Category Archives: Anti-Semitism

Say It Sam

If the name Sam Harris doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because you’re blessedly not into the world of podcasts.

Neither am I, but Mr. Harris, holder of a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and a philosopher, is a popular podcaster. Although he is halachically Jewish, he is an avowed secularist, not someone who might be expected to feel any connection to Judaism or Israel.

Which is why those who consider him a highbrow of the highest caliber have been dismayed by his bucking of the Israel-hatred that has become mandatory among the imperious intelligentsia. They can’t understand how he missed the memo.

Recently, to address his dismayed disciples’ puzzlement, he wrote a 2000 word tour de force, audaciously titled “Why I won’t debate critics of Israel.” It has been widely shared.

Mr. Harris is no knee-jerk defender of any Israeli action or leader, but has no interest in “exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark.”

He is interested only in the larger picture, the one that, in a reasonable world, would obscure all else. “The ethical difference between Israel and her enemies,” he states, “remains vast.” And “the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible… the product of perennial lies and delusions.”

Strong words, made all the stronger by his elaboration.

Militant Islamists, he contends, are “essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise.”

Were the IDF ever to “morph into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields,” he fantasized, “if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom… producing generations of bright-eyed, suicidal fanatics, if the residents of Tel Aviv [would] condone the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other noncombatants as hostages and then gather in crowds of thousands, baying for their blood – if, in other words, the Israelis began to resemble the Palestinians, then I won’t care who wins this war.”

But of course, he continues, “there remains a world of difference between the two sides, and I believe that we should focus on how brutalizing it is for any free society to confront enemies that can sincerely claim to ‘love death’ more than everyone else loves life – for this has been Israel’s predicament for the better part of a century.”

Cutting sharply through all the “pro-Palestinian” obfuscation, he explains that “The problem in the Middle East is not, and has never been, the existence of the state of Israel.” It has been “jihadism… the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.”

Disentangling every strand of the region’s history is “a fool’s errand,” he further contends, “because Palestinians and Israelis have discrepant accounts of the past, and no amount of study or debate will reconcile them.”

All that matters in the here and now, he declares, is “what the current inhabitants of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the surrounding Arab states want out of life now…. What are they willing to sacrifice for? What are they willing to die for? And what are they willing to let their children die for?”

And here he cuts to the quick. While “Israel has its religious fanatics,” he writes, they are not “the same sort of fanatics we find in Hamas or Hezbollah, and they’re far less representative of the surrounding culture.”

There is much more in Mr. Harris’ manifesto, but the following paragraph really says it all:

“If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution; there could even be a one-state solution…. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there could be a diverse, tolerant, and prosperous society between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There could have been one eighty years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7th, 2023. And for anyone who has been paying attention, it has been true on every other day since the founding of the state of Israel.”

Words worthy of being displayed on every billboard in Europe and posted in every American university classroom.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

Muckrakers Not Welcome

Last month, “activist” Tyler Oliveira notified his eight million social media subscribers that he was planning a trip to the Holy Land: “You guys think Israel will let me into the country?”

Shortly thereafter, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli reposted Mr. O.’s words along with a one-word response: “No.”

Mr. Chikli later explained that he was “proud to have denied entry to Israel today to an unfortunate YouTuber who is using the harassment of Jews as a way to get clout on social media.”

And so, fresh from an appearance on “just saying” Tucker Carlson’s innuendo-cast, the self-appointed investigative journalist – who had previously spent time in New Square and Lakewood harassing residents and “exposing” what he called “a parasitic, insulated Jewish community,” “systemic exploitation” of government programs and Orthodox “invasions” of communities, – boarded an El Al plane to Israel and, when it landed, was denied entry to the country.

During his earlier interview with the increasingly creepy Mr. Carlson, Mr. Oliveira recounted his trips to the heavily Orthodox American Jewish communities.

The “entire lifestyle” of Jews in the towns he visited, he said, “is designed to extract and exploit these welfare systems to the maximum degree. It is strategic. It is not happenstance. It is not coincidental. It is by design.”

The design, of course, is that of our nation’s social services, which reflect the citizenry’s democratically-expressed will to aid large families with limited incomes.

An argument can certainly be made – and Mr. Oliveira repeatedly makes it – that the country should not be using tax dollars to help those who face economic challenges that qualify them for things like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Social consciences, unfortunately, aren’t universal.

But when someone singles out only one or two racially or religiously identifiable groups (Mr. Oliveira has gone after other minorities, too), the “argument” is exposed as something other than fiscal conservatism. Tellingly, the muckraking crusader doesn’t seem to have made any effort to visit and harass poor white citizens, say, in Appalachia.

And then there is the regurgitation of hoary antisemitic tropes. “Seemingly,” Mr. Oliveira confided in Mr. Carlson, “there are a lot of powerful Jewish people who own significant media enterprises, [and] websites that seem to bend the knee… to [them]. As if Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk were members of the tribe.

But, leaving aside the darker elements that infect the souls of some right-wing personalities, a question does present itself: Is Israel wise to prevent such people from visiting?

The argument against permitting them entry (and Israel had denied entry in the past as well to various politicians and academics, based on a 2017 law that allows it to refuse proponents of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement) is straightforward: People who ally themselves with enemies of the country or with policies that would harm it don’t deserve to tread its soil.

What’s more – and in the case of Mr. Oliveira, it’s an entirely reasonable assumption – people ill-disposed to Israel or Jews will only use their visits to seek out yet new excuses for disparagment.

But there is a downside to that approach as well. The very denial of entry itself is sure to be used by the denied to their advantage. “If they have nothing to fear, why don’t they let me in?” they will say. “Must be that they have reason to fear…”

And, dovetailing with that concern to argue for allowing critics entry is the irrepressible Jewish optimism that dares to imagine that even haters, given the opportunity to get to know their targets better, might feel more constrained in the future, maybe even changed by the experience.

I generally opt for such optimism.

But when I witness someone somehow finding fault even with the volunteer police-allied Shomrim, which helps report and prevent crimes against innocent civilians, calling it, as Mr. Oliveira did, a “religious police” – prompting Mr. Carlson to add “Exactly. Essentially like in Saudi Arabia or Iran” – I have to concede that there are eyes just so hopelessly jaundiced that even the freshest snow will register in their eyes as soot and ash.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

Pita and Propaganda

The Guardian lets down its guard

“First comes the hummus: studded with chickpeas, anointed with a little reservoir of olive oil, greedily smeared up with hunks of pitta [sic] bread and messy fingers. Then the tabbouleh, then some homemade falafels…”

Thus opened an article in The Guardian, the London daily that is considered Britain’s “paper of record,” like our country’s The New York Times. And, like The Times, it has a denied but evident bias against Israel and Jews.

The details of the sumptuous meal continued through several deliriously described courses and dessert (baklava and homemade chocolate, if you really must know). The writer, the paper’s sports writer and opinion columnist Jonathan Liew, was feasting at a successful North London Arab-run eatery called Cafe Metro.

He wasn’t writing a food column. It was, rather, a report on a controversy swirling around Cafe Metro and a new nearby branch of an popular upscale bakery called Gail’s.

The night before it was due to open, the bakery was vandalized with red paint. Less than a week later, all its windows were smashed in. Slogans reading “reject corporate Zionism” and various obscenities were scrawled on its walls.

Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK,” but its parent company, Bain Capital, reportedly invests in military technology, including some Israeli security companies. Bad bakery!

Mr. Liew, after noting how Cafe Metro, “proudly blazons its Palestinian heritage” with a public display of flags, describes it lovingly as “a source of comfort and community in troubling times, resistance in its tastiest and most delicately spiced form.” And goes on to contend that “the very presence of [Gail’s] 20 metres away from a small independent cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.”

Gail’s, the writer seems to imply, has no business being a business.

Many people saw Mr. Liew’s description of the bakery’s opening, “an act of heavy-handed, high-street aggression” as, well, an act of heavy-handed Fleet Street aggression.

It was also an example of utterly corrupt journalism. Mr. Liew wasn’t quoting the Arab owners of Cafe Metro – who would be misguided enough to characterize Gail’s as an aggressor for simply existing. It was the columnist’s own ostensible statement of fact.

Making matters even more outrageous, the piece, which included no quotes from anyone connected to Gail’s, dismissed the window-smashing and paint smearing as “small acts of petty symbolism.”

A slew of complaints about the column was registered by, among many others, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who called the column “disgusting,” “appalling” and “ridiculous.”

With typical droll British humor. Senior Barrister Simon Myerson referenced the paper’s record of bias, writing: “I see the Guardian is having an antisemitic moment. Sorry, another antisemitic moment.”

The Guardian later edited the piece, “repositioning” the objectional “aggression” wordage “to clarify it meant to refer to the described fears about the chain’s impact on small traders.”

Also, “to avoid misunderstanding,” the paper removed the “small acts of petty symbolism” phrase, which, it explained, “was not intended to minimize local vandalism but rather to suggest its misdirected futility.”

All of which really misses the real point. It was the framing of the entire piece that was, and remains, journalistically objectionable.

After hundreds of words extolling the gustatory delights of Arab cuisine, Mr. Liew dwells for hundreds more on how the family of one of Cafe Metro’s operators “once lived in the city of Beit Hanoun in Gaza, and now lives out a precarious and hunted existence in one of Gaza’s many temporary refugee camps…”

And he contrasts that with how “Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence.” Even though the chain is not currently owned by Jews or Israelis, the insinuation is as obvious as it is odious.

And Mr. Liew concludes with the observation that the two businesses “have found themselves on the frontline of a war. A deeply asymmetric war, defined by gross imbalances in power and resources and platforms.”

There is in fact a gross imbalance here. It lies in the shameless portrayal of a vandalized victim as an aggressor, opposite a reverent, adulatory portrayal of an imagined victim.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

Letter Bomb

Just over a year ago, President Trump nominated Joe Kent, a former Army Special Forces soldier and two-time Republican candidate for Congress, to be director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). It was a decision the president has come to regret.

Although Mr. Kent was a Trump loyalist, even to the point of endorsing the discredited “stolen election” of 2020 claim and asserting that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was an FBI plot, he turned his back on Mr. Trump last week, resigning his position in protest of the current Iran war.

The content of his resignation letter should concern us all.

Mr. Kent is entitled to believe, as he wrote, that the current war was not warranted because there was no “imminent threat” to the U.S. that would permit an American president to order to attack another country.

It’s a risible stance, considering Iran’s “Death to America” drumbeat and accelerated ballistic missile and nuclear programs – not to mention the mullahs’ employment of proxies over years to kill American citizens. But people are entitled to be short-sighted, even myopic, even stupid.

The gist of Mr. Kent’s letter, however, was not an insistence on Congressional approval or some pacifist plea. It was contemporary blood libel. And aimed at such slanders’ perennial targets.

The former security official lays responsibility for what he considers an illegitimate war squarely at the feet of Israel and her American supporters. It was they, he asserted, who forced a helpless, impressionable President Trump to attack Iran. “It is clear,” he wrote, “that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

He blames the Iraq war, too, on Israel, which “cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”

That Mr. Trump might be vulnerable to outside pressure is a laughable notion. If there is anything that both supporters and detractors of the president agree upon, it’s that the man has a mind of his own and is about as pliable as a steel rod.

But Mr. Kent seems to harbor an unshakeable belief in the Jewish ability to… control things, including the president.

Mr. Netanyahu certainly made the case to Mr. Trump that Iran is an imminent threat not only to Israel, its “Little Satan,” but also to the U.S., its “Great Satan.” But Mr. Trump has regarded Iran as a threat for decades. Well before he first became president, he actually called for troop deployments to the country and seizure of control of Iranian oil. In 2018, he famously withdrew from the Obama-era JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran.

Sharing an interest with Israel – and acting in unison with her to head off the mullahs’ desire to Islamify the world – isn’t some dark conspiracy. It’s responsible leadership.

What’s more, Israeli leaders have lobbied every president in memory to go to war in Iran. That Mr. Trump decided to do so is not a sign of some gullibility but of his judgment that the time had come to remove a threat to the Western world.

Mr. Kent should never have been in a governmental position, much less a counterterrorism post. That should have been evident from the start. The evidence would have included his 2021 call to the odious white nationalist Nick Fuentes to get advice on social media strategy for a Congressional run. And his interview by neo-Nazi blogger Greyson Arnold. And his hiring of a member of the neo-fascist “Proud Boys” as a campaign consultant.

And then there’s the large tattoo on his arm, revealed in a relative’s innocent posting of him in a swimming pool, that reads: “Panzer.” The name, of course, of a famed Nazi tank.

Now, since his resignation, he has appeared on Jew-baiting Tucker Carlson’s podcast and has been lauded by the likes of Candace Owens, a reincarnation of rabid antisemite Charles Coughlin. “May American troops take [Kent’s] lead,” she posted on social media, “and look into conscientious objection to Bibi’s Red Heifer War. Goyim stand down.”

Birds of a feather…

While we can feel relief that Mr. Kent has left the NCTC, it’s deeply concerning that he was ever part of it. One has to wonder if other bigots may be lurking in government bodies.

(c) 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran