Category Archives: Anti-Semitism

Provocation, Politics and Prudence

Two questions:

1) Which contemporary public provocateur poses the greatest threat to Israel?

2) Has Mike Huckabee, who has called attacks on Arabs in Yehudah and Shomron “Jewish terrorism,” thrown Israel under the bus?

The answer to the first question, I believe, isn’t Tucker Carlson or even Hasan Piker. It’s Itamar Ben-Gvir.

No, I don’t think Mr. Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, is the monster many media have made him out to be. Yes, he has strong views about Arabs he sees as posing dangers to Jews. And such Arabs, and the dangers they represent, certainly exist.

But he is a politician, too, who, to impress a particular constituency, has done things like boasted of reducing food rations for Palestinian prisoners (and Israel’s high court ruled in 2025 that the prison service under Ben-Gvir deprived Palestinians of a minimum subsistence diet). And posted (though later removed) a video of corpulent, smiling Arab prisoners entering prison and then exiting as gaunt, drained creatures.

And he has also made statements calibrated, like the video, to inflame. In a more recent one, responding to Israel’s drawdown of military strikes in Gaza,  he opined that “targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night.” He added: “Not just those who pose an immediate threat – there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”

Now, arguably, he meant the 30 to 40 deaths to be of Hamas terrorists. And few of us would be disappointed if the earth were no longer cursed with the presence of such murderous people.

But it was entirely predictable that media and nations (not just Arab ones but western ones as well) would understand his wished-for victims to include random Arab residents of Gaza. And, equally predictable, that those media and nations, along with countless pundits, would seize upon the “not even people” phrase as mirroring things like the Nazis’ portrayal of Jews.

Such incendiary statements provide potent ammunition to anti-Israel provocateurs like Carlson and Piker, who then gleefully feed them into their “genocide” generator. And from there, the libels spread into other parts of the populace.

As to question #2, Mr. Huckabee has been the friendliest and most empathetic US ambassador to Israel that she has ever known. And his condemnation of acts of violence by nationalist hotheads against innocent Arabs is not only justified, but also in Israel’s best interest.

He made clear that roughly half a million Israelis live in Yehudah and Shomon, and that the men responsible for “settler violence” represent “a very tiny minority” of that population, at most, “a few hundred men.”

He added that that is “a few hundred too many,” but he clearly rejects the myth that, as BDS supporter Mairav Zonszein put it a recent New York Times guest column, violence against Arab residents “is a feature, not a bug, of Israeli policy… [which includes] the emboldening of settler militias,” and that the “systematic destruction of Palestinian life” is the government’s goal.

Israeli Jews in outposts in Yehudah and Shomron point out that there have been many more instances of attacks on them by local Arabs than there has been violence against Arabs. And that there have been times when what seemed to be anti-Arab violence turned out to be nothing of the sort (in some cases, even fabrications). All true.

But, in the end, those cases do not justify “retaliations” against random Arab families and fields that have unarguably taken place.

Back in May, when an “activist” flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli navy, Mr. Ben-Gvir posted a video mocking captured flotilliacs bound and forced to kneel on the ground. The posting sparked (as its poster intended) outrage from abroad and even from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who call his minister’s actions “despicable.”

Mr. Huckabee’s reaction at the time was that the “Flotilla was [a] stupid stunt, but Ben Gvir betrayed dignity of his nation.”

That latter phrase said much. And still does, today.

At a time when Israel is ridiculously but widely vilified as racist and genocidal, preserving the dignity of the nation is more important than ever. And provocative anti-Arab rhetoric, not to mention violence perpetrated against Arab civilians, promote anything but dignity.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

Canards on the Quad

There was a time, dear young’ns, when academia – the world of universities and professors – was the gold standard, the go-to place for ascertaining truths. A time when scholarship was objective and reliable; and scholars, the same.

The most recent reminder that things have changed arrived recently in the sad saga of Jason Arday, one of Britain’s most prominent young academics, who, in 2003, rose to become Cambridge University’s youngest black professor at just 37.

He was renowned for having been mute until he was 11, illiterate until he was 18 and yet later completed a PhD and published widely-praised sociological research. When he was hired by Cambridge, the head of its department for education told him: “You are the best in the world in terms of the research that you do.”

Professor Arday also wrote about running marathons, and that he ran 600 miles in six days.

Sound too amazing to be true? Well, it was.

Mr. Arday stood accused of not only falsifying his life story and academic credentials, but also of having plagiarized his PhD thesis. He canceled a series of events promoting his memoir “Great and Unfortunate Things,” and resigned from Cambridge, because, he explained, the public scrutiny had been bad for his mental health.

It clearly was, since he was discovered on erev Shabbos to have died.

Mr. Arday’s field of academic endeavor was sociology, and it wouldn’t have been wrong to characterize him as woke. In a keynote speech at the British Sociological Association, he contended that white conservative activists target black academics and are a “cancer” to be “eradicate[d] from academia.” He did not write or speak about Jews or the Middle East, but his wokeness and fabulism was very much of a kind with that of other professorial prevaricators who did.

Like former Harvard University dean of social science Claudine Gay, who famously, at a Congressional hearing, said that calling for the genocide of Jews might perhaps violate the school’s code of conduct, “depending on the context.”

Dean Gay later was later accused of, in the delicate words of The New York Times, “using material from other sources without proper attribution.” The plagiarism allegations totaled almost 50 instances spanning eight of her academic works, including her dissertation and five of her 11 published articles.

Ms. Gay resigned, saying that having “doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor” has been “distressing.” Understandably.

Back in 2005, Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, who calls Israel a “colonial” project and ignores Jewish historical ties to Eretz Yisrael, was accused of plagiarizing significant portions of another writer’s 1994 article.

While it’s interesting that plagiarizing and vilifying Israel and/or Jews seem to enjoy a cozy relationship, there are all too many academics who, even if they haven’t been caught stealing from others, are nevertheless guilty of another, even worse, academic sin: Bias.

Two Anti-Defamation League reports that just came down the pike reveal rising levels of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in university classrooms. Some instructors are assigning readings by terrorist groups and – not a joke –  offering extra credit for attending anti-Israel protests.

One of the reports cites incidents of professors presenting one-sided narratives, framing lectures around a single political view and treating contested claims as settled fact. Criticism of Israel without presenting counterarguments is worse than plagiarism; it is educational malpractice.

Stanford University, for one example, offers a course called “Palestine Across Disciplines: An Introduction” and asks in its description, “How do we talk about Palestine and Palestinian life in the midst of devastation and genocide?” Somehow, one imagines, the true genocidal actors in the Middle East are untalked about in the course.

And at the University of California, Berkeley, history students were reportedly assigned to read a book by a former spokesperson for the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, alongside materials on plane hijacker Leila Khaled. (Alan Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel” did not appear on the reading list.)

According to Gallup, the percentage of U.S. adults who say they have “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education has fallen 19 points since 2015 to just 38 percent.

For good reason.

© 2026 Ami Magazine

Sad People in Dearborn

Leaked recordings of private conversations and “hot mic” moments – when a politician or other public figure doesn’t realize that his microphone is still on – offer the best evidence of the true character and positions of the speaker. And, sometimes, those of others.

Last week, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was confronted with words he didn’t expect would become public. But they did, and revealed something about the candidate’s assessment of a bastion of his strongest supporters, and likely about himself.

On audio obtained by The Washington Free Beacon website from an event that Mr. El-Sayed held shortly after the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the candidate told staff that he wasn’t going to comment on the mullah’s death, and shared his feeling that the dictator’s demise had resulted in “a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.”

Dearborn, of course, is a Michigan city that has the largest Muslim population in the U.S. It is the only Arab-majority city in the country.

CNN reporter Jake Tapper asked Mr. El-Sayed about his remark, prefacing his question by explaining that he “thought that quote was interesting, because the ayatollah has killed tens of thousands of innocent Iranians, not to mention the proxies that Iran has funded that have killed innocent civilians all over the Middle East.”

And then, the question: “Why were you worried about offending people who support the ayatollah?”

Mr. El-Sayed’s response to the question was revealing in itself: He tried to change the subject, citing the then-recent deaths of two American soldiers in an Iranian attack on a military base in Jordan.

“Jake,” he said, in a patronizing tone, “on a day where we’re mourning the loss of two more service members in a war we never should have fought, I think all of us ought to step back and ask whether or not everybody in Michigan, frankly, everybody in America, shouldn’t be sad.”

Funnier moments in recent politics are few. Mr. El-Sayid couldn’t deny what he had said about bereaved Dearborners – which revealed his recognition that the Arab, mostly Muslim, population of the city were sitting shiva for a mass murderer. So he pivoted to to a non sequiter, in the hope that no one would notice.

Mr. Tapper, however, tried to steer things back, “I was specifically asking you,” he said, “about comments you didn’t want to make because you didn’t want to offend people in Dearborn, which is in Michigan.”

Alas, Mr. Tapper, gentleman (or weakling) that he is, didn’t press the issue further.

In truth, though, he didn’t have to. The reality was all too apparent. The candidate had revealed the disturbing, demented and dangerous mindset of a subset of the citizenry, perhaps of himself as well.

Michigan is an imporant “swing state,” and a politically “purple” one too, neither reliably Democrat nor Republican. It voted for Donald Trump in 2024 and has a Democratic governor. It has flipped between parties in recent elections.

Mr. El-Sayed is a Muslim progressive, pursuing the Democratic party’s nomination to succeed retiring Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat. Earlier this month, Mr. Sayed refused – repeatedly – to say whether he believes that Israel “has a right to exist.”

“Nobody’s ever asked me whether I believe Palestine has a right to exist,” he huffed. (Maybe, Abdul, because the answer is obvious?)

Among his endorsers are Bernie Sanders, AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Elizabeth Warren. Enough said.

His opponent in the August 4 primary is Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who supports a strong U.S.-Israel alliance and strongly opposes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The race is currently too close to call.

If Mr. El-Sayed should, chalila, win the Democratic nomination, he will face a highly competitive general election matchup against presumed Republican nominee Representative Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Mr. Rogers considers Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to be an existential threat. And he is a steadfast defender of Israel and her right to attack Iranian proxies like Hamas.

Michigan state law provides for “open” primaries, contests in which any voter, regardless of party affiliation, can cast a vote.

And so, all Michiganders who were not saddened by the demise of Ayatollah Khamenei need to turn out and vote their consciences on August 4.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

DSA VS. USA

There’s no way to put a gloss on the ugliness of Darializa Avila Chevalier’s and Melat Kiros’ sentiments about the US and Israel. Even more disturbing is the reluctance of saner Democratic leaders to criticize the corrosive candidates.

To read more about the implications of the above, please click here.

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