“In a globalized world, there is a sense among Jews that, unlike the past, there is no far-flung land to escape to,” said Hirschhorn. “It seems for Jews that there is a calculus of the lesser of evils. Jews no longer have any one safe harbor—it is now a question of relative safety in a dangerous world.”

Hirschhorn also points to a troubling shift in the nature of antisemitism. Traditional right-wing antisemitism, she notes, has been reinvigorated in parts of the West amid economic disruption. At the same time, it has been joined by what she describes as a new and virulent strain of “anti-Zionist antisemitism.”

While there may have been some efforts to make Jew-hatred more unpalatable in polite society, Hirschhorn said, “open and even violent hatred toward ‘Zionism,’ ‘Zios,’ ‘Israel’ ‘Israelis’, and ‘Supporters of Israel’ has been given a new carte blanche.”

For the full article in the Wall Street Journal, click here.

The post Jews Begin to Wonder: Is Anywhere Safe? first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

To download the PDF file, click here.

An analysis conducted by researchers at JPPI (the Jewish People Policy Institute) examines the media conduct of one of the key players in the Middle East, Qatar — home to the largest American military base in the region, Al-Udeid Air Base, which the United States uses in its military operations against Iran.

While Qatar publicly presents itself as cooperating with the United States, the English-language network Al Jazeera, which is affiliated with the Qatari regime, together with its digital arm AJ+, which reaches millions of viewers worldwide, has broadcast strongly anti-war messages and has directly and indirectly attacked U.S. President Donald Trump and the U.S. administration. The analysis examined dozens of opinion columns, articles, and videos in English, published both before and after the outbreak of the war, between January 28 and March 8, 2026. The findings reveal a clear and consistent pattern: criticism of the war is extremely harsh and largely ignores the role played by Gulf states — including Qatar itself — in hosting and defending American military bases.

Some content even argued that the war serves as a distraction from domestic political controversies in the United States, such as the Jeffrey Epstein affair, while others framed the military campaign as illegitimate, illegal, or even linked to broader structures of “white supremacy and capitalism.” The study analyzed Al Jazeera’s English-language opinion columns and articles using advanced artificial intelligence tools and sentiment analysis. Researchers compared two periods: before the war, when commentary focused on the possibility of conflict, and after the war had begun.

During the pre-war period (approximately one month), 77.8% of publications were classified as very negative and 5.6% as negative. In total, 89% of the publications expressed negative sentiment toward the war. After the war began, the trend intensified. 85.3% of publications were classified as very negative and 5.9% as negative. Overall, 91.2% of the publications were negative, the vast majority of them strongly so.

The findings were even more pronounced on AJ+, the network’s digital platform. 95.2% of the content analyzed was classified as “very negative” toward the war, including direct personal criticism of President Trump. Among the sampled videos, not a single one presented the war in a positive light or attempted to justify it, and only marginal references were made to Iranian attacks on Gulf states.

Lt. Col. (res.) Or Hurwitz, a Senior Fellow at JPPI, and a former senior officer in Israeli Military Intelligence stated: “Qatar has experienced firsthand the Iranian threat during the current war. Its longstanding strategy of attempting to ‘live alongside tigers’—pursuing reconciliation while maintaining strategic relationships with terrorist organizations and extremist actors—has not protected it. At the moment of truth, this approach failed to prevent Iran from harming Qatar itself and directly threatening its sovereignty. This development joins the Israeli strike in Doha several months ago, which also demonstrated the limits of Qatar’s attempt to ‘dance at two weddings.’

“Qatar is an actor driven primarily by survival in a complex regional environment rather than by ideology. The current war may therefore create a unique window of opportunity for a strategic shift in Qatari policy after the conflict. Such a shift could include a harder stance toward Iran and Sunni terrorist organizations, a reassessment of Al Jazeera’s editorial guidelines, and perhaps even gradual changes in Qatar’s posture toward Israel. The path forward is uncertain and complex, but the possibility for change now exists—particularly if it is supported by American engagement and strategic assistance.”

The full study here.

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The study findings point to sharp disparities, both in the scope of international media coverage and in the number of protests held in the United States around each of these issues.

Protests organized by various groups in response to the IDF’s entry into Rafah were nearly one hundred times more numerous than protests concerning Iran. Media coverage of the war in Gaza was almost double in volume compared to coverage of the protests in Iran during comparable time periods sampled for the study.

To enable a fair comparison, researchers selected two 22-day time windows. The first covered the protests in Iran, which lasted from December 28, 2025 until their decline on January 18, 2026, following reports that tens of thousands of demonstrators were massacred. The second examined one of the peak moments of the war in Gaza, the IDF’s entry into Rafah, over an identical 22-day period from May 6 to May 27, 2025. During this period, a social media campaign under the slogan “All Eyes on Rafah” spread widely and extensive protests took place on U.S. campuses.

The post The Dramatic Gap Between Global Coverage of the War in Gaza and the Massacre of Protesters in Iran first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN

Tel Aviv-based researcher, columnist, and editor Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), took on a hefty challenge when he agreed to write a book at the behest of the leadership of ANU – The Museum of the Jewish People.

Each chapter of Why Am I a Jew? provides an array of answers to a difficult question: “What Is Judaism?” “Who’s a Jew?” “What Are Jewish Values?” “Why Do They Hate Us?” “How Do We Survive?” “Israel or Diaspora?” “Jewish Genius – Does It Exist?” An epilogue is titled “Does Judaism Have a Future?”

The subtitle, “A Contemporary Guide for the Perplexed,” is a play on the title of Maimonides’ classic 12th-century work. The Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed, mentioned in Rosner’s timeline, was aimed at practicing Jews perplexed by apparent contradictions between the Torah and Aristotelian philosophy.

Rosner’s book, on the other hand, was written primarily for non-practicing Jews perplexed by Judaism in general and by apparent contradictions between Jewish and Western values in particular. At the end of each chapter is a handy summary. The first chapter explains that Judaism may be defined as “1) Primarily a religion (more suitable to Jewish life in the Diaspora) and/or primarily a nationality (more suitable to statehood in Israel); 2) A set of ideas (there is “Judaism” and there are “Jews”) and/or a way of life (Judaism is what Jews do); 3) A covenant founded on a bond with God (faith, observance of the Commandments) and/or a covenant founded on a historical bond (tradition, language, peoplehood, ethics).”

Could Rosner’s book prove as enduring as Maimonides’ work – which, despite sparking controversy in its time, remains a highly revered and well-thumbed resource on the shelf of Jewish literature? Perhaps it will – for some readers. I found several stylistic and substantive aspects irritating. For instance, the contradiction in styles for dates. Dates before year 1 on the Gregorian calendar are referred to as BCE (before Common Era) in the accepted secular style. Yet dates after year 1 are followed not by CE but by the Christian Latin AD – for Anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord” – causing an imbalance in chronological styles.

On a substantive level, Rosner makes some statements that are real head scratchers. In the “How Do We Survive?” chapter, he concludes that because most modern Jews don’t practice daily Jewish rituals, keep kosher, or adhere to rabbinic directives, “Jewish law and communal way of life are no longer relevant.” Really?

The sources Rosner chooses to quote generally represent a wide spectrum, from Spinoza to Soloveitchik and from A.Y. Kook to A.B. Yehoshua, though some are weighted too heavily. Mordecai Kaplan, whose name appears 20 times, is described as an “American rabbi and avant-garde thinker” in one place and as “one of the most critical and progressive thinkers among America’s Jews in the 20th century” in another. Only in an endnote does Rosner reveal that Kaplan founded the rather fringe Reconstructionist movement, casting doubt on the rabbi’s relevance as an oft-quoted source.

Nevertheless, Why Am I a Jew? contains plenty of gems worth considering. Rosner includes this insight from Yuri Slezkine’s 2004 The Jewish Century: “The Modern Age is the Jewish Age” because everyone wants to be “urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible.”

Modernization is about “pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake.” Modernization, in other words, is about “everyone becoming Jewish.” But where is the heart in that statement? Why is there no discussion of the yearning for authenticity and a relationship with the divine that stirs the souls of many Jews by birth or by choice? This is the core I find lacking in Why Am I a Jew?

Rosner’s epilogue ponders whether Judaism has a future. “There are Jews by virtue of emotion, and Jews by virtue of reason. There are Jews who investigate questions of identity and Jews whose identity is effortless, natural, and uncomplicated. And there are Jews who make do with faith – and those who also need a mission. All of them are challenged by the vibrant world of the 21st century – a world after Spinoza and Nietzsche, Copernicus and Darwin, where it’s more challenging to defend faith.” … “In such a world, the question of why be Jewish is a critical one. It’s a question that has no simple answer.”

Indeed, it does not. And despite Rosner’s thoughtful, sincere attempt to answer this question from a multiplicity of perspectives, I believe most readers will remain perplexed and will need to seek deeper answers elsewhere.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

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The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) used advanced artificial-intelligence tools to examine the immediate reactions of world leaders and governments to the murder of 15 people in the shooting attack against the Jewish community in Sydney during a Hanukkah event on December 14, 2025.

The analysis reviewed the first official responses to the attack in 25 major countries worldwide, including Western countries, Asian countries, and Muslim and Arab states. The material examined included official statements by government spokespersons, public declarations, and social media posts immediately after the attack. In cases where no statement was issued by a head of state, the analysis examined statements released at a lower governmental level, such as diplomats or foreign affairs officials.

Each response was weighted according to several parameters, including whether it explicitly stated that the attack targeted Jews, that it occurred on Hanukkah, and whether it used terms connected to terrorism or antisemitism. Mentions of Israel or Israelis, and the level of the official issuing the statement were also factored in. Statements delivered by heads of state received greater weight than general announcements released by foreign ministries. The full ranking is attached for reference.

Keyword analysis found that “terrorism” was the most frequently used term, followed by “antisemitism” and “Jews.”

The findings show that the highest scores were recorded in Argentina and Canada. In both cases, the nation’s leaders clearly and explicitly stated that the attack was antisemitic terrorism directed against Jews and carried out during the Hanukkah holiday.

By contrast, Australia, where the attack took place, as well as New Zealand and the United Kingdom, received relatively low scores because their initial statements did not explicitly mention Jews, antisemitism, or Hanukkah. In Australia, the prime minister was widely criticized by both traditional and social media outlets, and only later issued a clarification referring to the attack as antisemitic terrorism. A similar pattern was observed in New Zealand.

At the bottom of the ranking were Muslim and Arab countries. In most of these cases, responses were issued by foreign ministries rather than by national leaders. In some instances, the fact that the attack targeted Jews was omitted, and condemnations were framed in general terms opposing “any form of violence,” without reference to the antisemitic motive. This group included Egypt and Jordan, countries that maintain peace agreements with Israel.

Israel was mentioned only once, in a statement by Argentine President Javier Milei, who directly criticized the Australian government, linking Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state to what he described as a climate that enabled the antisemitic attack. This response was unusual in that it explicitly connected Australia’s foreign policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians with the security of the local Jewish community.

The analysis also examined which officials spoke and which remained silent. In most democratic countries, the responses were issued directly by heads of state, indicating the gravity attributed to the attack. No leader of a Muslim country issued a direct response.

Published on Channel 7

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