Benjamin Kerstein's Blog

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again." 

—Andre Gide

There is a Global Pogrom under way.
This is a terrible truth. And people tend to ignore terrible truths. So it must be said again: There is a Global Pogrom under way.
And another terrible truth must be spoken: The Global Pogrom has been under way for more than a decade. It has taken lives. It has destroyed property. It has injured, brutalized, and terrified Jews and Jewish communities in many nations. And it is creating a silent exodus, a de facto expulsion, an ethnic cleansing in slow motion.
To say again, because it must be said again, this is something almost no one wants to admit. A truth that almost no one, including many Jews, wants to speak or hear. But over the past month, it has become a truth that is impossible to ignore.
Yet even in the face of this, many continue to deny it, or at least to minimize it. And many, one regrets, have chosen to blame it on the Jews themselves.
A mere seven decades after the Holocaust, after the world was supposed to have learned its lesson, this is not only monstrous. It is not only evil. It is also an existential threat to the civilized world. Because the Global Pogrom presents the world with a stark choice: The Global Pogrom or civilization. And a civilization, any civilization, that cannot or will not say no to barbarism, is no longer a civilization at all...
Continue reading at Tower Magazine

My latest article at The Tower, on why Israel's growing media presence around the world could make it the world's next cultural superpower.


Despite its high international profile, Israel has always been a somewhat provincial county, with a domestic culture largely unknown to outsiders. The classic pieces of Israeli pop culture, such as the comedy group Ha’Gashash Ha’Hiver, Eretz Israel and Mizrahi music, and the classic bourekas movies, remain ubiquitous in Israel—most Israelis can quote lines from them at will—but almost nowhere else. Everyone in the world knows who Brad Pitt is, but no one outside of Israel knows Yehuda Levi, his rough Israeli equivalent. Indeed, when Yair Lapid suddenly emerged as Israel’s newest political star, the global media proved completely ignorant of a man who had been one of Israel’s most famous media personalities for decades.

But this may be changing, and very quickly. Over the past decade, Israeli films, actors, television shows, celebrities, and music have spread and, more importantly, been embraced around the world. This includes films like Walk on Water, Fill the Void, Ajami, Or, and the cinema of Amos Gitai, which have won international prizes and foreign distribution, often with considerable success. There are television shows like Betipul, remade almost word-for-word as HBO’s In Treatment, and Hatufim, whose American remake Homeland is a runaway success; game and reality shows have also been reproduced and remade in numerous other countries.

Actors like Noa Tishby, Ayelet Zurer, and Mili Avital have appeared in American and European films, become stars, producers, and conduits through which the Israeli film and television industry can reach into foreign markets. Zurer in particular has met with significant Hollywood success, co-starring in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, as well as blockbusters like Man of Steel.

Even more surprisingly, musicians like the heavy metal band Orphaned Land and Mizrahi singer Sarit Hadad have become popular in countries that have historically been ambivalent or violently hostile toward Israel, garnering fans from nations like Turkey and Syria.

While it is too soon to know for sure, it increasingly looks like Israel may well be on the road to becoming a cultural superpower.

Continue reading at The Tower

In English, on my article on Israel having to go it alone and the legacy of Rav Ovadia Yosef. Hosted by the excellent writer and my personal friend Alex Stein.

Listen at TLV1...

The Kindle version of my first novel, The Mighty Quinn, is temporarily available at a considerable discount. It's a dystopian satire of environmentalists, hippies, psychotic activists, and whales. Enjoy!

Click to buy at Amazon.com

The latest issue of The Tower - of which I am associate editor - is now online. It contains some excellent articles by David Hazony, Armin Rosen, and myself.

It is, of course, very widely believed among supporters of Israel—and among some opponents, one imagines, though they are unlikely to ever admit it—that it is not only a reasonable supposition but practically a moral certainty that Israel cannot and will never get a fair hearing at the UN or from the international community in general. Indeed, Netanyahu all but said as much in his 2011 speech to the General Assembly, noting that the Lubavitcher Rebbe once referred to the international body as “a house of many lies.”

Most Israelis likely agree with this, as well. But however fervently they agree, there always remains a nagging doubt. This doubt was expressed fairly well, ironically, by one of the UN’s former leaders. In 2002, with Israel deep in the horrors of the second intifada and Ariel Sharon’s Operation Defensive Shield at last fighting back against Palestinian terrorism, international condemnation of the Jewish state reached a fever pitch. Then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan summed up the general attitude by asking, “Can Israel be right and the whole world wrong?”

Continue reading at The Tower...

If the reaction to the death of Helen Thomas, with its studied indifference to her cackling demand that the Jews “get the hell out of Palestine,” has told us anything, it is that the embrace of racism among Israel’s critics has become so ubiquitous that it has essentially been normalized.

There is a fascinating irony in this, because critics of Israel, however ferocious they may be, almost always portray themselves as anti-racists....

Continue reading at the Jerusalem Post

‘But surely you don’t believe,” they always ask you, “that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic?” It is a noticeably patronizing question, of course, in that it is obviously an admonition that all civilized, thinking people must answer “no” or “of course not.” It is an important question, however, because of its real answer, which is unequivocally and unquestionably “yes”...

...continue reading at the Jerusalem Post

PJ Media » House Jew, Field Jew

My first novel The Mighty Quinn is now available via Amazon Kindle. It's a satire of environmentalism, Moby-Dick, samurai movies, Scientology, stupid hippies, nausea, and many other highly amusing things. Also, sex and violence. And whales. If you like it, spread the word. And if you don't have a Kindle, these apps let you read it on various other highly amusing devices. Enjoy!