Uncategorized
There’s something rotten in our approach to antisemitism. Tucker Carlson exposed it
The federal government has cracked down on antisemitism from the left, while ignoring or justifying antisemitism on the right. That’s a cold, hard and very uncomfortable fact.
After anti-Israel protests swept campuses amid Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, Congressional panels subjected university administrators to withering public cross-examinations over antisemitism. President Donald Trump’s administration levied millions in fines, and withheld or threatened to cancel billions in federal funding, including to university medical research.
It was a quick and harsh reaction to protests that, in some cases, veered into antisemitism and singled out Jewish students. “Nobody gets the right to harass their fellow students,” Vice President J.D. Vance said at the peak of the student protests. “Nobody gets a right to set up 10 encampments and turn their college campuses into garbage dumps. And nobody gets the right to block their fellow students from attending class.”
Contrast that to Vance’s reaction earlier this month, when the conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson hosted the far-right activist Nick Fuentes on his popular podcast, kicking off a massive debate about the mainstreaming of extremist views on the right.
Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and called for the execution of “perfidious Jews,” told Carlson that the great challenge to American social harmony is “organized Jewry.” Carlson didn’t push back. And when asked for comment, Vance said he didn’t want to take part in Republican “infighting.”
Trump, too, declined to join the Carlson critics.“I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it. Get the word out. Let them,” Trump told reporters.
Get the word out? What, exactly, is going on?
Ignoring horseshoe theory, at our peril
Defenders of this lopsided response might argue that the administration actually has leverage over universities in the form of billions of taxpayer dollars. The government has legal recourse to hold colleges and individual students accountable.
Carlson’s choice to play nice with Nazis, on the other hand, is a matter of free speech — even if it is ominous, incendiary speech. What action could the government take against a privately-funded podcaster?
The obvious answer is: At least condemn it. But that has not happened at any level of this administration.
Carlson himself, in a long new interview with a New York Times reporter, downplayed Fuentes’ overt antisemitic statements and positioned himself as someone who, like Fuentes, merely questions U.S. policy toward Israel.
“Mr. Carlson said he abhors antisemitism and that he has numerous Jewish friends who share his qualms with the Israeli government,” wrote the Times reporter.
If that sounds awfully familiar, it’s because anti-Israel protesters at the other extreme say much the same things. Some of their best friends are Jewish, and they too hate what Israel’s leaders are doing.
American Jews are witnessing the horseshoe theory of politics in real time — the idea that the far-left and the far-right bend more toward each other than to the center. The ideology that the extremes are converging on is that Jews are the problem.
Both extremes, beginning with outrage at Israel, have a propensity to slide into overtly anitsemitic conspiracy theories that blame Israel for the Iraq War, 9/11, NYPD violence, manipulating Congress, and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Meanwhile, the political leaders who can confront both these extremes through words and policy, only seem to be hammering away at one side: the left.
A virus among young conservatives
The organized Jewish community, too, is highly attuned to instances on the left when anti-Israel attitudes bend toward outright Jew hatred. The most vocal critics of New York’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani accused him of just that — fomenting antisemitism and supporting antisemites in opposing Israel.
Immediately after Mamdani’s election, the ADL announced it was debuting a special program to monitor his administration for antisemitism.
But the ample evidence that a growing segment of the right is slipping back into the well-worn alliance that characterized the United States in the 1930s, when isolationists and antisemites made common cause against the Jews, doesn’t raise the same institutional alarms.
Trump has engaged with the extremist right, where antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment have both flourished for years, since the beginning of his first presidential run. Yet his Jewish supporters have given him far more leeway than they would ever think of giving Mamdani.
Meanwhile, that antisemitic segment of the conservative movement has quietly expanded, and found increasing tolerance in mainstream conservative spaces. The conservative analyst Ron Dreher wrote recently that he estimates some 30 to 40% of the Republican Gen Z’ers who work in official Washington are Fuentes fans.
Antisemitism “is spreading like a virus among religious conservatives of the Zoomer generation,” he wrote.
Antisemitism for me, but not for thee
That boom might explain the disparity between Trump and Vance’s stance on college protesters and on Carlson and Fuentes.
Like so much else in our polarized society, antisemitism itself has become politicized. Your Jew-hatred is abhorrent, the thinking goes, but mine is free speech. Yours must be prosecuted. But I’m just asking questions.
The best hope American Jews have is that enough brave souls from across the political spectrum will step up and speak out, even against their own political tribe, knowing the dark fate of societies that go down this path.
Dreher, in a private meeting with Vance earlier this month, told the vice president that standing up to Nazis and their publicists like Tucker Carlson is not “infighting,” but a fight for the soul of the Republican Party, and of the U.S.
No word on how Vance responded. But can I suggest the ADL monitor him, too?
The post There’s something rotten in our approach to antisemitism. Tucker Carlson exposed it appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
What It’s Like in Israel — During ‘Operation Lion’s Roar’
An Israeli air defense system intercepts a ballistic missile barrage launched from Iran to central Israel during a missile attack. Photo: Eli Basri / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
I haven’t been sleeping much.
It starts with an (intentionally) obnoxious screech on your phone that overrides all your “leave me alone” settings, and harangues you that a missile alarm has gone off. The radar and satellite tech behind this disruptive howl is almost magical, but in the moment, no one cares.
Then the promised air raid sirens sound all around: you have 90 seconds to reach a bomb shelter.
Fortunately, there’s a bomb shelter in my building. Some aren’t so lucky: they run down the block to public shelters, or to Tel Aviv’s new underground subway, which was built with this exact scenario in mind.
The attacks come in waves of an hour or two.
Imagine having a baby that wakes you up all day and night, except instead of a baby it’s a homicidal Islamist regime, and instead of wanting to be changed or fed, it wants to kill you.
Emergency notifications from the Israeli Home Front Command indicating the approach of Iranian missiles. Photo: Daniel Pomerantz.
Israel has the most advanced, multi-layered missile defense system in human history, but it’s only about 88% effective — and that remaining 12% takes out entire apartment buildings. Iran already claimed its first victims in Israel and across the region.
This war is horrible, but there are many reasons Israel needed to wage it:
1. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
This isn’t some Iraq era claim of “WMDs” — we know this is true because (among other reasons) Iran essentially says so. The regime very publicly insists on enriching uranium up to levels that have no possible use other than making warheads, all while paradoxically claiming “peaceful purposes.”
And if all that weren’t enough, Iran hides its “peaceful” nuclear program hundreds of feet under a mountain. Make of that what you will.
2. Iran is also developing ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) capable of reaching the United States. We know this because (again) the regime says so. A lot. They brag about it. This is not a question mark.
3. Iran’s terror proxies have killed thousands of Americans, Israelis, Europeans, and Arabs, including the Beirut barracks bombing that took the lives of 220 US Marines, and the unimaginable October 7 Massacre in Israel. Claiming that the work of proxies isn’t “really” Iran’s doing this is like hiring a hitman and then claiming that you didn’t “personally” murder anyone.
4. Of course, the greatest victims are the Iranian people, 80% of whom want to overthrow the regime — after 47 years of unimaginable suffering. This regime murdered thousands of its own people just last month, most for protesting, some for using Star Link terminals.
We seem to forget that military might can be used appropriately and effectively.
For every nightmare of intervention, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, there are also success stories, such as Libya, Kosovo, and most recently, Venezuela. And this isn’t even “intervention,” this is self defense. The regime’s President Masoud Pezeshkian declared in December, “we are in a full-fledged war with America, Israel, and Europe,” as Iranian officials continued to scream “Death to America” in the halls of Parliament, and on the streets.
And Iran puts its money where its mouth is: backing up its homicidal rhetoric with actual homicide. Lots of it.
Iran is now spreading a distorted history, claiming that all of its problems can be traced to America. That isn’t true: it’s a psyop, designed to weaponize our democracy against us. One can debate whether America should have helped affect a coup in Iran in 1953, but the leadership America helped bring to power back then (the “Shah”) is the very same leadership whose return the Iranian people are now risking their very lives to demand. America and the Iranian people are completely aligned in this, and the death of Ayatollah Khamenei was met by cheers and celebrations.
Genocidal maniacs have a way of telling us exactly what they plan to do: we ignored Hitler in the run up to World War II, we ignored Al-Qaeda in the years before 9/11, and we now ignore Iran at our peril.
But we’re not ignoring Iran.
We must hope that the people of Iran are ready to take back their country, and institute a new, organized government. It is entirely possible that Iran, the Middle East, and the world at large are on the verge of greater peace and stability than we have seen, or even imagined, in any of our lifetimes.
But we aren’t there yet, and we need the united support of all our allies, and our entire democracy, in order to succeed.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
Uncategorized
Family of Former FBI Agent Robert Levinson Demands Iran Be Held ‘Accountable,’ Return His Remains
People walk near a mural featuring images of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, on a street in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 17, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and is believed to have died while in Iranian custody, is calling on the Trump administration to make sure Tehran returns his remains and is held “accountable” for its actions following this weekend’s US-Israel airstrikes on the Islamic Republic.
Washington has maintained that Levinson, a retired FBI special agent, was taken by Iranian officials on March 9, 2007, while working as a private contractor for the CIA on the Iranian island of Kish, where he had traveled to meet a source. His family was never informed of what officially happened to the American citizen, but in 2020, the US government officially concluded he had died while in Iran’s custody. The details and circumstances surrounding his death remain unknown. Levinson was a father of seven children.
Levinson’s family issued a statement, shared on social media, following Saturday’s killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the US-Israel airstrikes.
“For nearly 19 years, Iran has lied, obstructed, and refused to answer for the kidnapping, detention, and death of our father, Robert Levinson,” the family said in its statement. “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led the regime responsible for these crimes. His death does not erase what Iran did to our father, and it does not end our fight for accountability. But it is a significant moment for our family and for every family that has suffered at the hands of this regime’s hostage-taking and wrongful detention.”
“Now Iran must do what it has refused to do for nearly two decades: provide full accountability for what happened to our father, return his remains to our family, and disclose the truth about his kidnapping, imprisonment, and death,” they added. “Our family will not stop demanding the truth. And we will not stop demanding justice.”
The family also expressed gratitude to US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “for using the power of the United States to confront Iran and to hold it accountable, including by recognizing and addressing Iran’s long-standing practice of wrongful detention.”
Levinson’s son, Dan Levinson, talked to “Fox & Friends” over the weekend about the need for the Trump administration to pressure Iran to take accountability.
“We’re just looking for answers. We still don’t know what exactly happened to him,” the younger Levinson said of his father. “There was no person more responsible for my father’s fate than Ayatollah Khamenei. At any time he could have waved his hand and had my dad released. He chose not to. We begged and pleaded. We sent so many letters. I went over there twice asking for a meeting and his people rebuffed us. Ignored us.”
Levinson said there is still a $25 million reward for information leading to the recovery and return of his father’s remains.
In March 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on three Iranian intelligence officers for their alleged involvement in Levinson’s disappearance.
In December 2020, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two other Iranian officials who are accused of authorizing Levinson’s 2007 abduction. The FBI released posters seeking information about them last year.
Uncategorized
The Jewish space lasers are real — well, kind of
Everyone made fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene when she said that Rothschild-funded space lasers had caused forest fires.
But, as it turns out, the space lasers are real. Well, sort of. They aren’t starting forest fires or causing major weather events, as Greene claimed in her post. Israel does, however, have a laser that shoots in the general direction of space. But that’s enough for some conspiracy theorists to feel vindicated.
“No longer a ‘Conspiracy Theory.’ Israel just used a Directed Energy Weapon (DEWs),” reads one viral tweet about the lasers. “During Biden’s term the media worked relentlessly to Fact Check these weapons as conspiracy theories.”
Indeed, as Israel and Iran exchanged missiles over the weekend, videos circulated online purporting to show Israel shooting down missiles using a laser. In the video, missiles launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, appear to flame out moments after taking off. (Israel has yet to officially confirm that the rockets were shot down by lasers, and the videos aren’t definitive; the missiles could have been defective and burned out on launch.)
But it is true that Israel has been working on defensive lasers for years. In 2022, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, “We have successfully completed a series of tests on our new ‘Iron Beam’ laser air defense system. This may sound like science fiction, but it’s real.” The laser system was reportedly delivered and deployed across Israel in December.
“It has nothing to do with the ‘Jewish space laser’ conspiracy theory,” said Mike Rothschild, a researcher on extremism and author of Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. “Conspiracy theorists often take real or in-development technology and twist it around for their own purposes.”
The laser works by shooting a grouping of small beams toward the projectile it is attempting to destroy, explains a report on the system’s development in National Defense Magazine. When one hits its target, the beams concentrate on the target until it is incinerated.
The lasers are less effective than the existing Iron Dome system, which works by intercepting missiles with other missiles and exploding them before they hit the ground. The laser can only reach missiles within about a 10 kilometer range, and, like any beam of light, can be blocked by terrain or atmospheric conditions like haze or clouds. On the other hand, the lasers are cheap to use, since they don’t require a ballistic missile for each engagement, and, for the same reason, they cause less collateral damage from falling debris.
The existence of the laser and its first — or first public — deployment has plenty of people joking about Jewish space lasers being real, and apologizing to Greene, though the Iron Beam has little to do with Greene’s allegations of a laser used to start targeted forest fires for government profit.
Conspiracy theorists may be crowing about the supposedly huge secret they’ve uncovered. But the laser isn’t secret at all. The Iron Beam is a well-funded and well-publicized project that has been in development for years, funded by both the U.S. and Israel. The first model was unveiled in 2014 at the Singapore Air Show. Smaller versions have been used to shoot down drones at close range for the past several years.
The aura of secrecy is key to the world of conspiracy theories. If antisemites can frame anything done by Jews or Israel as an underground, hidden project, it gains an undertone of corruption and danger.
The Iron Beam, however, has its own Wikipedia page. It features 40 sources — which means there are at least 40 other articles, going back over a decade, about the laser defense device. If you think that’s a secret, you’re just not paying attention.
The post The Jewish space lasers are real — well, kind of appeared first on The Forward.