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 lonely, angry anti-Semite
At high school, he made no friends and didn’t belong to any clubs. He liked girls, but having a girlfriend was beyond his abilities. Academically, he was undistinguished, doing well in biology but failing...
A chill wind from Poland
I’ve known Rafal Pankowski, the Polish academic and campaigner against anti-Semitism and racism, for almost 20 years, but I don’t think I’ve heard him sound as worried about the political situation in his country...
Donald Trump and the Western alliance
U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to significantly reduce the number of American troops stationed in Germany has been causing ripples even among Republican lawmakers, who are—and not for the first time—expressing concern that the...
Nazi headstones, Confederate statues: America’s battle over memory
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) agreed last week to the removal of a small number of headstones in U.S. military cemeteries that were engraved with the Nazi swastika and the Iron Cross.
The stones marked...
‘Get your knee off our necks:’ Jews and the new civil-rights movement
Fighting racism doesn’t necessarily mean fighting anti-Semitism. Fighting racism can sometimes involve elements of anti-Semitism. And fighting anti-Semitism can sometimes lead to accusations of racism.
If you study the trajectory of racial politics in America...
Iran and Venezuela: The unshakeable alliance
In terms of putting on a spectacle, the current crop of leaders in Iran and Venezuela are a pale imitation of the situation a decade ago, when the double act of the late Hugo...
Suddenly, Human Rights Watch discovers anti-Semitism
The drumbeat of anti-Semitism has grown louder and more assured over the last two decades. Yet it’s only with the resurgence of far right activism in the last five years or so that mainstream...
Jeremy Corbyn in historical perspective
The era of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the opposition Labour Party in the United Kingdom mercifully came to an end last week, with the election of the more centrist-minded Sir Keir Starmer as his...
Daniel Pearl’s murderer gets ready for freedom
Even now, 18 years after his murder at the hands of terrorists in Pakistan, there is no better symbol of the ideological intersection between Islamism, anti-Semitism and hatred of the United States than Daniel...
Lies, Transparency and Pandemics
Has the world ever been this perfectly synchronized? Whether you wake up in an isolated hamlet in one part of the globe or a teeming city in another, whatever your language or your time...