Michael Doran on Israel and the American Right: Republicans remain staunchly pro-Israel, despite their social-media eccentrics
On July 29, Gallup published a new poll showing American support for Israel’s military action in Gaza at a historic low. But a strong majority (71 percent) of Republicans say they approve of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and that is up from 66 percent in September. Of Israel’s military action in Iran, 78 percent of Republicans approve. And 67 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Israel’s prime minister. Even as the broader American public continues to cool on Israel, Republican support for Israel’s conduct of the war isn’t just holding steady—it’s actually strengthening. Earlier this week, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, visited Judea and Samaria, and had dinner with the prime minster in the biblical city of Shiloh. Here’s what makes Gallup’s findings so remarkable: if you spent any time on right-wing social media over the past months, you’d expect to see Republican support for Israel cratering. But peer beneath the surface of the online discourse, and a more complicated picture emerges. Republican voters not only remain steadfast but are actually becoming more supportive, even as influential voices—influential especially with the young—are striking out in a very different direction. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a reliable Trump ally, now calls the Gaza war a genocide. Tucker Carlson’s social-media engagement spikes whenever he advances an anti-Israel narrative, hosts an anti-Israel guest, or moots anti-Israel conspiracy theories. Even some longtime pro-Israel voices from the right have made themselves unwitting tools of Hamas and Iranian propaganda. Our guest this week is the Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran, and our subject is Israel and the American right. Of course, the disjuncture between Republican voters and the most prominent and loudest voices in Republican media is not a new story. When you train your eyes on that fact, the entire Trump era, from his 2016 campaign forward, has seen the emergence of a new media elite whose views simply do not convey the attitudes of their base as well as the president himself does. But of course the Trump era will end in a few years, and the contours and debate within the post-Trump right over attitudes toward Israel is being shaped right now.
--------
48:13
--------
48:13
How Islamism Took Over the Middle East
This month at Mosaic, we hosted a very important set of conversations, spurred on by a very important essay: “The Enchantment of the Arab Mind,” by the Egyptian-American writer Hussein Aboubakr Mansour. Mansour traces the roots of jihadism to European, and especially German, philosophy, transmitted through 20th-century Arab radicalism. Earlier this week, we broadcast a conversation about the essay with Hussein and two eminent professors: Bernard Haykel from Princeton University and Ze’ev Maghen from Bar-Ilan University. The discussion was at times contentious in the best, and most illuminating, of ways. For anyone interested in intellectual history and the history of the Middle East, this is one of the most fascinating conversations we’ve ever convened. Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.
--------
1:17:43
--------
1:17:43
Tal Fortgang and David E. Bernstein on Defending Jewish Civil Right on Campus: How the government can fight anti-Semitism effectively and legally
This week, Columbia University reached a $200 million settlement with the Trump administration to resolve multiple federal civil-rights investigations. The deal—which the White House characterized as the largest anti-Semitism-related settlement in U.S. history—will also release hundreds of millions of dollars in suspended federal grants that had been withheld from Columbia as the administration sought to guarantee the rights of Jewish students and faculty at an institution that has become, since October 7, a hotbed of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activism. Since taking office, the Trump administration has acted aggressively against anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism at America's elite universities—taking aim at some of the most storied names in higher education: Harvard, Penn, Brown, Columbia. And this effort shows no signs of slowing down. What are the legal tools that the executive branch departments and agencies—especially the Departments of Justice and Education—have at their disposal to protect the rights of Jews on campus? Is there a tension between the protection of Jewish civil rights, on the one hand, and the free speech of students and the academic freedom of faculty, on the other? Last December, just before the new administration took office, Mosaic published an important essay by the lawyer Tal Fortgang, asking how the incoming Trump team could vigorously protect Jewish civil rights. Later that month, Tal joined the legal scholar David E. Bernstein of George Mason University for a conversation about his essay, which was originally made exclusively available to Mosaic subscribers. Today, as the Trump administration implements some of the very principles and strategies that Tal raised in the pages of Mosaic, we are pleased to share that discussion with you. You can also read the transcript here. Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.
--------
1:14:41
--------
1:14:41
Rabbi J.J. Schacter on the Jewish Meaning of Memory: What does it mean to remember the destruction of the Temples?
We are now in a period in the liturgical calendar of the Jewish people known as the Three Weeks, which begins on the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, and continues through the ninth day of the month of Av. It is a period of mourning and commemoration of many experiences of tragedy and sorrow in the Jewish past, and it culminates on the Ninth of Av, or Tisha b’Av, because on that day, in the year 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar’s forces destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem. It was also on that day, in the year 70 CE, that Roman forces destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem. These events the Jewish people, together, as a nation, remember at this time of year. But how can a person remember an event that he or she never experienced? That is the organizing question that the rabbi and historian Jacob J. Schacter asks in his eight-part video course, “The Jewish Meaning of Memory.” That course, like all of Tikvah’s video courses, is available free of charge at courses.tikvah.org. This week, to elevate our study during the Three Weeks, we are broadcasting its first episode.
--------
35:13
--------
35:13
Robert Satloff on Revitalizing Middle East Studies: A new graduate program promises to restore scholarly integrity to a debased field
October 7th exposed to everyone what many in and around the academy have known for years: American universities—not all, but many—are failing catastrophically to educate the next generation about the history, cultures, and politics of the Middle East. Instead of producing students versed in the region’s complexities, these institutions have become factories for ideological activism. And nowhere is this truer than in the case of Israel and its history: Zionism in the modern university classroom is rarely examined as a movement of national liberation but instead as a caricature of colonialism, racism, repression, and occupation. And outside of the classroom, we’ve seen the most prestigious campuses in the United States transform into nodes of anti-Israel activism and Jew hatred. These are immense and long-standing problems. But instead of just diagnosing their sources and discussing their perils, today we’re going to talk to someone who’s actually done something about it. Robert Satloff saw this crisis clearly. Having published back in 2001 the eminent historian Martin Kramer’s short volume on the corruption of Middle East Studies, Ivory Towers on Sand, Satloff has spent decades watching the field drift toward anti-Israel political advocacy. As the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he decided to stop complaining and found his own professional master’s program. Working with Pepperdine University, the Washington Institute has established a completely new graduate program designed to train policy professionals with rigorous scholarship and historical accuracy, without anti-Israel bias. The program offers full scholarships, accepts no foreign funding, is fully accredited, and will convene its inaugural cohort in Washington, DC this fall.
The Tikvah Fund is a philanthropic foundation and ideas institution committed to supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish State. Tikvah runs and invests in a wide range of initiatives in Israel, the United States, and around the world, including educational programs, publications, and fellowships. Our animating mission and guiding spirit is to advance Jewish excellence and Jewish flourishing in the modern age. Tikvah is politically Zionist, economically free-market oriented, culturally traditional, and theologically open-minded. Yet in all issues and subjects, we welcome vigorous debate and big arguments. Our institutes, programs, and publications all reflect this spirit of bringing forward the serious alternatives for what the Jewish future should look like, and bringing Jewish thinking and leaders into conversation with Western political, moral, and economic thought.
Netherlands