Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no choice but to go along with the scheme but believing that President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the war in the Gaza Strip can work still requires a leap of faith, says JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin. He believes that there’s little reason to think Hamas will free the hostages and surrender their arms and control of the Strip even if Trump is offering them no alternative.

Tobin is joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by JNS contributing editor and columnist Ruthie Blum who believes that while an end to the war with the “barbarians” of Hamas on Trump’s terms is possible, but she said we shouldn’t call that “peace” if it involves releasing more terrorists in exchange for freeing Israeli hostages and believing that the Palestinians are ready to change.

While she was skeptical that Hamas would take this opportunity to end the war, the Trump plan won’t involve trust since nothing will move forward if all of the hostages are not freed first. Still, she feared that any deal that will mandate the release of Palestinian terrorists from prison may lead to more bloodshed in the same way that the 2011 agreement that freed kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit led to the Oct. 7 massacres.

She also agreed with Tobin that the Trump administration’s faith in the good will of Qatar is a mistake since that regime funds terrorism and Islamist fundamentalism around the globe. Blum believes that businessmen like Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff simply don’t understand Muslim fanaticism since they view the world solely through the prism of business deals based on mutual interests. They fail to realize that the war between Jews and Arabs is about much more than real estate.

Blum pointed out that those who claim that Israel can’t achieve its objectives by military means are wrong and that Netanyahu is right. If there is to be any progress toward ending the war it is only because of the military pressure that Israel has exerted on Hamas. What will be needed for Trump’s deal to do more good than harm, as was the case with previous attempts to broker peace, is for him to stick to his word and let Israel “finish the job” of defeating Hamas if they don’t agree to the deal or violate it afterward. That’s not what happened in the past when Israel made concessions to the Palestinians in the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

Blum sympathizes with Netanyahu when he tells his supporters to pipe down about extending Israeli sovereignty to Area C of Judea and Samaria where Jewish communities exist. His priority must be to avoid alienating Trump and showing patience on the issue since that is in Israel’s interests.

The question facing American Jewry is which trend is more important. As JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin notes, a lot of American Jews have been shocked by both the trauma of the Oct. 7 attacks and the subsequent surge of antisemitism into increased activism on behalf of Israel and giving to Jewish causes. But on the other hand, a large number of Jews, especially progressives, are becoming more assimilated, less interested in Jewish life and alienated from Israel.

According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, the release of a new documentary film called “Soul on Fire” about the life of Holocaust survivor, author, teacher and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel couldn’t be timelier. At a time of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism and demonization of Israel, Wiesel’s example of courageous truth-telling is needed more than ever.

He is joined in the latest episode of Think Twice by Wiesel’s son Elisha, who works on Wall Street and for Israeli startups, as well as being a leading human rights activist. Elisha Wiesel said that he and his late mother, who passed away earlier this year, had been searching for a filmmaker to do a documentary about his father before choosing writer/director and producer Oren Rudavsky. He says that acting on his father’s instructions, they have refused to let anyone produce a film based on Wiesel’s classic Holocaust memoir, Night but believed a well-made documentary could help keep his memory alive as well as reintroduce a new generation to his work.

The film traces Wiesel’s Holocaust experience and journey back to life after surviving the camps and then his rise to prominence as an activist and author. But the key incident in it concerns his confrontation with President Ronald Reagan live on national television when he unsuccessfully sought to persuade him not to visit a military cemetery in Bitburg, where German SS soldiers were buried in 1985.

Elisha Wiesel, who was present at the White House for this event says that looking back at it now, he sees how difficult it was for his father, who liked Reagan very much, to lecture him in front of the country. But it was a classic example of how to “speak truth to power,” in the service of a great truth.

He also says that those Jews who speak out against Israel since Oct. 7, 2023 and in favor of “free Palestine” are not following his father’s example. Elie Wiesel was an ardent Zionist and never chose to criticize the Jewish state whether or not he always agreed with its government because he understood how that would be used by antisemites.

“Many of these people think that they're acting in keeping with my father's values. You know, I've seen signs at Israel-hating rallies that actually say, know, Elie Wiesel said, you know, the enemy, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. So, a lot of people go around and they think, you know, ‘I'm being Wieselian. I'm not indifferent. Look at me.’ But of course, I think my father hadn't properly envisioned at the time that he made that statement, how we've gone past, we've gone beyond indifference. We've gone straight to what I like to think of is indignant ignorance.”

He said that the current generation of young American Jews, “Don't feel what I feel in my heart. When Israel is attacked, it's visceral. It's gut level. It's emotional. This is 50% of my brothers and sisters in the Jewish people, so many of whom came, whether fleeing the Farhud in Muslim lands or the Holocaust, you know, to get to Israel. These are my people, my brothers and sisters, who have gotten to a place where they can finally defend themselves and create the state that is transforming the world with its inventions and its ideas.

Elisha Wiesel compared the “Free Palestine” movement and support for Israel-hating New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to the punk rock music he loved as a teenager.
“So much of the free Palestine movement to me, and so much of the tear it down, anarchy, let's end capitalism, has all of the violence of punk rock without the good music. It's just people looking for change without thinking too hard about what they're going to build or what should be built.”

When Jews gather in synagogues on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur this month, will their rabbis seek to rally them to stand with Israel and against the surge of antisemitism fueled by blood libels against the Jewish state? Or will they instead use their pulpits to virtue signal their support for the false charges of “genocide” being hurled at Jerusalem? Those are the questions that JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin is posing.

With mainstream media parroting Hamas propaganda about “genocide” in Gaza, the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism is likely to continue to get worse, says JNS editor–in-chief Jonathan Tobin. Those blood libels are not only fueling the sort of Jew-hatred that is impacting students on college campuses but also raising the threat of more violence directed at synagogues, schools and other Jewish targets.

He’s joined on this week’s episode of Think Twice by Michael Masters, the National Director and CEO of the Secure Community Network (SCN), the organization that is responsible for the security organization for the North American Jews. The SCN monitors threats to Jews and advises community organizations on safety issues providing its own version of an Iron Dome for the community.

According to Masters, the antisemitism crisis on college campuses is not the product of spontaneous efforts to support Hamas and attack the pro-Israel community. The immediate mobilization of protesters and materials for them was organized and coordinated. And much of it was funded by foreign state actors, especially Iran. Moreover, he says these efforts were not merely expressions of free speech but took the form of organizing manuals that were clearly aimed at facilitating violence and other illegal acts.

The most ominous development, Masters points out, is that in the wake of pressure from the Trump administration on colleges and universities to stop tolerating and encouraging Jew-hatred, the pro-Hamas activists are switching tactics. Instead of building takeovers, they are now emphasizing the targeting of Jewish individuals, such as professors and students. Their goal is to silence and intimidate people from speaking out on behalf of Israel and in defense of the Jewish community.

The security expert points out that in the current atmosphere, Jew-hatred unites both the extreme left and the extreme right in a “circle” in which white supremacists and Islamists join together to target Jews. As such, he asserts that what is needed is a unified Jewish community that will advocate against antisemitism and also to get the funding needed to adequately protect Jewish institutions.

While the SCN has a list of recommendations for enhancing Jewish safety, Masters emphasizes the need for training for those responsible for security. While Americans have a Second Amendment right to carry firearms, he says the key to protecting the community is putting weapons in the hands of those who are trained to use them in an emergency.

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Jewish students should expect to be confronted by more pro-Hamas mobs and antisemitism when returning to college this fall, says JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin.  With legacy media mainstreaming Hamas propaganda and blood libels against Israel,  it’s likely that the surge of antisemitism throughout American education that began after the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, will continue in the coming months.

He’s joined in the week’s episode of Think Twice by Cornell Law professor and Legalinsurrection.com founder William Jacobson who says it’s “going to be a very hot fall” with respect to anti-Israel activity. Jacobson believes that the pro-Hamas movement is in retreat as a result of Trump’s crackdown, which has caused many schools to act swiftly to quash antisemitism on campus, lest they lose federal funding. But given the widespread belief in the lies about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza, antisemitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine will be even more aggressive than in the past two years. It will be up to colleges and universities to ensure that those who break the rules and engage in illegal activity in the name of “Palestine” are held accountable.

Israel-haters have, Jacobson says, co-opted the entire left-wing movement, sidelining causes like Black Lives Matter and making activism for the destruction of Israel their main goal. This movement is being aided with funding from Qatar and other malign actors and is also seeking to co-opt the right via influencers like Tucker Carlson.

But, he says, their main target is America itself and not just the Jews. “If you wanted to destroy the United States from inside, what would you do differently than the left and now the Islamists are doing to our educational system, which is pitting students against each other based on skin color and identity group? And that's what the mainstream Jewish community refuses to address. 

Jacobson says that Trump’s attempts to broker deals with universities like Harvard and Columbia is having an impact on the spread of antisemitism, in part, because of the decline in foreign students who have been a big part of the problem. But he cautions that enforcement of the provisions of those agreements are key, since these institutions are hoping to wait out Trump and go back to their discriminatory policies once he leaves office.

The key to the problem is ridding the system of the plague of the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) which is at the core of the spread of anti-Jewish prejudice because it falsely identifies Jews and Israel as “white” oppressors. He criticized those mainstream liberal Jewish groups that refuse to oppose DEI. 

Jacobson said he’s not sure whether the education system can be saved. “We need to now figure out how we protect ourselves from the universities, not how we reform the universities. I do not believe that universities can reform themselves, at least not the so-called elite universities where we're having most of these problems.”

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According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, Americans and many in the West seem to be blind to the threat posed by radical Islam and Islamist movements. Thanks to the successes of a red/green alliance that unites Marxists and Islamist antisemites who both hate the West, this attitude is leading to a fundamental shift that undermines the national identity of some nations and calls into question their willingness to defend civil liberties. This also involves not just tolerance for antisemitism and hatred for the state of Israel but legitimization and mainstreaming of the worst sort of anti-Jewish hate.

If Israel’s plan for the “day after” the current war against Hamas ends is to secure a future of peace by pouring aid into the Gaza Strip, then JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin says Israel’s leaders are being delusional. That’s the same foolish mindset that led the entire Israeli military, intelligence and political establishment to believe that Hamas wouldn’t jeopardize the flow of cash and aid into the Strip by attacking as they did on Oct. 7, 2023.

He’s joined in the week’s episode of Think Twice by Hudson institute scholar and Tablet magazine editor-at-large Liel Leibovitz who says that Israel’s leadership, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political opponents lived in “dream palaces” in which they bought into the conceptzia that led them to think, “that all we have to do is find the correct amount of U.S. dollars to pay the Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas would basically transform itself into the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.”

According to Leibovitz, the lesson of Oct. 7 and of the previous century of history is that the idea that Israel is, as its leadership always says, not at war with the Palestinian people, is a delusion. It is, he says, “absolutely straightforwardly false. Israel's war is 100% with the Palestinian people and we know this from the records of every single hostage who's returned” and spoken of how they were held and abused by ordinary Palestinian civilians, not terrorists. “We are fighting a war against a population that is hellbent on destroying us for no apparent reason. They are not kind of under the spell as some of our self-appointed intellectual and moral betters like to tell us.” Nor is it, he asserts, “because of some generational trauma or the ‘occupation’ or living in Gaza. They are pursuing a very distinct and easy to understand faith that tells them that in their midst, there is a usurper, the Zionist entity and it must be destroyed. 

Leibovitz also believes that the emphasis in the pro-Israel community on winning the information war against the Hamas propaganda with better hasbara is another delusion. He says that Israel should forget about hasbara because the Western media is not interested in facts or truth. The only thing to do is to win the war and defeat Hamas and not worry about the “day after.” He also points out that the arguments against defeating Hamas in order to save the remaining hostages simply isn’t rational because it will endanger more Israelis and these efforts to pressure the government to surrender to the terrorists just makes a deal even less likely.

The writer also believes the efforts by some Jewish groups including the Jewish Federation in New York City to aid Gazans is indicative of a delusional effort to demonstrate their empathy for the Palestinians that will accomplish nothing. The same is true, he says, of what the Anti-Defamation League is doing. Leibovitz thinks the mainstream Jewish organizations’ failure to respond to the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism illustrates their moral bankruptcy and the need to replace them with groups that actually serve the community’s interests and defend the Jewish people.

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Not enough attention is being paid to the way foreign funders and supporters of terrorism are infiltrating into North America. That’s the conclusion JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin draws from a new report about the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood produced by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). 

He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by ISGAP’s founding director and president, Charles Asher Small. According to Small, the Muslim Brotherhood is a century-old reactionary Islamist movement whose goal is to complete the work of Adolf Hitler and kill Jews and destroy the state of Israel. It’s just as interested in waging war on the West. To that end, it has spawned the Hamas terrorist movement and, with the financial assistance of Qatar, is also spreading its influence in the West.

As ISGAP’s research revealed, the Brotherhood has made an impact in the United States as front groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) pose as civil rights organizations while spreading hate for Jews. But it has made even greater inroads in Canada. There it has weaponized that country’s liberal political culture and lack of First Amendment free speech protections to promote the idea that any criticism of Muslim antisemitism is Islamophobia and illegal. As Small relates, it has led many Jewish groups and leaders to be silent on a growing problem of Jew-hatred. That is compounded by the fact that many Brotherhood associated groups are now also receiving money from the Canadian government.

Small also discussed the way Qatari money is spreading antisemitism in higher education, something that is also advanced by the presence of so many foreign students from countries where Islamist views are normative. He says it’s important for groups that are advocating terror and being funded from the Middle East to be banned and cut off from funds. Similarly, universities should not be allowed to import Jew-hatred while bolstering their finances.

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Patriotism seems to be out of style in the United States and many young people are also being influenced by toxic woke ideas that falsely smear Israel as an illegitimate “apartheid” state. That’s why JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin believes we need examples of Jews who dedicated their lives to serving both America and Israel more than ever. He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by author Steven Ossad, whose latest book is dedicated to retelling the story of one of the greatest of American Jewish heroes: David “Mickey” Marcus, the West Pointed-trained American Jewish officer who helped lead Israeli troops in the War of Independence.

Marcus is the most famous of the foreign volunteers who joined the fledgling forces of the newborn Jewish state in 1948. Ossad’s new book, Chasing The Shadow: Mickey Marcus’s 200 Days of Destiny is the first book in English dedicated to this subject to be published in 60 years. Speaking of his subject, the author says Marcus was the son of Romanian immigrants to the United States who “made it” in the era in between the two world wars. He graduated from West Point where he won acceptance from his classmates as a collegiate boxing champion. He then went on to a career in the law and the administration of New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia before returning to the service prior to America’s entry into World War Two. He was a highly-ranked Pentagon staff officer and played an important role in the occupation of Germany and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.

But in early 1948, he accepted an offer from the head of the government of what would soon become the state of Israel to organize and train the troops of the Haganah as it transitioned from an underground militia to an army of a beleaguered nation that was about to be invaded by five nations. He would go on to be the first Jew to be given the rank of aluf or general in 2,000 years and command the IDF’s troops that successfully lifted the siege of Jerusalem before being killed on the evening of a cease-fire in the conflict in a tragic friendly fire incident.

According to Ossad, Marcus is a symbol of the shared national security interests of the United States and Israel and a symbol of the democratic values of an army that fights a common enemy. He also noted that in the current atmosphere of hatred for Israel and antisemitism, he had a very difficult time finding a publisher for the book before the University of Missouri finally accepted it.

Chapters

00:00 Reviving American Jewish Heroes

03:25 The Life and Legacy of Mickey Marcus

11:42 Mickey Marcus: Myths and Realities

17:42 The Formation of the Israel Defense Forces

23:21 Mickey Marcus's Impact on Jewish Identity

29:54 Mickey Marcus and Military Training Manuals

32:10 Truman's Recognition of Israel

35:56 Mickey Marcus's Role in the 1948 War

42:14 The Battle of Latrun and Its Significance

47:49 Mickey Marcus: A Symbol of US-Israel Relations

53:59 The Legacy of Mickey Marcus and His Story

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