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The exhausting, never-ending job of debunking antisemitic conspiracy theories
(JTA) — A few days after the comedian Dave Chappelle appeared to justify the never-ending appeal of Jewish conspiracy theories, this sentence appeared in the New York Times: “Bankman-Fried is already drawing comparisons to Bernie Madoff.”
I’ll explain: Sam Bankman-Fried is the 30-year-old founder of FTX, the crypto-currency exchange that vaporized overnight, leaving more than 1 million creditors on the hook. Bernie Madoff, is, of course, Bernie Madoff, the financier who defrauded thousands of investors through a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme and died in prison.
It’s a fair comparison, as a former regulator tells CNN: “Bankman-Fried, like Madoff, proved adept at using his pedigree and connections to seduce sophisticated investors and regulators into missing ‘red flags,’ hiding in plain sight.”
Nevertheless, seeing these Jewish figures lumped together, I braced myself for the inevitable: Nasty tweets about Jews and money. Slander from white supremacists. Plausibly deniable chin-scratching from more “mainstream” commentators.
What comes next is a familiar script: Jewish defense groups issue statements saying conspiracy theories traffic in centuries-old antisemitic tropes and pose a danger to the Jews. Jewish news outlets like ours post “explainers” describing how these myths take hold.
It’s exhausting, having to deny the obvious: that a group of people who don’t even agree on what kind of starch to eat on Passover regularly scheme to bilk innocents, manipulate markets or control the world. And it often seems the very attempt to explain these lies and their popularity ends up feeding the beast.
Chappelle’s now notorious monologue on “Saturday Night Live” is a case in point. At first pass, it is a characteristically mischievous attempt to both mock the rapper Kanye West for his antisemitism, and to push boundaries to explain why a troubled Black entertainer might feel aggrieved in an industry with a historic over-representation of Jews. Jon Stewart certainly heard it that way, telling Stephen Colbert, “Look at it from a Black perspective. It’s a culture that feels that its wealth has been extracted by different groups. That’s the feeling in that community, and if you don’t understand where it’s coming from, then you can’t deal with it.”
That is a useful message, but consider the messenger. Chappelle appears to disapprove of West’s conspiracy-mongering, but never once discusses the harm it might cause to the actual targets of the conspiracies. Instead, he focuses on the threat such ideas pose to the careers and reputations of entertainers like him and West. The “delusion that Jews run show business,” said Chappelle, is “not a crazy thing to think,” but “it’s a crazy thing to say out loud.” He ends the routine by ominously invoking the “they” who might end his career.
That’s what critics meant when they said Chappelle “normalized” antisemitism: He described where it’s coming from, explained why his peers might feel that way, and only criticized it to the degree that it could lead the purveyors to be cancelled. It’s like saying, “You don’t have to vaccinate your kids. Just don’t tell anybody.”
This week I worked with a colleague on an article about how the “Jews control Hollywood” myth took hold, and at each step of the way I wondered if we were stoking the fire we were trying to put out. No, Jews don’t control Hollywood, we reported, but “nearly every major movie studio was founded in the early 20th century” by a Jew. Those moguls rarely used the movies as a platform to defend Jewish interests, but per Steven Spielberg, “Being Jewish in Hollywood is like wanting to be in the popular circle.”
A documentary shown Thursday night at the DOC NYC festival here in New York teeters on the edge of the same trap. “The Conspiracy,” directed by the Russian-American filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin and narrated by Mayim Bialik, uses 3-D animation to explain how conspiracists ranging from a 19th-century French priest to American industrialist Henry Ford placed three Jews — German financier Max Warburg, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and falsely accused French soldier Alfred Dreyfus — at the center of a vast, contradictory and preposterous scheme to take over the world. It connects age-old Christian animosity to the Jews to centuries of antisemitic paranoia and fear-mongering that led to unspeakable violence at Kishinev, Auschwitz and Pittsburgh. “This myth has plagued the world for centuries,” Pozdorovkin explains.
Or at least that’s the message you and I might have gotten. But I can also see someone stumbling on this film and being seduced by the rage and cynicism of the conspiracy-mongers — who, I should note, are quoted at length. Part of the problem is the film’s aesthetic: a consistently dark palette and a “camera” that lingers on ugly examples of antisemitic propaganda. Even though these images are seen on a creepy “conspiracy wall” and connected with that red thread familiar from cop shows and horror films, I can well imagine an uninformed viewer asking why members of this tiny minority seem to be at the center of so many major events of the 19th and 20th centuries.
I was reminded of a joke by the Jewish comedian Modi, ridiculing the ritual of inviting celebrities accused of antisemitism to visit a Holocaust museum. “Which is the stupidest idea, ever,” he says. “You’re taking someone who hates Jews into a Holocaust museum. They come out of there [saying] ‘Wow! Oh my God, that was amazing! I want a T-shirt!’”
The poet and essayist Clint Smith, whose cover story in next month’s Atlantic explores the meanings of Holocaust museums in Germany, makes a similar point. After visiting the museum in Wannsee documenting the infamous meeting in which the Nazis plotted the Final Solution, he wonders: “Might someone come to a museum like this and be inspired by what they saw?”
The makers of “The Conspiracy” (oy, that title) obviously intend the very opposite. In an interview with the Forward, Pozdorovkin agrees with the interviewer’s suggestion that those “who most need to see this film might be the least likely to be convinced by it.”
“My hope is that this film has a trickle-down effect,” he explains.
The fault lies not with those who seek to expose antisemitism but with a society that relies on the victims to explain why they shouldn’t be victimized. As many have pointed out, antisemitism isn’t a Jewish problem; it’s a problem for the individuals and societies who pin their unhappiness and neuroses on a convenient scapegoat. Ultra-nationalism and intolerance are the soil in which conspiracies take root.
But as long as scapegoating remains popular and deadly, the victims have to keep explaining and explaining the obvious — that, for instance, the fact that Sam Bankman-Fried and Bernie Madoff are Jewish is no more significant than the fact that Henry Ford and Elon Musk, two people who founded car companies, are gentiles.
The question is, who is listening?
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The post The exhausting, never-ending job of debunking antisemitic conspiracy theories appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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ISIS Threat Surges Across Syria and Beyond, Raising Alarm Bells From Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa
Islamic State – Central Africa Province released documentary entitled “Jihad and Dawah” covering group’s campaigns in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and battles against Congolese and Ugandan armies. Photo: Screenshot
US and Iraqi officials are warning of a resurgent terrorist threat posed by Islamic State (ISIS), with the number of militants in Syria reportedly soaring to 10,000 and regional instability raising concern from Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Earlier this week, Iraqi intelligence services sounded the alarm over the surging ISIS threat, warning of a sharp increase in the terrorist group’s fighters in northern Syria, the country’s western neighbor, and expressing growing concerns among officials.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri revealed that ISIS fighters in Syria have skyrocketed from roughly 2,000 to 10,000 in just one year.
This number far surpasses last year’s estimate in the UN Security Council report, which placed the total of ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq at roughly 3,000 as of August.
“This represents a real danger for Iraq, because ISIS — whether in Syria, Iraq, or anywhere else in the world — is a single organization and will likely seek to establish a new foothold to launch attacks,” al-Shatri told the Washington Post.
He also noted that the terrorists who joined ISIS in Syria over the past year include men previously linked to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and al-Qaeda, many of whom have expressed dissatisfaction with the current political leadership.
As the Syrian government advances to retake territory long controlled by Kurdish forces, Iraqi officials are increasingly concerned about a resurgent ISIS threat.
In the wake of escalating violent clashes across Syria over the past few weeks, chaos erupted in regional prisons holding thousands of ISIS members, allowing many to escape into the desert.
Even though many escaped ISIS members were later recaptured, the Iraqi government rapidly deployed thousands of troops to bolster its border with Syria, warning that the threat of further attacks remained high.
Last week, the US military began relocating ISIS detainees from northeastern Syrian prisons, formerly controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to Iraqi facilities following the SDF’s withdrawal as Syrian government forces advanced into the area.
On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the decision to temporarily transfer ISIS detainees to local prisons aims to safeguard both Iraq’s national security and the stability of the broader region.
According to the US Central Command, around 2,500 ISIS fighters remained at large in Syria and Iraq in 2024, but no updates have been released since.
These latest warnings from the Iraqi government come amid rising concerns following the departure this month of the last US troops from Ain al-Asad Airbase in western Anbar province, bringing to a close a mission that had supported local forces in combating ISIS terrorism.
The United States is now focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, where analysts have identified rising Islamist terrorist threats, making the region a central concern in the fight against global jihadist terrorism.
Last week, the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said Washington is stepping up equipment shipments and intelligence support to Nigeria as part of a wider government effort to strengthen its presence across the region and assist African forces in combating Islamic State-linked militants.
Brennan also revealed that the US military continues to engage closely with the armed forces of the junta-led Sahel nations — Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali.
Under US President Donald Trump, “we’ve gotten a lot more aggressive and are working with partners to target … [regional] threats, mainly ISIS,” Brennan told reporters.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” he continued. “It’s been about more enabling partners and then providing them equipment and capabilities with less restrictions so that they can be more successful.”
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Antisemitism Witnessed by 78% of EU Teachers in Classrooms, UN Survey Finds
Krakow, Poland – Oct. 5, 2024: Pro-Palestinian activists in front of the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University. Photo: Artur Widak via Reuters Connect
Teachers across the European Union are witnessing antisemitism as a near daily social occurrence in the classroom and the workplace, according to a new survey issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Released on Tuesday, the survey of 2,030 teachers found that 78 percent have “encountered at least one antisemitic incident between students,” and 27 percent have “witnessed nine or more such incidents.” It added that 61 percent saw students promoting Holocaust denialism, while others had students who drew or wore Nazi symbols. Forty-two percent witnessed “other teachers being antisemitic.”
“Hate speech, notably antisemitism and Holocaust denial, has reached levels not seen since World War II,” UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany said in a statement. “Most teachers have never received specific training to confront this reality, including the consequences related to AI development. UNESCO provides policymakers with unique tools to empower teachers in more than 30 countries — from classrooms and campuses to sports clubs — and soon even more.”
Included in a UNESCO report titled “Addressing Antisemitism Through Education: A Survey of Teachers’ Knowledge and Understanding,” the survey comes amid a global rise in antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Since then, many European antisemitic incidents have occurred on college campuses, including someone assaulting a group of Jewish students while shouting “Zionist fascists” at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Vienna hosting an “Intifada Camp,” a pro-Hamas encampment. At the Free University of Brussels campus in Solbosch, a pro-Hamas group illegally occupied an administrative building and renamed it after a terrorist. Elsewhere across Europe, anti-Zionists damaged property to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Euros, desecrated Jewish religious symbols, graffitied Jewish students’ dormitories with swastikas, and carried out gang assaults on Jewish student leaders.
Violence in the streets of Europe’s major cities is also a regular occurrence. In July 2025, a group of people wielding knives attacked Jews walking home from an event on the Greek island of Rhodes; in Davos, Switzerland a man spat on, attacked, and verbally abused a Jewish couple— an offense he reportedly perpetrated multiple times against other Jewish people.
European governments are responding to the antisemitism crisis by paying closer attention to its linkage with the politics and ideology of anti-Zionism, a connection many political leaders hesitated to acknowledge and which UNESCO, despite having exuded anti-Zionist hostility in the past, also cited as a leading cause of rising antisemitism.
“Almost half of teachers (43.6 percent) had encountered students articulating hateful comments in relation to the State of Israel either once or twice, or often,” the report, summarizing the survey results, stated. “Hateful comments targeted at the State of Israel might not necessarily be antisemitism and may be motivated by other forms of hostility. However, comments motivated by hate are significantly more likely to include prejudice, or incite further dehumanization and violence.”
The document added, “Moreover, the prevalence of emotionally charged comments around the conflict in the Middle East highlights the salience of this topic and the need for targeted training and guidance for teachers on how to handle difficult conversations in an increasingly polarized environment.”
Across the Atlantic, teachers in the US have seen a surge of antisemitism in K-12 schools.
According to another survey conducted by the StandWithUs Jewish advocacy organization, 61.6 of teachers have been both targets and witnesses of antisemitic conduct in a professional setting. Meanwhile, nearly half suffered antisemitism perpetrated by their teachers unions, purportedly their advocates and representatives in collective bargaining.
School districts, obligated to comply with civil rights laws which proscribe discrimination, fail at prevention, according to the data. Of the 65 percent of respondents who said they are required to take anti-bias trainings, only 10 percent said those trainings address antisemitism.
“This first of its kind empirical study sought to understand antisemitism experienced by Jewish educators in K-12 education. Over 60 percent of respondents reporting that they personally experienced or witnessed antisemitism in their profession is an astounding number,” StandWithUs data and analytics director Dr. Alexandra Fishman said in a statement. “StandWithUs is deeply committed to rigorous research that serves both academic and lay audiences.”
Civil rights groups have argued that pushing anti-Zionism in the classroom can have a profound impact on students, who in many cases perpetrate antisemitic incidents. On Thursday, for example, local media reported that two 15-year-olds were arrested on suspicion of having graffitied 60 swastikas all over a playground in Brooklyn, New York.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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City of Austin Enshrines ‘CAIR Day’ After Texas Designates Islamic Group as Terror Organization
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The city of Austin, Texas has declared Jan. 22 as “CAIR-Austin Day,” honoring a controversial organization that has been designated by multiple US states as a terrorist group and scrutinized by federal authorities over alleged ties to Hamas.
On Thursday morning, the local holiday was announced with a proclamation at city hall acknowledging the efforts of civic and community engagement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of Muslim Americans.
Representatives of the group praised the decision.
“Our proclamation today, declaring Jan. 22 as CAIR-Austin Day, means a lot, not only to the CAIR-Austin staff and board members, but for the whole Muslim community in our city statewide,” CAIR said in a statement.
The proclamation came about two months after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott formally designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations under state law, citing in part what officials described as longstanding ideological and operational ties with Islamist movements hostile to the US and its allies.
Abbott’s proclamation described CAIR as a “successor organization” to the Muslim Brotherhood and noted the FBI called it a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network.” The document also outlined the history of the organizations and their historical associations with figures and networks tied to Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement while announcing the designations last month. “These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
In response, the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters of CAIR sued Abbott and the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, arguing the proclamation “chills” their freedom of speech and association under the First Amendment of the US Constitution and “retaliates against” them for exercising such rights. The CAIR chapters asked the court to stop the state from enforcing the designations and requested “compensatory damages,” according to the complaint.
Paxton responded by filing an affidavit defending the Texas proclamation, arguing in part that the terrorist designation is a lawful national-security measure aimed at protecting Texans from extremist influence, not a violation of free speech.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller lambasted Austin’s decision to honor CAIR.
“Austin’s proclamation of Jan. 22 as ‘CAIR-Austin Day’ is an outrageous disgrace and a blatant surrender to radical ideology that’s hijacked city hall. This is pure political theater, shoving left-wing activists ahead of hard-working Texas families,” he said in a statement. “CAIR isn’t some harmless community group. Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Paxton have branded it a foreign terrorist organization under Texas law, citing ironclad ties that endanger America and our allies.”
CAIR has drawn scrutiny over its alleged history of lending material support for foreign terrorist groups. In the 2000s, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) has called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate CAIR’s status as a nonprofit organization, arguing the group has ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two internationally designated terrorist groups.
CAIR has denied any ties to Hamas or other terrorist organizations, portraying itself as a civil rights group defending Muslim Americans.
Additionally, CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities in southern Israel.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.