Reviewing: “American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War, and the New Antisemitism” By Uri Kaufman. Republic Book Publishers. 2025. 224 pages. ISBN-10: 1645721043.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state of discomfort experienced when an individual’s beliefs, attitudes or behaviors contradict each other. For example, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol understood that Gamal Abdel Nasser was completely serious when he said he was going to drive Israel into the sea. Yet the American State Department thought it was simply rhetoric and urged restraint.

From Osama bin Laden to Yahya Sinwar, these terrorists make it eminently clear what their goals are—the utter destruction of the West and the infidels that reside there. To which Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden similarly suggested restraint and calm. Obama and Biden have the luxury of cognitive dissonance, given that the 7,500 miles of border with Canada and Mexico are relatively calm. Israel’s borders should only be so quiet.

Cognitive dissonance is a core theme in “American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War, and the New Antisemitism (Republic Books),” an essential new book by Uri Kaufman. He is also the author of “Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East,” which I reviewed in the October 19, 2023 edition of The Jewish Link. (https://jewishlink.news/understanding-the-yom-kippur-war/).

Cognitive dissonance has turned Israel, the miracle on the Mediterranean, the start-up nation, into a pariah. It has simultaneously turned the Palestinians, whose leaders have been against the West and have been leaders in terrorism since the PLO was founded in 1964, into a group worth sympathizing with.

Real estate developer by day, author by night, Kaufman brings his excellent research skills and writing talent to every chapter of this insightful book.

The Navier-Stokes equations are partial differential equations that describe the motion of viscous fluid substances. They are some of the most complex equations in mathematics.

Oct. 7, 2023 should be the opposite of Navier-Stokes, an equation that is eminently elementary: who is right and wrong, who is evil, and who is just. Yet it did not take long for organizations like the BBC, CNN, the United Nations, The New York Times, Human Rights Watch and others to condemn Israel and sympathize with Hamas.

Kaufman asks in the book and tries to analyze how Israel has been made into the enemy when it is so clear they are in the right. He shows how it is rooted in cognitive dissonance. That is the only way someone like Jimmy Carter could be more pro-Palestinian than Anwar Sadat.

As to the Palestinian cause, it has long been used as fodder against Israel when countries themselves have long given the Palestinians short shrift. Sadat’s predecessor, Nasser, said in 1970 that he had “no interest” in the Palestinian cause.

The reason no Arab country wants to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza is the long history of predicaments that the Palestinians have brought to every host country. While progressives condemn Israel for its treatment of Palestinians, they are oblivious to how Palestinians are treated as third-class citizens in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. And oblivious that Gazans had more rights and freedoms when Gaza was under Israel, as opposed to Egypt. But all of that is lost on the left, and progressives and their cognitive dissonance only enable them to see Israel through the lens of its enemies.

In chapter after chapter, Kaufman shows that the double standard is applied only to Israel. One of countless examples is that the Muslim Brotherhood-led Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) have taken over Sudan. Over 150,000 have been killed, 9,000,000 forcibly displaced, and 5,000,000 are starving. Daily, the SAF conducts airstrikes on hospitals, schools, churches and mosques, destroying 86% of them. Besides the silence from the media and the U.N. on what is going on there, most people could not even find Sudan on a map.

The International Criminal Court has done nothing, and other countries have pretty much ignored the atrocities in Sudan and are obsessed with every minor trespass of Israel in Gaza. Yet when Israel launches an attack against Hamas where there are casualties, the media accepts heavily inflated figures from the Hamas news bureau as if they were from a peer-reviewed journal.

Cognitive dissonance has long led the U.S. to have fundamental misunderstandings of Iranian priorities. The nuclear program of Iran is to them as baseball and apple pie are to the U.S. Yet the U.S. State Department naively expects them to put their nuclear program on a long-term thaw.

Tawriya is a concept in Islam where someone can say something with an intended meaning that is different from what is outwardly understood. It’s a way to communicate without explicitly lying, allowing for a more nuanced expression. Iran used tawriya on steroids with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, yet the world was oblivious to it.

The book concludes with the observation that people eventually wake up and find themselves lying next to their enemy. Yet groups like Queers For Palestine (a group whose name should be the definition of “irony”) will find that they are next in the killing line of the Palestinian terror organizations. It’s not ironic that Queers For Palestine does not seem to have any active living members in Palestine—you do the math.

Kaufman writes that he is an optimist. He ends with a prediction that one day, those who share Israel’s liberal values will look back upon our time. They will look back upon progressives who hate everything about Palestinians and Iranians except their struggle with Israel. They will look back at the tortured truths progressives employed to support their strange biases. And, like racism itself, they will realize just how crazy the whole thing was. The progressive lunatics have taken over the asylum. It’s disheartening to see how many organizations support Hamas when they would be first in the Hamas killing line.

If you decide to read this important book, start early in the evening. “American Intifada” is hard to put down. Kaufman is an engaging writer, and this is a fascinating read about an important topic.

Ben Rothke lives in New Jersey and works in the information security field. He reviews books on religion, technology, philosophy, and science. Follow him on Twitter at @benrothke.