Think Twice with Jonathan Tobin

A half century ago, the Soviet Union and its Third World allies passed the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution at the United Nations. Today, the same propaganda is regurgitated by academics, liberal media and pop culture figures who think they’re enlightened supporters of human rights. According to historian Gil Troy, who joins JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin on this week’s episode of Think Twice, the reason is the spread of “anti-racist” ideology that spreads antisemitic blood libels about Israel.

Troy, who wrote the definitive study of the struggle against the “Zionism is racism” resolution, sees the spread of toxic left-wing ideas has undermined both Israel’s international standing and that of American Jews. This was evident in what he calls the “triple double cross” of liberals and feminists who betrayed Israel after Oct. 7 by taking the side of the Palestinians who murdered, raped and kidnapped Israelis. What happened should have brought moral clarity about jihadi foes to American views of the conflict but instead it created division between the United States and Israel.

While Troy is worried about the way far-left Israeli-haters are taking over the Democratic Party, he believes figures like Michigan Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a greater threat to his party than he is to the Jews. The reason is that the shift to the far left is likely to damage Democrats in 2028 if not in 2026.

Nevertheless, Troy says it was far more important for Israel to win on the battlefield after Oct. 7 than to win public relations or diplomatic battles.

Analyzing the upcoming Israeli election, Troy says the divide among citizens of the Jewish state is primarily tribal and causing the two main camps that are supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the one hand, and his chief opponent, former Gen. Gadi Eisenkot on the other, to create what may well be a stalemate in the vote. He says it’s unfortunate because there is a broad Zionist consensus on the issues of security and even on the drafting of Haredim. Though many Israelis would like the two main blocs to come together, it’s not clear that either leader can escape the necessity of allying themselves with allies on the right or the left.

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At a time when most Americans have lost the ability to listen to people with opposing views on political issues, how can a fractious Jewish community that is also split on denominational lines to pull together. That’s the question posed by JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin. He believes that Jewish disunity has been exacerbated by the capture of the political left—which is still supported by the majority of Jews—by anti-Israel and antisemitic “progressives.” This puts even more pressure on Jewish liberals to conform to fashionable opinion on the left that poses a threat to their community’s interests and safety.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by DePaul University Law Professor Roberta Kwall, author of the new book, Polarized: Why American Jews Are Divided And What To Do About It. She believes that a vital Jewish center can be reconstituted if people realize that the things that unite them are still greater than those that seek to tear them apart.

Part of the problem is that Israel, which was once thought to be a unifying factor is now the greatest source of division with many unaffiliated or liberal Jews no longer supportive of it with a small but well-publicized minority actively opposed to Zionism.

At the core of her effort is a statement of largely anodyne principles that she believes the overwhelming majority of Jews agree on. Among them is support for the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state as well as the legitimacy of criticizing its government.

But for Kwall, just as important is the need to re-emphasize education and the importance of tradition to reinforce Jewish identity. In such a context, it will be easier for Jews who disagree on politics or aspects of Israeli policy to listen to each other and find common ground.

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The secret to the success of the Israel Defense Forces involves many factors but according to JNS Israel military correspondent Yaakov Lappin, it involves creating a culture as much as the courage of its soldiers, air crews and sailors and their effective use of cutting-edge technology. Lappin, who has written about this in his recently published book, Blue Team Dynamics: Three Proven Leadership Principles Inspired by IDF Sources for Business and Life, joins JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin on this week’s episode of Think Twice to discuss how this works.

The book is based on years of research and interviews dating back to 2018. According to Lappin, the three principles that are the foundation of IDF culture involve the importance of after-action review of everything they do, cultivating the ability to switch from the routine to an emergency mode and encouraging the need to recognize how to manage long-term change inside an organization. As he notes, the same ideas can help individuals or non-military organizations and businesses also succeed.

Lappin concedes that many of these lessons were forgotten by Israel’s military and intelligence establishment as well as their political masters prior to the catastrophe of Oct. 7, 2023, which occurred almost exactly 50 years after the IDF suffered another disaster that was also rooted in organizational failure. With respect to Oct. 7, Lappin says the mistake came from a basic human failing in which, “the human mind adopts and falls in love with a narrative” that is very difficult to break out of. This overrode the culture that should have prevented the complacency that led to the Hamas and Palestinian terrorists being able to carry out the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Prioritizing after-action detailed post-training and combat analysis started inside the Israeli Air Force but it has spread to the other branches of the military now too. That involves creating a culture where admitting mistakes of any kind is not only permitted but lauded as necessary, especially where it concerns commanders.

The necessity of knowing when to switch to emergency mode was actually highlighted by the way many in the IDF responded to Oct. 7. Those efforts ensured that the grievous damage inflicted by Hamas was limited and then allowed the Israelis to defeat the terrorists. Nevertheless, it’s still true that the IDF failed to anticipate this “black swan” event and that the procedures which should have prevented that mistake which involve looking for “black feathers,” rather than the swan itself, didn’t happen.

According to Lappin, the “Blue Team” approach, which refers to the creation of two groups dedicated to both planning IDF actions and those that seek to examine and defeat those plans as an enemy would, must also be credited for the amazing triumphs Israel achieved after Oct. 7 in Lebanon and against Iran. And as he notes, the very same ideas have also been applied by IDF veterans in their post-military careers in business and technology.

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JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin wants to know what’s the bigger problem? Is it the global surge of antisemitism? Or is it the passivity of some Jews who recoil from active defense against their attackers or the willingness of others to actively collaborate with those who seek their destruction?

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Tablet magazine editor-at-large Liel Leibovitz who answered by speaking of his outrage at the reaction of American and European Jews to efforts to harm them. He was particularly incensed by the fact that when a deranged man entered a New York City synagogue and disrupted services and attacked a congregant, not a single person present attempted to restrain him or defend the person who was assaulted. Instead, they simply sat back and waited for security to rush in and save them.

He believes this is symptomatic of Diaspora Jewry’s inadequate response to their current dilemma. “If that's all you've got, then what you have isn't a congregation. What you have is a hospice.”

“If Zionism taught us anything, and indeed if Judaism taught us anything,” he continued. “It’s that our expectation should never ever be to be safe. Our expectation should always be to be free. Free people have the door wide open. Free people welcome everyone that wants to come in. Free people are armed and trained and ready to defend themselves against their haters. This is a very normal state of being, applicable everywhere, it seems, except for the mainstream American Jewish community, which still harps on about risk management. Well, you know, that way lies doom.”

Leibovitz discussed Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s advice to Jews that they should prioritize the interests of the Democratic Party over their own safety and even the existence of Israel by supporting an antisemite like the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. She was, he asserts, “speaking the quiet part out loud.” That is something, he says, that most of the leadership of American Jewry has failed to do.

According to Leibovitz, “the inconvenient truth is that by deed, if not by word, every single one of our so-called communal leaders practice the same exact thought process” as Nessel. He says that when it comes to “the most pressing issues that actually affect the well-being of Jews today”—such as supporting the Trump administration’s effort to root out DEI policies that enable antisemitism in academia, immigration and the threat from Islamists—they are acting like Nessel. They are prioritizing liberal partisan political stands, not the interests or even the defense of the community.

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The Oct. 27 Israeli election will be a referendum on the record of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But according to JNS contributing editor Ruthie Blum, the voters will also be registering their verdict on whether they believe the promises of his opponents. Blum joins JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin on this week’s episode of Think Twice to analyze the upcoming vote.

According to Blum, many Israelis may be tired of the prime minister, who has now served for 15 out of the last 17 years as his country’s premier and for 18 years in total. But the campaign will also test the appeal of the apparent new leader of the opposition bloc, former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. The general has mainstream appeal and has the sympathy of the nation after losing his son during the war in Gaza.

As Blum notes, Eisenkot is trying to sound as much like Netanyahu as possible when it comes to issues like the war against Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah while still blaming the prime minister for Oct. 7. Yet the military establishment he embodies just as, if not more responsible for Israel being surprised by Hamas. More than that, his record as chief of staff shows that he is clearly on the left though not trying to sound like it. And contrary to the promises that have been made, the opposition may well hope to bring in the Muslim Brotherhood-connected United Arab List to help them form a government now that it has one Jewish member on its list of candidates.

Israelis are, she says, exhausted by the war and sick of the divisiveness that it engendered. But a key factor in determining the outcome will depend on which of the various smaller parties (38 different lists registered before the deadline) will be able to garner the necessary 3.5% of the vote in order to make it into the Knesset. If the right, left or Arab splinters and votes are “wasted” by being cast for parties that don’t qualify, that may make the difference in whether Netanyahu or Eisenkot will be able to form a government.

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Antisemitism in American education isn’t merely a matter of elite universities. It’s being tolerated and encouraged at colleges large and small across the country by woke administrators and faculty. But according to JNS Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Tobin, it’s also happening in K-12 schools, something that is being facilitated by teachers’ unions.

The global surge of antisemitism that followed the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israel was no spontaneous outburst of hate. According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, it’s clear that it was not only the product of years of preparation by ideologues recycling Soviet-era propaganda aimed at delegitimizing Israel and Jewish rights. It was also the direct result of funding and planning carried out by Islamists in Qatar and other Middle sources as well as UN agencies, NGOs, non-profits, and charities who were behind this effort.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Canadian political consultant Warren Kinsella, author of the new book, The Hidden Hand: The Information War and the Rise of Antisemitic Propaganda. Kinsella asserts that the best way to understand the insidious effort to rationalize and/or defend Hamas and demonize the Jewish state and its supporters is to think of it as the moral equivalent of a political campaign. He argues that this is a story that the mainstream media has ignored as it became the willing stenographer for antisemitic terrorists.

Kinsella points out that this plot to destroy Israel is a highly sophisticated plan that relies heavily on social media algorithms aimed especially at influencing young people. The author, who isn’t Jewish, believes it's imperative to recognize the threat Islamist hate poses to the West, not just Israel.

He worries that despite the fact that it has a great story to tell and has the truth on its side, the state of Israel is failing to get its message across to those being indoctrinated in the antisemitic narrative in the West. He believes it is imperative for Jerusalem to start taking this threat seriously. Just as important, he thinks all people of goodwill must push back against the blood libels being spread about Jews in the media. Kinsella believes what's at stake is not just Israel and the Jewish people, it's democracy and civilization itself.

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What should we be asking about what happened on Oct. 7, 2023, and its aftermath? According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, the key issue is not only learning and understanding the truth about the horrific crimes that occurred on that day. Rather, it is how so much of the world reacted to it by siding with the perpetrators and against the victims.

He’s joined on this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by documentary filmmaker Gloria Greenfield, the producer, director and writer of the new film, “A Collective Descent Into Evil: The Lethal Obsession with Jews and the Jewish State.” It gives voice to a broad array of scholars, writers and commentators on the subject, and isn’t only about the barbarism and atrocities that occurred during the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on communities in southern Israel.

It is, she says, an exploration of the motivations, ideologies and strategies of those involved, as well as their apologists and enablers.

The problem is not just the terrorists and a population that supported and participated in the horrors of Oct. 7. Greenfield explains that her film seeks to broaden our understanding of the subject by pointing out that what happened was the product of decades of indoctrination into hatred for Israel, the Jews and the West. The same is true of the mobs on college campuses and in the streets of American cities who turned out in support of Oct. 7 and to defend its perpetrators.

The goal wasn’t, says Greenfield, merely “destroying the Jewish people and destroying Israel. It’s also about destroying the free world and destroying people that don’t subscribe to Islamist ideologies.”

Greenfield, a feminist publisher who grew disillusioned with the movement because of its tolerance for antisemitism, points out that the “epidemic” of tolerance for Jew-hatred is rooted in the success of Marxist and radical ideologies in their “long march” through American institutions.

The film is available for streaming via the Roku Channel and Doc Emet Productions, as well as by request for community screenings.

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Is it possible for America to defeat its Islamist enemies like the Iranian terror regime when they resort to asymmetrical warfare? And does President Donald Trump truly understand that diplomacy will  never convince Tehran and its terrorist proxies to give up their war on the West? Those are the questions posed by JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin about whether the United States will resume efforts to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and spreading terror around the world.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. According to Schanzer, the “rules-based international order” created in the aftermath of World War II” appear to be “binding the hands of the United States” and preventing it from conclusively defeating enemies like Iran. The answer, he says, is that, “if our hands are tied, we're the stronger power and we have justice on our side, but yet cannot take the action that is necessary in order to win based on rules that we created,” that’s a problem. “It may be time to revise them,” he concludes.

He argues that the efforts of Trump envoys and advisers Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, backed by Vice President JD Vance, to get Iran to agree to give up its nuclear program or to persuade Hamas and Hezbollah to lay down their arms in Gaza and Lebanon is “not feasible.” They can’t be won over by diplomacy, something that was proved by the failures of the Obama and Biden administrations. Instead, they can be defeated. What Trump needs, says Schanzer, is a “new strategy” that will offset the advantages Iran has gained because of the rise in the price of oil and the American shortage of munitions.

The stakes in this conflict, Schanzer asserts, are enormous. If Iran is defeated, it will help facilitate the creation of IMEC—an Indian-Middle East energy corridor—that will connect the subcontinent to Europe via moderate Arab nations and Israel that will transform the international situation for the better. The alternative would be the advance of the so-called STEP alliance of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, that will be an Islamist obstacle to regional stability, American influence and normalization of relations between the Arab and Muslim world with Israel.

American Jews are facing an unprecedented crisis of antisemitism but according to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, that’s just part of the problem. What’s also wrong is that the majority of American Jews who identify as politically liberal, don’t seem to understand that continuing to support a party and a movement that spreads blood libels about them and defines them as “white” oppressors is, at best, self-sabotage and, at worst, suicidal.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of the new book, The Jews and the Left. Ungar-Sargon argues that a principal reason why Jewish liberals were unprepared for the post-Oct. 7 surge of antisemitism and seemingly unwilling to draw conclusions about it is that they fundamentally misunderstand their place in America. From the beginning of the American republic, Jews have always been equal partners and not a tolerated and discriminated-against minority.

In her book, she makes the case that American exceptionalism is real and that the belief that Jews were, like racial minorities, among the oppressed, is wrong. Jews found themselves on the political left in the mid-20th century because Democrats supported the rights of labor, civil rights, and were associated with the war against the Nazis. But in the 21st century, the Democrats are no longer, she says, the party of the working class, but rather of the credentialed elites. What’s worse, the woke hijacking of the party has led to a situation where the reigning orthodoxy on the left puts Jews and Israel in the intersectional cross-hairs. That is why after the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, the American left which now dominates the Democrats took sides against Israel and was ready to tolerate and even encourage Jew-hatred.

Ungar-Sargon believes that the response to this crisis on the part of liberal Jewish organizations that make up the Jewish establishment is not merely inadequate; it’s wrongheaded since it counsels Jewish students to “shelter in place” and not resist the antisemitic mobs. She also believes the continuing refusal of Jewish liberals to join forces with the majority of Americans—largely on the right—who oppose the Jew-haters on both the left and the right. Jews must, she believes, “get off their knees and fight.”