the world needs—firm, unapologetic, and effective.

There is also, however, a clear recognition of the larger danger of which the Houthis are a part. In January, Houthi forces fired repeatedly into Israel, supporting the terrorists of Hamas and intending to inflict fear and trauma upon Israeli citizens.

During the recent months of renewed ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the Houthi attacks stopped entirely. With the end of the ceasefire, coupled with the U.S. strikes on the Houthis that began this past Saturday night, the Houthis resumed firing at Israeli targets. What is the connection between the Houthis and terrorism in Israel? Simply put, everything.

The halt in Houthi hostilities during this period indicates a tactical alliance with Hamas and others. However, this alliance is only one of convenience; without a common target, these groups would immediately fight among themselves, in the model of Syria.

After the last of Syria’s Jews were expelled in the 1990s, its government began a period of oppression that led to a civil war that began in 2011, with atrocities on both sides and Assad’s use of weapons of mass destruction against his own people. Today, the flight of Assad and his government has left the country torn apart by former rebel allies, with massacres of Alawites and Christians merely a prelude to warfare between radical Islamic groups.

The left consistently underestimates the powerful draw of religious devotion. They imagine that with better economics and more education, those radicalized by Imams will lay down their arms to engage in business.

In reality, religion overrides worldly concerns even more than Nazi ideology corrupted German academia. This can be used for good or evil: religious teachings are why Jewish Americans reduce their standard of living for the opportunity to live in the Holy Land, but are also why radical Islamic terrorists commit suicide bombings.

The Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah all find common sponsors in Iran and other countries. At the end of the day, however, they would bring Syria’s disastrous human rights situation to the entire region. Their cooperation, like that of the Syrian rebels, is driven by a common enemy rather than genuine solidarity, and would quickly dissolve if permitted to expand their reach.

President Trump’s airstrikes are thus not merely a reaction to immediate threats; they are part of a broader strategy to restore peace and stability to the region, and ensure that terrorist groups can no longer threaten their neighbors.

The Houthis remain a threat, but the message is clear: America will act decisively to protect peace around the world unlike the former president who was all about appeasing terrorists. The days of appeasement are over!

Image Credit: Houthi PR photo shared by Col. Richard Kemp on X. 

Originally published in JNS

Provoking outrage from the United Nations, human-rights organizations and Arab governments, Israel is blocking further aid to Gaza. It comes as the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has ended and Hamas refuses to agree to a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire extension. But even without this valid reason, and despite the condemnations, Israel has adopted the morally correct approach.

For more than a year, the Biden administration’s insistence that Israel provide support to its mortal enemies prolonged the conflict, trapped Palestinian civilians in a war zone, and condemned innocent hostages to months of torture, abuse and death.

There is a saying in the Midrash: “Those who are compassionate to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to the compassionate.”

The billions of dollars that have flowed into Gaza over the past two decades under the guise of humanitarian aid enabled the governing genocidal junta to solidify its control, arm for war and indoctrinate the Arab populace to seek death and destruction. Hamas then carried out the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust and has broadcast its intent to repeat its atrocities if allowed to survive. The requirement that Israel sustain the same terrorists it must eliminate only further demonstrates the truth of this aphorism.

Days after Oct. 7, 2023, I predicted and dismissed the disingenuous calls for “restraint” that would hound Israel in the aftermath of the slaughter. This did not reflect a lack of concern for the costs of war; it was born of a commitment to human rights and an opposition to antisemitic double standards. As I wrote then, world leaders and members of Congress don’t call for restraint when people are fighting totalitarian regimes or terrorists, unless the victims are Jews.

In late October 2023, amid closed border crossings into Gaza, Biden administration officials predicted a humanitarian crisis, saying that fuel supplies were expected to last “a couple of days.” They did not mention at that early date that Hamas was considering trading hostages for that fuel. Rafael Hayun, an analyst and civilian hacker who monitors Hamas communications, went further in a recent interview with Ami Magazine. He claimed that had the siege lasted longer, “we would have had everything,” with Hamas fighters flying a white flag and turning over Yahya Sinwar, architect of the Oct. 7 murderous assault, to Israel.

Even as Israel worked to provide Gazan hospitals with fuel, the Biden administration forced Israel to surrender its critical bargaining chips and supply Hamas with all the fuel it needed, plus enough food and other aid to stock every pantry in Gaza. This is why—after months of cries from the United Nations and others of “impending famine”—healthy, well-fed Hamas fighters and supporters were dancing and cheering as they paraded the coffins of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, babies they kidnapped and slaughters had slaughtered. The only emaciated victims in sight were the surviving hostages they had deliberately starved.

None of these lies were incidental, they are key to the strategies of Hamas and its Iranian, Qatari and European allies throughout the conflict. For nearly two decades Hamas built tunnels under civilian buildings and stored weapons in mosques, schools and shelters. They set up a data center beneath and borrowed connectivity from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) headquarters. Palestinian Authority officials noted that Hamas was maximizing civilian casualties for PR reasons, while world outlets unanimously blamed Israel for Hamas Health Ministry death counts so inflated and unrealistic as to be statistically impossible. Despite the cries of “genocide,” Israel remains the only party in the conflict working to save civilians from harm, and it has succeeded to an unprecedented degree.

It is also worth considering how innocent Gazan civilians truly are. During the Nazi era, civilians in every country under Hitler’s control—including Germany, Poland, France, Holland, Austria and Hungary—saved Jews from harm at great personal risk. Since Oct. 7, Israel has broadcast Arabic-language announcements on radio, television, social media and in print, promising security and a generous financial reward to anyone helping rescue a hostage. Not one Gazan has responded. Instead, they participated in the kidnappings, rapes, imprisonment, humiliation, torture of hostages and desecration of their bodies.

Where are the decent, innocent Gazans? Sadly, they are dead. Hamas has long since murdered anyone identified as gay or as a supporter of the Palestinian Authority, as well as anyone who opposed their iron-fisted and antisemitic agenda.

The withholding of aid has always been, and remains, a just and moral course of action. Hamas must release the hostages, abandon its explicitly genocidal mission and permanently disband. Aid should only come afterward to support the de-Nazification and rebuilding of Gaza. Until then, blame for all of the suffering in both Israel and the Strip must be placed firmly at the feet of the terrorists and their supporters around the world.

Photo Credit: Israel Foreign Ministry video on X/Twitter.

Originally published in Times of Israel

When non-Jewish groups work to fight antisemitism, they should expect to earn grateful appreciation from the Jewish community. This is especially true today if they have the ear of the incoming Trump Administration. But if those groups are politically conservative, some on the Jewish left are sadly unwilling to check their own partisanship in favor of basic Jewish and humanitarian interests. To them, conservatives can only be tagged as antisemitic for the silliest of reasons (think Elon Musk and his so-called “Nazi” hand motion), not acknowledged for their positive contributions to fighting hatred.

In response to the Hamas terror attack on Israel in October of 2023 and the explosion of open antisemitism that followed on campuses and cities across America, the Heritage Foundation teamed with an array of other organizations to form the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (NTFCA). This led to Project Esther, a strategic plan to confront and reject the antisemitism hiding behind “Palestinian” advocacy, unveiled on the first anniversary of the Hamas massacre.

Instead of embracing this groundbreaking initiative, numerous writers on the Jewish left responded with hostility. This reaction cannot be explained by flaws in either the NTFCA or Project Esther, but only by the cognitive dissonance that occurs when dearly held beliefs clash with cold reality. Clearly, many progressive Jews have yet to fully acknowledge that blatant Jew-hatred is now endemic among their erstwhile left-wing allies and “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) staff, much less to accept friendship and alliance from conservatives anxious to reject racism and hate. Heritage is the largest conservative think tank in the country, and thus they cannot conscience its support.

Examined on its merits and without political bias, Project Esther is a serious and welcome campaign to stop hatred against Jews, targeting its most obvious and potent agents today: what Project Esther terms the “Hamas Support Network,” the coalition of hateful, pro-terror groups and spokespersons embedded in American universities, media, and corporate DEI programs. Project Esther intends to dismantle the infrastructure behind that pro-Hamas network and “restore equal protection under the law for all Americans.”

No one should be surprised that Hamas supporters in outlets like Mondoweiss, Al Jazeera, and The New Republic characterize Project Esther as a “right wing action plan” to counter what they call “Palestine” activism or “anticolonial resistance.” This is because they invert reality: what they describe as “colonialists” are Jews living in Judea, while their “indigenous” are Arab invaders. Project Esther encourages Americans to reject terror and antisemitism, so it obviously faces opposition from propagandists for hate.

More concerning are the pieces from progressive Jewish writers transparently intended to impeach the integrity of Project Esther and the Task Force behind it. These represent a case study in ingratitude, of course, but this is where the failure of some to choose self-interest over partisanship is most evident.

In the Jewish Insider (JI), reporter Gabby Deutch focused not upon the laudable aims of the NTFCA, but her own assertion that most of the constituent organizations are from the evangelical Christian community. In reality, the NTFCA incorporates a broad swath of ethnic and other partners, including Jewish groups such as Coalition for Jewish Values and the Zionist Organization of America. One of the chairs is Ellie Cohanim, a Jewish refugee from Iran who served as Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the first Trump administration. So Deutch’s pejorative claim that Heritage “spurned” Jewish groups in creating the Task Force is simply untrue.

Besides, non-Jewish member organizations in the Task Force have produced outstanding research on anti-Jewish threats in America and led rallies to support Jewish victims of terror. Yet Deutch even criticized one NTFCA leader for having the temerity to point out that Jewish groups combating antisemitism have not been as effective as needed on their own.

Dove Kent in the Jewish Daily Forward not only referenced the same unjustified complaints highlighted by Deutch, but has been deceived by the ruse that groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, which declared its members to be actual participants in the terrorist attack on Israel in 2023, are merely “pro-Palestinian.” Kent even claimed that Project Esther, far from protecting the American Jewish community, will endanger it instead.

To understand this, note that Kent also characterized the steps taken by the House of Representatives last year to combat antisemitism as attempts by Republicans to “repress political organization by groups and institutions they disagree with.” She could not acknowledge the unquestionably positive efforts against Jew-hatred taken by Republicans, in part because she could not permit herself to recognize the bigotry and violence fomented by the “progressive” targets of their investigations.

Back in 2018, Kent wrote that antisemitism was exclusively a right-wing, “white nationalist” phenomenon, while random attacks on Jews across New York City were being perpetrated by overwhelmingly non-white assailants. And just this past November, Jewish writer Franklin Foer asserted in The Atlantic that Donald Trump, whose record of fairness towards Israel and the Jewish community is arguably unmatched in Presidential history, was “building the most Anti-Semitic cabinet in decades.” These claims, so wildly discordant with reality, signal a consistent inability of left-wing Jewish columnists to check their political biases when looking at both antisemitism and those who oppose it.

This also explains why all of Deutch, Kent, and Arno Rosenfeld, also writing in the Forward, unanimously resorted to “whataboutism,” accusing Project Esther of “ignoring” antisemitism on the right, when in reality it focuses exclusively upon the single antisemitic movement with the greatest traction in America today, without reference to others found on either political side. It is no fault of conservatives that the blatant Jew-hatred targeted by Project Esther is so dangerous precisely because it finds a sympathetic audience among so-called progressives.

To back Project Esther, one needs nothing more than the desire to reject Jew-hatred wherever it is found, and the ability to accept the alliance and support of prominent American conservative groups in that stance. Every American, and certainly American Jews, should embrace Project Esther and support its efforts, with the urgency and unity that this moment demands.

Photo Credit: Heritage Foundation by Mike Licht with CC BY 2.0 license, on Flickr.