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Why Bret Stephens and the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt See Eye-to-Eye

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaks during the organization’s “Never Is Now” summit at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan in New York City, US, Nov. 10, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Jeenah Moon
“I was born in hiding, and I don’t want to die in hiding.”
Bret Stephens’ mother, who survived the Holocaust as a child in hiding, said that to him a year ago, after “watching footage of a Jewish student being harassed and surrounded by anti-Israel protestors at Harvard, a once great university,” said Stephens at Temple Emanu-El’s Streicker Center on Dec. 3.
“She couldn’t believe it. My mother, who came to this country at 10 and reveres America and our great institutions, she couldn’t believe that sight.” She responded by putting an Israeli flag on her door.
Stephens was in dialogue with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, focused on the fact that the war in Gaza has been merely an excuse for the global surge in violent, normalized antisemitism.
The gorgeous sanctuary of Temple Emanu-El was packed on that cold Tuesday evening, with an additional 8,000 watching virtually. In general, the temple has leaned left, as do Reform (and most Conservative) congregations in NYC. But that night, there was no left and right in the audience. There were Jews. And many were there because they were scared.
Greenblatt talked about his first trip to Europe as ADL’s CEO, a decade ago. After seeing the high walls surrounding synagogues and Jewish day schools in Paris, he spoke with a well-armed member of the French Foreign Legion, who told him that he went from “fighting ISIS in Mali to fighting ISIS in Paris.”
“What starts in Europe ends up in America,” a friend told Greenblatt at the time.
“Objects in the mirror are closer than they may appear,” said Nicole Mutchnik, vice chair of the ADL’s Board of Directors.
A decade later, Greenblatt flew to Amsterdam to meet with Dutch leaders after the pogrom last month. “They told me they knew that this was planned long before the Israelis showed up. And yet, we were gaslit and told: The fans caused it. There are intense rivalries in soccer, but they don’t lead to a series of coordinated attacks across an entire city. Six hours of people getting chased down and assaulted with pipes and clubs and knives.”
“I’m sick and tired of being told that what’s happening on college campuses or at K-12 schools or at a soccer game is our fault. We should all be sick and tired of being told that we caused it because we didn’t cause any of it,” he said.
Greenblatt also met with leaders from the local Jewish community. “They were asking me, is it time to leave? Communities that withstood the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and the Shoah are now saying, is it time to go?”
Stephens was equally horrified by the reaction of European leaders. “Immediately, there was an effort at almost every level to explain away what had happened. What are the intellectual and cultural assumptions in which so much bigotry, which would not be permissible against any other minority, becomes permissible when it comes to Jews?”
“What do I want to see from leaders in Europe?” asked Greenblatt. “I want them to show courage. I want them to go after the radicals, whether they’re in the mosques or in the schools, or in their own political parties. And I want them to finally address the propaganda that is radicalizing these young people.”
“And this jihadi Islamism,” he added, “it’s coming here like a freight train.”
“Antisemitism,” Stephens explained, “is always going to find its roots and power not in the most bigoted and ugly expressions, but in the willing compliance of people who are prepared to go along with antisemitic explanations for the harm that’s done to Jews.”
How did we get to this place? “We have allowed anti-Zionism, this ideology of nihilism rooted in racism, to become legitimized,” Greenblatt said. “It is incredibly poisonous and problematic. We need to have the moral clarity and, frankly, the moral courage to call anti-Zionism for what it is: antisemitism. Period.”
“Viruses mutate to adapt to their host,” explained Stephens. “And the host today is uniquely susceptible to totally fallacious arguments about so-called settler colonialism. In fact, there’s one state that has this extraordinary connection to its ancestral homeland. And there’s one movement in the world that has the longest continuous anticolonial struggle in history.”
“The longest anticolonial struggle in history is Zionism,” Stephens stated. Zionism was in fact founded as a liberation movement from colonial powers.
“What is Hanukkah about? Who were we fighting? Who were we being colonized by? Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, the British. Over that space of 2,500 years, Jews never lost sight of the fact that they would resist colonialism and establish sovereignty on their own land.”
Greenblatt then delved into the damage DEI has done. “This kind of oppressor/oppressed framework, this derivative of the DEI industrial complex, has created the view that Jews are ‘oppressors.’”
“What worries me is this idea of privilege,” said Stephens. “We used to speak in America about success and the proper emotion when it comes to the success of others is admiration. When you talk not about success, but about privilege, the suggestion is that it is unearned. Unearned success doesn’t beget admiration, it begets envy. And envy is the most toxic political emotion in the world.”
European Jews “always suffered because there was a profound streak of envy that ran through a lot of European culture, and America was free of that,” said Stephens. “I’m not so sure we’re free of it now, which is what makes me so alarmed that we are on the cusp of replicating some of the patterns we see in Europe.”
“And let’s be honest about what’s happening at Columbia,” Stephens continued. “It isn’t just a bunch of idealistic students upset about what they’re seeing in Gaza, but not in Syria, Sudan, Burma, Russia, or anywhere else, because that double standard is plain, clear antisemitism. When it comes to Israel, there’s zero nuance, zero history, zero context, zero curiosity about how this came about. It’s an abomination, not simply when it comes to the Jews. It’s an abomination when it comes to pedagogy.”
“How did our elite universities get taken over by this utterly unthinking ideology that asks its students to do nothing but mouth stupid slogans that happen to rhyme?,” Stephens asked.
“We cannot expect the cavalry to come,” Greenblatt warned. “You are the cavalry,” he told the audience. “You are the ones who are going to ensure that Bret’s mom doesn’t die in hiding. Anyone who thinks that all of this is a function of some natural law, that it could never happen here, you’re kidding yourselves. America is an experiment in democracy bound together by invisible values and morals that tie us together and root us. And it’s up to us to hold onto those.”
The attendees (myself included) left that evening still feeling scared, but, perhaps, a little less alone.
“All of us are aching,” Greenblatt said, “and all of us are heartbroken.” But here were two strong Jewish leaders who were not afraid to ask and answer the tough questions. And perhaps most important: both want to finally ditch the toxic partisanship that has only made everything a thousand times worse.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A different version of this article appeared in the Jewish Journal.
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IDF Denies Troops Fired on Civilians After Incidents of Settler Violence

Illustrative. Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.
i24 News – The IDF released a statement after an incident during which Israeli soldiers opened fire on Israeli civilians in the West Bank on Saturday night, denying that the trooped fired live ammunition.
This comes at the heels of arson incidents by settlers against Palestinian villages, with clashes breaking out. The IDF said that its soldiers had come under attack on Friday as they entered the area of Kafr Malik, the site of the disturbances, by Israeli civilians. “The undermining of the rule of law and the use of violence by a radical minority harm security and stability in the area.”
The IDF later said that “an initial investigation indicates that IDF forces did not fire live ammunition at Israeli civilians in the area. It should be clarified that the battalion commander’s force operating in the Baal Hatzor area of the Binyamin brigade did not fire live ammunition at all.” On the other hand, the civilians claimed this was false, posting a video that showed shell casings on the ground right next to where the troops were deployed.
Meanwhile, the police requested the remand of six individuals, two of whom are minors, to be extended in connection with the incident.
The IDF later said that, “in another area within the sector, stones were thrown at a military vehicle near the site of the clash by masked individuals from an ambush. The force responded with a warning shot of three bullets.” A possible connection “between this incident and the claim that an Israeli civilian was injured by live fire” is being investigated.
After the incidents late last week, the IDF issued an unusual directive for soldiers to exercise special vigilance and also prepare for scenarios involving nationalist incidents perpetrated by Israeli citizens. The directive was issued after a military vehicle was set on fire inside a Jewish settlement, the tires of an armored David vehicle were punctured, and a community policing caravan near the community of Beit El was also set on fire.
“The security establishment system is highly alert,” a security official told i24NEWS. “We are seeing an escalation on the ground – and if you cannot leave a military vehicle in a Jewish community without it being burned in the sector, it is a sign that the situation is dangerous.”
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Israel Orders Evacuations in Northern Gaza as Trump Calls for War to End

US President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in northern Gaza on Sunday before intensified fighting against Hamas, as US President Donald Trump called for an end to the war amid renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire.
“Make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform early on Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold talks later in the day on the progress of Israel’s offensive. A senior security official said the military will tell him the campaign is close to reaching its objectives, and warn that expanding fighting to new areas in Gaza may endanger the remaining Israeli hostages.
But in a statement posted on X and text messages sent to many residents, the military urged people in northern parts of the enclave to head south towards the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, which Israel designated as a humanitarian area. Palestinian and U.N. officials say nowhere in Gaza is safe.
“The (Israeli) Defense Forces is operating with extreme force in these areas, and these military operations will escalate, intensify, and extend westward to the city center to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations,” the military said.
The evacuation order covered the Jabalia area and most Gaza City districts. Medics and residents said the Israeli army’s bombardments escalated in the early hours in Jabalia, destroying several houses and killing at least six people.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, relatives arrived to pay their respects to white-shrouded bodies before they are buried.
“A month ago, they (Israel) told us to go to Al-Mawasi (in Khan Younis) and we stayed there for a month, it is a safe zone,” said Zeyad Abu Marouf. He said three of his children were killed and a fourth was wounded in the Israeli airstrike.
“We ask God and the Arabs to move and end this occupation and the injustice taking place against us,” Abu Marouf told Reuters.
NEW CEASEFIRE PUSH
The military escalation comes as Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, begin a new ceasefire effort to halt the 20-month-old conflict and secure the release of Israeli and foreign hostages still being held by Hamas.
Interest in resolving the Gaza conflict has heightened following US and Israeli bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
There has also been rising concern over how aid is being distributed to Gazans in the ruined enclave. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed over the past month in the vicinity of areas where food was being handed out, local hospitals and officials have said.
A Hamas official told Reuters the group had informed the mediators it was ready to resume ceasefire talks, but reaffirmed the group’s outstanding demands that any deal must end the war and secure an Israeli withdrawal from the coastal territory.
Hamas has said it is willing to free remaining hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive, only in a deal that will end the war. Israel says it can only end the war if Hamas is disarmed and dismantled. Hamas refuses to lay down its arms.
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Russia Launches Largest Drone Attack Yet Against Ukraine, Kills F-16 Pilot

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
i24 News – Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia launched 537 drones and missiles against targets throughout Ukraine overnight between Saturday and Sunday, in what what described as the largest attack of the war.
Poland activated aerial defenses and scrambled jets as the six-hour onslaught continued. One Ukrainian F-16 pilot was killed as Kyiv attempted to intercept the missiles and drones, with 475 shot down.
“Tragically, while repelling the attack, our F-16 pilot, Maksym Ustymenko, died. Today, he destroyed seven aerial targets,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“Ustymenko did everything possible, but his jet was damaged and started losing altitude,” the air force said, as quoted in Politico. “He died like a hero!”
The cities of Cherkasy, Lviv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv were targeted.
The Russia attack came after Ukraine attacked the Kirovske airfield in the Crimean Peninsula, targeting air defenses, drones, and even destroying several helicopters and an air defense system.
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