Ben Cohen
Ben Cohen writes a weekly column for JNS on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications.
The connection between WWI armistice and WWII Kristallnacht
Two grimly sobering anniversaries fall in November. On the 9th and 10th, we will mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht—the orgy of murder and violence that devastated Jewish communities across Nazi Germany in 1938....
Yahya Sinwar explains how Hamas hasn’t changed
In the weeks since footage emerged of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn insinuating that native-born British Jews have a feeble grasp of English irony, lo and behold, I’ve been spotting ironies everywhere.
This week,...
Mideast realities: Abbas and Netanyahu address the UN
There was one corner of New York City last Thursday where the Senate Judicial Committee hearings into the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh went largely unnoticed: the United Nations building perched on...
![By user:Danbury [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons](https://jewishwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/800px-İstanbul_Üniversitesi-324x235.jpg "Study abroad in Turkey, anyone?")
Study abroad in Turkey, anyone?
Earlier this month, the Turkish NBA star Enes Kanter published a moving article in Time magazine about how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s mushrooming tyranny is impacting his own family.
“This month, my dad will face trial in Turkey for...
Soviet anti-Semitism in a British guise
The “it’s” I refer to is a phenomenon pretty much unknown to newer generations of Jews in terms of their direct experience, but it will be remembered clearly by folks who lived through the...
How to misread anti-Semitism
In all the furor around the anti-Semitism plaguing the British Labour Party, I’ve noticed two distinct forms of defense of both the party and its far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
The first defense, favored by those...
France’s reputation is at stake again over the murder of Sarah Halimi
For the second time in 20 years, France basked in the accomplishment of winning the World Cup with a team whose diverse backgrounds were as much a symbol of national unity as the creative...
The Irish Senate’s ‘boycott Israel’ debate
Reading the transcript of the debate that took place in the Irish Senate on July 11 before that body voted, by 25-20, to criminalize commercial relations with Jewish communities in the West Bank, I was struck...
Denmark confronts Islamism and integration
Imam Mundhir Abdallah is a good example of the dilemmas that have confronted politicians in Denmark in their response to Islamist extremism among the country’s 300,000 Muslims, the large majority of whom are first- or...
Polish-Jewish relations step back from the brink
Poland has taken the welcome step of removing the most objectionable part of its legislation governing the commemoration of the Nazi and Communist eras. No longer will a historian or journalist or any member...