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Amid an incoherent war with Iran, antisemitism fills the vacuum
One of the most striking elements about the war with Iran is how little the Trump administration and its supporters have done to explain their rationale for starting a new war in the Middle East.
There’s no shortage of possible explanations — the Iranian government’s repression of protesters, its sponsorship of foreign terrorist attacks, the threat its missiles or nuclear program poses to the United States or to Israel — but Trump and his advisers haven’t been able to pick one or even to say what the war’s objective is and when it might end.
“You’ve said the war is ‘very complete,’ but your defense secretary says ‘this is just the beginning,’” a reporter asked Trump on Monday. “So which is it?”
“Well, I think you could say it’s both,” Trump replied.
People don’t like this lack of explanation — recent polling has found that the Iran war has lower public approval, at 41%, than any other modern conflict that the U.S. has participated in — and are quick to supply their own reasoning for why their government is willing to sacrifice American lives and hundreds of millions of tax dollars to bomb a foreign country.
Some, apparently fueled in part by an Iranian propaganda campaign, have claimed the war is intended to distract from disclosure of the Epstein files or from setbacks on domestic policy, where presidential powers are far more limited than they are in military action.
Others have pointed to Trump’s longstanding obsession with toppling Iran’s leadership.
But many have zeroed in on a familiar claim: It’s the Jews.
Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host, spoke for many in the conspiracy-laden isolationist sphere of the conservative movement — dominated by figures like Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and the Holocaust-denying Nick Fuentes — when she argued this war was the doing of Jewish pundits, donors and, for good measure, the senior senator from South Carolina.
“Mark Levin wanted it, it’s his war, Ben Shapiro, Lindsey Graham, Miriam Adelson — that’s obvious,” she said. “They are the ones who’ve been pushing us into it.”
At least it’s true that the folks Kelly named are hawkish political figures who have long called for confronting Iran. But Jews outside of the political sphere have also come under attack. Carlson suggested that the U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran is a Jewish religious plot intended to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and build the Third Temple — and that it was orchestrated by “Chabad, C-H-A-B-A-D.”
Carlson’s outlandish claim, shared widely on social media, prompted the Lubavitcher Orthodox Jewish movement to boost security at its many remote outposts, which are often the only formal Jewish presence in cities around the world.
This rhetoric echoes what we saw last spring when the far right openly trafficked in antisemitism as influencers voiced opposition to American airstrikes on Iran. “We are done being blackmailed, bribed and killed by Jews,” one prominent conservative said at the time.
And it fits in with a long pattern of scapegoating Jews for death and destruction. Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent claimed that Jews “found wealth in the debris of civilization” following World War I, while the celebrity aviator and isolationist Charles Lindbergh claimed the “British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration” had conspired to drag the U.S. into World War II.
When convenient, Jews have also been blamed for losing wars. The Nazis promoted the stabbed-in-the-back myth to claim Jews were among those who had caused Germany to lose the Great War, while President Richard Nixon was obsessed with how many of his Democratic opponents were supposedly Jewish anti-Vietnam peaceniks.
Often these conspiracies have been complete fabrications. But even when there’s a germ of truth — many Jews did, of course, oppose the Vietnam War — the most straightforward rebuttal is that it’s offensive and ignorant to attribute the actions of individual Jews to “the Jews,” as if every Jewish person is part of a vast global conspiracy.
What makes the current uproar blaming Israel or Jews — sometimes the public has a hard time separating the two — for the Iran war is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did seem to play an integral role in convincing Trump to strike Iran.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
And while the American war objectives are clear as mud, Israel faces a far more obvious threat from Iran — as witnessed by the hundreds of missiles fired at the country since the war began — which likely accounts for the widespread support for the war in Israel.
It’s not incorrect or antisemitic, then, to note that Israel encouraged the U.S. to attack Iran and that many of its American supporters have cheered on the campaign.
But assigning the country outsized influence is where one starts to get into dicey territory. The notion that the United States has become subservient to Israel has made its way into the discourse across the political spectrum. “A rogue client state has completely overtaken the host,” James Li, a conspiratorial content creator, wrote on X last week.
This sentiment teeters on the edge of the absurd. Israel may have sought to force Trump’s hand by threatening its own attack, but the U.S. has tremendous leverage over Israel and has stopped Israel from launching similar planned attacks in the past.
And the lack of a more straightforward explanation for why the war was in America’s own interests should not inevitably point to a nefarious Israeli plot. Trump has done a lot of things that either belie logical explanation — like a tariff regime that even protectionist economists have looked askance at — or have been justified in fluid ways, or not at all.
But conspiracies help people make sense of confusing and stressful events especially in the absence of a more sensible explanation.
And where conspiracies begin, antisemitism almost inevitably follows.
The post Amid an incoherent war with Iran, antisemitism fills the vacuum appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
