Think Twice with Jonathan Tobin

According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, President Donald Trump and the Republicans weren’t the only big losers in the midterm elections. Supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance and those who worry about the surge of antisemitism that has swept across the globe over the past three years should, he says, be equally worried about the implications of the Democrats’ midterm victory.   He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by commentator & author Josh Hammer who said the assertion that the war against Iran was the sole reason for the GOP’s defeat is mistaken. The economy in general, the impact of Trump’s tariffs, corruption and the administration’s focus on things voters don’t care about played just as big a role in the voters’ decisions.   Hammer also believes that it would be a mistake to underestimate the negative impact of the election of anti-Israel and antisemitic leftist candidates to Congress. But he is especially alarmed by the victory of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. He called it  “a turning point moment in American history.” What’s important is not that he’s the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.   It is, he says, what he stands for, in terms of a campaign that revolved around antisemitism as well as “who he is surrounded with, what he has said, and what he has failed to say.” Hammer termed his election as the “singular culmination of the Muslim Brotherhood's decades-long effort” to insinuate itself and other Hamas supporters into mainstream politics.   Hammer also asserts that the “biggest loser” of the midterms isn’t Trump but Vice President JD Vance, who clearly intends to run for president in 2028. “His entire pitch is that he wants to be the third term of Trumpism and MAGA. Well, I hate to say it, but as of this past Tuesday evening, MAGA and Trumpism are dead. They are deader than dead. That the coalition is not just in shambles, it is literally dead.”   Hammer believes the Republicans will need someone, unlike Vance, who is not associated with the administration or a conspiracy and hate monger like Tucker Carlson, to come up with a new vision for the country.   Listen/Subscribe to weekly episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, iHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.   Watch new episodes every week by subscribing to the JNS YouTube Channel.

Who were the real winners and losers of the Israeli election? On the  day after the voting, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin was joined on this week’s episode of Think Twice by JNS Senior contributing editor Ruthie Blum to break down the results and discuss the implications.   According to Blum, the fact that neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition partners nor that of the “anyone-but-Bibi” alliance of parties led by former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, retired Gen. Gadi Eisenkot gained a majority, creating an impasse. But the biggest winners on Oct. 27 were clearly the Arab parties, which appeared to have won a record number of Knesset seats.   Both Tobin and Blum said the pressure from the left and many in the international community for Eisenkot to join forces with the Arab parties in one way or another in order to topple Netanyahu. But allowing parties that are not merely anti-Zionist but which identify with Israel’s enemies which seek its destruction into the cabinet is not merely shocking; it’s a threat to the Jewish state’s security at a time of ongoing war.   Blum said Eisenkot’s call for the IDF and the security services to thwart any efforts of the current caretaker government that is led by Netanyahu to continue the war against Iran and its terror auxiliaries is outrageous. It will also set up a possible conflict with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made it clear he wants Israel’s government to help him “finish the job” of ending the nuclear threat from Tehran.   While neither Netanyahu or Eisenkot had a clear path to a government, they agreed that the prime minister was in a stronger position and not just because his faction won more seats. All of Eisenkot’s options for breaking the stalemate, whether by deals with the Arabs, a unity government with Netanyahu or one with the haredi parties will damage him politically in the long run. Netanyahu can stand his ground and be ready to try again in new elections early next year if no government is formed and may do better the next time.   The prime minister’s advantage, Blum says, stems from the fact that although it is vilified in the liberal press in Israel and the United States, the Likud Party remains the largest because its positions on security and other issues are more in touch with the center of Israeli public opinion. Listen/Subscribe to weekly episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, iHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

American Jews have been among the most ardent and loyal supporters of the Democratic Party for over a century. But as, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin notes, as the party’s intersectional left wing base embraced hatred for Israel and even antisemitism in recent years, the argument for a shift in political loyalties is now being made by some who were closely identified with the Democrats. One such person is famed legal analyst and retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who joins Tobin on this week’s episode of Think Twice. A prolific author, Dershowitz has written a new book titled, Why I Quit the Dems And So Should You! The confessions of a reluctant Republican. In it, the 63rd book he has published in his career, Dershowitz, 88, documents the reasons why he left the Democrats after 70 years as an ardent and involved supporter of the party and many of its candidates. Dershowitz asserts that his beliefs are unchanged. But the Democratic Party has, he acknowledged, been gradually becoming more illiberal and woke. It is “a systemic problem.”   “I am a liberal, but I'm no longer a liberal Democrat, because I think that's an oxymoron,” Dershowitz says.   “I don't think Democrats are liberals. The reason I basically made the switch was not because [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani got elected or because [Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul] El-Syed was nominated, it's because [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer supported them. It's because the mainstream of the Democratic Party, which is testicularly challenged, wouldn't stand up against the anti-Semites in the Democratic Party. Whereas President Trump did stand up against some of the extremists in the Republican Party. So, for me,” he continued. “The issue is not the extremes; it's how the center deals with the extremes.” When asked about criticism from Democrats that prioritizing Israel and the battle against antisemitism makes Jews “single issue voters,” Dershowitz had a ready reply.   “We should become more single-issue voters. If I were living in Germany in 1932 and I were an environmentalist or a vegetarian or somebody who wanted full employment for Germany, I wouldn't care about those issues. I would care about Adolf Hitler. Seven thousand German Jews voted for Adolf Hitler,” Dershowitz declared. “I think the time has come for single issue voting. Anti Semitism is the most serious danger in the world today of bigotry.”   Dershowitz admitted that he was a “reluctant Republican” because he still agreed with the Democrats on many issues. He also held out the possibility that the Democrats could reject their antisemites as well as noting that the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, led by Vice President JD Vance, whom he says is “not pro-Israel” yet also “not antisemitic” worries him.   The legal authority also said that he had recently reconnected with his friend Larry David after the “Seinfeld” producer and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star publicly broke with him because Dershowitz had represented President Donald Trump. Now that David has denounced the Democratic Socialists who have hijacked the Democratic Party, the two have, he said, reconciled.   Listen/Subscribe to weekly episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, iHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.   Watch new episodes every week by subscribing to the JNS YouTube Channel.

What if all the clever ideas about dealing with antisemitism, including focusing on Holocaust education, are failing? That’s the question posed by JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin with respect to the unprecedented surge in Jew-hatred. He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Dara Horn, author of the seminal 2021 collection of essays, People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present and the new The Solution to the Jewish Problem: A Love Story for the Living. Horn says that since the publication of her People Love Dead Jews, she’s become a magnet for Jews who want to share their stories of how they’ve been impacted by the surge of antisemitism. Because of this, she’s been dubbed by family members as the “Antisemitism Lorax,” a reference to the Dr. Seuss book. Because of this, she’s spent the past few years researching efforts to combat Jew-hatred and come to some firm conclusions. One is that Holocaust education, while important in and of itself, is not curing the world of antisemitism or achieving the goal of many involved with it to teach non-Jews to be nicer to people. To the contrary, since it doesn’t teach about Jewish civilization or about Jew-hatred per se, it does little or nothing to deal with the problem. She also believes that American Jews are wrong to believe that the so-called “golden age” of American Jewry after the Second World War was the result of non-Jews deciding not to be antisemitic because of the Holocaust. Instead, it was created by American Jewish activism which asserted the rights of Jews to be treated as equal partners. The problem was that the implicit deal that Jews sought to make with the non-Jewish world created more trouble in the long run. The “Gentleman’s Agreement,” which was the name of a famous novel and Oscar-winning 1947 film about antisemitism—hinged on the idea that Jews are like everyone else rather than a group whose civilization was always based on their being different. Antisemitism thrives, Horn says, because it is not so much a virus as “lie” that tells people that the Jews are to blame for whatever it is they fear most. That applies to every variety of Jew-hater, including those at Harvard University, where she served on the ill-fated Antisemitism Advisory Group. The only effective answer to it—the “final solution” that she references in the title to her book—is for Jews to stop trying to make others like them and instead concentrate on educating themselves and others about their own heritage. The answer today, she says, is the same that has sustained Jews throughout their history. Listen/Subscribe to weekly episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, iHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Watch new episodes every week by subscribing to the JNS YouTube Channel.

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.   Listen/Subscribe to weekly episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, iHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.   Watch new episodes every week by subscribing to the JNS YouTube Channel.