With only a colorful graphic as evidence, Dana Bash and Jonathan Greenblatt announced on CNN that antisemitic incidents have increased by ten times since 2015. This, they admit with gleeful importance, is the stat they will use to justify the silencing of Palestinian voices in America.
Since Bash won’t tell us what those antisemitic incidents actually were, we go straight to the ADL’s audit and dissect what they found: according to the Anti Defamation League, the definition of antisemitism includes “activity at or surrounding anti-Israel protests” and any use of the phrase “from the river to the sea.” They report that 58% of the 9,354 incidents were “related to Israel or Zionism.”
Antisemitism is a real and dangerous thing, and when people like Bash and Greenblatt conflate it with anti-genocide protests, it waters down the severity of real anti-Jewish speech and gives the Trump Administration free course to arrest and deport nonviolent student protesters like Mahmoud Khalil.
When Bash brings up Khalil and the other students kidnapped by the State Department, Greenblatt answers that he supports the Trump Administrations actions. Bash has no further questions.
Also in this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Secretary Pete Hegseth’s embarrassing second text leak, Republicans use the ‘states rights’ argument to justify cutting Medicaid, Jordan Peterson tells Joe Rogan that he no longer supports free speech, and Elizabeth Warren can barely keep a straight face while saying she didn’t notice Biden’s cognitive decline.
It’s a jam-packed week of media madness, which means it’s a jam-packed Thursday Throwdown. Watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here:
