Jesse Arm on Michigan Democrats' Islamism Problem

Something has been happening in Michigan politics that deserves the attention of everyone who cares about the health of American democracy. And, as they so often are, the Jews are at the center of events. Taking root in Michigan is a specific and serious ideological threat—Islamism—that is gaining influence inside the Democratic party. This is a story about what happens when that influence is unnamed, accommodated, and finally normalized. And it is a story with major national implications. Muslim Americans serve in the U.S. military, teach in schools, build businesses, raise families, and love this country. Presumably, most Muslim citizens of America see their futures as bound up with the future of this republic, with no sympathy for those who would undermine it. But a radical Islamic political ideology has taken hold in specific institutions, among them the Michigan Democratic party. In March of this year, a Hizballah-inspired attacker drove a truck into the largest Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, when over a hundred children were inside. Two weeks later, the Michigan Democrats held their statewide convention, and the incumbent Jewish regent of the University of Michigan—a man whose home had been attacked, whose family had been terrorized—was denied renomination and replaced by a Dearborn attorney who had praised Hizballah on social media. The leading candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination excused the synagogue attacker. And the pro-Israel Senate candidate was booed by delegates when she addressed the Jewish Voters Caucus. To discuss this growing threat, our guest this week is Jesse Arm, who grew up in West Bloomfield and is now a vice-president at the Manhattan Institute. This week's episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Dr. Michael Schmerin and family. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.

Roy Altman came to America as a little boy. He came from Venezuela, where his own grandparents had fled to during the Holocaust. Altman and his family arrived in the U.S. with very little and knowing almost no one. Some three decades later, the president of the United States nominated him to serve as a federal judge for the Southern District of Florida, where he became the youngest person ever to hold that position. Being an American has been, he says, among the great blessings of his life; a blessing he repaid in public service. Then came October 7. And what disturbed him was not only the massacre itself but the reaction in Western media, on college campuses, in institutions that he had assumed shared his most basic commitments. He found it, he says, first ridiculous, then disconcerting, and ultimately shocking. He set out to understand this reaction and then, as best he could, to counter it. The result is a new book called Israel on Trial, in which Judge Altman applies the methodology of the federal courtroom to the six most common legal charges leveled against the Jewish state: colonialism, illegitimate founding, blocking Palestinian statehood, illegally occupying Gaza, apartheid, and genocide. In this episode, Altman discusses the book with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver. Their conversation ranges beyond the book's core argument, paying particular attention to something Judge Altman observed about the 50 college and law-school campuses he has visited since October 7, something that points beyond a pathology specific to Israel to a broader crisis in American intellectual and moral life. Judge Altman has a striking way of evoking that crisis, rooted in his daily experience watching ordinary jurors reason their way to correct verdicts while educated young Americans somehow cannot reason their way through the difference between civilization and barbarism. This week's episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Dr. Michael Schmerin and family. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.

There is an irony set at the cornerstone of Jewish memory. The very texts that proclaim the Jewish people's liberation from Egypt—the Song of the Sea, the Haggadah that we recite at the Passover seder—borrow their most evocative imagery from the propaganda of our Egyptian oppressors. For instance: the phrase "mighty hand and outstretched arm," which the Torah uses to describe God's miraculous deeds, appears hundreds of times in the royal inscriptions of the Egyptian New Kingdom, applied to the pharaoh himself. The Torah doesn't just recount the Hebrew slaves' deliverance from Egypt. The Torah took Egyptian language, Egyptian symbols, and even Egypt's greatest military triumph, and turned it all inside out. This is the argument that the Bar-Ilan University Bible professor Joshua Berman has been developing for years, including in the pages of Mosaic. And that insight now resides at the center of his new Haggadah, lavishly illustrated with hieroglyphics, photos, and sketches that situate the Passover seder in the historical setting from which the Hebrew slaves escaped. Rabbi Berman joins Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver to discuss the book, and the argument that underlies it. This week's episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Dr. Michael Schmerin and family. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.

 From the moment of its founding, and, in truth, before its founding, the State of Israel has faced the determined opposition of the Arab world. The armies of five Arab nations invaded Israel the day after it declared independence in 1948. In 1967, after a similar attempt again failed, the Arab League met at Khartoum and issued the famous three no's: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiation with Israel. Terrorism, war, and boycott followed across the decades—the PLO, the intifadas, the missile campaigns, and the Iranian proxy network that exploited Arab grievance and stretched from Lebanon to Gaza to Yemen, and whose efforts came to a gruesome crescendo on October 7, 2023. Arab opposition to Israel has been, for most of the past century, an organizing principle of Arab political life. It was the cause around which governments mobilized populations, and around which Palestinians built an identity. And so it is genuinely remarkable when a man who grew up inside that world, who absorbed its assumptions as a child, who knows its arguments from the inside, sits down and writes a book called The Arab Case for Israel. Hussain Abdul-Hussain was born in Iraq, raised in Lebanon, and serves as a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. On this episode, he joins Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver to discuss The Arab Case for Israel. This week's episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Dr. Michael Schmerin and family. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.

On February 28, 2026, Ali Khamenei was assassinated. He was killed in a joint American and Israeli airstrike, in a bunker so deep the elevator took five minutes to reach it, at a meeting with senior advisers whose location intelligence services had tracked for months. The infrastructure that made this targeted assassination possible—the human networks engaged in the patient penetration of one of the most hostile intelligence environments on earth—had been built over more than two decades. Today, Yonah Jeremy Bob joins Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver to delve into how the Mossad build that infrastructure. Bob is the senior military and intelligence analyst for the Jerusalem Post and has deep access to the Israeli intelligence community. His book Target Tehran, co-authored with Ilan Evyatar and published by Simon & Schuster in 2023, was named a top book of the year by the Wall Street Journal. When Prime Minister Netanyahu was photographed in his war room during Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, a copy of Target Tehran was visible on the table in front of him. Bob also has a forthcoming book with the Wall Street Journal's Elliot Kaufman, titled In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis. Before the airstrikes, there was a decades-long effort to recruit agents inside the nuclear program, to infiltrate Iran's supply chains, and to track and, when necessary, to assassinate the Iranian officials and weapons producers who posed the greatest threat to Israel and America. This episode examines three operations in depth—the 2018 theft of Iran's nuclear archive, the assassination of the weapons-program chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the infiltration of the supply chain for the Natanz nuclear complex—and asks what Israeli human intelligence is contributing to Operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury. This episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Dr. Michael Schmerin and Family. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.

At 1:15 in the morning on February 28, more than 200 Israeli Air Force jets took off from bases across the region, bound for Iran. They were soon joined by American B-2 and B-1 bombers and the full weight of U.S. air and naval power in the Middle East. Not long after in Tehran, the Iranian supreme leader was dead, along with dozens of the seniormost figures in his government. Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion had begun. Five days later, the Iranian missile arsenal is measurably degraded, the regime is in a succession crisis, Hizballah has entered the war from Lebanon, Kurdish forces have crossed the border from Iraq, a U.S. submarine has sunk an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean, and the Strait of Hormuz has effectively been closed to tanker traffic. The Middle East is in a different place than it was a week ago. On March 4, Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver convened two trusted experts to discuss the context and strategic underpinning of these events: the theory of the campaign, what comes next inside Iran, and what this moment means for American power and the American right. Those experts were Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and the former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo. The conversation, broadcast live over Zoom for members of the Tikvah community, is this week's podcast. This week's episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Julie Goldberg-Botvin in honor of the IDF and all the brave soldiers who are defending our country and the Jewish people all over the world. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.  

On February 25th, 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India became the first Indian head of government to address the Knesset. It was a moment that, years ago, would have been difficult to imagine. India and Israel established full diplomatic relations only in 1992. For most of the preceding decades, India had been among Israel's harshest critics—a reflexive supporter of the Palestinian cause, a country whose leaders looked on the Jewish state with suspicion or contempt. Something has changed. And Prime Minister Modi's speech in Jerusalem made clear just how much. Standing before the Knesset, Modi opened by describing himself as "a representative of one ancient civilization addressing another." He noted that he was born on September 17, 1950, the very day India formally recognized the state of Israel. He expressed condolences for the victims of October 7, condemned Hamas's attack as "barbaric," and declared that "no cause can justify the murder of civilians." He called Israel "a protective wall against barbarism." And in language that echoed Prime Minister Netanyahu's own, he told the assembled lawmakers: "The massacre of October 7 made it absolutely clear—either the jihadist axis of evil will break us, or we will break it. And we are breaking it—and will break it." He closed with two phrases that belong to two civilizations, and that he offered as a single statement: Am Yisrael Hai. Jai Hind. The people of Israel live, in Hebrew, and Hail India, in Hindi.  We recorded this conversation on the afternoon of February 25, as Modi was departing from the Knesset. To discuss the visit and its significance, Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver is joined by Bill Drexel, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute whose work focuses on U.S.-India relations, artificial-intelligence competition with China, and technology in American grand strategy. This episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Jessica and PJ Heyer. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle.

Israel has operated in the skies above Tehran. It has struck nuclear facilities near Baghdad and dominated the airspace of its enemies across the region. But according to a newsletter that the Israeli journalist Amit Segal sent out earlier this week, there is one city in the Middle East where the IDF cannot move freely. That city is a fifteen-minute drive from Tel Aviv, and is called Bnei Brak. On February 15, two female soldiers from the IDF's Education and Youth Corps arrived in this densely populated haredi city for a routine visit to a draftee ahead of his induction. A local resident called a hotline run by the Jerusalem Faction—an anti-conscription group—and falsely reported that military police were distributing draft notices. A mob of hundreds materialized, surrounded the soldiers, chased them through the streets, and forced them to hide until police arrived to rescue them. A patrol car was overturned. A police motorcycle was set on fire. Twenty-six were arrested; most were released by nightfall. Israeli leaders across the political spectrum condemned the violence as the provocation of extremists. But whether they support the rioters or not, most of the Jews of Bnei Brak see the draft as an existential threat to their way of life. It's just that the extremists are willing to say so with violence. For the past two years, pressed by the Supreme Court and by growing public resentment, the government has been trying to legislate a resolution to the question of haredi military service. Some 80,000 haredi men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are currently eligible for conscription but have not enlisted. A bill now moving through the Knesset would set enlistment targets, grant continued deferments to full-time yeshiva students, and impose penalties that critics—including the government's own legal advisers — say will produce no meaningful increase in enlistment. The haredi parties have threatened to block the 2026 state budget unless the bill passes. If the budget fails to pass by March 31, the Knesset dissolves and elections are triggered. The country is, in effect, in the middle of a slow-motion constitutional crisis over this question. Into this moment comes Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer. He is the founding editor of Tzarich Iyun—a journal of haredi thought—and has devoted his public life to arguing that the haredi world must take greater responsibility for the Jewish state, and that it can do so without compromising its fundamental values. In January, following the death of a fourteen-year-old boy struck by a bus at a different protest, Rabbi Pfeffer wrote an essay in Tzarich Iyun called "Idleness, Anger, and the Erosion of the Torah World." In light of what happened this week in Bnei Brak, it deserves a wide hearing.  In this episode, Pfeffer speaks with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver about the conscription crisis and the recent riot. This episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Richard Moldawsky in memory of Pauline Moldawsky. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.

Recently, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Carlos Campo, president of the Museum of the Bible, joined the CEO of Tikvah, Eric Cohen, for a conversation about cherishing and strengthening America's heritage of religious freedom. They were convened by the Levy Forum for Open Discourse, now in its fourth season, an initiative that is sponsored by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, generously funded by Paul and Karen Levy, and hosted by the Palm Beach Synagogue. More information about Levy Forum programs and video recordings can be found at https://goacta.org. This week, we're sharing a special broadcast of this important conversation, which delves into who we are as Americans, the country's biblical heritage, and what it means to be a covenantal nation. This episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Steve and Deborah Kleinman in memory of Steve's grandmother, Gittel Fox. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.

In November 2025, Rod Dreher published an essay in the Free Press, based on an earlier Substack post he'd written, about anti-Semitism on the American right. Dreher had just returned from Washington, where he'd spent several days speaking with young conservatives working in think tanks and in government. What he discovered was that a significant portion of young men on the right, perhaps as many as 30 or 40 percent, expressed sympathy for Nick Fuentes, the white-supremacist podcaster who denies the Holocaust and openly attacks Jewish institutions and Jewish people. The trigger for Dreher's reporting was an interview of Fuentes in late October by another media personality, Tucker Carlson. Having watched that interview, Dreher witnessed what he called a Rubicon-crossing moment: the most influential conservative media figure in America giving a remarkably soft platform to someone who has praised Hitler and has made all manner of psychotic claims about the Jewish people. Dreher had considered Carlson a friend. That friendship ended when he called him out over the Fuentes interview. Dreher's voice is particularly important because he speaks from deep within the world of American Christian conservatism. He is the author of The Benedict Option, a defining text for thinking about Christian cultural withdrawal, published in 2017. He has also written extensively about his own conversion to Orthodoxy, and has spent much of his career reporting on the institutional health of American Christianity. So when he sounds an alarm, as he does in this conversation with Mosaic's editor Jonathan Silver, about anti-Semitism spreading among young Christian conservatives, Jews should listen. This conversation was recorded in December, with Dreher in Budapest, where he now lives. This episode of the Tikvah Podcast is generously sponsored by Ilya Shapiro, constitutional scholar at the Manhattan Institute. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the Tikvah Podcast, we invite you to join the Tikvah Ideas Circle. Visit tikvah.org/circle to learn more and join.