Think Twice with Jonathan Tobin

In this week’s episode of “Top Story,” guest host Melanie Phillips discusses the challenges of the Reform movement with guest Rabbi Cary Kozberg. According to the rabbi, the Reform movement hijacks words like God and Torah to push its political progressive agenda with little traditional or contextual backing.
“Words like God, Torah, Israel, commandment may be used,” he says. “But as far as I'm concerned, those are equivocal terms. And they're used in service of this agenda of political progressivism.”

In this week's "Top Story," guest host Melanie Phillips meets with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to discuss U.S. President Joe Biden’s arrival in the Middle East. During the discussion, Friedman offers his own version of what Biden should have told Israel and Saudi Arabia and what needs to be done to attain further peace in the region.
Other topics of discussion include:
- Economic incentives for America in the region,
- Israeli relations with Saudi Arabia and
- U.S. support of the Palestinian government.

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses both recent Supreme Court cases defending religious liberty and the need to “separate the state from the new secular woke religion on race, sex and gender.”
According to Tobin, this set of beliefs that is rooted in Marxism and being brought into the schools is nothing less than a secular state religion that seeks to silence dissent.
He’s joined by Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the legal director of the Deborah Project, which is suing to halt the teaching of an anti-Semitic ethnic studies curriculum in California. Marcus warns that the course is marinating kids in hatred and provides the same rationale that led to violence against Jews in the streets of Los Angeles.

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief discusses the debate among conservatives over how to respond to woke Marxist cultural indoctrination and whether Yoram Hazony’s new book on Conservatism provides the answer needed to defend both liberty and Western civilization.

He’s joined by Hazony who warns that “woke Neo-Marxism” is carrying out a ”perpetual revolution indefinitely until it simply destroys everything.” He extols the virtues of personally leading “a conservative life” in which faith plays a central role and explains how his template for tradition and religion-based politics gives an answer to the left that liberalism has failed to provide.

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses how to cancel culture is spreading from college campuses to the rest of society, including journalism and even football.

He’s joined by University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax who discusses efforts to cancel her for her statements supporting Western bourgeois values and opposing multiculturalism and affirmative action. She points out that affirmative action is being used as a club to silence dissent against toxic woke ideas.

In this week’s episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses how a “mapping project” undertaken by BDS supporters in Boston targets Jewish institutions throughout the state of Massachusetts, including synagogues and schools. He explains that this illustrates how the movement to boycott Israel is motivated by “pure unadulterated hate.”

He is joined by Lana Melman, CEO of Liberate Inc. and author of a new book, Artists Under Fire, about the way the BDS works in Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Melman discusses how the movement attacks artists who go to Israel and intimidates others to avoid the topic.

In this week's episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses how progressive Democrats are seeking to undermine the U.S.-Israel alliance and what the Democratic primaries mean for Israel. Furthermore, he explains that the war being waged on AIPAC by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) may end up dooming any hopes for bipartisanship in Israel.

He’s joined by Maurice Hirsch of Palestinian Media Watch who points out that the hate being fomented by the Palestinian Authority and its refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy effectively means there is “no difference” between the P.A. and Hamas.

In this episode JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses why the effort to tie mainstream Republicans and conservatives to the Buffalo mass shooting isn’t just wrong; it’s a smear that does more to undermine democracy and to break American society than anything done by an extremist.

He’s joined by Fox News contributor Ben Domenech who says the problem behind mass shootings is “evil”, not politics. Domenech also analyzes the need for a stronger foreign and defense policy in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the need for Big Tech to uphold free speech.

In this episode, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses how despite the UN's lack of legitimacy and clear anti-Israel bias, it pays for Israel not to ignore it. The growing support for intersectional ideology and critical race theory on the American left fueled in part by the UN's 'Apartheid State' lie, will eat away at U.S. support for Israel if not combated.
He is joined by Former Israel Ambassador to the UN Danny Dannon who discusses his first-hand experiences being in the lion's den, his new book and what can be done to defend Israel in and outside the UN.