Sam Harris “Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel” A note to the Making Sense Community
In 2003 the “Geneva Initiative” had been given way to constructive talks towards a peaceful settlements regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: Music that crosses divides
The continuation of:
パレスチナ・イスラエル友人関係の象徴：エドワード・サイードとダニエル・バレンボイムのウェスト＝イースタン・ディヴァン管弦楽団
Symbol of Palestinian-Israeli Friendship: Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
https://art-culture.world/politics/arab-israeli-orchestra/
I am a descendant of ROBERTO (Axis Roma-Berlin-Tokyo) . documenta15 should be closed down. Because there’s no weed. (lol)
私はROBERTO（枢軸国 ローマ・ベルリン・東京）の子孫である。ドクメンタ15は閉鎖されるべき。大麻草ないから。(笑）
https://art-culture.world/reviews/documenta15/
私は東京国立近代美術館小松弥生館長の即時解任を要求します！
I demand the Immediate Dismissal of the MOMAT Director KOMATSU Yayoi!
https://art-culture.world/art-world/momat-director-komatsu-yayoi-小松弥生館長/
Satomi Nakai from New York: The Situation Divides The Art World ナン・ゴールディンの政治的意見とアート
https://art-culture.world/reviews/nakai-nan-goldin/
なぜ、日本歴史・戦争博物館は存在しないのか？ Why doesn’t a Japanese History / War Museum exist?
https://art-culture.world/cultural-essays/japanese-history-war-museum/
ドイツファシストの真の危険性 The Real Danger of the German Fascists
https://art-culture.world/politics/deutsche-faschisten/
左翼の為。飯山由貴「ユダヤ人絶滅」の宣言。ファック・ユー。
For the Left. IIYAMA Yuki proclaims the “Extermination of Jews”. FUCK YOU.
https://art-culture.world/politics/iiyama-yuki/
反ユダヤ主義や「ドクメンタ15」という文脈で：昨日のメロン・メンデル氏 (フランクフルトのアンネ・フランク教育センター所長) のクネセト選挙に関する記事
In the Context of Antisemitism and documenta15: Yesterday’s Article by Meron Mendel (Director of the Anne Frank Educational Center in Frankfurt) regarding the Knesset Election
https://art-culture.world/politics/antisemitism/
「カッセルのユダヤ人雌豚」 “Die Judensau von Kassel”
https://art-culture.world/politics/documenta-15/
今日はドイツの緑の党、ロベルト・ハーベック副首相がパレスチナを訪問
German Green Party Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck visited Palestine today
https://art-culture.world/politics/green-party-robert-habeck/
What is this Japanese Woman thinking, actually? さて。
https://art-culture.world/jp-society/what-is-this-japanese-woman-thinking-actually/
抵抗運動に参加しなかった横山大観や藤田嗣治との関係：ギリシャのフォークヒーロー、ミキス・テオドラキスの日独伊ファシズム・レジスタンス
In The Context of Artists Like YOKOYAMA Taikan And FOUJITA Tsuguharu, Who Didn’t Join The Resistance Movements: Greece’s Folk Hero Mikis Theodorakis’ Japanese-German-Italian Fascist Resistance
https://art-culture.world/reviews/mikis-theodorakis-横山大観-藤田嗣治/
2021年5月8日の認知症予防。「ロベール・デスノス、藤田嗣治、藤田ユキ、藤田君代。レジスタンス 対 戦争犯罪人。」
Dementia Prevention on 8th of May 2021. “Robert Desnos, Tsuguharu Foujita, Youki Foujita, Kimiyo Foujita. Résistance vs War Criminal.”
https://art-culture.world/art-world/robert-desnos-tsuguharu-foujita-youki-foujita-kimiyo-foujita-resistance-vs-war-criminal/
退廃芸術のアーティストたちのドイツ記念切手 (過去サイト・アーカイブの再投稿、2017年5月13日)
Deutsche Post Gedenk-Briefmarken zu Künstlerinnen und Künstler der “Entarteten Kunst” (repost from the archive, 2017/5/13)
https://art-culture.world/art-world/entartete-kunst-退廃芸術-アーティスト-ドイツ記念切手/
Sam Harris (born 1967) is an American neuroscientist, philosopher, bestselling author, and podcast host. He is widely known for his critiques of religion and as one of the key figures of the “New Atheism” movement, alongside Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.
His work explores human consciousness, rationality, morality, and meditation. Key aspects of his career and contributions include:
Academic Background: He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, where he studied the neural basis of belief using fMRI.
Notable Books: He has written several best-selling books, including The End of Faith (which won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction), Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape.
Media & Platforms: He hosts the popular Making Sense podcast (formerly Waking Up) and is the creator of the Waking Up app, which teaches meditation from a secular and scientific perspective.
Core Themes: Beyond atheism and neuroscience, his writings and public discussions frequently address free will, ethics, politics, and artificial intelligence.
Critiques of Sam Harris from philosophers, scientists, and political commentators generally focus on his approach to philosophy, his views on religion, and his handling of complex social issues.
Philosophical and Scientific Criticism
Bypassing Academic Rigor: Academic philosophers often criticize Harris for publishing complex philosophical arguments—such as his views on free will or metaethics—directly for a popular audience rather than through peer-reviewed academic channels. Critics argue this allows him to bypass rigorous academic vetting and ignore extensive existing literature on these subjects.
Dismissal of the Is–Ought Problem: In his book The Moral Landscape, Harris argues that science can objectively determine human values by maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures. Philosophers widely criticize this for attempting to bridge David Hume’s famous “is–ought” problem (the idea that you cannot derive what should be from factual statements about what is) by simply redefining morality as a branch of science.
Simplistic View of Free Will: Critics argue that his outright rejection of free will relies on a narrow, reductionist view of human agency. They point out that he largely ignores “compatibilism”—the mainstream philosophical view that free will can coexist with a deterministic universe.
Geopolitical and Sociological Criticism
Reductionist View of Religion: Critics, including prominent figures like Noam Chomsky, argue that Harris focuses almost exclusively on religious texts while ignoring the complex historical, economic, and geopolitical factors that drive religious extremism and terrorism.
Accusations of Islamophobia: His sharp focus on Islam as a uniquely dangerous religion has led to intense public backlash and accusations of bigotry, notably during a highly publicized debate with actor Ben Affleck on Real Time with Bill Maher. Harris firmly rejects these labels, arguing that criticizing bad ideas is entirely distinct from bigotry against a group of people.
Public Intellectual Controversies
Platforming Controversial Figures: Harris has drawn severe criticism for hosting figures like Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve, on his podcast. Critics argued that by engaging with Murray’s highly controversial theories linking race and intelligence, Harris lent mainstream credibility to discredited scientific racism.
Over-Reliance on Thought Experiments: Opponents argue that his use of extreme hypothetical scenarios—such as considering the ethics of a pre-emptive nuclear strike against a fictional state or the theoretical justification of torture—can be detached from real-world nuances and easily misinterpreted.
11th of June 2026, Paul Kopeikin, quoting Sam Harris:
“My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence that Israel has become as evil as her enemies.”
Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel
A note to the Making Sense Community
SAM HARRIS, JUN 06, 2026
Many readers and podcast listeners have been dismayed by my enduring support for Israel and now urge me to debate someone—really anyone—drawn from a growing cast of scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics who have made that beleaguered country their professional or psychiatric obsession. The Making Sense Community seems to have inherited this infatuation, leading to some heated exchanges in recent days. I’ve explained my position on Israel across several podcasts and in my public talks, but it might help to summarize it here.
First, my general attitude: I’m not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark—from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s corrupt alliance with the far right, to the many crimes committed by settlers in the West Bank, to the deaths of innocent noncombatants in several wars—because none of these failings, however grave, will alter my sense that (1) the ethical difference between Israel and her enemies remains vast, and (2) the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible, being the product of perennial lies and delusions.
Next, a simple heuristic: As I suggested in at least one Community thread already, if my intransigence on these matters mystifies you, it might help to understand that, for whatever reason, I think militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is. When I talk about “jihadists” and their various groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the IRGC, etc.—I’m talking about people who I consider to be worse than Nazis (jihadists being, essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise). My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence that Israel has become as evil as her enemies.
However, you can rest assured that if the IDF morphs into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields (and yet somehow remains widely popular), if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom above every earthly priority, producing generations of bright-eyed, suicidal fanatics, if the residents of Tel Aviv condone the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other noncombatants as hostages and then gather in crowds of thousands, baying for their blood—if, in other words, the Israelis begin to resemble the Palestinians, then I won’t care who wins this war. Short of this, there remains a world of difference between the two sides, and I believe that we should focus on how brutalizing it is for any free society to confront enemies that can sincerely claim to “love death” more than everyone else loves life—for this has been Israel’s predicament for the better part of a century.
The problem in the Middle East is not, and has never been, the existence of the state of Israel. The problem is jihadism, Islamism, Islamic extremism, Islamofascism, militant Islam—or whatever words you want to use to describe the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.
I won’t debate the history of the Middle East because it is irrelevant to resolving the conflict there. Of course, many people insist that we must disentangle and reconsider every strand of this history, going back at least a century. The reason I’m convinced that this is a fool’s errand is simple: Palestinians and Israelis have discrepant accounts of the past, and no amount of study or debate will reconcile them.
What’s far more important to understand—and I think it really is the only thing worth considering—is what the current inhabitants of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the surrounding Arab states want out of life now. (Not what they pretend to want or what a handful of royal families want, while their populations want something quite different.) What do the Jews and Muslims in the region really yearn to accomplish? What are they willing to sacrifice for? What are they willing to die for? And what are they willing to let their children die for?
When we focus on the present this way, if we’re being honest, we must concede that there are two very different realities on either side of this conflict: culturally, psychologically, ethically, spiritually—in every way that matters. Yes, Israel has its religious fanatics too. But they aren’t the same sort of fanatics we find in Hamas or Hezbollah, and they’re far less representative of the surrounding culture. Notwithstanding everything that can be said against Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Israeli far right, and the settlers in the West Bank—and there is much to condemn—I believe the following remains true:
If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution; there could even be a one-state solution; it wouldn’t matter. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there could be a diverse, tolerant, and prosperous society between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There could have been one eighty years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7th, 2023. And for anyone who has been paying attention, it has been true on every other day since the founding of the state of Israel.
The truth is, I have never known how Israel should have responded to the events of October 7th. I only know that they, along with every other free society, must ultimately defeat militant Islam. How we should do this is genuinely debatable. But that’s not the point of contention among Israel’s critics, especially on the left. To them, worrying about militant Islam—even in Israel, even in the aftermath of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—is just more “Islamophobia.” It’s just more “colonialism” and “racism” (as though that last charge made any sense in the Middle East).
If you want to understand my view of this conflict, simply ask the one question that clarifies everything in the present:
What would each side do if it had the power to do whatever it wanted?
Though many pretend otherwise, everyone knows the answer to this question to a moral certainty.
If Hamas had the power, it would perpetrate a real genocide in Israel. The group has affirmed its commitment to this project on countless occasions, both before and after October 7th. And while it is true that Jew-hatred throughout the Muslim world has been made immensely worse by a century-long fascination with Nazi propaganda and conspiracy theories, this animus isn’t merely a modern phenomenon. For instance, there is a famous hadith which predicts that the End Times will not come until the very stones and trees cry out “Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come kill him.” Unsurprisingly, Hamas cited this hadith in its founding charter.
Most Palestinians know this, and yet Hamas remains popular. For over a decade, Hamas diverted foreign aid that was meant to improve life in Gaza and used it to build the largest bomb shelter our species has ever constructed—hundreds of miles of tunnels—and yet no Palestinian civilians were allowed to shelter there during the war. Why not? Because Hamas was using these men, women, and children as human shields. And when Israel made phone calls and sent millions of text messages urging civilians to evacuate, the loudspeakers in the nearest mosques warned them to stay in place. And Hamas snipers murdered many who tried to move to safety. The Palestinians know all this, and yet Hamas remains popular. Even after all the devastation that Hamas has brought down on its own people, it remains the most popular Palestinian faction, well ahead of its rival, Fatah. This is why there is no peace in the Middle East.
The suffering in Gaza is terrible, and I’ve never pretended otherwise. But the suffering elsewhere—suffering you aren’t thinking about—is just as real. You should ask yourself why you don’t care more about it. This difference, emotionally and politically, is what it looks like to lose an information war.
We haven’t seen all the dead children in Yemen, Syria, or Sudan, where the numbers are far worse than in Gaza, but everyone has witnessed the pornography of misery and death that has been steadily manufactured by supporters of Hamas. You might think that your special concern over Israel is due to the fact that we (Americans) supply many of the weapons the IDF uses to kill Palestinians. But we supplied arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for a war in Yemen that has killed an estimated 377,000 people. Where were those protests? Where was the celebrity sanctimony over Yemeni dead? Why didn’t Zohran Mamdani trumpet his opposition to this evil while campaigning to become Mayor of New York? Yemen was the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for years, with American weaponry and logistical support fully implicated, and yet it never became the organizing moral obsession of universities, media institutions, activist networks, or leftwing politics the way Gaza has.
To point this out isn’t to commit the rhetorical sin of “whataboutism.” Rather, it exposes a glaring moral disparity: The world simply does not care when Muslims kill other Muslims—amazingly, it doesn’t much care when they kill Christians either—but it does care, enormously, when Jews do it. The General Assembly of the UN and its Human Rights Council have passed more resolutions against Israel than against all other nations combined, including North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. A few of these countries have committed actual genocides. None of this makes sense. But this is the world we are living in.
Of the world’s 193 nations, two-thirds were created by map makers who merely imagined their frontiers into being, without much regard for the tribal interests of the people living within them. In fact, more than half were created since 1948, the year that Israel was founded. And yet there is only one whose legitimacy is still debated everywhere. There is only one nation on Earth that must continually argue for its right to exist, even when the very survival of its people is threatened by avowedly genocidal enemies.
This obsession with Israel, and the double standards to which its people are held, now forms the center of mass of that shapeshifting moral affliction widely known as “antisemitism.”
I’ve lived most of my life believing that dangerous antisemitism was behind us, at least in the West. Unfortunately, the response to October 7th has put that assumption very much in doubt. The atrocities committed by Hamas revealed a level of Jew hatred, globally, that shocked even those of us who have been students of antisemitism for much of our lives. Crucially, this hatred showed itself before Israel invaded Gaza. When the corpses of the young people mutilated and murdered at the Nova Music Festival were still being identified, we had students at Harvard and professors at Columbia—and demonstrators in New York, London, Sydney, and Toronto—celebrating their killers.
Why does antisemitism matter? Well, for the Jews, it’s obvious why it matters, but why should it matter to everyone else? It matters because when you look at what antisemites also hate, you find they hate everything that makes culturally rich, diverse, open societies possible. Real antisemites bring with them more than just their hatred of Jews: they bring censorship, political repression, conspiracy thinking, and the politics of dehumanization and scapegoating. So decrying antisemitism is not an act of special pleading. It is a defense of the moral and institutional architecture that free societies require.
Let me close with another general point to members of the Making Sense Community: Many of you have written to tell me that you’ve lost respect for me over this issue (or that you still value my work and are giving me “a pass” on Israel). I reject this framing, and you should too. No one should be a part of Community just because they agree with me. I’m not running a political party, and there is no line for me, or for anyone else, to toe. If I’ve fallen off a pedestal because I said something you don’t agree with, the pedestal was the problem, not the disagreement. Of course, if you think I am lying to you, or that I otherwise lack integrity, you should leave and never look back. But if you just think I happen to be wrong, even about something important—especially about something important—I encourage you to keep showing up with better evidence and arguments. This, after all, is what a real intellectual and moral community is for.
https://samharris.substack.com/p/why-i-wont-debate-critics-of-israel
https://www.facebook.com/kopeikingallery/posts/pfbid06pv2GQ314iVU3x8syxhP7Dhu8t93eZGPu4eKQxezy8tRv9BH4Skp4rFPVEsCccapl
Max Kopeikin
I read the whole thing and many of the assumptions are plainly wrong or generalizing the “other” as being black and white. While offering understanding and subtlety to Israel and the Jews. It is a highly educated argument still based in tribal bias and islamism. His footnotes and explanations do not actually get him out of this racist conundrum. It is not a queer feminist approach to restorative justice but an US versus them in group versus other way of thinking about things. I have worked extensively in Israel and in Palestine with people from both sides who are very reasonable. The majority of the people in the Palestinian territories are not terrorists, do not have suicidal understandings of paradise, etc. they wish to be modern liberated people in the world, not to have a chance to finally kill themselves and kill Israel. That is a Jewish tribal narrative to excuse extreme violence
Reply Paul Kopeikin
Max Kopeikin Not really. I hate to think I can’t adapt my views to facts on the ground. As I said somewhere here already, the definition of genocide has changed. I accept that. The problem is that everyone wants to see things in black and white when most things are gray. So okay, there are many genocides taking place in the world right now if we are going to expand the definition. Why are so many people obsessed with only one? No where have you seen me defend Israel for what they are doing. I just don’t need to call it genocide to be outraged. And anyway, so much of people’s use of that word is virtue signaling.
2026/6/15 UPDATE:
OMER BARTOVS ISRAEL-BUCH
Der Zionismus soll schuld sein?
Von Thomas Thiel, FAZ 14.06.2026
Der Historiker Omer Bartov erklärt die Katastrophe im Nahen Osten aus den Fehlstellungen des Zionismus. Sein Buch nutzt er für einen Frontalangriff auf das Holocaustgedenken.
Über die Frage, ob Israel in Gaza einen Völkermord begangen hat, wird der Internationale Gerichtshof in den nächsten Jahren urteilen. Die Debatte wird auch nach dem Urteil nicht enden, weil das Gericht weder die Zeit noch die Ressourcen hat, die strittigen Punkte einzeln zu untersuchen. Für Omer Bartov steht das Urteil indessen schon fest. Der an der amerikanischen Brown Universität lehrende Historiker war einer der ersten wissenschaftlichen Experten, die den Krieg als Völkermord bezeichneten. In der „New York Times“ schrieb er 2025, als Genozidforscher erkenne er einen Völkermord, wenn er ihn sehe. Von dieser Gewissheit ist sein neues Buch getragen, das einen Ausweg aus der Katastrophe im Nahen Osten sucht.
Nun ist mit bloßem Auge nicht zu erkennen, ob unter einem bombardierten Krankenhaus eine Kommandozentrale der Hamas versteckt war oder ob ein getötetes Kind von der Terrorgruppe als Soldat in den Tod geschickt wurde. Zu sehen ist nur das ungeheure Ausmaß der Zerstörung. Die Vereinten Nationen und verschiedene Hilfsorganisationen haben ernst zu nehmende Indizien für einen Genozid vorgelegt, die aber noch keine Beweiskraft haben, einschließlich der Aussagen israelischer Politiker und Funktionäre, man wolle Gaza dem Erdboden gleichmachen.
Fehlstellungen des Zionismus
Bartov sieht darin keine affektiven Kurzschlussreaktionen nach dem Trauma des 7. Oktober, sondern eine im Kriegsverlauf planmäßig umgesetzte Strategie, die auf einem breiten Konsens innerhalb der israelischen Bevölkerung fuße: Es gebe keine unbeteiligten Palästinenser, sei dort die vorherrschende Meinung. Die Kollektivbestrafung drücke den Mehrheitswillen des israelischen Volkes aus. Das Leid der Gaza-Bewohner werde ungerührt zur Kenntnis genommen, wenn in den Medien überhaupt darüber berichtet werde. Bartov stützt seine Darstellung unter anderem auf eine Studie, nach der 82 Prozent der israelischen Bürger die Vertreibung der Gaza-Bewohner befürworteten. „Haaretz“ hatte im Mai 2025 darüber berichtet. Dass die Zeitung die Studie später wegen methodischer Mängel kritisierte, erwähnt Bartov nicht. Der breiten Zustimmung unter Palästinensern zum Angriff des 7. Oktobers schenkt er wenig Aufmerksamkeit.
In Anlehnung an Aimé Césaire erklärt er den Mangel an Mitgefühl in der israelischen Bevölkerung mit einer kolonialen Denkhaltung, die im Kolonisierten nur noch den Untermenschen sieht. Bei einem Israel-Besuch habe er sich davon im Gespräch mit Studenten überzeugen können und sich an die Mentalität von deutschen Wehrmachtssoldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg erinnert gefühlt. Es ist seit jeher der größte Triumph für „Israel-Kritiker“, das Land als NS-Staat zu entlarven, der an den Palästinensern den nächsten Holocaust begeht. Bartov belässt es geschickt bei der Andeutung.
Sein Buch soll die Frage klären, ob der Zionismus unausweichlich in die heutige Katastrophe geführt hat. Das habe er nicht, lautet das Fazit. Bartov macht zwei spätere Fehlentwicklungen für die Misere verantwortlich: das Versäumnis, Israel in einer Verfassung als demokratischen Staat zu definieren, der den Arabern die gleichen Rechte garantiert, wie es die Unabhängigkeitserklärung in Aussicht gestellt hatte. Scharfe Kritik trifft in diesem Zusammenhang das Oberste Gericht, das einem Grundsatzurteil über die Siedlerbewegung und die Rechtmäßigkeit der Besatzung aus dem Weg gegangen ist.
Missbrauch des Holocausts
Die zweite Fehlstellung ist für Bartov der Missbrauch des Holocausts als Abwehrschild gegen jegliche Form der Kritik durch die israelische Regierung, vollstreckt durch die Antisemitismusdefinition der International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Die IHRA-Definition verurteilt unter anderem die Gleichsetzung Israels mit dem NS-Regime als antisemitisch sowie die Behauptung, Israel würde den Holocaust instrumentalisieren, um sich gegen Kritik zu immunisieren, zwei Motive, mit denen Bartov mehr oder weniger deutlich spielt. Im Interview mit dem „Spiegel“ behauptete er am vergangenen Holocaustgedenktag, die Israelis hätten aus dem Holocaust eine unmenschliche Lehre gezogen, indem sie aus ihm eine moralische Sonderstellung abgeleitet hätten, die es ihnen erlaube, Verbrechen und Unrecht zu begehen. Entgegen dem behaupteten Tabu hinderte ihn niemand an der verstörenden Deutung, auch nicht die angeblich allmächtigen Wächter der IHRA-Definition. Die richtige Lehre wäre für Bartov gewesen, den Holocaust als universale Warnung gegen jede Art von Menschheitsverbrechen zu verstehen und Holocaust- und Nakba-Gedenken zusammenzuführen.
Bei seinen Demontagearbeiten am Holocaustgedenken lässt er keine Gelegenheit aus, die Bedrohung für israelische Juden herunterzuspielen. So heißt es an einer Stelle, der Antisemitismus „is said to be on the rise“, als ließen die Statistiken daran einen Zweifel. Israel unterstellt er eine irrationale, obsessive Furcht vor der Vernichtung, als wäre das Land nicht von Staaten und Mächten umgeben, die es auslöschen wollen, und als hätte es das Hamas-Massaker nicht gegeben. Iran, die Hisbollah und die Atombombe werden im Buch kaum erwähnt. Irreführend ist die Angabe, neunzig Prozent der antisemitischen Straftaten würden von der deutschen Polizeistatistik 2024 dem Rechtsextremismus zugewiesen (in Wahrheit sind es 48 Prozent), eine Verzerrung, die Warnungen vor dem israelbezogenen und islamischen Antisemitismus seltsam unbegründet erscheinen lässt. Die Behauptung, antisemitische Proteste an den amerikanischen Universitäten gingen auf eine kleine Minderheit zurück, widerlegt der Antisemitismusbericht der Harvard-Universität. Der Holocaust, ein Feigenblatt für Kriegsverbrechen, eine freundlichere Beschreibung des aktuellen Holocaustgedenkens findet sich auf mehr als zweihundert Seiten nicht.
Das abschließende Plädoyer für eine jüdisch-palästinensische Konföderation mit gleichen Rechten für alle Bewohner, die den jüdischen Suprematismus überwände und den Zionismus auf den richtigen Weg brächte, fiele überzeugender aus, wären Gewalt und Ressentiment auf beiden Seiten zuvor ausgewogen beschrieben worden. Die jüdischen Siedler dürften nach diesem Modell im Westjordanland bleiben und die arabischen Flüchtlinge von 1948, einschließlich ihrer Nachfahren, nach Israel zurückkehren. Das klingt nach einem idealen Ausweg aus dem Dilemma. Für die dann arabisch majorisierten israelischen Juden wäre es nach der Erfahrung des Massakers vom 7. Oktober allerdings ein lebensgefährliches Experiment.
Omer Bartov: „Israel. What went wrong?“ Fern Press, London 2026. 256 S., geb., 24,52 €.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/sachbuch/israelpalaestina-historiker-omer-bartov-macht-den-zionismus-zum-schuldigen-200846814.html
Update 2026/6/18
Steven Sherman
No shade for the director of Yes, and I’ve never taught in a yeshiva, but American Jewish institutions before and after October 7 haven’t been great for those who want to vigorously express solidarity with Palestinians, and Israeli opinion is hardly uniform.
Martha Rosler
this is just some random guy’s comment–but what is interesting that when I was in Israel decades ago, the epithet hurled at Arabs was the Hebrew word for dog. A despised animal in the ME. Not sure where you are going with your comment…? (The guy’s end para is to tie it in to the article he was commenting on.)
Jessica Hines
Martha Rosler I’ve been there and have witnessed the hatred toward them, too. Miserable experience at airports and various other places. What a tragedy it all is.
Steven Sherman
It’s been my experience that the most negative views of Palestinians cut through divides like American Jews/Israelis, Reform etc/Orthodox. Some care should be taken to be clear who we are talking about as we try to isolate the worst element. That’s all.
Martha Rosler
Steven Sherman ok, but still not sure how the guy’s comment I posted calls forth this response. (Also lots of Israels are also “American Jews”–and that certainly, notoriously, includes some of the Brooklyn Young Israel settlers I grew up with.)
Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
A.J. GoldmannJune 13, 2026
Nadav Lapid is a filmmaker whose work has become increasingly ferocious in its indictment of Israeli society, nationalism and moral self-deception. His latest film, Yes, is not a plea for Israeli innocence, but rather a savage, obscene, self-implicating reckoning with a country in which language, music, sex and grief have all been drafted into the service of monstrous affirmation.
That he was pushed out of a prestigious international film festival in the name of opposing Israeli state violence is not a victory for moral clarity. It is “an intellectual failure,” to quote an open letter that was published in Le Monde on June 9.
Here’s the backstory: Lapid, a dissident Israeli director based in France, was asked to serve on the jury of the international film festival FID Marseille. After his appointment was announced, the festival’s director, Tsveta Dobreva, started to receive phone calls objecting to the presence of an Israeli director on the film festival jury.
Dobreva initially stood by her decision, yet as pressure intensified, the festival and Lapid mutually agreed that he would give up the jury role. Instead, the festival envisioned a more limited role for Lapid in Marseille, in which he would present his first feature, Policeman (2011), followed by a public discussion. However, even this compromise continued to raise the hackles of those who felt that the mere presence of an Israeli filmmaker at FID Marseille was unacceptable.
After a dozen directors threatened to pull their films from the festival over his participation, Lapid exited — not, it seems, out of a desire to capitulate to his opponents, but rather because he felt insulted that so many in the global filmmaking community felt that his presence in Marseille was an instance of “artwashing” designed to deny, obscure or deflect from the crimes of the Israeli government and the IDF.
How does the presence of a dissident filmmaker make him the representative of the very state he critiques? One can argue about and with Lapid’s films. One can validly choose to love them, attack them or reject them. But first one has to watch them.
That point rests at the heart of the Le Monde letter defending Lapid, collectively signed by 10 prominent actors and directors including Natalie Portman and Jacques Audiard. The case against him is that for a blanket cultural boycott of Israeli artists, fueled by the fact that Yes received support from the Israel Film Fund.
What critics may miss: The Israel Film Fund operates independently of Israel’s government, albeit with taxpayer funding, and has supported films sharply critical of Israeli policy — including last year’s The Sea, an antiwar film about a Palestinian boy that won five Ophir awards, Israel’s equivalent to the Oscars. (After The Sea’s award night victory, Israel’s Culture Minister threatened funding cuts to the ceremony.) Le Monde even reported that the Israel Film Fund stepped in to provide 10% of Lapid’s budget for Yes after the European Union declined to support what they judged to be an anti-Israel project.
Lapid himself has not dismissed the boycott debate. He has called it serious, and has long supported political sanctions against the Israeli state. Nor does he appear to think of the filmmakers who oppose him as enemies. He has suggested that their actions come from powerlessness, anger and immense frustration at political inaction over Gaza.
But he understands that political frustrations can lead to censorship with far-reaching implications.“For a year, it was my film Yes that was being attacked,” he told Le Monde earlier this week. “And then, suddenly, my mere presence became unacceptable. I asked myself: What exactly do they want? That I stop making films? Should I leave France? How far will this go?”
Those are troubling questions. Answering them incorrectly — as Lapid’s critics have — risks turning film festivals into places to virtue signal and perform outrage, rather than opportunities to sit with art that fosters critical thinking and discrimination.
The most recent editions of the Berlin Film Festival illustrate that risk. Berlin has always been a deeply political festival, beginning with its Cold War origins. Since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, the festival has been convulsed by furious debates set off by Israel’s war in Gaza, and amplified by the German government’s iron-clad support for the Jewish state.
Accusatory speeches, open letters and political threats have frequently upstaged the actors and filmmakers on the red carpet. The festival has become political in the way that a rally is political. Instead of the films themselves provoking complicated political conversations, the focus has increasingly been on the inability of the Berlinale — one of Germany’s foremost cultural institutions — to issue a robust defense of freedom of expression while respecting Germany’s historic responsibility to Israel.
Marseille risked a similar mistake. Dobreva, the festival director, warned that the boycott threats over Lapid prevented the festival from programming freely and serving as a place of free thinking. She is absolutely right. A film festival should be able to screen Palestinian films, condemn state violence, interrogate potential moral compromises in film funding and still hold clarity about the fact that an individual artist’s value cannot be reduced to the birthplace listed on his passport.
The collective Palestine Will Save Cinema, which agitated against Lapid’s presence at Marseille, argued that placing Palestinian and Israeli narratives side by side risked turning the devastation of Gaza into a tidy exercise in balance, as if symmetrical programming could smooth away asymmetrical suffering.
That argument is guilty of its own kind of cultural flattening. Lapid’s films have been arguments with and against the country that formed him. In Synonyms (2019), an existential tragicomedy that is Lapid’s most incisive investigation into Israeli and Jewish identity, a young man moves to Paris after completing his military service. There, he tries — and ultimately fails — to transform himself into a Frenchman by repudiating the Hebrew language and severing ties with his family.
In Ahed’s Knee (2021) an Israeli filmmaker is incensed after being asked to choose from a list of approved discussion topics for a Q&A about his work at a community library. The filmmaker’s protest against government censorship swells into a scorching, self-destructive tirade against Israeli culture, with righteous anger warping into paranoia and cruelty.
When I interviewed Lapid about Ahed’s Knee in Cannes, where the film won the jury prize, the director told me that making the film had allowed him to think through a number of tough yet vital questions: “What does it mean to be good in a bad place? And what does being right matter when it detaches you from your most human instincts?”
He added that sick societies present people with bad choices, where “the normal option doesn’t exist.” Yes is the most extreme form he has given to that idea. In Munich, he said the film is vulgar, noisy and brutal because the “collective soul” it depicts is vulgar, noisy and brutal — and because he, too, is “part of the sickness.”
Rejecting false equivalences is not the same thing as reducing every Israeli artist to an emissary of state violence. Film festivals exist, in part, to teach us to see such distinctions. To exclude an artist of Lapid’s stature, temperament and talent is to admit that we no longer trust art, or ourselves, to withstand complexity and contradiction.
Lapid’s case reveals this category error with special force.
https://forward.com/opinion/831338/nadav-lapid-yes-marseilles-israel-boycott/
« Le boycott culturel du réalisateur israélien Nadav Lapid est une faillite intellectuelle »
Les réalisateurs russes, israéliens, iraniens ne sauraient être menacés d’effacement pour expier des crimes commis par des gouvernements dont ils sont souvent les plus fervents pourfendeurs, estime un collectif de personnalités du cinéma, parmi lesquelles Natalie Portman, Justine Triet et Jacques Audiard, dans une tribune au « Monde ».Publié le 09 juin 2026
Le cinéaste Nadav Lapid ne se rendra pas au Festival de cinéma international de Marseille, malgré l’invitation qu’il avait reçue. Les pressions, les menaces de retrait, les appels au boycott venant d’activistes anti-israéliens auront eu raison d’abord de sa présence au sein du jury, puis de sa présence tout court.
Que le plus grand artiste dissident israélien, œuvrant inlassablement à dénoncer les dérives fascistes et colonialistes de son gouvernement, ses faillites morales criminelles, dans des films primés dans le monde entier, soit amené à se retirer d’un festival français doit nous alerter et nous mobiliser au-delà de cette aberration.
Nous alerter sur l’évidence : quels que soient les crimes commis par son Etat, personne ne saurait être réduit à un passeport.
Nous mobiliser ensuite pour nous amener à réfléchir collectivement aux outils qui protégeraient les programmateurs, les exploitants, les diffuseurs, les critiques et les artistes des pressions extérieures, seuls face aux menaces pesant sur des structures parfois précaires. La nécessité de penser l’inaction politique et d’y résister ne peut se jouer dans l’annulation d’une voix.
Qu’est ce qui fait soutien d’un Etat criminel, qu’il soit russe, iranien, ou israélien, quand il est question de cinéma ? A quel niveau de financement public décide-t-on qu’une œuvre ou son auteur, fût-il le plus critique, se fait le porte-parole d’un gouvernement criminel ? Et du reste, y a-t-il un seuil critique nécessaire envers l’Etat en question pour avoir le droit d’exprimer son opinion et projeter son travail ? Rien ne justifie l’annulation de la parole d’un artiste.
Levier de contestation
Le boycott culturel de Nadav Lapid est une faillite intellectuelle. Les cinéastes russes, israéliens, iraniens ne sauraient être menacés de disparition pour expier des crimes commis par des gouvernements dont ils sont souvent les plus fervents pourfendeurs. A ceux qui voudraient penser qu’en les désinvitant on fait pression sur leurs Etats, nous répondons que c’est en continuant sans relâche de les inviter que ce levier de contestation se poursuit. En témoigne la récente adresse du réalisateur russe Andreï Zviaguintsev à Vladimir Poutine, [l’exhortant à « mettre fin [au] carnage » en Ukraine] lorsqu’il vint recevoir sur scène le Grand Prix du Festival de Cannes pour son film Minotaure.
This Israeli filmmaker harshly criticizes his country. Pro-Palestinian activists boycotted him anyway
Natalie Portman and other stars signed letters criticizing the recent targeting of Nadav Lapid’s invitation to a film festival
By Andrew Lapin, June 10, 2026
(JTA) — Earlier this year Nadav Lapid, the award-winning Israeli dissident filmmaker, traveled with his son to Marseille for a screening of his latest film. He fell in love.
“This city reminded me of Tel Aviv, in a way, with the beach and everything,” he recounted Wednesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency — referring to the city he no longer lives in, having built a career with movies that take sharp aim at what he calls the “moral abyss” of Israeli society. When a Marseille film festival then invited him to serve on its jury for its upcoming installment in July, he readily accepted.
Then the boycotts started. Last month around a dozen pro-Palestinian filmmakers threatened to pull out of the upcoming Marseille International Film Festival over Lapid’s planned participation because, they said, he had accepted funding from the Israeli government to support his work. (Lapid’s movies, including his latest, have received funding from Israel’s film fund.) Following this, according to the accounts of both Lapid and the festival’s director, the festival had second thoughts about him serving on the jury.
While the festival offered him the opportunity to participate in a public master class instead, Lapid said, the protesters hadn’t relented: “It’s not enough for these people.”
Frustrated, the director earlier this week decided to pull out of the festival altogether. He’s not happy about it.
“To make people like myself the enemy when the actual state of things is so terrible, it’s insanity. It’s stupidity,” he told JTA. “For them, the highest triumph of the Palestinian cause is if they will cancel my master class in Marseille? I think it’s pathetic.”
Lapid has received a groundswell of support this week: Natalie Portman and hundreds of other film-industry figures have signed open letters criticizing the boycotts against him. While he’s uncomfortable with being in the spotlight for reasons unrelated to his films, Lapid said he’s pleased with this outcome.
“You could have composed an unbelievable cinematic program from only the filmmakers that texted me during the last hour,” he said.
Even so, the filmmaker says, he’s now unsure if he is still welcome in France as a dissident Israeli.
“I asked myself whether they would like me to stop doing movies, or to leave France,” he told JTA. Elsewhere, he’s described himself as “homeless.”
It’s the latest unspooling of painful dynamics around artistic boycotts of artists and institutions seen by the left as normalizing Israel. Last month another French cultural figure, the Jewish comics artist Joann Sfar (“The Rabbi’s Cat”), faced calls to boycott his presence at a literary festival, also in Marseille. In its justification, a pro-Palestinian artist collective, pushing an Instagram post reading “Zionists out of our city,” cited Sfar’s signing of an open letter last year that argued a Palestinian state should not be recognized unless Hamas could be disarmed and Gaza’s Israeli hostages freed.
In recent months, in addition to broader boycotts of the Israeli film and TV industry, several leading cultural critics of Israel — both Jewish and not — have been targeted as well. Those include bestselling author Sally Rooney for publishing a Hebrew-language translation of her novel with a left-wing Israeli publisher (some prominent activists accused her of exploiting a “loophole” in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel); Jewish Currents editor Peter Beinart for speaking at Tel Aviv University; and Jewish author Joshua Leifer for associating with a “Zionist” rabbi at a book event.
In Lapid’s case, the group organizing against him, La Palestine Sauvera Le Cinéma, argued that “Nadav Lapid is not being targeted because of his Israeli nationality.”
Instead, the collective asserted, their objection was due to Lapid having accepted funding from Israel to complete his latest film, “Yes!”; the fact that the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as an Israeli co-production and competed for Israel’s highest film awards; and Lapid’s past participation in an Israeli film festival in Paris.
“The cultural boycott does not target artists because of their nationality or personal opinions,” the filmmakers wrote, in French, in a blog post. “What is at issue here is the reality of their integration into the institutional and political structures of the Israeli state.”
For Lapid, whose new movie follows Israeli musicians hired to write an openly genocidal post-Oct. 7 anthem for their nation, this argument doesn’t hold water. Lapid has long been critical of cultural boycotts, including BDS. Such measures, he told JTA, are a form of “dogmatic Stalinism” and don’t “move one piece of sand” in Israel.
“I became a test case of purity,” he mused.
Others agree. More than 350 entertainment industry figures signed the first of two open letters in the French newspaper Le Monde backing him, which was published Sunday.
“Inviting an artist to a festival does not make them a cultural ambassador,” the letter reads, in French, decrying a “campaign of intimidation” against Lapid while also noting what the signatories said was the “genocidal logic” of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
Among this letter’s signatories were Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, the Oscar-winning team behind “Anatomy of a Fall”; Harari is Jewish and a critic of Israel himself. Arnaud Desplechin, a French filmmaker who often features Jewish characters in his work, also signed. Other signers include acclaimed directors Claire Denis, Mati Diop, and Kleber Mendonça Filho; Romanian director Radu Jude, whose films have explored his country’s complicity in the Holocaust; and Palestinian historian Elias Sanbar.
A second open letter, published on Monday, calls the campaign against Lapid an “intellectual failure” and states, “No matter what crimes a state may commit, no one should be reduced to a passport.” It was signed by a smaller cohort of 10 names, including Portman; French-Jewish director Rebecca Zlotowski; and Oscar-winning filmmakers Jacques Audiard and Michel Hazanavicius.
Like Lapid, Portman — an Israeli-American actress who is one of the most prominent Jews in Hollywood — is a longtime critic of the Israeli government and opponent of the BDS movement.
Creative Community For Peace, a pro-Israel entertainment group, said Wednesday its members also oppose the boycott of Lapid, adding that Israel “funds, screens, and honors films that challenge its leaders, criticize its society, and engage openly with its most difficult debates.”
Unusually, the Marseille festival’s own director, Tsveta Dobreva, also signed one of the open letters in support of Lapid after she appeared to acquiesce to the earlier demands to pull him from the jury.
In an email, Dobreva told JTA her festival “fully supports Nadav Lapid,” saying that she had removed him from the jury out of concern he would be targeted at the event. She did not believe she had “agreed to the boycotters’ demands,” she said.
“Few festivals or cultural institutions in our days have the courage to extend invitations that may provoke controversy, and we stand with Nadav in believing that this form of self-censorship must be resisted, as it only contributes to the problem,” Dobreva wrote.
Lapid intends his next movie to be a follow-up to “Synonyms,” his 2019 film about an Israeli expat in Paris that won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. The Marseille festival is scheduled for July, but he says now he has no intention of going: “I’ll find other beaches.”
AI: Is it true that Israelis call the Palestinians “dog”?
AI Overview
Yes, there are documented instances of Israelis—including civilians, far-right activists, and military personnel—using the word “dog” to refer to Palestinians. In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the term is primarily used as an antisemitic slur by certain extremists or as a dehumanizing insult.
Key contexts where this terminology has been documented include:
Extremist Discourse: Right-wing groups and settlers have been recorded using the term to dehumanize Palestinians. It is part of a broader vocabulary of slurs that human rights monitors have identified in the region.
Military & Prison Context: Human rights organizations and news outlets, including the Al Jazeera investigation and reports by B’Tselem, have documented cases of Israeli forces unleashing military dogs on Palestinians or using the animals to degrade and intimidate detainees.
Widespread Dehumanization: According to sociological and political monitors like the Wikipedia page on Dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli discourse, “dog” is one of several non-human classifications (such as rats, pigs, and beasts) that extremists have applied to Arabs.
Conversely, similar dehumanizing language is often reciprocated in the region; monitors have extensively documented Palestinian militant and political discourse employing the same term—”dog”—and other antisemitic insults to dehumanize Israelis and Jewish people.
While the term is used by specific factions and individuals, it is not universally used by all Israelis, nor does it represent the language or views of the entire population.
Is it true that Israelis call the Palestinians “dog”?
Yes, certain Israelis, including far-right figures and extremist elements, have used dehumanizing language like “beasts” or “rats”, and the term “dog” has been documented as a derogatory insult within the broader context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, it is not a universally used or official term for all Palestinians by Israelis.
Because the term “dog” carries a heavy, universally understood negative weight in Middle Eastern culture, its use appears on both sides of the conflict as a severe insult rather than an exclusive label used by one specific group.
Documented Use of Dehumanizing Terms
Studies and documentation on the dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli discourse highlight various animal-based slurs and metaphors used by political figures, militants, or pop-culture media:
Political Figures: Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously referred to regional adversaries and infiltrators as “wild beasts” or “predators” (hayot teref). Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin historically referred to militants attacking Israelis as “two-footed beasts”.
Cultural & Pop Media: During the Gaza conflict, highly popular nationalist Israeli rap tracks (such as songs by Subliminal and HaTzel) referred to militants or adversaries using severe slurs like “swarms of rats”.
Interpersonal Slurs: Like many cultures in the region, the word “dog” is used as a severe street insult to strip a target of dignity, though it sits alongside terms like “savages” or “barbarians”.
The Term Used in Palestinian Discourse
According to documentation on the dehumanization of Jews and Israelis in Palestinian discourse, the exact same insult is frequently used in reverse. In political op-eds, militant radio, and street-level rhetoric, Palestinian figures and combatants have historically referred to Israelis or Jews as “dogs” or “wolves”. For example, recordings from Hamas-led militants during attacks have captured fighters using the phrase “Jewish dogs” to mock and degrade captives.
Underlying Context
Cultural Gravity: In Arabic and Hebrew slang, calling someone a dog implies they are untrustworthy, dirty, or subhuman. Because of its weight, it is deployed as an active weapon of verbal degradation.
Systemic Concern: Human rights organizations frequently warn that when public figures or military personnel rely on animal metaphors (“beasts,” “rats,” “dogs”), it lowers the barrier to violence and normalizes harsh treatment of civilian populations on both sides.
Who Owns Israel’s National Debt?
FEB 27, 2026,
Israel’s national debt has surged to historic levels. By the end of 2024, total government debt reached NIS 1.33 trillion — roughly $364 billion — pushing the debt-to-GDP ratio from 61.3 per cent to 69 per cent in a single year. The Gaza and Lebanon wars consumed an estimated NIS 100 billion ($28 billion) in direct war-related costs in 2024 alone, within a total defence expenditure of NIS 169 billion. The 2025 Knesset-approved defence budget initially stood at a record NIS 109.8 billion, later supplemented by a further NIS 30.8 billion to cover the costs of the Iran conflict. Yet the question most commentators neglect is not how much Israel owes, but to whom.
The answer reveals an intricate architecture of domestic institutional power, diaspora loyalty, and global capital market confidence that together constitute what might be called Israel’s “financial Iron Dome.”
The Domestic Backbone
The overwhelming majority of Israel’s sovereign debt is held domestically. During 2024, the state raised NIS 278 billion, of which 79 per cent was raised through Israel’s domestic bond market. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, Israel has raised NIS 360 billion in total — NIS 272 billion domestically and NIS 83 billion from international markets. The ratio tells the story: roughly three-quarters of wartime financing has come from Israeli institutions and savers.
At the heart of this domestic absorption capacity are Israeli pension funds, provident funds, and insurance companies. By mid-2024, total assets managed by Israeli institutional investors exceeded NIS 2.5 trillion. Government bonds and short-term Treasury bills (Makam) held by these institutions stood at approximately NIS 1.02 trillion in the first quarter of 2024 alone. Israeli workers saving for retirement are, whether they know it or not, the single largest creditors of the Israeli state. Every shekel deducted from a payslip in Haifa or Herzliya finds its way, at least in part, into the government’s war chest.
This is not unique to Israel — most advanced economies finance the majority of their debt domestically. But in Israel’s case, the concentration is notable given the country’s relatively small population of under 10 million. The depth and sophistication of the domestic capital market is, as the Accountant General’s office has acknowledged, what enables the state to raise debt on a massive scale even during wartime.
The Diaspora Channel
Then there is the unique institution of Israel Bonds — formally, the Development Corporation for Israel. Conceived by David Ben-Gurion in the aftermath of the 1948 war, Israel Bonds was designed to channel Jewish diaspora capital directly into the Israeli treasury. Cumulative worldwide sales have now exceeded $55 billion since the program’s inception in 1951.
These are not ordinary bonds. They are non-tradeable, held to maturity, and sold primarily through community networks, synagogues, and Jewish organizational channels in the United States, Canada, and Europe. In wartime, sales spike dramatically. In the first four weeks after October 7, 2023, several US states alone invested $300 million. By November 2023, a record-breaking $1 billion had been purchased.
Over 90 US state and municipal pension and treasury funds have invested more than $3 billion in Israel Bonds to date. The New York state retirement fund holds over $350 million; Ohio’s state treasury and counties collectively hold over $300 million. The buyer base has expanded well beyond the American Jewish community to include corporations, insurance companies, universities, foundations, and unions. Israel Bonds thus represents a fascinating hybrid: part sovereign debt instrument, part expression of political solidarity, part community investment vehicle.
For the finance scholar, Israel Bonds embodies what we might call a “loyalty premium” — investors accept below-market liquidity (the bonds cannot be resold) partly because the act of purchase carries ideological and communal meaning beyond pure yield maximization. This is rational behavior when utility is defined broadly enough to include identity and belonging.
The International Capital Markets
The third pillar is conventional sovereign borrowing in global capital markets. In early January 2026, Israel completed a landmark $6 billion international bond offering — its first since the Gaza ceasefire — in three tranches of 5-, 10-, and 30-year maturities. Demand reached $36 billion, six times the amount actually sold, from over 300 institutional investors across more than 30 countries.
The underwriters read like a roll call of Wall Street royalty: Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan. Spreads over comparable US Treasuries narrowed to between 90 and 125 basis points — a 34 per cent improvement on the 2024 issuance and a return to pre-war levels.
Perhaps most striking was the participation of sovereign wealth funds from Abraham Accords countries. Gulf-based funds entered not through small satellite vehicles but through their flagship investment arms. During one investor presentation, a senior Gulf fund manager reportedly interrupted Israeli officials with the words: “We know everything. We’ve done our research.” The geopolitics of the Abraham Accords, it turns out, have a bond market expression.
This international appetite persists despite credit downgrades from all three major rating agencies during 2024, and despite the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 advisory opinion urging states to avoid economic relations linked to the occupied Palestinian territories. Capital, as always, follows its own logic.
The US Government Guarantee
Underpinning the entire structure is the US Loan Guarantees Program, which since 2003 has underwritten up to $3 billion per year of Israeli government borrowing. While the direct financial benefit has diminished as Israel’s own credit standing improved over the decades, the program functions as a sovereign backstop — a signal to global markets that Washington stands behind Israeli debt.
The Political Economy of Debt Ownership
Who owns a nation’s debt is never merely a financial question. It is a question about political accountability, strategic vulnerability, and the distribution of risk.
Israel’s debt structure — overwhelmingly domestic, supplemented by diaspora loyalty bonds, and topped up by enthusiastic international institutional demand — provides remarkable insulation from the kind of sovereign debt crises that have devastated other nations. There is no single foreign creditor capable of exerting leverage. There is no hostile government that can dump Israeli bonds to trigger a financial panic. The risk is distributed across millions of Israeli pension savers, tens of thousands of diaspora households, and hundreds of the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors.
But this insulation comes with a domestic cost. When 79 per cent of new debt is absorbed locally, Israeli savers bear the concentration risk. Their retirement savings are disproportionately exposed to the fiscal consequences of prolonged military campaigns, credit downgrades, and the economic contraction that saw GDP shrink by nearly 5 per cent in the second quarter of 2025 during the Iran conflict. The Israeli worker saving for retirement in Petah Tikva is, in effect, lending to the state to finance operations in Gaza — whether or not that worker supports the war.
The debt-to-GDP ratio is forecast to continue rising, potentially reaching the vicinity of 72 per cent by 2030. Israel’s total financing needs for 2026 alone are estimated at around NIS 200 billion. As long as the domestic capital market remains deep, the diaspora remains loyal, and international investors remain confident, the system holds. But each of these pillars rests on assumptions — about economic growth, about political stability, about the continuation of American strategic backing — that are not immutable.
The question “Who owns Israel’s national debt?” ultimately becomes “Who bears the cost if things go wrong?” The answer, for now, is overwhelmingly Israeli citizens themselves — through their pension funds, their savings, and their taxes. It is the most intimate form of war finance: a nation borrowing from its own future.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/who-owns-israels-national-debt/
Leila Shahid shares her perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Thierry Ardisson’s sho…
Update 2026/6/19
Woher kommt der linke Antisemitismus?
VON MARX BIS „DIE LINKE“ :
Linker Antisemitismus hat tiefe Wurzeln
Frankfurter Allgemeine, Gastbeitrag von Jochen Staadt, 19.06.2026
Teile der Linkspartei sehen sich Antisemitismusvorwürfen ausgesetzt. Der real existierende Zionismus war schon im „real existierenden Sozialismus“ ein problematischer Topos.
Photo: 1978, „Woche der Solidarität mit dem Kampf der antiimperialistischen Kräfte im Nahen Osten für Frieden und sozialen Fortschritt“: Honecker und Arafat
Die Linke hat ein Antisemitismusproblem. Etliche prominente Mitglieder traten deswegen in den vergangenen Monaten aus der Partei aus. Unter ihnen sind der ehemalige Berliner Kultursenator und Landesvorsitzende Klaus Lederer, die frühere Sozialsenatorin Elke Breitenbach, der langjährige Landesgeschäftsführer Carsten Schatz und der frühere Bausenator Sebastian Scheel.
Im März verließ auch der Brandenburger Antisemitismusbeauftragte Andreas Büttner die Linkspartei nach antiisraelischen Beschlüssen ihres niedersächsischen Landesverbandes. Dietmar Bartsch, Gregor Gysi und Bodo Ramelow regierten mit einer Stellungnahme: „Wir wehren uns entschieden gegen Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten in unserer Partei und deren Umfeld, die sich antizionistisch nennen und eigentlich meinen, Israel solle von der Landkarte verschwinden.“
Karl Marx zur „Judenfrage“
Allerdings setzt der aktuelle linke Antisemitismus auf antijüdische Traditionsbestände auf, die weiter zurückreichen als der Zionismus. Bereits Karl Marx, der selbst aus einem rabbinischen Elternhaus stammte, bediente antisemitische Klischees. 1844 schrieb er „zur Judenfrage“: „Die gesellschaftliche Emanzipation des Juden ist die Emanzipation der Gesellschaft vom Judentum“ und „die Emanzipation vom Schacher und vom Geld, also vom praktischen, realen Judentum wäre die Selbstemanzipation unsrer Zeit“. Hannah Arendt ordnete die Äußerungen von Marx dem linken Antisemitismus zu.
Der marxistische Historiker Franz Mehring rechtfertigte 1898 in seiner „Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie“ die Judenschrift von Marx mit den Worten, „gerade auch in der Trierer Gegend wütete der jüdische Wucher und erwürgte die kleinen Bauern mit den raffinierten Methoden, die ihm in dem feudalen Verwerfungsprozeß des östlichen Europas angewachsen waren“. Obwohl Mehring kein bekennender Antisemit war, wimmelt es in seinen Schriften von antisemitischen Zuschreibungen. Da ist vom „Geldjuden“ die Rede, von der „Geldoligarchie“, die eine „kosmopolitische Profitjagd“ betreibt, vom „parasitischen Schacher“ und der „schmutzigen Form des jüdischen Schachers“. Dessen „Schlacken“ meint er auch beim sozialdemokratischen Gründervater Ferdinand Lassalle zu entdecken, dessen Sprache er als „stark angemauschelt“ bezeichnet.
Wo Nazis der KPD Beifall zollten
In der KPD der Weimarer Republik finden sich weitere deutliche Spuren des linken Antisemitismus. Arthur Rosenberg, selbst jüdischer Herkunft, erhielt als Reichstagsabgeordneter der KPD für seine Verbalattacken gegen das „jüdische Großkapital“ den Beifall der Nationalsozialisten. So, als er sich im Reichstag am 24. Juli 1924 darüber mokierte, dass der amerikanische Großbankier Strauß in Bayern wie ein Fürst empfangen wurde, um zu erläutern, „wie amerikanische Großbanken die bayerischen Schiffahrtswege ausgestalten würden“.
Die bayerische Regierungspartei, „die stets ihre patriotischen Phrasen hinausschmettert, ist sehr froh, wenn sich das amerikanische jüdische Großkapital in Bayern einnistet. Ich hoffe, daß wenigstens die Herren Völkischen in Bayern gegen dieses Treiben Opposition machen werden. (Zustimmung bei den Nationalsozialisten.) Meine Herren Völkischen, man muß ja sagen, daß Sie in manchen Dingen einen ganz guten Willen haben. Aber was Sie tun, ist alles halb, Ihnen fehlen die richtigen Taten auch gegen das jüdische Kapital.“
Arthur Rosenberg entzweite sich 1927 mit der KPD. Nach dem Machtantritt der „Völkischen“ verließ er Deutschland. Seine Untersuchung über „Entstehung und Geschichte der Weimarer Republik“ wurde zu einem geschichtswissenschaftlichen Standardwerk.
„Jüdische Lausebengels“, sagten KPD-Parteifreunde
Antisemitische Ressentiments unter KPD-Mitgliedern trafen unter anderen Albert Norden. Er war ein zum Kommunismus konvertierter Rabbinersohn und späteres Mitglied im SED-Politbüro, der als junger Mann auf dem linksmilitanten Flügel der KPD im Ruhrgebiet Karriere machte. Beobachter der Essener Polizei registrierten 1930, wie ältere KPD-Funktionäre gegen Norden und seinen Freund Alexander Abusch Stimmung machten, indem sie sich im vertrauten Kreis über die „jüdischen Lausebengels“ mokierten, „die mit so großen Vollmachten ausgestattet“ seien.
Hintergründig muss das auch Albert Norden wahrgenommen haben, thematisiert hat er es nicht. Im Gegenteil. Er distanzierte sich 1926 in einem wüsten Artikel „gegen den Zionismus“ radikal von jeder eigenständigen jüdischen Interessenvertretung. Er polemisierte gegen die „jüdische Hochfinanz Amerikas“ und bezeichnete die Zionisten „als Adjutanten der Weltreaktion“. Nur in der Sowjetunion werde wirklich für „die Verwurzelung der entwurzelten“ Juden gearbeitet. „Dort gibt es keinen Pogrom, keine Unterdrückung der Juden mehr.“ Dieses Glaubensbekenntnis blieb für Norden auch zu DDR-Zeiten sakrosankt, als er längst erlebt hatte, wie es zu antisemitischen Prozessen und Säuberungen in der Sowjetunion, der CSSR, Ungarn und der DDR gekommen war.
Sowjetadministration beendete die Entnazifizierung
Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg lebten in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone noch etwa zwei Millionen ehemalige NSDAP-Mitglieder. Die sowjetische Militäradministration beendete 1948 per Befehl die Entnazifizierung. Einfache NSDAP-Mitglieder durften fortan in die SED aufgenommen werden, das geschah rasch und lautlos. Im Dezember 1947 sprach das SED-Politbüromitglied Anton Ackermann, der ein Jahr zuvor den „besonderen deutschen Weg zum Sozialismus“ verkündet hatte, vor SED-Funktionären über die Integration ehemaliger Nazis. Nationalsozialisten der Jahrgänge ab 1919 sollten mit dem Argument für die SED gewonnen werden, dass der Faschismus „den sogenannten deutschen Sozialismus“ nicht verwirklichen konnte. „Aber das, was der Faschismus nicht verwirklichen konnte“, werde „der wissenschaftliche Sozialismus verwirklichen.“
Während die SED sich so mit ehemaligen NSDAP-Leuten arrangierte, wuchs das Misstrauen gegen die wenigen in der SBZ/DDR lebenden Juden, die den Holocaust überlebt hatten. Dieses Misstrauen richtete sich selbst gegen Parteimitglieder jüdischer Herkunft, die dem Glauben ihrer Vorfahren abgeschworen hatten. Sie standen unter Kosmopolitismusverdacht, nicht zuletzt weil sie in aller Welt Freunde und Verwandte hatten, die aus Deutschland geflohen waren. In den internen SED-Personalunterlagen, den sogenannten Kaderakten, schlug sich das in der Eintragung „Jude“ nieder. Die wenigen überlebenden Juden in den Gemeinden der sowjetischen Besatzungszone sahen sich neuen Pressionen ausgesetzt. Viele flohen in den Westen. Zwischen 1946 und 1952 ging die Mitgliederzahl der jüdischen Gemeinden von 2094 auf 977 zurück.
Für die SED war Antizionismus Staatsdoktrin
Der DDR-Staatssicherheitsdienst definierte zu dieser Zeit Zionismus als „die Erwartung, einmal in die alte Heimat Palästina zurückzukehren, wieder ein Volk zu werden und die Weltherrschaft anzutreten“. Für die SED war Antizionismus Staatsdoktrin. Wiedergutmachungszahlen an Israel lehnte sie strikt ab. Das ehemalige SED-Politbüromitglied Paul Merker, der bereits im Exil eine Entschädigung jüdischer NS-Opfer befürwortet hatte, wurde aus der Partei ausgeschlossen und 1952 unter Vorwänden im MfS-Gefängnis Berlin-Hohenschönhausen inhaftiert. Das DDR-Außenministerium bezeichnete 1953 die Forderung, ebenso wie die Bundesrepublik eine finanzielle Wiedergutmachung an Israel zu zahlen, als „zügellose Hetze gegen die DDR“.
Als der Schriftsteller und PEN-Präsident Arnold Zweig 1959 unter dem Eindruck antisemitischer Wandschmierereien in Westdeutschland darum bemüht war, in der DDR eine Wiederveröffentlichung seines 1919 für die „Weltbühne“ geschriebenen Essays „Die antisemitische Welle“ zu erreichen, schrieb er im März 1959 an Albert Norden und bat um eine Neuveröffentlichung seiner Überlegungen aus dem Jahr 1919.
Doch das war für den Politbüromann Norden unannehmbar, denn Zweig forderte in dem Essay: „Das jüdische Volk erhält ein Land, sein Land: Palästina.“ In Deutschland könne eine „redliche und vertrauliche Symbiose“ verwirklicht werden, wenn ein „Zusammenleben auf der reinlichen und klaren Erkenntnis der Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten und des beiderseitigen guten Willens“ möglich gemacht würde, und zwar ohne dass sich die deutschen Juden von dem „jüdischen Volke und seinem neuzubauenden Hause“ Palästina abzutrennen hätten. Genau dies aber beabsichtigte die SED, eine Loslösung der in der DDR lebenden Juden von Israel.
„Völlig assimilieren“
Norden antwortete, in dem Essay Zweigs werde die entscheidende Rolle des Finanzkapitals bei der Organisierung und Finanzierung der antisemitischen Bewegung vernachlässigt, und es würden vor allem die psychologischen Momente des Antisemitismus betont. Das aber könne „uns in die Position desjenigen bringen, der wider Willen Wasser auf die antisemitischen Mühlen gießt (Neid auf die Überlegenheit des Juden als Händler oder geistiger Mensch)“.
Er halte das Thema für anachronistisch. „Die jüdische Schicht, um die es in Ihren Aufsätzen geht, existiert doch in Deutschland gar nicht mehr, sie wurde sozial und größtenteils physisch vernichtet. Hat es noch Sinn das Problem aufzurollen?“ Es gebe wohl DDR-Bürger, „deren Köpfe oft noch in der alten Zeit“ befangen seien, während „die Hände schon im Sozialismus tätig sind“. Mit der klassenlosen Gesellschaft, der die DDR entgegengehe, würden sich aber „die paar Tausend Juden bei uns völlig assimilieren“.
Unter der Verantwortung Albert Nordens verschärfte die SED-Propaganda in den Sechzigerjahren ihre Angriffe auf Israel. Einen traurigen Höhepunkt erreichte die antiisraelische DDR-Kampagne nach dem Junikrieg im Jahr 1967. Als nach dem Kriegsbeginn im DDR-Radio ein Beitrag „über die Hintergründe des aggressiven Staates Israel“ vorbereitet wurde, in dem Israel als „Vorposten des Weltimperialismus“ gegen die arabischen Staaten entlarvt werden sollte, weigerte sich der Moderator Gerhard Leo, der in der Résistance gegen die Wehrmacht gekämpft hatte, den Wortlaut zu verlesen. Wie ein Stasispitzel berichtete, bezeichnete Leo den Beitrag als „antizionistisch und damit antisemitisch“. Es sei ja bekannt, schrieb der Spitzel, dass Leo jüdischer Abstammung ist. Schlussbemerkung: „Angeblich soll Gerhard Leo Verwandte in Israel haben.“
Anti-Israel-Erklärung
Das „Neue Deutschland“ veröffentlichte am 9. Juni 1967 eine „Erklärung jüdischer Bürger“. Darin heißt es: „Nach allen schrecklichen Lehren der Vergangenheit genügte es den Machthabern Israels nicht, ein verhängnisvolles und widernatürliches Bündnis mit den Imperialisten einzugehen, sondern darüber hinaus arbeiten sie noch offen mit den Nazimördern des jüdischen Volkes, mit den westdeutschen Imperialisten in Bonn auf das allerengste zusammen.“
SED-Akten belegen, dass Arnold Zweig und einige andere prominente Juden es abgelehnt hatten, diese von Albert Norden dem SED-Politbüro am 7. Juni 1967 vorgelegte Stellungnahme zu unterschreiben. Norden informierte darüber sogleich den SED-Chef Walter Ulbricht, dass unter anderem der Vizepräsident des PEN-Zentrums, Schriftsteller Heinz Kamnitzer, der Schriftsteller und Maler Peter Edel und auch der Vorsitzende des Verbands der Jüdischen Gemeinden Helmut Aris nicht unterschreiben wollten. „Arnold Zweig hat rundheraus erklärt, daß er mit dem Inhalt der Erklärung prinzipiell nicht einverstanden ist. Das ist angesichts seiner althergebrachten prozionistischen Einstellung nicht erstaunlich.“
Unterschrieben hatten schließlich nur elf halbwegs prominente DDR-Bürger jüdischer Herkunft wie das ZK-Mitglied Lea Grundig, Rechtsanwalt Friedrich Karl Kaul oder der Maler Wolfgang Frankenstein. Kein Mitglied der kleinen jüdischen Gemeinden in der DDR fand sich bereit, die Anti-Israel-Erklärung zu unterschreiben.
Am 6. September 1972 schrieb das „Neue Deutschland“ über die Geiselnahme israelischer Sportler während der Münchner Olympiade, „eine Gruppe mit Maschinenpistolen bewaffneter Terroristen“ sei in das olympische Dorf eingedrungen. Doch schon am folgenden Tag machte das SED-Zentralorgan aus den Terroristen „Freischärler“, und die DDR-Mannschaft boykottierte am selben Tag die olympische Trauerfeier für die getöteten israelischen Sportler.
Stasiberichte über jüdische Genossen
Der Verdacht, dass insbesondere jüdische Intellektuelle das Gift der westlichen Moderne in das sozialistische Lager einschleppen könnten, führte nicht nur zu stalinistischen Schauprozessen gegen Kommunisten jüdischer Herkunft in Ungarn und der Tschechoslowakei, er zog auch im politischen Alltag der SED und ihrer Sicherheitsorgane eine besondere Behandlung von Personen mit jüdischen Wurzeln und Verwandten nach sich.
Das Schriftgut der SED und des MfS enthält dafür zahllose Beispiele. So etwa ein Bericht des MfS vom 25. Juni 1952: „Die Eltern der Frau des Gen. Haid sind Israeliten, die im Elsass gelebt haben und sich jetzt schon einige Jahre in Palästina befinden. Die Eltern schreiben regelmäßig aus Palästina. In der letzten Zeit verkehrt bei dem Gen. Haid ein junger Mensch – schwarzes Haar, Brillenträger, israelitischer Typ – der meist mehrere Tage dort schläft und dann wieder eine Zeitlang verschwindet und wieder auftaucht.“
Ein MfS-Agent berichtete 1953 über einen CIA-Offizier in Westberlin, Kirschbaum spreche Wiener Dialekt „und ist nach meiner Vermutung Jude“. Über den Vorsitzenden der Jüdischen Gemeinde in Halle, Hermann Baden, der das KZ Theresienstadt überlebt hatte, heißt es in einem MfS-Dossier, er sei ein „typischer Jude“, der nur „die materiellen Vorteile“ sähe. Ein MfS-Dokument über einen Beamten im Westberliner Strafvollzug aus dem Jahr 1970 enthält den Hinweis: „Macht Unterschiede zwischen kriminellen und politischen Häftlingen. Sorgt für bevorzugte Behandlung der politischen Häftlinge. Jude. Sehr hinterhältig.“ Ein Kadervermerk vom 24. Januar 1972 über einen Oberst des Staatssicherheitsdienstes: „Vater war Jude und hatte ein Konfektionsgeschäft“.
In einem Untersuchungsvorgang gegen den polnischen Fotografen Antoni Ulikowski, der in der DDR arbeitete, listete die Arbeitsgruppe Ausländer des Staatssicherheitsdienstes im Jahr 1980 dessen Bekanntenkreis auf. Ulikowski pflegte demzufolge 32 „Feindkontakte“ zu westlichen Journalisten, Mitgliedern der jüdischen Gemeinde und Personen aus Israel, die jeweils als „Jude“, „Jüdin“, „polnische Jüdin“, „polnischer Jude“ oder „Mitglied der jüdischen Gemeinde“ gekennzeichnet sind. In zahlreichen Berichten über den Fotografen wurde stets hervorgehoben, welche seiner Verwandten „jüdisch“ verheiratet sind.
Die Legende vom antifaschistischen Staat
Im Oktober 1978 wandte sich Albert Norden nach längerer Abwesenheit wegen eines Schlaganfalls an Erich Honecker und regte an, am 9. und 10. November dieses Jahres zum vierzigsten Jahrestag der berüchtigten „Kristallnacht“, dem „Auftakt für den Versuch der Ausrottung der jüdischen Bevölkerung“, eine Erklärung des „Komitees der antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer“ in Zusammenarbeit mit der jüdischen Gemeinde herauszugeben, „in der nachgewiesen wird, daß wir zusammen mit dem Nazismus auch den Geist des Antisemitismus ausgerottet haben“.
Aus einer Information der Bezirksparteikontrollkommission Dresden geht hingegen hervor, dass sich dort im Frühsommer 1977 über dreißig „politische Vorkommnisse“ von „Verherrlichungen faschistischer Symbole und Verbreitung faschistischen Gedankengutes (Gedichte und Lieder auf Hitler, Austausch faschistischer Literatur)“ ereignet hatten.
Unterdessen rüstete der SED-Staat die Gegner Israels im Nahen Osten mit Waffen aller Art aus und lud palästinensische „Militärkader“ zur Ausbildung in die DDR ein. Bis dahin hatte die DDR Waffen und Munition in Höhe von 11,4 Millionen Valutamark nach Syrien geliefert. Erich Honecker sagte am 10. März 1982 zu seinem Staatsgast Yassir Arafat: „Was die Waffenfrage betrifft, so können wir nur das liefern, was wir selbst produzieren. Leider haben wir da keine größere Produktion. Das ist mit Ihrer Militärdelegation besprochen.“
Er habe am Vortag mit DDR-Verteidigungsminister „Genossen Hoffmann gesprochen. Auf dem Gebiet der panzerbrechenden Waffen gibt es bei uns eine Produktion. Im Kampf gegen die israelischen Streitkräfte stehen natürlich panzerbrechende Waffen im Vordergrund. Diese Waffen sind durchaus in der Lage, israelische Panzer zu durchschlagen. Ich habe mir einmal angesehen, wie das vor sich geht. Ich hätte nie gedacht, daß diese Dinger durch so dicke Panzer hindurchgehen. Das sind Spezialgeschosse. Dazu kommen dann noch andere Fragen, so Fragen der Entfernungsmessung mit Hilfe von Laser.“
Israels Feinde wurden aufgerüstet und militärisch ausgebildet
Kurz nach Arafats Besuch in der DDR nahm die Terrororganisation Abu Nidals mit dem DDR-Konsul in Bagdad Kontakt auf, wie aus Informationen von PLO-Sicherheitsorganen hervorgeht, die der Stasi-Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung übermittelt wurden. Demnach „führte die DDR in der ersten Hälfte des Jahres 1984 den ersten militärischen Lehrgang für die Abu-Nidal-Gruppe durch“.
Zu diesem Zeitpunkt gingen bereits zahlreiche Anschläge auf das Konto dieser Terrororganisation, darunter 1980 ein Anschlag auf eine Gruppe jüdischer Kinder an einer Bushaltestelle in Antwerpen, bei dem ein Fünfzehnjähriger ums Leben kam. Abu-Nidal-Terroristen ermordeten 1981 den Präsidenten der „Österreichisch-Israelischen Gesellschaft“ Heinz Nittel und verübten wenige Monate später einen Anschlag auf die Wiener Hauptsynagoge, bei dem zwei Personen getötet und 17 weitere verletzt wurden.
Im selben Jahr wurde der israelische Botschafter in London Schlomo Argov durch Abu-Nidal-Attentäter schwer verletzt. 1982 verübten Abu Nidals Leute einen Anschlag auf die Große Synagoge von Rom, wobei ein Kind ums Leben kam und zehn Besucher verletzt wurden.
Ebenso wie Abu Nidals Leute konnten sich auch andere Organisatoren von Terroranschlägen gegen Israel in die DDR zurückziehen, darunter Ramirez-Sanchez Illich, Deckname „Carlos“, und Wadi Haddad, verantwortlich für mehrere Flugzeugentführungen durch die „Volksfront zur Befreiung Palästinas“. Haddad starb 1978 während einer Behandlung in der Charité.
Der Altnazi Klenner und Netanjahus Rolle bei seiner Enttarnung
Der DDR-Delegierte in der UN-Menschenrechtskommission, Hermann Klenner, forderte am 8. Februar 1984, Israel „im Interesse des Weltfriedens“ aus der Organisation auszuschließen. Im Bonner Auswärtigen Amt traf unmittelbar danach die Mitteilung aus New York ein, Israels UN-Botschafter Benjamin Netanjahu liege die NSDAP-Mitgliedskarte Klenners aus dem Berlin Document Center vor. Der israelische Vertreter in der Genfer Menschenrechtskommission, Ephraim Dowek, erklärte zwei Tage nach Klenners antiisraelischer Polemik, dieser habe offenbar seinen Hass gegen Juden aus der NS-Zeit nun in Hass auf den Judenstaat überführt.
Vor allem aus wirtschaftlichen Erwägungen sah sich die SED-Führung seit Mitte der Achtzigerjahre gezwungen, ihre Haltung gegenüber jüdischen Ansprüchen auf Rückerstattung des in der NS-Zeit enteigneten Eigentums zu überdenken. Die Vereinigten Staaten weigerten sich, ohne eine diesbezügliche Regelung ihre Wirtschaftsbeziehungen mit der DDR auszubauen und die Meistbegünstigung zu gewähren. Das DDR-Außenministerium riet der SED-Führung 1987 in einem Maßnahmenkatalog dringend dazu, die Vermögensverhandlungen mit der Jewish Claims Conference weiterzuführen.
Ein Jahr später meldete der DDR-Staatssicherheitsdienst eine „öffentliche Herabwürdigung“ durch Fußballanhänger der SG Dynamo Dresden auf dem Berliner Alexanderplatz. Demnach rief die Gruppe am 6. April 1988 auf dem Weg vom Brunnen der Völkerfreundschaft zum Fernsehturm mehrfach „Juden raus aus Berlin, Berlin, Scheiß Ost-Berlin. Berlin gehört zu West-Berlin. Judenschweine!“ Zu diesem Zeitpunkt beteiligten sich in der DDR nur noch rund 400 Personen aktiv am jüdischen Gemeindeleben.
Honecker, Galinski, Arafat
Am 8. Juni 1988 traf Erich Honecker mit Heinz Galinksi zusammen, dem Vorsitzenden des Zentralrates der Juden in Deutschland und der Jüdischen Gemeinde Westberlins. Die beiden waren letztmals 1945 zusammengetroffen, Galinski hatte damals den ersten Ausweis des Magistrats von Groß-Berlin für Honecker ausgestellt.
Im ersten Teil der Unterredung sprach Galinksi über „die politische Kultur in beiden Teilen Deutschlands“ und erwähnte dabei auch die Ausschreitungen von Skinheads in der DDR. Auf seine Bemerkung, diesem Problem sei bisher nicht genügend Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt worden, antwortete Honecker, in der DDR würden Rassismus und Antisemitismus, schon von der Verfassung her, in jeder Beziehung verurteilt. Mit dem Hinweis auf neofaschistische Gruppen in Westdeutschland wich er sodann dem Skinhead-Thema aus.
Galinski begrüßte die Bildung eines Internationalen Kuratoriums und die Gründung einer Stiftung für den Wiederaufbau der Berliner Synagoge in der Oranienburger Straße und betonte, er wolle dazu gerne einen wesentlichen Teil beitragen. Er bat, den Ton in den DDR-Medien gegenüber Israel zu mäßigen. Er stelle eine gewisse Einseitigkeit, eine Vorverurteilung fest. Erich Honecker ging darauf nicht ein, versicherte Galinski aber, „die DDR billige nicht den Anspruch, Israel ins Meer zu werfen. Auch gegenüber Yassir Arafat habe er sich dafür eingesetzt, Maß zu halten“.
Arafat kam drei Monate später nach Ostberlin und schilderte Honecker die Kampfführung der Intifada in den besetzten Gebieten. Es würden dabei auf Anordnung der PLO nur Brandflaschen und Steine eingesetzt. Schwere Waffen sollten nur außerhalb der besetzten Gebiete zum Einsatz kommen, da die Israelis in den besetzten Gebieten in dieser Hinsicht überlegen seien. Das Gesprächsprotokoll verzeichnet darauf keinen Maßhalte-Appell Honeckers.
Und wie verhält sich die Linkspartei dazu?
Teile der Linkspartei haben sich inzwischen ihrer Wurzeln und der damit verbundenen antiisraelischen SED-Politik besonnen. Unter der Überschrift „Ablehnung des Zionismus“ beschuldigte die niedersächsische Linke kürzlich in einem Parteitagsbeschluss Israel, es verübe in Gaza und anderen Gebieten Völkermord an Palästinensern. Einer solchen Diktion bediente sich Honecker bereits 1982 in einem Solidaritätsschreiben an Arafat, in dem er einen „seit langem von Israel und den aggressivsten Kreisen des USA-Imperialismus geplanten Mord- und Ausrottungsfeldzug gegen das palästinensische und libanesische Volk“ anprangerte.
Nach öffentlicher und innerparteilicher Kritik korrigierte der niedersächsische Linksparteivorstand die Antragsüberschrift „Ablehnung des Zionismus“ in „Die Linke Niedersachsens lehnt den heute real existierenden Zionismus ab“. Honecker bezeichnete seit 1973 seinen SED-Staat als den „real existierenden Sozialismus“. Das dürfte in der SED-Tochterpartei noch bekannt sein. Somit ist klar, was mit dem „heute real existierenden Zionismus“ gemeint ist. Für das Existenzrecht Israels spricht sich der Antrag auch folgerichtig nicht aus.
Für den Bundesparteitag von „Die Linke“ in dieser Woche liegen unterschiedliche Anträge zum Thema vor. In einigen erscheint Israel als „imperialistische“ Macht, die „Völkermord an den Palästinenser:innen“ betreibe und gemeinsam mit den USA „Vernichtungsfantasien gegenüber der iranischen, libanesischen oder palästinensischen Bevölkerung“ hege. Andererseits beschwört ein von weit über hundert Mitgliedern und 15 Bundestagsabgeordneten eingereichter Antrag die „Solidarität mit Jüdinnen und Juden“.
Der Parteivorstand versucht, die widerstreitenden Positionen mit einem eigenen Antrag unter einen Hut zu bringen. Er wendet sich gegen Waffenlieferungen für Israel, bezeichnet die Bundesregierung als „am Krieg beteiligte Mittäterin“, fordert einen palästinensischen Staat mit Ostjerusalem als Hauptstadt und gesteht dem Judenstaat eine Existenz in den Grenzen von 1967 zu. Der Potsdamer Parteitag wird zeigen, wohin die linken antizionistischen Winde wehen.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/woher-kommt-der-linke-antisemitismus-accg-200757656.html
איתמר בן גביר
@itamarbengvir
על כל דמעה של אמא ישראלית, אלף אמהות לבנוניות צריכות לבכות. לבנון כולה צריכה לבעור!
עם כל הכבוד לאמריקאים, ישראל חייבת להבהיר לעולם כולו שדם בנינו וביטחון אזרחנו איננו הפקר. לבנון כולה צריכה לבעור. חובתנו העליונה היא להגן על אזרחי ישראל ועל חיילי צה״ל, והמחויבות הזו קודמת לכל שיקול אחר.
אמרתי לראש הממשלה, גם בישיבות בינינו: על כל דמעה של אמא ישראלית, אלף אימהות לבנוניות צריכות לבכות.
מספיק עם הפינג־פונג. במזרח התיכון לא מנצחים בתגובות מדודות ובהכלה – צריך להשתגע. למחוק. להכריע את הטרור.
4:02 PM · Jun 19, 2026·8.5M Views
For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!
With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration.
I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep.
Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.
https://x.com/itamarbengvir/status/2067865510281170957
We are not suppose to refer to Trump supporters as stupid even as Trump himself relies on their stupidity and their inability to reason is proven every day. There is nothing he does they will not defend. No proof of his wrong doing is enough for them to even consider changing their minds. And these are the people we are suppose to hold a rational conversation with and cannot vilify.
I just try to remember that as far as intelligence goes, half the country is below average. The part I can’t reconcile is their complete lack of integrity and not caring about right vs wrong. I need to listen to Michelle’s speech again.
It’s a disorder common in cults and fanatical movements. Cognitive dissonance. We would likely agree on a definition of stupidity that fits them perfectly. 20 years I started an essay on finding a legal definition of stupidity, and different forms and causes of stupidity. But I think cognitive dissonance – where counter-factual evidence is staring at you in the face – is a form of stupidity. (I do like the idea of finding someone, or an action, or a belief – to be legally-stupid). Perhaps good name for a movie? LEGALLY STUPID.
I think rather than it’s that they can’t admit they were wrong, it is that they cannot admit they were so easily fooled, so they’re doubling down. I am assuming someday they will all have a common rationale for their stupidity that doesn’t include their duplicity.
After DT is long gone are these said Trump supporters still part of our community? Would they be seen as “stupid”.
I just conform to the idea that they are people with differing opinions than mine, and that’s OK.
I live in Texas.
I spend way too much time thinking about how this has all come to pass, how anyone could have voted for him once let alone twice. That some of them had voted for Obama is of no consequence to me. I am very happy to consciously not know any Trump supporters or to have anything to do with those who I know are. If people want to engage with them, go at it. I have no interest in doing so. They have contributed to the demise of my Country and the World. They can all go fuck themselves.
Sometimes the most simple explanation is the correct one. He and his cult following have been forever over-estimated.
I have done everything you have said with friends and family and people I do not know. Hundreds of them. Some them do have some intelligence but obviously not enough to make sane choices. All of them, regardless of intelligence or education have serious cognitive dissonance that won’t allow them to hear and understand facts as all of them simply dismiss easily found facts as fake or simply ignore them and continue with their own baseless rhetoric they repeat like parrots.
None of them believe they are fascists. All of them think Liberals are fascists. None of them believe they are bigots and homophobes. All of them believe liberals are racists. Most of them are card carrying Christian Nationalists. Most of them are gleeful at the cruelty perpetrated by this admin. Many of them are white supremacists. Significant numbers of them believe Nazi rhetoric even if they are not card carrying Nazis.
The more intelligent ones are only looking out for their own bottom line financially. They believe the old GOP line of less govt and fiscal responsibility but cannot see that there is no GOP and Trump has been terrible on all things financial and economy.
All of the above cannot see past their nose and recognize fascism that is not even trying to hide itself.
Yes, they are stupid. Smart people are not fascists.
Myth: “Some of them will have to switch their votes back to the Dems if we are to win the next election.” Zero evidence exists for this claim and its implications. Capitulation to MAGA, which is roughly 25% of voters, is both unnecessary and a mistake. Let them go.
It’s about the majority party Democrats turning out to vote. Period. When they do, they elect presidents. You can’t even blame MAGA for electing Trump. Blame the Democratic political purists who simply couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton and Harris.
Fox News is largely to blame for creating an actual cult.
Update 2026/6/28
“He Sees the Writing on the Wall”: How J.D. Vance Pivoted on Israel
Julia Ioffe, June 26, 2026

Last week, as Washington was melting down over the leaked contents of Donald Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran, Israelis were reacting in kind. Israel was not a party to the negotiations—hardly surprising, given Benjamin Netanyahu’s overt opposition to ending the conflict—but the Israelis were particularly irate on two fronts. Not only did the deal offer nothing on the issue of reining in Iran’s proxies, like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, but it also did something far worse: By accepting the Iranian framework that a ceasefire must include Israel and Hezbollah, the M.O.U. essentially relegated Israel to the status of a proxy, itself.
The shock and disillusionment ran especially deep because the betrayal came from the very same Trump administration officials that the Israelis had, until recently, perceived as their saviors. With the signing of the Iran M.O.U., Trump, J.D. Vance, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff “went from idols to outcasts” in Israel, said Eran Etzion, the former Israeli national security advisor. On the Israeli right, he told me, “they went from worshipping Trump and Vance to calling them traitors.”
Vance has not taken kindly to this. “I guess my response to them would be: What is your exact proposal?” he responded testily when Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times Opinion columnist, asked him about the Israeli reaction on a podcast episode last Wednesday. “You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.” Vance, who has described himself as one of Israel’s strongest defenders, went on to dismiss the Israeli fears as a “freak-out” and a “weird panic,” which he found “odd” given that “we’ve done a very good job by that particular country and that particular government.”
The following day, Vance continued the tongue-lashing. “Anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that the country is in,” Vance told reporters at the White House. Trump, he added, was “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.” He also scolded Israel for trying to sabotage the negotiations with Iran. “What the president gets a little frustrated with sometimes is that we seem to be right on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the agreement, and then all of a sudden, there’s a major explosion that goes off in a civilian population center in Beirut, and a lot of people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah lose their lives,” he said. “That is not acceptable.”
This was, on one hand, a familiar role for the vice president, who has made a habit of publicly dressing down allies, from his jaw-dropping 2025 speech to NATO allies in Munich to his Oval Office berating of Volodymyr Zelensky. But there is also something deeper at play. Once upon a time in American politics, frustrations with Israel—and there have always been many—were typically aired in private. After all, few politicians wanted to be perceived as anti-Israel by a public that broadly supported our ally. But after October 7 and the country’s retaliatory war in Gaza was broadcast to the world on social media, public sentiment started to shift. Progressives began denouncing Israel—and the right seized on their comments instantly, labeling critics of the war as antisemitic and leveraging those accusations as a pretext to go after liberal academia.
Which is why Vance’s scolding was so shocking. Had someone like Rep. Rashida Tlaib or Rep. Ilhan Omar uttered half of what Vance said, Republicans would have been apoplectic. (And in the past, they have been.) But this was Trump’s vice president, presumably speaking on behalf of the White House. And so while the usual Republican suspects chided Vance, most stayed silent, and Vance’s sharp words hung uncomfortably in the air.
“He Sees the Writing on the Wall”
It wasn’t always like this. In the Senate, Vance was known as solidly pro-Israel. He called Israel America’s “most important ally.” He said the alliance was deeper—”culturally, morally, politically”—than mere geostrategic shared interests. Vance even held up Biden’s State nominees for being too “woke,” including on Israel. For years, his right-hand man has been Jacob Reses, a staunchly pro-Israel Orthodox Jew who has continued to work for him at the White House. (Reses is leaving at the end of the summer.)
The shift toward publicly bashing Israel has surprised those who knew Vance in the before times. “This is not how he was in the Senate,” said someone who worked with Vance in the chamber. “He was super pro-Israel. I don’t ever remember him being even somewhat slightly critical.”
After Israel took the U.S. to war, however, public opinion on the country has soured across the political spectrum, and Vance is eyeing the presidency in 2028. “He sees the writing on the wall that an increasing fraction of America hates Israel,” one Trump administration official told me. “He’s trying to save his political future. J.D. very clearly knows that being anti-Israel is the most politically profitable thing to be right now. And now he gets to be the face of toughness to Israel.” A Trumpworld source contested this narrative. “The V.P. hasn’t shifted his position on Israel,” this source said. “He’s remained consistent. Anyone claiming a shift is inventing one.”
Vance has always had a preternatural talent, dating back to his Senate days, for political flexibility. “He doesn’t believe in anything,” one Senate G.O.P. leadership aide told me back then. “He will do whatever it takes to ascend the greasy pole.” And in the past year or so, as the Republican base has become increasingly skeptical (or hostile) of Israel, Vance has changed his tune. He was clued into the shift early, as I wrote last summer, by his best friend and confidante Charlie Kirk, who had been surveying young conservatives at Turning Point USA events about their views on Israel. Many were having a hard time squaring the circle of “America first always—except Israel.”
Shortly before his murder, Kirk and Megyn Kelly had vented on her podcast that they weren’t allowed to criticize Israel at all, even given their past support. Those comments, along with Kirk’s griping in private text messages about a Jewish donor cutting off support for TPUSA for not deplatforming Tucker Carlson, have since become the eye of a conspiracy hurricane, with Candace Owens alleging that Israel had Kirk assassinated. Vance has criticized Owens for “tormenting” Kirk’s family after his assassination, but he is also attuned to the deep well of resentment and suspicion toward Israel that has been working its way from the right-wing fringes into the mainstream. And ever since Trump decided to go to war against Iran, reportedly at Netanyahu’s urging, the Israel skepticism among young right-wing Americans has reached a fever pitch. Vance, it seems, is trying to capitalize on it—and, perhaps, to keep his Kirk-built base from abandoning him.
“America First, No Exception”
In recent weeks, word has spread around town that Vance has been regularly talking to Trita Parsi, the Swedish-Iranian co-founder of the Quincy Institute. The anti-interventionist think tank, which is funded by Charles Koch, bills itself as “transpartisan” and operates in that space between the ends of the political horseshoe—one that, these days, looks increasingly like a circle. When I asked him whether he speaks to the vice president, Parsi told me he didn’t want to get into all that, but he did say that “we’ve been talking to the administration since they first came into office, on a variety of different issues, including this one.” The Trumpworld source told me that “rumors that Mr. Parsi is advising the vice president are not accurate.” (Parsi, who has a history of making colorful comments about Iran and American Jews, has been a frequent target of Laura Loomer; Bari Weiss’s Free Press recently reported that the State Department was investigating Parsi, a green-card holder, and considering deporting him. The State Department quickly denied this.)
Parsi pointed me to a speech that Vance gave in the spring of 2024, before he became Trump’s running mate, at a conference that Quincy co-hosted with The American Conservative, the right-wing journal co-founded by Pat Buchanan. The speech, in Parsi’s telling, was partly a way for Vance—a representative of the restraint-oriented, realist school of Republican foreign policy—to explain why supporting Israel did not conflict with that view. “He was trying to justify that position,” Parsi said. “But this has become increasingly difficult to do. That cognitive dissonance broke down in the past year.”
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Parsi agreed that “if Ilhan or Rashida had said this, there would’ve been mayhem.” But, he explained, Vance’s criticism of Israel lands differently on the right, especially among its younger cohort. “What’s attractive to folks on the right is that they don’t want to see any exception to America First,” Parsi said. “It’s what elements of the right find so galling—that when they say, ‘America First, no exception,’ they mean no exception.”
What Vance is doing now, Parsi argued, is political cleanup for the White House—and for himself. “Vance’s base has a degree of disappointment with Vance that he didn’t stop the war,” he told me. “But now that he’s showing how he’s negotiating an end to the war, being critical of Israel—it plays well with the base.” And Vance’s criticism is also more nuanced than mere tongue-lashing, Parsi argued, suggesting that the vice president is attempting to place Israel on the same level as other U.S. allies, like the U.K. and France, which are similarly not immune from criticism. “This is his effort to de-exceptionalize the relationship,” Parsi said of Vance’s thinking. “It’s a demotion of the relationship with Israel. Among his base, it’s seen as a very positive thing.”
“The Great Convergence”
Vance, like Kirk before him, has repeatedly couched his critiques of Israel as a disagreement between close friends. And for allies of the vice president, as was the case with Kirk, this makes his criticism far more acceptable than the attacks coming from the left. Vance, of course, has never questioned Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state or to defend itself—though he has, of late, criticized the high civilian death tolls that occur when it does so. To them, Vance’s criticism of Israel should be seen in the context of his past support.
But some Jewish Republicans are not so sure. Suddenly, all those little things that had made them raise their eyebrows—when Vance didn’t mention Jews when commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, or when he refused to denounce Tucker Carlson’s overt antisemitism—seem to have a different valence. “You can defend these things episodically. You can say, Well, but he has a great relationship with Israel,” said Danielle Pletka, a Middle East expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “The problem is that Vance is, increasingly, not in the context of the great relationship with Israel. It’s that the context in which Vance exists is one in which antisemitism is the norm.” (When Vance was asked to denounce Nick Fuentes earlier this year, he said Fuentes should “eat shit.” He demurred when asked to denounce the man’s followers, the “groypers”—”I don’t know what that means,” Vance said—but added, “I think Jew hatred is disgusting.”)
Pletka, who is Jewish, has long been concerned about what she sees as criticism of Israel serving as a fig leaf for antisemitism on the left—a phenomenon she’s now observing on the right. “Antisemitism got mainstreamed on the left a few years ago,” she told me. “And now we’re seeing a very serious effort on the part of Vance to mainstream it on the right.” Pletka was unnerved. “This is the great convergence,” she continued. “Now you’re seeing a huge convergence between the Vance wing of the Republican Party converging with the Ilhan Omar wing of the Democratic Party. Their aim is to appeal to the same people.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/sees-writing-wall-j-d-190046855.html
In 2003 the “Geneva Initiative” had been given way to constructive talks towards a peaceful settlements regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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