As antisemitism floods American political discourse, the impulse in American Jewish life to not discuss certain things publicly — because they are complicated or shameful, or out of fear that they might inspire antisemitism — is not working.

That’s especially true when it comes to Israel.

A public resignation letter by Joe Kent, now the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, made this clear. The letter released this week, which alleged that President Donald Trump began the war with Iran “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” was rife with antisemitic tropes.

The letter went viral for, I think, two reasons.

The first: A high-up official resigned from the Trump administration over the war with Iran, which is unpopular, and for which the president has failed to articulate a clear and compelling justification. The second: in blaming Israeli influence, Kent positioned himself as speaking truth to power. As it got shared across social media, the implication was clear — finally, here was someone saying the true thing we have been leaving unsaid.

In actuality, much of what Kent wrote was not true. But there are ways in which it was adjacent to truth.

Israel did not puppetmaster this war — that image is antisemitic as well as inaccurate — but it did push for it. And there is an influential pro-Israel lobby in the United States that has worked to make it politically perilous to question U.S.-Israel cooperation, or American military funding for Israel.

There is just enough semblance of truth in Kent’s letter, in other words, to make his most outlandish and blatantly unsupportable claims — like, say, that Israel “manufactured” the Syrian civil war — sound plausible. And I worry that part of what is giving people the misguided impression that Kent is speaking truth to power, as opposed to airing antisemitic conspiracies, is that the American mainstream — including the American Jewish mainstream — has done a poor job of creating conditions in which complicated conversations about Israel can be held responsibly.

This is not to blame American Jews for antisemitism. Kent’s ideas are hateful and dangerous — when he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Wednesday, he seemed to baselessly imply that Israel had Charlie Kirk killed — as well as unjustifiable. It’s worth remembering that Kent has ties to white supremacists.

But it is to say that in our efforts to create a safer American environment for Jews, we must reckon with the ways in which our community may have inadvertently helped make it easier for these ideas to spread.

At the same time that concerns among Americans about Israel’s conduct toward Palestinians have soared, space in which to rationally discuss those concerns has shrunk. When a student can face the threat of deportation for writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed; when American Jewish institutions suggest that merely considering the possibility that Israel’s actions in Gaza could be called genocidal is antisemitic; when universities are taken to court for allowing pro-Palestinian protests, public debate is stifled.

And so instead of debate, we have declarations in spaces that are less beholden to civic norms. That is to say, among extremists.

Kent’s letter was uplifted not only by some on the right, like Carlson and Candace Owens, both of whom have spread antisemitic libels, but by some on the left, too. And the unfortunate truth is that if extremists are the people who give airtime — however inaccurate and malicious — to concerns that many Americans share, then those extremists are going to grow more powerful.

This trend — of blaming not only Israel for this war but Jews generally for American imperialism — isn’t going away. Instead, alarmingly, it’s gaining steam. It’s clear that we can’t stop this phenomenon by resorting to a playbook that is no longer working.

Claiming that it’s not reasonable to question U.S. military support for Israel — or that we can’t or shouldn’t talk about those questions, for fear of emboldening antisemites — has failed.

The firestorm around Kent’s letter, in fact, shows that people with antisemitic beliefs are actually emboldened by silence and censure.

Making space for reasonable people to have open conversations about Israel’s influence in American politics won’t, on its own, defeat antisemitism. There’s a chance that opening that space might fuel antisemitism in other ways, and that there will be those who see Jews naming unflattering truths as permission to cast all Jews in the least flattering light possible.

But what the Kent episode makes glaringly clear is that insisting on adherence to a narrative that most Americans no longer find compelling is working against us. So perhaps we should at least try to name the previously unnameable.

We can’t leave criticism of this war — or of Israel’s participation in it — to extremists. There are good reasons to be critical of and outright opposed to the conflict. Together, the U.S. and Israel have killed hundreds of civilians in Iran and Lebanon and displaced about 3 million; the Israeli civilian death toll has also climbed into the double digits. In addition to the death and displacement, there is the lack of clarity about the endgame from our president, who did not get congressional approval before initiating airstrikes. And there are real concerns that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is exploiting the conflict to maintain a grip on power.

Being open about these issues will reduce the power of those, like Kent, who would lend a conspiratorial bent to the narrative. Extremists are benefitting from the thrill of the illicit. But criticism and analysis shouldn’t be illicit.

Shutting down criticism of Israel or discussion of Israel and American foreign policy is not keeping us safe. We should be having honest debate and dialogue — both because doing so is right, and because it will help disempower those striving to convince the public of antisemitic conspiracies.

The post We must rewrite the rulebook for fighting antisemitism — or conspiracists like Joe Kent will win the narrative wars appeared first on The Forward.

National Counterterrorism Center Director Joseph Kent attends a House Homeland Security hearing entitled “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland,” on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Dec. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

After Joe Kent, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in protest of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast on Wednesday.

While on the podcast, Kent, who resigned from his position on Tuesday, argued that Israel dragged the US into the war against the Iranian regime, suggested that Israel may have been involved in the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, claimed that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and said that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Themes of Israel controlling US policy and conspiracy theories about Kirk’s assassination have become commonplace on Carlson’s podcast in recent months.

“We don’t know what happened with Charlie Kirk. I’m not saying the Israelis did this — I’m saying there are a lot of unanswered questions there, and there’s enough data to say there’s a good chance that President Trump feels he is under threat,” Kent said.

“The last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this earth was in June, in the West Wing stairway,” Kent said on Carlson’s podcast. “And he said very loudly to me … ‘Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.’ Very loudly. He was single-minded.”

“So, when one of President Trump’s closest advisers who was vocally advocating against a war with Iran is suddenly publicly assassinated, and we’re not allowed to ask questions about that — it’s a data point. A data point that we need to look into,” Kent said, suggesting that Israel may have something to do with the assassination.

There has been no evidence to support claims of Israeli involvement in Kirk’s assassination. Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged for murdering Kirk and potentially faces the death penalty. He was romantically involved with his transgender roommate, and prosecutors have reportedly argued that Kirk’s anti-trans rhetoric was a key factor that allegedly led him to shoot the Turning Point USA founder.

Kent also argued that the US is not really in charge of its own foreign policy: “Who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East? Who is in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?” he asked.

Ther former counterterrorism chief argued that Israel forced Washington’s hand by saying it would attack Iran and that the US would be forced to be caught up in Iran’s inevitable retaliation.

“The Israelis felt emboldened that no matter what they did, no matter what situation they put us in, they could go ahead and take this action, and we would just have to react. That speaks to the relationship — but also it just shows there was a lobby pushing for us to go to war,” Kent said.

In addition to claiming Israel was driving US foreign policy, he also claimed Iran was not close to achieving, or even pursuing, a nuclear-weapons capability. “No, they weren’t [on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon] — not three weeks ago when this started, and not in June [2025] either,” Kent said, referring to last year’s 12-day war between Iran and Israel

“The Iranians have had a religious ruling — a fatwa — against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That’s been in place since 2004. That’s available in the public sphere. But we also had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed or was on the cusp of being lifted,” Kent added.

Experts on Iran have widely dismissed the Iranian regime’s so-called fatwa against having nuclear weapons, noting Tehran has repeatedly lied about and tried to hide aspects of its nuclear program.

The interview occurred one day after Kent resigned from his senior intelligence position, saying he could not support the war and arguing Tehran posed “no imminent threat” to the United States. But it was Kent’s broader assertion, that pressure from Israel and pro-Israel voices influenced the decision to go to war, that especially drew swift pushback from the White House and national security experts.

In his resignation, Kent also drew parallels to the Iraq War, suggesting that similar dynamics shaped both conflicts by arguing that Israel pushed the US into the war.

“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter.

The Trump administration forcefully disputed Kent’s claims, maintaining that the decision to strike Iran was based on credible intelligence about threats to US forces and interests in the region. Trump dismissed Kent as “weak on security,” defending the operation as necessary to deter Iranian aggression and protect American personnel and allies.

“When I read the statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said that Iran was not a threat,” Trump said. “Iran was a threat.”

Kent himself previously described Iran as a major threat that needed to be addressed.

In a September 2024 post on X, for example, he wrote that “Iran has been after Trump since January of 2020 after he ordered the targeted killing of the terrorist Qasem Soleimani. This isn’t a new threat.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lambasted Kent’s resignation letter as inaccurate.

“The absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable. President Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon,” she posted on social media.

Kent previously faced scrutiny during his US congressional runs in Washington state over links to far-right, antisemitic, and white nationalist figures, including Nick Fuentes.

Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has reached a major agreement to settle a lawsuit it filed against the University of California, Berkeley in 2023 over its allegedly failing to address a series of incidents of campus antisemitism which culminated in anti-Zionist students establishing “Jewish-free zones” where pro-Israel advocates were barred from speaking.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the complaint provided several examples of alleged antisemitic harassment and exclusion on campus, including a bylaw banning Zionists speakers that 23 Berkeley Law groups adopted in September 2021, campus groups Women of Berkeley Law and the Queer Caucus requiring support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel to join its ranks, and the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice banning Zionists from submitting articles and speaking at its events.

The campus environment worsened after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught across southern Israel, in which the Palestinian terrorist group murdered over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, according to the complaint. Indeed, the suit alleged that hate mail and death threats have been sent to Jewish students, that Jewish students have opted not to attend class because walking through campus risked encountering angry pro-Palestinian supporters, and that an anti-Israel demonstrator bashed a Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag over the head with a metal water bottle.

“As a UC Berkeley alumnus, I am glad that we can finally resolve this long battle with a victory for Jewish American students and for all Americans who care about free speech and fairness,” Kenneth Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement on Thursday. “What began as a ban on Zionist Jewish voices, regardless of the subjects they wished to address, and mushroomed into a widespread hostile environment will no longer be tolerated.”

He continued, “What happened at Berkeley is a cautionary tale. Universities, corporations, and political parties cannot create an anti-Zionist exception to their conduct codes. They cannot silence Jewish Americans on the pretext of advancing their own political agendas.”

The details of the settlement are disclosed. They call for Berkeley’s using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a reference tool, stating a “reaffirmation” of antisemitism as a violation of the code of conduct, conducting an annual survey of the Jewish student body, and appointing an official to manage the school’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at universities receiving taxpayer money to fund research and other operations. UC Berkeley will also pay the Brandeis Center $1 million as reimbursement for “outside attorneys’ fees and costs incurred” during litigation of the suit.

UC Berkeley saw some of the most shocking antisemitic incidents in recent memory in the months which followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.

In February 2024, a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at UC Berkeley featuring an Israeli soldier, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.

Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach Hall while an event featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat — who visited the university to discuss his military service during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion — took place inside. The mob then stormed the building — breaking glass windows in the process, according to reports in the Daily Wire — and precipitated school officials’ decision to evacuate the area.

During the infiltration of Zellerbach, a member of the mob — which was recruited by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.

“You know what I was screamed at? ‘Jew, you Jew, you Jew,’ literally right to my face,” the student who was attacked said to a friend. “Some woman — then she spit at me.”

In July, the chancellor of UC Berkeley described a professor who cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities as a “fine scholar” during a congressional hearing held at Capitol Hill.

Richard Lyons, who assumed the chancellorship in July 2024, issued the unmitigated praise while being questioned by members of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which summoned him and the chief administrators of two other major universities to interrogate their handling of the campus antisemitism crisis.

Lyons stumbled into the statement while being questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who asked the chancellor to describe the extent of his relationship and correspondence with Professor Ussama Makdisi, who tweeted in February 2024 that he “could have been one of those who broke through the siege on Oct. 7.”

In Thursday’s statement, Marcus implored the Jewish community to be unrelenting in its fight against antisemitism.

“As we have now seen time and time again, if left unaddressed, antisemitic bigotry, whether or not masked as anti-Zionism, only continues to expand. We will fight this bigotry wherever and whenever we find it, and we will win.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.