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A history of Mel Brooks as a ‘disobedient Jew’
(JTA) — Jeremy Dauber subtitles his new biography of Mel Brooks “Disobedient Jew.” It’s a phrase that captures two indivisible aspects of the 96-year-old director, actor, producer and songwriter.
The “Jew” is obvious. Born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, Brooks channeled the Yiddish accents and Jewish sensibilities of his old neighborhoods into characters like the 2000 Year Old Man — a comedy routine he worked up with his friend, the writer and director Carl Reiner. He worked Jewish obsessions into films like 1967’s “The Producers,” which features two scheming Jewish characters who stage a sympathetic Broadway musical about Hitler in order to bilk their investors.
Brooks’ signature move is to inject Jews into every aspect of human history and culture, which can be seen in the forthcoming Hulu series “History of the World, Part II.” A sequel to his 1981 film, “History of the World, Part I,” it parodies historical episodes in a style he honed as a writer on 1950s television programs such as “Your Show of Shows,” whose writers’ rooms were stocked with a galaxy of striving Jewish comedy writers just like him.
The “Disobedient” part describes Brooks’ relationship to a movie industry that he conquered starting in the early 1970s. In a series of parodies of classic movie genres — the Western in “Blazing Saddles,” the horror movie in “Young Frankenstein,” Alfred Hitchcock in “High Anxiety — he would gently, sometimes crudely and always lovingly bite the hand that was feeding him quite nicely: In 1976, he was fifth on the list of top 10 box office attractions, just behind Clint Eastwood.
Dauber describes the parody Brooks mastered as “nothing less than the essential statement of American Jewish tension between them and us, culturally speaking; between affection for the mainstream and alienation from it.”
Dauber is professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Columbia University, whose previous books include “Jewish Comedy” and “American Comics: A History.” “Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew” is part of the Jewish Lives series of brief interpretative biographies from Yale University Press.
Dauber and I spoke about why America fell for a self-described “spectacular Jew” from Brooklyn, Brooks’ lifelong engagement with the Holocaust, and why “Young Frankenstein” may be Brooks’ most Jewish movie.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “History of the World, Part II” comes out March 6. “History of the World, Part I” may not be in the top tier of Brooks films, but it seems to touch on so many aspects of his career that you trace in your book: the parody of classic movie forms, the musical comedy, injecting Jews into every aspect of human civilization, and the anything-for-a-laugh sensibility.
Jeremy Dauber: I agree. There’s the one thing that really brings it home, and it’s probably the most famous or infamous scene from the film. That’s the Spanish Inquisition scene. You have Brooks sort of probing the limits of bad taste. He had done that most famously in “The Producers” with its Nazi kickline, but here he takes the same idea — that one of the ways that you attack antisemitism is through ridicule — and turns the persecution of the Jews into a big musical number. It’s his love of music and dance. But the thing that’s almost the most interesting about this is that he takes on the role of the Torquemada character.
As his henchman sing and dance and the Jews face torture, the Brooklyn-born Jew plays the Catholic friar who tormented the Jews.
That’s right. And what’s the crime that he accuses the Jews of? “Don‘t be boring! Don‘t be dull!” That’s the worst thing that you can be. It’s his way of saying, “If I have a religion, you know, it is show business.”
His fascination with showbiz seems inseparable from his Jewishness, as if being a showbiz Jew is a denomination in its own right.
One of my favorite lines of his is when he marries [actress] Anne Bancroft, who of course is not Jewish. And he says, “She doesn’t have to convert: She’s a star.” If you’re a star, if you’re a celebrity, you’re kind of in your own firmament faith-wise, and so it’s okay. Showbiz is this faith. But it is very Jewish, because show business is a way to acceptance. It’s a way that America can love him as a Jew, as Mel Brooks, as a kid from the outer boroughs who can grow up to marry Anne Bancroft.
Jeremy Dauber is the author of “Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew” (Yale University Press)
You write early on that “Mel Brooks, more than any other single figure, symbolizes the Jewish perspective on and contribution to American mass entertainment.” On one foot, can you expand on that?
Jews understand that there’s a path to success and that being embraced by a culture means learning about it, immersing yourself in it, being so deeply involved in it that you understand it and master it. But simultaneously, you’re doing that as a kind of outsider. You’re always not quite in it, even though you’re of it in some deep way. In some ways, it’s the apotheosis of what Brooks does, which is being a parodist. In order to be the kind of parodist that Mel Brooks is, you have to be acutely attuned to every aspect of the cultural medium that you’re parodying. You have to know it inside and outside and backwards and forwards. And Brooks certainly does, but at the same time you have to be able to sort of step outside of it and say, you know, “Well, I’m watching a Western, but come on, what’s going on with these guys? Like why doesn’t anyone ever, you know, pass gas after eating so many beans?”
You have this great phrase, that to be an American Jew is to be part of the “loyal opposition.”
That’s right. Brooks at his best is always kind of poking and prodding at convention, but loyally. He’s not like the countercultural figures of his day. He’s a studio guy. He’s really within the system, but is poking at the system as well.
You wrote in that vein about his 1963 short film, “The Critic,” which won him an Oscar. Brooks plays an old Jewish man making fun of an art film.
On the one hand, he’s doing it in the voice of one of his older Jewish relatives, the Jewish generation with an Eastern European accent, to make fun of these kinds of intellectuals. He’s trying to channel the everyman’s response to high art. “What is this I’m watching? I don’t understand this at all.” On the other hand, Brooks is much more intellectual than he’s often given credit for.
For me the paradox of Brooks’ career is conveyed in a phrase that appears a couple of times in the book: “too Jewish.” The irony is that the more he leaned into his Jewishness, the more successful he got, starting with the “2000 Year Old Man” character, in which he channels Yiddish dialect in a series of wildly successful comedy albums with his friend Carl Reiner. How do you explain America’s embrace of these extremely ethnic tropes?
Brooks’ great motion pictures of the late 1960s and 1970s sort of track with America’s embrace of Jewishness. You have “The Graduate,” which came out at around the same time as “The Producers,” and which showed that someone like Dustin Hoffman can be a leading man. It doesn’t have to be a Robert Redford. You have Allan Sherman and all these popular Jewish comedians. You have “Fiddler on the Roof” becoming one of Broadway’s biggest hits. That gives Brooks license to kind of jump in with both feet. In the 1950s, writing on “The Show of Shows” for Sid Caesar, the Jewishness was there but in a very kind of hidden way. Whereas, it’s very hard to watch the 2000 Year Old Man and say, well, that’s not a Jewish product.
What he also avoided — and here I will contrast him with the novelist Philip Roth — were accusations that he was “bad for the Jews.” Philip Roth was told that his negative portrayals of Jewish characters was embarrassing the Jews in front of the gentiles, but for some reason, I don’t remember anyone complaining even though the Max Bialystock character in “The Producers” can be fairly described as a conniving Jew. What made Brooks’ ethnic comedy more palatable to other Jews?
“The Producers” had a lot of pushback, but for a lot of other reasons.
I guess people had enough to deal with when he staged a musical comedy about Hitler.
Exactly. But the other part is that his biggest films are not as explicitly Jewish as something like Roth’s novel “Portnoy’s Complaint.” I actually think “Young Frankenstein” is one of the most Jewish movies that Mel Brooks ever made, but you’re not going to watch “Young Frankenstein” and say, wow, there are Jews all over the place here.
What about “Young Frankenstein,” a parody of classic horror movies, seems quintessentially Jewish?
The script, which is a lot of Gene Wilder and not just Mel Brooks, is really about someone saying, “You know, I don’t have this heritage — I’m trying to fit in with everybody else. My name is Dr. FRAHNK-en-shteen.” And then people say, “No, this is your heritage. You are Dr. Frankenstein.” [Wilder’s character realizes] “it is my heritage, and I’m embracing it. And I’m Frankenstein. And you may find that monstrous but that’s your business.” It’s about assimilation and embracing who you are.
And of course, Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein is unmistakably Jewish, even when he plays a cowboy in “Blazing Saddles.”
Right. Again, by the mid-’70s, you know, you have Gene Wilder and Elliot Gould and Dustin Hoffman, all Jews, in leading roles. “Young Frankenstein” ends up being a movie about coming home and embracing identity, which is playing itself out a lot in American Jewish culture in the 1970s.
I guess I have to go back and watch it for the 14th time with a different point of view.
That’s the fun part of my job.
You talk about what’s happening at the same time as Brooks’ huge success, which is, although he’s a little younger, the emergence of Woody Allen. You describe Brooks and Woody Allen as the voice of American Jewish comedy, but in very different ways. What are the major differences?
Gene Wilder, who worked with both of them, says that working with Allen is like lighting these tiny little candles, and with Brooks, you’re making big atom bombs. The critical knock against Brooks was that he was much more interested in the joke than the story. And I think with the exception maybe of “Young Frankenstein” there’s a lot of truth to that. The jokes are phenomenal, so that’s fine. Allen pretty quickly moved towards a much more narrative kind of film, and so began to be seen as this incredibly intellectual figure. In real life, Allen always claimed that he wasn’t nearly as intellectual as everyone thought, while Brooks had many more kinds of intellectual ambitions than the movie career that he had. There is a counterfactual world in which “The 12 Chairs,” his 1970 movie based on a novel by two Russian Jewish novelists and which nobody talks about, makes a ton of money.
Instead, it bombs, and he makes “Blazing Saddles,” which works out very well for everybody.
Although he does create Brooksfilms, and produces more narrative, serious-minded films like “The Elephant Man” and “84 Charing Cross Road.”
Right, and decides that if he puts his name on these as a director, they’re going to be rejected out of hand. There is a shelf of scholarship on Woody Allen, but if you look at who had influence on America in terms of box office and popularity, it’s Brooks winning in a walk.
You also mention Brooks and Steven Spielberg in the same sentence. Why do they belong together?
Partly because they had huge popular success in the mid-’70s. Brooks is a generation older, but they are hitting their cinematic success at the same time. And they are both movie fans.
Which comes out in their work — Brooks in his film parodies and Spielberg in the films that echo the films he loved as kid.
Until maybe his remake of “West Side Story,” Spielberg is not really a theater guy in the way that Brooks is, when success meant to make it on Broadway. When Brooks was winning all those Tonys in 2001 for the Broadway musical version of “The Producers,” it may have been almost more meaningful for his 5-year-old, or 7- or 8-year-old self than making his incredibly popular pictures.
You also write about Brooks being a small “c” conservative, a bit of a square. Which I think will surprise people who think about the fart jokes and the peepee jokes and all that stuff. And by square, I mean, kind of old showbizzy, even a little prudish sometimes.
I think that’s right. There’s a great moment that I quote at the end of the book where they are trying out the musical version of “The Producers,” and they want to put the word “f–k” in and Brooks is like, “I don’t know if we can do that on Broadway,” and Nathan Lane is like, “Have we met? You’re Mel Brooks!” He’s a 1950s guy.
Another place where this kind of conservatism comes in is when you compare him to other comedians of the 1950s and ’60s — the so-called “sick comics” like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl who were pushing the envelope in terms of subject matter and politics. He wasn’t part of that. He was part of Hollywood. He was trying to make it in network television.
There is an interview in that era when he complained that people who are writing for television are not “dangerous.” Meanwhile, he himself was writing for television. But I think it’s fair to say that “The Producers” was really something different. You didn’t have to be Jewish to be offended by “The Producers.” But as we were saying before, he is more of the loyal opposition, rather than sort of truly out there. He’s not making “Easy Rider.”
An exhibit space at the Museum of Broadway evokes the scenery from the Mel Brooks musical “The Producers.” (NYJW)
“The Producers” is part of Brooks’ lifelong gambit of mocking the Nazis, I think starting when he would sing anti-Hitler songs as a GI in Europe at the tail end of World War II. Later he would remake Jack Benny’s World War II-era anti-Nazi comedy, “To Be or Not to Be.” And then there is the quick “Hitler on Ice” gag in “History of the World, Part I.” Brooks always maintains that mocking Nazis is the ultimate revenge on them, while you note that Woody Allen in “Manhattan” makes almost the opposite argument: that the way to fight white supremacists is with bricks and baseball bats. Did you come down on one side or the other?
To add just a twinge of complication is the fact that Brooks actually fought Nazis, and also had a brother who was shot down in combat. So for me to sit in moral judgment on anybody who fought in World War II is not a place that I want to be. What’s interesting is that Brooks makes a lot of these statements over the course of a career in which Nazism is done, in the past, defeated. Tragically, the events of the last number of years made white supremacy and neo-Nazism a live question again. When “The Producers” was staged as a musical in the early 21st century, people could say, “Okay, Nazism’s time has passed.” It’s not clear to me that we would restage “The Producers” now as a musical on Broadway, when just last week you had actual neo-Nazis handing out their literature outside a Broadway show. It would certainly be a lot more laden than it was in 2001.
Time also caught up with Brooks in his depiction of LGBT characters. Gay characters are the punchlines in “The Producers” and “Blazing Saddles” in ways that have not aged well. But you also note how both movies are about two men who love each other, to the exclusion of women.
There’s an emotive component to him about these male relationships. Bialystok and Bloom [the protagonists in “The Producers”] is a kind of love story. One of the interesting things is that as it became comparatively more comfortable for gay men to live their truth in society and in Hollywood, there was an evolution. In that remake of “To Be or Not to Be,” there is a much more sympathetic gay character who’s not stereotypical.
What other aspects of Brooks’ Jewishness have we not touched upon? For instance, he’s not particularly interested in Judaism as a religion, and ritual and theology rarely come up in his films, even to be mocked.
It’s not something that he’s particularly interested in. To him, being Jewish is a voice and a language. From the beginning of his career the voice is there. What he’s saying in these accents is that this is Jewish history working through me. It is, admittedly, a very narrow slice of Jewish history.
The first- and second-generation children of Jewish immigrants growing up in Brooklyn neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly Jewish.
It was a Jewishness that was aspirational. It was intellectual. It was a musical Jewishness. It was not in the way we use this phrase now, but it was a cultural Jewishness. It was not a synagogue Jewishness or a theological Jewishness. But of course he is Jewish, deeply Jewish. He couldn’t be anything else. And so he didn’t, and thank God for that.
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Trump may be making a classic error in seeking peace with Iran
An assumption has shaped Western thinking about Iran for decades: that the Islamic Republic has similar goals to those of the West, and can therefore be incentivized to integrate into a more stable regional order.
Vice President JD Vance gave that assumption its latest expression when he said a potential new peace agreement between Iran and the United States could “fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years” — if Iran complies with the deal.
Perhaps he’s right, and Iran is in fact committed, this time, to never again pursuing the creation of nuclear weapons. But the Islamic Republic’s own rhetoric provides serious reasons for skepticism on that front.
Since 1979, the regime has presented itself as the standard-bearer of a revolutionary project. It is not merely a government. It is the self-appointed guardian of a worldview.
That worldview is often expressed through the concept of muqawama, which translates roughly to “resistance.” The term refers to far more than military opposition. It describes a political, religious and civilizational struggle against what the regime views as Western domination, American influence, Israeli sovereignty, and the regional order that emerged during the 20th century.
Ideologies shape behavior. A regime organized around economic growth behaves one way. A regime organized around the concept of revolutionary struggle behaves differently.
Western powers too often forget this truth when it comes to Iran, assuming that its leaders seek prosperity, stability, security and international acceptance. We assume that economic incentives and diplomatic agreements will eventually outweigh ideological commitments.
It is important to distinguish here between the regime and the people it governs. Iran is home to an ancient civilization, a sophisticated culture, and millions of citizens whose aspirations often appear very different from those of their rulers. For nearly half a century, many Iranians have lived under a system they neither created nor freely chose. Waves of protests and dissent have repeatedly suggested that large numbers of Iranians seek a different future — one characterized less by revolutionary struggle and more by ordinary human aspirations like freedom, dignity and connection to the wider world.
Viewed through the lens of muqawama, Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile program, proxy armies and regional interventions cease to look like products of separate policies. They become parts of a coherent strategy, manifestations of the same underlying vision: the transformation of the existing regional order.
The obvious question, then, is whether that vision has changed. And if it hasn’t, what does Iranian compliance with this new deal actually mean?
After all, one can honor the terms of an agreement while remaining fully committed to objectives that lie beyond the agreement’s reach. Iran has done so plenty of times in the recent past.
In 2018, Israeli intelligence agents removed a vast archive of nuclear documents from a secret warehouse near Tehran. The archive contained detailed records of weapons-related research and planning, suggesting that the regime viewed this knowledge as valuable, worth preserving and potentially applicable in the future.
Over the years, inspectors evaluating Iran’s nuclear capabilities have repeatedly encountered inconsistencies between Iran’s declarations about its efforts and the evidence before them. Each episode, by itself, may be explainable. Taken together, they paint a picture of a regime that has consistently viewed transparency as something to be managed rather than embraced.
Fordow, the infamous nuclear enrichment facility buried beneath a mountain, was designed by people expecting confrontation. Facilities intended to withstand intensive military attacks — as Fordow has — reveal something about the assumptions of those who build them.
Western policymakers often view negotiations as a path toward resolution. Iran tends, in contrast, to treat them as a strategic opportunity. Every round of talks creates opportunities to reposition and advance. Every agreement creates new debates about interpretation and enforcement that the regime can turn to its advantage.
It may be less useful to think in terms of bad faith than in terms of incentives. The issue is understanding the ambitions of the regime as it understands them. And there are reasons to doubt whether U.S. negotiators hammering out the details of this agreement understand those ambitions correctly.
This raises grave concerns for Israel, which is not a party to the new ceasefire. The nuclear issue is primary, but the ballistic missile program and satellite armies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all pressing problems for the Jewish state. A deal that fails to engage with all parts of that picture will leave Israel in danger.
The United States can afford strategic patience. It sits behind two oceans, far from Iran. Israel cannot. A nation smaller than New Jersey has little margin for catastrophic error. If American assumptions prove mistaken, American policy can be revised. If Israeli assumptions prove mistaken, the consequences are potentially fatal.
This is why many Israelis have expressed outrage at this ceasefire. They’re wondering: If the ideology remains intact; if the missile programs remain intact; if Hezbollah remains intact; if the regime’s revolutionary ambitions remain intact, what exactly has been resolved?
Near-term tension reduction has repeatedly served as a substitute for resolving the underlying threat from Iran’s radical regime. Sanctions relief following the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by then-President Barack Obama eased pressure on the regime while leaving its governing vision untouched. The underlying problem remained.
Muqawama is not merely resistance to particular policies. It is resistance as an organizing principle. Any agreement that ignores that reality risks confusing tactical restraint with strategic change.
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Trump-backed Oklahoma congressional candidate supports Israel — and says the Antichrist will be Jewish
(JTA) — A pro-Israel pastor who inveighs against “sharia law” and wants Jews to accept Jesus is the favored candidate in a crowded congressional primary in Oklahoma on Tuesday.
Jackson Lahmeyer, the founder of Pastors for Trump and a political activist from the Tulsa area, secured the president’s endorsement ahead of Tuesday’s primary for the state’s solidly Republican 1st District House seat. Other big GOP endorsements soon followed, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, helping to pull Lahmeyer away from the other nine candidates vying for the nomination.
Much of Lahmeyer’s national profile has been defined by his regular invocations of “sharia law,” traditional Muslim doctrine often used as a right-wing shock tactic. One of his campaign platforms is “Ensuring That Sharia Law Never Takes Root In Our Nation.”
On Sunday, Lahmeyer also responded to allegations published by the Daily Mail that he had cheated on his wife, writing in a post on X that “this matter was already dealt with privately between me and my wife, Kendra, through counsel and prayer with God and spiritual advisors.”
Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District is home to a thriving Jewish community — one that has recently urged Jews from Canada to take up residence — as well as multiple large Jewish organizations including Schusterman Family Philanthropies.
Multiple representatives of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa declined to comment on Lahmeyer’s candidacy. But it’s clear that if elected, he will bring to Congress some specific ideas about Jews.
“The Antichrist will be a political leader of Jewish descent,” he told a livestream of his church on Oct. 8, 2024, a day after the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. “That is how the Jews will worship him.”
During his sermon, Lahmeyer based the claim on his reading of biblical prophecy, arguing that the Antichrist will “speak great blasphemy” and will “have no regard for the gods of his fathers.”
Lahmeyer’s preaching about the Jewish Antichrist has also sparked concern among some Jewish voters.
“Jackson, I am appalled at this post. I’m Jewish. I supported you[r] run for office at every turn. I have children and grandchildren. Antisemitism is at an all time high. I’m scared for them. This is abhorrent,” one X user wrote in response to a February 2023 post on X by Lahmeyer claiming the Antichrist will be “Jewish” and a “homosexual.”
Lahmeyer pushed back on the response, replying to the user that “This is not anti-Semitic AT ALL. The Christ is Jewish. Scripture indicates that the Antichrist will also be Jewish.”
Despite those apocalyptic beliefs, Lahmeyer has repeatedly framed support for Israel as a key tenet of his faith, reflecting a Christian Zionist worldview that sees Jewish return to Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
“I stand with the Jewish people because God almighty stands with the Jewish people,” Lahmeyer said in an Oct. 9, 2025 post dismissing claims he had been paid by the Israeli government to post pro-Israel content. “So those of you who are out there saying I’m getting $7,000 a post, I wish that were true, but you’re an idiot and you’re wrong.”
Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Lahmeyer’s statements about Jews and Israel reflect a typical strain of Christian Zionism.
“He’s pro-Israel in this very particular sense of he has a strong attachment to a theological conception of Israel,” Taylor said. “When it comes to questions about the Antichrist and whether the Antichrist is Jewish or not, that’s all pretty standard speculation within modern evangelicalism.”
Those views, once largely confined to Lahmeyer’s reach as a storefront pastor, have followed him into a larger political arena as he has transformed from a fringe activist into a political contender with presidential backing.
“It is my Great Honor to endorse MAGA Warrior, Jackson Lahmeyer, who is running to represent the fantastic people of Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, and has been with me from the very beginning of our Movement to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Monday reaffirming his endorsement of Lahmeyer.
Trump praised Lahmeyer’s role in founding “Pastors for Trump,” which he launched in 2022 to organize evangelical pastors around getting Trump reelected. The same year, Lahmeyer lost his Republican primary bid to unseat Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, whom he called a “coward” for not backing Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Lahmeyer, who did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for an interview, is a member of the White House Faith Office and Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board.
He has been cultivating relationships with the Trumps for years. In addition to backing the president’s election claims, Lahmeyer has hosted the president’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., as well as FBI Director Kash Patel at his church and on podcast episodes.
Lahmeyer’s rise coincides with a growing movement of conservative Christians and right-wing influencers who have been increasingly critical of Israel and the U.S.-Israel alliance.
During an event marking the second anniversary of Oct. 7 titled “The Case for Israel,” Lahmeyer addressed the growing prominence of anti-Israel figures on the Christian right, including Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
“Both Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, they’re Roman Catholics, so to them the church has replaced the Jewish people, the state of Israel, and that is why they can make these claims,” Lahmeyer said.
But Lahmeyer has stopped short of condemning Carlson’s rhetoric, despite criticism from Trump and evangelical members of his administration including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
“Some very influential leaders, all of whom I like — Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have taken a very controversial stance in regards to the nation of Israel,” Lahmeyer told NPR in November.
Taylor said the fallout over Israel within the MAGA coalition between Christian antisemites, such as Carlson and Owens, and Christian philosemites, such as Huckabee, placed Lahmeyer in a precarious position as he seeks office.
White evangelicals show widespread support for Israel, with 72% reporting a positive opinion of the Jewish state according to an April 2025 poll by the Pew Research Center, but among Republicans under 50, positive sentiments about Israel have dropped in recent years, falling from 63% reporting a positive view in 2022 to 48% in 2025.
“A lot of young evangelicals are moving away from Zionism, and becoming less sympathetic with the state of Israel, both theologically and just in terms of world events, and the war in Gaza,” Taylor said. “So I think it’s a very complicated place that he’s in, trying to kind of run as a politician in this moment where MAGA is fracturing over some of the things he could be very publicly identified with.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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UK appeals court upholds ban on Palestine Action as a terrorist organization
(JTA) — A British appeals court ruled Monday that the government acted lawfully in banning a prominent pro-Palestinian group as a terrorist organization.
Jewish groups welcomed the decision to maintain the ban on Palestine Action, which has staged multiple destructive attacks on military installations and weapons manufacturers in Britain.
The government banned Palestine Action in July 2025 after some of its members broke into an air force base and damaged two military aircraft as part of a protest against the U.K.’s relationship to Israel during the war in Gaza. The ruling meant that anyone displaying support for the group has been subject to arrest and imprisonment.
The British High Court declared the ban unlawful in February, concluding that the ban interfered with Palestine Action members’ rights to speech and assembly. Now, a five-judge U.K. Court of Appeal panel has ruled that the group’s activities met the legal standards for terrorism and the government’s decision to ban the group was justified and proportionate.
Sue Carr, England’s chief justice, said in a statement broadcast from the court that while many Palestine Action activities and affiliates were non-violent, the group’s materials and impact showed that violence was integral to its activities.
“It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes operating transparently in the open,” Carr said. “It is a covert organization operating with secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy the property of third parties.”
British Jewish groups applauded the decision. “The Court’s decision confirms the seriousness of Palestine Action’s activities,” Board of Deputies of British Jews Acting President Adrian Cohen said in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Cohen noted that Palestine Action’s targets have included Jewish communal institutions and Jewish-owned businesses. He added, “At a time of record levels of antisemitism, division, and communal tensions, all those in public life should be clear: no cause justifies criminality, violence or the glorification of those who carry it out.”
The ruling comes days after four Palestine Action-affiliated activists were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in connection with an August 2024 break-in at the headquarters of Elbit Systems UK, the British outpost of an Israeli weapons company. The activists had previously been acquitted on some charges but were prosecuted again on others and convicted, including one on charges of striking a police officer with a sledgehammer..
More than 100 people were arrested on Friday after Palestine Action’s supporters rallied outside the sentencing. They joined more than 3,000 people who British media report have been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action since its ban. Other supporters include the writer Sally Rooney, who last year pledged proceeds from the BBC productions of her books to the group despite potential legal penalties.
The group is vowing to appeal its ban yet again. “We will not stop fighting for the ban to be lifted, the end of the use of terror legislation against us, and crucially, for a free Palestine,” co-founder Huda Ammori posted on X on Monday. “I will appeal to the Supreme Court and take it up to the European Court of Human Rights, if needs be.”
The ruling comes as Prime Minister Keir Starmer seeks new powers to ban state-backed groups, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as terrorist organizations. (British law currently reserves such bans for non-state actors.) The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British advocacy group, said the ruling about Palestine Action “underscores the Home Secretary’s power to proscribe terrorist networks” and called for the IRGC and other groups to be banned.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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