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From Inquisition to the Emmys: The Pressure on Jews to Renounce Their Identity
Hannah Einbinder accepting her Emmy award and denouncing Israel. Photo: screenshot.
At this year’s Emmy Awards, actress Hannah Einbinder ended her remarks with the chant of the season: “Free Palestine.” Then, in a follow-up interview, she added: “As a Jew, I feel I need to separate Jews from the State of Israel.”
The line was neither original nor courageous. It was predictable — almost compulsory. In today’s “progressive” Hollywood and academic culture, denouncing Israel has become the price of admission. The applause is automatic. The acceptance guaranteed. And the irony is staggering: in the name of “peace,” a Jew is expected to separate themselves from Jewish freedom and sovereignty.
This moment is revealing. For much of the activist left, and parts of the conspiratorial right, “pro-peace” no longer means anti-war. It does not mean demanding Hamas release hostages, Hezbollah dismantle its missile arsenals, or Iran stop exporting terror across the Middle East. It does not mean compromise, coexistence, or recognition. “Pro-peace” has been hollowed out into a single, shallow position: being anti-Israel.
Selective Outrage
The first irony is the selective outrage. No one at the Emmys shouted “Free Tibet,” “Free Uyghurs,” or “Free Western Sahara.” No actor declared, “As a Muslim, I feel I need to separate Muslims from the regime in Iran.” Only Jews are asked, expected, and rewarded for separating themselves from their people’s homeland.
Even more telling is the near-total silence about wars with far higher death tolls — often fought with US weapons and by US allies. Wars in Yemen, Sudan, Myanmar, or even Afghanistan draw only passing notice. Israel alone animates the passions of celebrities, academics, and activists. That obsession reveals less about Israel than about the standards and expectations uniquely placed on Jews.
The Burden on Jews
Einbinder’s statement was not a private musing, but a public performance of loyalty to her cultural milieu. In the arts and academia, Jewish voices increasingly feel pressured to add disclaimers: I am Jewish, but I reject Israel. It is the modern equivalent of conversion — not to Christianity, as in Spain during the Inquisition, but to anti-Zionism, which has become the entry-fee to polite progressive company.
This is not solidarity with Palestinians. It is self-disarmament. It is a way of saying: “I denounce my people’s national project; therefore, I should be safe among you.”
A Hollow Definition of “Peace”
This ritual underscores how “peace” has been redefined. If peace were the real goal, activists would call on Hamas to stop using civilians as human shields, or on Palestinian leaders to stop rejecting every peace proposal since 1947. They would demand an end to the indoctrination that teaches Palestinian children that Jews have no right to exist in any part of the historical land of Israel, or that Jews are a unique evil in the world. Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas promote these deeply antisemitic themes (and many others) in their “educational programs.”
Instead, slogans like “Free Palestine” are unmoored from reality. They are not calls for compromise or coexistence. They are applause lines, serving one purpose: to demonize Israel’s very existence.
The Echo of History
This is not new. For centuries, Jews were told that belonging required abandoning their peoplehood. In Spain and Portugal, it meant baptism. In Enlightenment Europe, assimilation. In Soviet Russia, it meant the abandonment of religion and Zionism. In today’s Hollywood, campus, and art worlds, it means denouncing Israel.
That this demand now comes from self-styled progressives is a bitter irony. The rhetoric of liberation has become a mechanism of exclusion. Once again, Jews are told their safety and acceptability require severing themselves from their people and homeland.
What It Means for Israelis
For Israeli Jews, this cultural pressure is not just insulting, it is — first and foremost — irrelevant. Almost all Israelis understand that their enemies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Iran — are not negotiating partners, but movements explicitly committed to Jewish eradication. Israelis understand, in their bones, that no amount of celebrity posturing will soften that intent.
And so Israelis will not accede to the demands of Western elites who find Jewish sovereignty distasteful. They will not return to the role of perpetual victim simply because it is easier for Hannah Einbinder and her peers to mourn powerless Jews than to confront the reality of Jews defending themselves. Israelis will always endure global disapproval before they accept extinction.
Reclaiming Peace
This leaves us with a challenge. If “pro-peace” is to mean anything, it must be reclaimed. It must mean rejecting ideologies of annihilation, not accommodating them. It must mean supporting coexistence, not rewarding rejectionism. It must mean defending Jewish self-determination as legitimate, while also insisting on dignity and hope for Palestinians.
That is hard work. It is not fashionable. It cannot be captured in a faddish red-carpet slogan. But it is the only way that peace will ever move from mindless chant to reality.
Einbinder’s comment was not simply about her personal politics. It reflected a culture that demands Jews disavow their nation and their peoplehood to be accepted, which are just old patterns of exclusion dressed in new language.
Israelis, meanwhile, live with the reality that their enemies want them dead. They will not die for the comfort of privileged actors in Hollywood. They will not trade sovereignty for applause. They will defend their families, freedoms, and democracy — even if that means being maligned abroad.
True peace will never come from silencing Jews or separating them from Israel. It will come only when the world stops demanding Israelis disavow their survival, and starts demanding that those who have sought their destruction for nearly a century abandon their war. Israelis are here to stay — no matter how much more comfortable our departure from existence would make the Hannah Einbinders of the world.
Micha Danzig is a current attorney, former IDF soldier & NYPD police officer. He currently writes for numerous publications on matters related to Israel, antisemitism & Jewish identity & is the immediate past President of StandWithUs in San Diego and a national board member of Herut.
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Hezbollah Chief Makes Overtures to Saudi Arabia for Front Against Israel
Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers a speech from an unknown location, Nov. 20, 2024, in this still image from video. Photo: REUTERS TV/Al Manar TV via REUTERS.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday urged Saudi Arabia to turn “a new page” with the Iran-backed terrorist group and set aside past disputes to create a unified front against Israel, following years of hostility that strained Riyadh’s ties with Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states designated Shi’ite Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 2016. In recent months, Riyadh has joined Washington and Hezbollah‘s rivals within Lebanon in pressuring the Lebanese government to disarm the Islamist group, which was badly weakened by last year’s war with Israel.
In a televised address on Friday, Qassem said that regional powers should see Israel, not Hezbollah, as the main threat to the Middle East and proposed “mending relations” with Riyadh.
“We assure you that the arms of the resistance [Hezbollah] are pointed at the Israeli enemy, not Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, or any other place or entity in the world,” Qassem said.
He said dialogue would “freeze the disagreements of the past, at least in this exceptional phase, so that we can confront Israel and curb it” and said that pressuring Hezbollah “is a net gain for Israel.”
Saudi Arabia once spent billions in Lebanon, depositing funds in the central bank and helping rebuild the south after a 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel – only to see the group grow more powerful in Lebanon and the region with Iran’s help.
Relations soured sharply in 2021 when Sunni Saudi Arabia expelled the Lebanese ambassador, recalled its own envoy, and banned Lebanese imports. A statement in Saudi state media at the time said Hezbollah controlled the Lebanese state’s decision-making processes.
Hezbollah‘s then-secretary general Hassan Nasrallah called Saudi Arabia‘s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman a “terrorist” and repeatedly criticized Saudi‘s role in Yemen.
But recent months have seen seismic political shifts in the region, with Israel pummeling Hezbollah last year and killing Nasrallah, and rebels toppling the group’s Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad in December.
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UN Security Council Decides Not to Lift Iran Sanctions
Members of the UN Security Council vote against a resolution that would permanently lift UN sanctions on Iran at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The United Nations Security Council did not adopt a draft resolution on Friday to permanently lift sanctions on Iran, but Tehran and key European powers still have eight days to try and agree to a delay.
The 15-member UN Security Council was required to vote on the draft resolution on Friday after Britain, France, and Germany launched a 30-day process on Aug. 28 to reimpose UN sanctions, accusing Tehran of failing to abide by a 2015 deal with world powers that aimed to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran denies having any such intention.
Russia, China, Pakistan, and Algeria voted in favor of the draft text on Friday. Nine members voted against and two abstained.
The Security Council vote has now set up a week of intense diplomacy while world leaders – including Iran‘s President Masoud Pezeshkian – are in New York for the annual high-level UN General Assembly.
IRAN SAYS VOTE OUTCOME ‘WEAKENS DIPLOMACY’
“The door for diplomacy is not closed, but it will be Iran, not adversaries, who decide with whom and on what basis to engage,” Iran‘s UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani told reporters after the vote.
Iran‘s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will meet with his European counterparts in New York next week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, he said, adding that Friday’s divided vote showed there was “no consensus in the council.”
“This decision weakens diplomacy and risks dangerous consequences for non-proliferation,” Iravani said.
Britain, France, and Germany have offered to delay reinstating sanctions for up to six months – to allow space for talks on a long-term deal on Tehran’s nuclear program – if Iran restores access for UN nuclear inspectors, addresses concerns about its stock of enriched uranium, and engages in talks with the United States.
“Without these most basic conditions being met, there is no clear path to a swift diplomatic solution,” Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the council. “We are ready for further engagements, diplomatically, in the next week, and beyond to seek to resolve differences.”
Any delay on reimposing sanctions would require a Security Council resolution. If a deal on an extension can’t be reached by the end of Sept. 27, then all UN sanctions will be reimposed.
US REMAINS READY TO ENGAGE, ENVOY SAYS
Acting US Ambassador Dorothy Shea said that while the US voted “no” on Friday, it “does not impede the possibility of real diplomacy,” adding that a return of sanctions on Iran “does not preclude later removal through diplomacy.”
“More importantly, President Trump has continued to reiterate the United States’ ongoing readiness for meaningful, direct, and timebound dialogue with Iran – be it prior to the conclusion of the snapback process on Sept. 27, or after,” she told the council.
French UN Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont said that since the 30-day process – known as snapback – was triggered, the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Britain had met twice with their Iranian counterpart.
“Our hand remains outstretched to find a negotiated solution,” he told the council before the vote.
Separately, Iran‘s strategic allies Russia and China finalized a draft Security Council resolution late last month that would extend the 2015 deal for six months and urge all parties to immediately resume negotiations. But they have not yet asked for a vote.
Russia and China, which are also parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, have both rejected the Europeans’ bid to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran.
China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong said the attempt to trigger snapback was “detrimental to the diplomatic effort towards an early resumption of talks, and may even bring about catastrophic consequences that are impossible to foresee and forfeit years of diplomatic efforts in one stroke.”
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Japan Plans Not to Recognize a Palestinian State for Now, Foreign Minister Says
Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya attends the 26th ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers’ Meeting at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, July 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hasnoor Hussain/Pool
Japan does not plan to recognize a Palestinian state at UN meetings this month, Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said on Friday.
But he also said that for Tokyo, which supports a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, it is not a matter of whether to recognize a Palestinian state, but when to recognize it.
“I’m aware voices calling for the recognition as a state are getting louder in the international community as well as in Japan,” Iwaya told a press conference.
“But the government has a responsibility to look hard into what will really lead to a two-state solution and to make diplomatic efforts towards that direction.”
A handful of US allies are preparing to recognize a Palestinian state as world leaders meet at the UN General Assembly in New York next week in the hope of putting pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza and seek long-term peace.
Iwaya said Japan does not condone Israel’s unilateral action such as the expansion of its military operations in Gaza, and that Japan will respond if Israel takes further steps that would close the way to the realization of a two-state solution.
Asked if the Japanese response would include sanctions against Israeli ministers over the conflict in Gaza, Iwaya said the government will not exclude any options, including the recognition of a Palestinian state, in weighing its potential moves.