Uncategorized
Does anime have a Nazi problem? Some Jewish fans think so.
TAIPEI (JTA) — When the Season 3 plot twist of “Attack on Titan” aired in 2019, viewers wasted no time in jumping online to discuss what they saw.
In the world of “Attack on Titan” — an extremely popular Japanese anime series now in its final season, which started in March and does not have a known end date — humanity has been trapped within a walled city on the island of Paradis, surrounded by Titans, grotesque giants who mindlessly eat any person who gets in their way.
In the third season, the Titans’ origins are revealed as a group called the Eldians, a group that made a deal with the devil to gain Titan powers with which they subjugated humanity for years. A group called the Marleyans later overthrew the Eldian empire and forced them into ghettoes, forcing them to wear armbands that identified their race with a symbol similar to the Star of David. Political prisoners were injected with a serum that turns them into the terrifying Titans.
The implications that a race meant to represent Jews had made “a deal with the devil” to achieve power were too much for some to bear. Fans debated the meaning on Twitter and Reddit as think pieces pointed to the show’s “fascist subtext” and possible antisemitism as ratings and viewership climbed. Some viewers defended the series as a condemnation of those ideas and a meditation on moral ambiguity, but others said the plot’s condemnation of fascism was too weak. The New Republic in 2020 called “Attack on Titan” “the alt-right’s favorite manga.”
Either way, in November 2021, the show’s production team announced it would cancel the sale of Eldian armbands — the ones Eldians were forced to wear in their ghettos — explaining that it was “an act without consideration to easily commercialize what was drawn as a symbol of racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination in the work.”
“Attack on Titan” is only the latest manga (a specific type of Japanese comic books or graphic novels) or anime (TV shows or movies animated in the manga style) series on the chopping block. As it continues to gain popularity outside of Japan’s borders, the Japanese animation medium as a whole has been hit with criticism for alleged glorification of antisemitism, fascism and militarism. The debate has been fueled by a stream of examples: the literal evil Jewish cabal in “Angel Cop,” (references to Jews were later removed in the English-language dubbed version), the Fuhrer villain in “Fullmetal Alchemist,” the Nazi occultism (in which Nazis channel the occult to carry out duties or crimes) in “Hellboy,” and the Nazi characters in “Hellsing” and “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” to name a few.
Western viewers are not the only ones taking issue. Fans of “Attack on Titan” in South Korea — which was subject to Japanese war atrocities during World War II that Japan continues to deny — have taken issue, too. Revelations from Hajime Isayama, the creator of the original “Attack on Titan” manga, that a character in the series was inspired by an Imperial Japanese army general who had committed war crimes against Koreans were met with heated discussion and later death threats from Korean fans online. Some also pointed to a private Twitter account believed to be run by Isayama that denies imperial Japan’s war atrocities.
“Ridiculous the lengths a fandom will go to downplay the blatant antisemitism in a series and protect and lie about the creator of said series,” wrote one Twitter user. “[Y]ou doing this and ignoring koreans and jewish people says a lot.”
These themes are so common in manga and anime that some independent researchers like Haru Mena (a pen name) have begun creating classifications for the many Nazi tropes that make regular appearances. Mena, a military researcher who lectures annually at the Anime Boston convention about World War II and Nazi imagery in anime and manga, says the phenomenon is a result of how Japan remembers its role in World War II — not as the aggressor, but as a victim of war.
“Japan does not want to be the bad guy. They love to have other people be the bad guy,” he said. “That’s why they’re using all these Nazi characters. We all agree Nazis are bad, war crimes are bad, no decent self-respecting nation would ever do [what they did].”
But many Jewish anime fans, like Reddit user Desiree (who did not offer her last name for privacy reasons), have taken issue with the way some anime and manga series portray Nazis while reducing the Holocaust to narrative devices.
“I think that most people who are telling these stories aren’t coming from an area where this would be as personally familiar,” she said. “There’s almost no resonance to it. Because they take away all these details they make it a big trope.”
hi
anime and manga have an antisemitism problem
good day
— Kay (he/they, she for friends only) (@Cayliana) February 19, 2022
East Asian interest in Nazi imagery has also bled over into the West in the form of news headlines in recent years — involving everything from Nazi-themed bars and parades to Nazi cosplay in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea.
But some experts say that repeated references to Nazi villains and World War II in manga and anime have more to do with Japanese history and culture than with antisemitism.
“There is a fascination with Nazism in Japan to some degree or another,” said Raz Greenberg, an Israel-based writer whose Ph.D. research examined Jewish influence on Japan’s “God of Comics,” Osamu Tezuka, an artist sometimes referred to as Japan’s equivalent to Walt Disney. In 1983, Tezuka released the first in a five-volume series called “Adolf,” a popular manga set in World War II-era Japan and Germany about three men with that name — a Japanese boy, a Jewish boy and Hitler.
“I think there’s something fascinating about Nazi aesthetic, certainly for countries that never actually participated in the war against the Nazis. But I don’t think it’s that different from, say, the way George Lucas made the Empire in the ‘Star Wars’ films very Nazi-like in its aesthetic,” Greenberg said.
As Greenberg notes, Western media is also full of Holocaust references — some more successful in its repudiation of Nazi ideology than others — like the numbered tattoos and recent use of a Lithuanian prison camp as a filming location in the Netflix hit show “Stranger Things.”
“What makes people angry is, people think when the Japanese approach it, they approach it without understanding. And it’s easier to think that they don’t understand it when you look at a show like ‘Attack on Titan,’” Greenberg said.
Liron Afriat, a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Asian Sphere program and the founder of the Anime and Manga Association of Israel, said while shows like “Attack on Titan” reference the Holocaust and use World War II-era imagery, it’s likely that Western viewers are misinterpreting its intended parallels to Japanese politics. … particularly Japan’s past of aggressive and corrupt militarism and late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempts to reinstate a non-defensive military.
“Western people are very eager to jump to conclusions when it comes to Asian media. This is something I see a lot in my work and it’s very frustrating,” she said. “There is a sense that because Japanese pop culture is so popular nowadays, it’s very easy to kind of dogpile on it and say it’s racist.”
In recent decades, anime series have been watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and the medium has gone from being seen in the West as a geeky niche genre to a mainstream phenomenon. Though show creators may be conscious about their references, some fans say the fascist and Jewish references, especially the more clear-cut ones — like the Jewish conspiracy in “Angel Cop” — have real-life consequences.
Many in the anime fan community today remember a 2010 incident at Anime Boston when a group of cosplayers dressed up as characters from “Hetalia: Axis Powers,” a series that anthropomorphized Axis and Ally countries, was photographed making Nazi salutes just around the corner from the city’s Holocaust memorial.
“It used to be like, I can go to an anime convention and they would be selling uniforms that were clearly meant to be Nazi uniforms, but sans the swastika,” Desiree said. “And then over time, I noticed conventions started banning that kind of thing.”
“JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” features a Nazi character named Rudol von Stroheim. (Screenshot from YouTube)
Noah Oskow is the managing editor of the digital magazine Unseen Japan and a Jew who has lived in Japan for seven years. He recalled similar experiences at U.S. anime conventions.
“I think that it is problematic to portray Nazis and the Holocaust in the very frivolous way that it’s often portrayed,” he said. “Even in a place that is so far removed from Japan, that aesthetic of Nazis from manga or anime was seeping into somebody’s choices in a far-removed anime and manga event.”
Oskow says recent portrayals of Nazis and fascism in anime and manga lack the depth necessary to confront an issue like the Holocaust, but that some subtext in shows like “Attack on Titan” is likely missed by Western viewers since it is created for a Japanese audience.
Still, he says, as a Jew, there is a discomfort with these depictions, and the problems with simplifying themes like fascism and genocide should not be ignored just because the product came from Japan — particularly as stereotypes about Jews as having outsize influence remain common. In Japan, as in other East Asian nations such as South Korea, China and Taiwan, books and classes on how to become as smart and wealthy as Jews — believed to be among the most powerful people in media and finance — are not uncommon.
“In my years of discussing Jews with Japanese people…they really think of Jews as an ancient historical people or the people who were killed in the Holocaust unless they have some sort of conspiratorial idea. But most people have no conception of Jewish people,” Oskow said. “So when they’re portraying Jews in manga or anime or any sort of media, and when readers or viewers are engaging with that media, I just don’t think there’s this thought of how a Jewish person would perceive how they’re being portrayed.”
Jessica, a 29-year-old Jewish and Chinese anime fan from Vancouver who also requested her last name be left out of this article, said she deliberately chooses not to watch shows such as “Attack on Titan” and “Hetalia” because she finds the discussions about them among fans to be unproductive and frustrating. Desiree echoed Jessica’s experience of being ignored when raising the topic of antisemitism within the medium or within the fan community on platforms such as Reddit.
“I saw the reactions of other Jewish fans and, more importantly, saw the reaction of the goyish fans — the way ‘Hetalia’ fans did the sieg heil in front of a Holocaust memorial, the way that [‘Attack on Titan’] fans would swarm concerned Jewish fans in droves to tell them that they should perish in an oven, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with anime that attracted that sort of fanbase,” Desiree said.
“Attack on Titan” returned to streaming services on March 4 with the first part of its final season. In the first episode, the protagonist Eren, whom audiences have followed for a decade, begins carrying out a global genocide known as “the rumbling” with the end goal of destroying all Titans for good and bringing peace. The end result is a wipeout of 80% of humanity, an act that Eren believes was the only path to freedom. He thinks humans must all suffer as a consequence of being born into the world — a nihilistic philosophy that can be found among the manifestos of school shooters and incels.
In the original manga series, Eren’s supporters on the island militarize in order to defend Eren’s violent act, chanting a slogan: “If you can fight you win, if you cannot fight you lose! Fight, fight!” The ending was seen as morally ambiguous and was not popular with fans, who mostly refuted it due to poor writing. Many hope that the anime series will go a different route in its final episodes, which have not yet been released or given future release dates.
—
The post Does anime have a Nazi problem? Some Jewish fans think so. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Former Hamas Hostages Visit Rebbe’s Ohel, Grave of Chabad Leader, in New York
Four former Hamas hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel on Nov. 22, 2025. Photo: Provided
Four freed Israeli hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel, the resting place of Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Queens, New York, on Saturday night together with their families.
Segev Kalfon, Matan Angrest, Nimrod Cohen, and Bar Kuperstein prayed at the gravesite and expressed gratitude for their return home as well as the support they received from the Chabad movement during their 738 days in the captivity of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
As is customary at the Ohel, the freed hostages and their families gave charity, lit candles, and wrote personal notes for blessings that they left by the Rebbe’s mausoleum. They also recited Psalm 100, giving thanks for their return from captivity after being abducted from Israel during the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Until now, our families prayed here for us to come home,” said Angrest, 22. “Today, I came only to say thank you.”
“I was here exactly two years ago and many times throughout the last two difficult years, we went to pray at the Ohel, and every time we would come back strengthened to continue our efforts,” shared Kalfon’s father. “Now, that we were successful, we came to the Rebbe to say thank you and reflect on the power of all the mitzvot that were done in their merit.”
The former hostages also prayed for the return of the remaining captives, all deceased, still held in the Gaza Strip.
Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky hosted the visit on behalf of Chabad World Headquarters, and the evening was arranged by Rabbi Mendy Naftalin in coordination with both Yaron Cohen from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and Yael Goren-Hezkiya, head of the Government Policy and Foreign Relations Division in the Kidnapped, Missing, and Returnees administration in Israel.
Naftalin noted that the gathering at the Ohel on Saturday night symbolized a full circle moment after two years of praying for the return of the hostages. “Here, we cried, we prayed, and we strengthened each other,” he said. “To be able to return with you all is so moving; we are closing the circle.”
“We are only here because of our forefathers, who gave us this strength to withstand all challenges,” added Rabbi Simon Jacobson, the publisher of The Algemeiner who joined the group on Saturday night. “The Ohel connects us to our roots. You all are living proof of that resilience and eternality of the Jewish people.”
The four ex-hostages were released from captivity in October during the first stage of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Angrest, an IDF soldier, was kidnapped near the Nahal Oz military base and faced injuries and severe torture during his captivity. His captors agreed to give him Jewish prayer books and tefillin, small leather boxes with straps traditionally wrapped on one’s head and arm at the start of weekday morning prayers.
“I prayed three times a day, morning, afternoon, and night,” he said. “It protected me; it gave me hope.”
Kuperstein was an IDF soldier on leave working as an usher at the Nova music festival when he was kidnapped. During his time in Gaza, his mother lent his tefillin to thousands around the world and urged Jews to wear it in his merit. Bar said he recited the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael often in captivity and prayed using Hebrew prayers that he had memorized.
Several former Hamas hostages – including Omer Shem Tov, Agam Berger, Sasha Troufanov, Eli Sharabi, Noa Argaman, and Edan Alexander – have visited the Ohel in recent months. In November 2023, 170 relatives of hostages chartered a flight from Israel to New York to pray at the Rebbe’s Ohel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s wife Sara, and other Israeli public figures also prayed at the Ohel during the Israel-Hamas war.
Trump visited the Ohel last year on the first anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. He was joined by a group that included Alexander’s family members. In a letter marking the anniversary of the Rebbe’s passing, Trump wrote: “When Edan Alexander was returned earlier this year, the entire country felt the power of the Ohel and the Rebbe’s enduring example.”
Uncategorized
Trump Set to Blacklist Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Group, in Move Hailed by Netanyahu
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, in a move hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said the Islamist group “endangers stability.”
“TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the White House’s social media account on X posted, above a screenshot of a New York Post headline with the same wording.
TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. pic.twitter.com/Zwt61sRRuI
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 24, 2025
The post came after Trump, in an interview with the Just the News outlet published on Sunday, was cited as saying that the “final documents are being drawn” to enact the designation.
“It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,” he said.
Trump’s comments followed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announcing last week a state-level designation of the Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.
The interview also came several months after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican co-sponsors introduced a bill seeking to classify the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Lawmakers in the US House also reintroduced earlier this year the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which would direct the State Department to classify both the organization and its affiliates as terrorist entities.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that a federal designation was “in the works,” noting that the legal process requires examining each of the Brotherhood’s regional branches individually.
If finalized, the designation would mark a significant shift in US counterterrorism policy, criminalizing support for the Islamist group and potentially triggering sanctions on its global affiliates.
As of this writing, the White House has not yet confirmed the report beyond its social media post.
The Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational movement active in some 70 countries that preaches a vision of society governed by Sharia law, has made recent headlines over allegations of theft and corruption. Several Arab governments, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, have banned the Brotherhood or designated it a terrorist organization. The Hamas terror group has long been affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.
Counterterrorism experts argue that targeting the Muslim Brotherhood’s sprawling network is an overdue step to combat the roots of Islamist extremism. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a research center that has long sounded alarms about the Brotherhood, welcomed Trump’s reported commitment to the designation, saying the group has functioned as an “intellectual incubator” for jihadist movements, spreading doctrines that inspire terrorist organizations even if the Brotherhood’s official chapters claim to disavow violence.
Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s executive director, told The Algemeiner that the Brotherhood has learned to exploit the freedoms of open societies, the values of pluralism, and rights discourse “as instruments to weaken the very system that protects them.”
Trump’s statements on Sunday “reflect a growing recognition of the scale and seriousness” of the threat of the Brotherhood, Small said, and formalizing it as a terrorist designation would mark “an essential first step” to confront the group’s presence in the United States.
But he warned that the designation should not be treated “as an end in itself.” Real progress will require “sustained, evidence-based policy, rigorous scrutiny of affiliated organizations and funding networks, and long-term investment in strengthening democratic resilience against ideological infiltration already underway.”
A report released by ISGAP last week found that Qatar has funneled roughly $20 billion into American schools and universities over five decades as part of a coordinated, 100-year project to embed Muslim Brotherhood ideologies in the US.
The 200-page report, unveiled last week in Washington, DC to members of Congress, chronicles a 50-year effort by Brotherhood-linked groups to embed themselves in American academia, civil society, and government agencies, exposing what ISGAP calls the Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” strategy, while maintaining an agenda fundamentally at odds with liberal democratic values.
“This is not a conventional political movement. It is a transnational ideological network that has learned to mimic the language of democracy while steadily corroding its foundations,” Small told The Algemeiner.
Dalia Ziada, co-author of the report, also welcomed Trump’s comments but cautioned against complacency.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is not just a Middle Eastern movement but an ideological export that has adapted itself to Western institutions, language, and freedoms in order to hollow them out from within,” Ziada told The Algemeiner. She added that she has “seen how its networks operate, how they marginalize moderate Muslim voices, and how state actors like Qatar amplify this project through money, media, and education.”
A US designation would be “a crucial signal of clarity,” she said, but “it must be followed by rigorous policy, real oversight of affiliated organizations, and sustained investment in protecting democratic culture.”
Netanyahu on Sunday applauded Trump’s decision “to outlaw and designate the Muslim Brotherhood … as a terrorist organization.”
“This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he said, noting that Israel has already outlawed part of the movement and is working to “complete this action” soon.
The announcement could complicate matters for the Israeli Arab Ra’am party, which was part of the previous coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid and is aligned with the Southern Islamic Movement — a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate seen as more moderate than its northern counterpart, which was outlawed in 2015. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas responded to Netanyahu’s comments on Monday, saying that his party is “evaluating the legal situation.”
Uncategorized
RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s
Imagine receiving a love poem that reads: “Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, browsing among the lilies,” going on to say that they are a “mount” that the author wishes to “betake” himself to.
That particular line is from the Song of Songs, the sexiest book in the bible. But it doesn’t sound all that different from the poetry that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allegedly wrote to journalist Olivia Nuzzi during what she claims was a purely “digital” affair between the two of them.
“Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest,” the former presidential candidate and current Secretary of Health and Human Services texted Nuzzi according to Ryan Lizza, her ex-fiancé; he released the “poetry” in a series of tell-all Substack posts about the affair.
The nature metaphors go on, as he allegedly instructs Nuzzi to “drink” from him: “‘Don’t spill a drop,’” he exhorts Nuzzi. “I am a river. You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you.”
This thinly-veiled description of a blow job is going viral online, where people cannot stop making fun of RFK’s literary stylings. “This is why we need better education in the humanities,” joked one post.
But the quality of love poems — or sexts, or erotica — is often in the eye of the beholder. (Though there are a few timeless classics, like The Book of O.) From inside the relationship, already dizzied by lust or love, the sexual descriptions can read as head-spinningly romantic even if, from the outside, they’re painfully awkward to read.
Perhaps this is also why the Song of Songs is usually interpreted allegorically, as a description of God’s love for the people of Israel, in Judaism. Later, Christians interpreted the book as a paean to the love between Jesus and the church. If it means what it seems to mean — if the breasts the author is lusting after are literally breasts — it’s just too racy. And, perhaps more importantly, too cringe.
The book is traditionally believed to be by King Solomon, one of the most venerated kings of ancient Israel, known for his wisdom. (Not incidentally, he is also known for his hundreds of wives and concubines.) And, of course, it’s included in the Bible, a holy text. And yet it is full of both open discussion of breasts and beauty, as well as metaphors that are about as subtle as RFK Jr.’s.
“His fruit is sweet to my mouth,” goes one line in the Song of Songs. “He brought me to the banquet room and his banner of love was over me.” Interpret that how you will, but eating sweet fruit seems thematically similar to opening one’s mouth to receive the bounty of a harvest.
Erotic texts were, in the era the Song of Songs was likely written, often part of the religious ceremonies of other traditions, particularly in fertility cults in the area. Still, how do you justify a great wise king discussing his lover’s breasts and dreaming of how her “rounded thighs are like jewels” — especially a king that was supposedly a titan of monotheism? Well, Rashi — one of the most famous Jewish textual commentators — interprets the breasts in the line “My beloved to me is a bag of myrhh, lodged between my breasts” as referring to “the two staves of the Ark.” Which seems like a stretch.
Of course, no one is trying to interpret RFK Jr.’s alleged poetry to be about God; he is nowhere near as venerated as King Solomon, and some of the other lines are less metaphorical. Plus, hundreds of years haven’t passed to blur the meaning of his words. But even with the centuries of interpretations, Solomon’s meaning is as clear as a freshwater stream. Or a river.
The post RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s appeared first on The Forward.