In this episode, Naya Lekht is joined by Ben Cohen, Director of Rapid Response at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), journalist, and one of the foremost researchers on global antisemitism and antizionism. Ben's work spans the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Tablet, the Jewish News Syndicate, and his book Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through 21st Century Antisemitism.


Together, Naya and Ben trace the deep roots of the United Nations' institutionalized hostility toward Israel, from the passage of Resolution 3379 ("Zionism is Racism") in 1975, to the simultaneous creation of CEIRPP (the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People), and how that Soviet-engineered infrastructure has outlasted the USSR itself.
They discuss:

  • The origins and mechanics of CEIRPP: What it does, what it costs taxpayers, and why it's still operating 50 years later
  • How UNRWA's unique definition of refugee status, inheritable across generations, differs fundamentally from every other refugee agency in the world, and why that distinction is politically explosive
  • The 1991 rescission of "Zionism is Racism" and why, despite being formally repealed, it functionally never went away
  • The Durban conference of 2001 as a turning point that revived and radicalized UN antizionism
  • Countries that have resigned from the committee - Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Ecuador — and the political dynamics that drive those decisions
  • Whether the UN is irredeemable on the question of Israel
  • The intellectual history of antizionism: from the Soviet antizionist campaign, to Edward Said, to today's TikTok-era influencers, and how the discourse has shifted from "bistro antisemitism" to open, unashamed hatred
  • Ben's concept of "Bierkeller vs. bistro antisemitism," crude versus sophisticated Jew-hatred, and whether the distinction still holds
  • The upcoming Stop Antizionism symposium in Toronto, the first conference ever dedicated explicitly to confronting antizionism as a distinct and lethal form of Jew hatred

Ben Cohen can be found at fdd.org and writes a weekly column for the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS).

Don't Know Much About is hosted by Naya Lekht. It always starts with a question. 

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