“B’Ivrit: A Hebrew Language Media Roundup” is a monthly look at the news through the eyes of Israeli media consumers.
1. Trump and Columbia University—the Israeli Media Doesn’t See the Issue
Once again, Columbia University is in the news, this time over dramatic steps taken by the Trump administration this past week, which included withholding $400 million in federal grants and an ICE raid leading to the arrest and attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident who was among the leaders of the anti-Israel protests on campus last year.
The American press, as is the case with media outlets across the world, reported on the unprecedented moves while noting the problematic aspects of Trump’s actions: possible infringements on free speech; excessive government punishment; concerns about harm to academic and scientific research; and federal overreach in going after permanent residents.
In the Israeli media, there were no signs of this concern. The extensive coverage in the Israeli press provided matter-of-fact reporting on the administration’s actions against Columbia, delivered with a grain of pro-Trump commentary.
“Following the return of pro-Palestinian protests, the Trump administration has delivered a death-blow to Columbia University,” exclaimed a headline in Maariv, a centrist daily.
Ynet, the popular news website of Yediot Aharonot, reported about the events and the list of demands put forward by the Trump administration to Columbia without adding any editorial opinion, as did the business daily Calcalist, also owned by the Yediot Aharonot group.
When given the chance to opine on the issue, almost all Israeli media outlets chose to side with the administration. “Terror on Campus: leader of anti-Israel protest in Columbia will be deported,” read the headline in the settler-friendly Makor Rishon, which described in the article how “Trump is living up to his promise.” The Miriam Adelson-owned popular daily Israel Hayom offered its own words of support to Trump’s move: “The Columbia grants cut—a response to the filth that has taken over US campuses,” was the headline given to the piece.
Several TV news networks added first-person testimonies from Israeli students and faculty decrying the anti-Israel atmosphere on campus, as was the case with Maariv, which ran an op-ed by an Israeli Columbia student who concluded that, “Trump’s threats are likely the only thing that can make the university drastically change the way it deals with protests that make the experience of Israelis here far more complicated than it should be.”
2. When Antisemitism Becomes a Catchall Phrase
Most striking about the Israeli coverage of these recent events, as of the entire issue of campus protests in the past year and half, is the use of the terms “antisemitic” and “anti-Israel” in a fully interchangeable way. Nearly all protests and anti-Israel activities were tagged as antisemitic, in part following the growing trend in the United Statesof adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism and the Anti Defamation League’s expansion of the term to include many expressions of anti-Israel or anti-Zionist sentiment.
The Israeli government has long erased the distinction and consistently describes any action targeting Israel—from UN resolutions to Ben & Jerry’s pulling their product from the West Bank—as an expression of antisemitism. The Israeli media, which never shies away from criticizing the government, has fully adopted this policy. Newspapers and TV reports regularly accompany stories about campus protests or anti-Israel rallies in the United States and Europe as antisemitic incidents and use the term freely to describe the motivation behind these protests.
3. Schumer Gets No Love
At the same time, some expressions of bias or hate that cause every American Jew to shudder go totally unnoticed by the Israeli press.
Such was the case with Trump’s recent jab at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian,” said Trump, responding to reporters’ questions about Senate budget discussions during a meeting with the prime minister of Ireland last week.
The insult was obvious, and Americans seemed to instinctively recognize that a president questioning the faith of a Jewish politician is at best rude and insensitive, and at worst outright antisemitic. Rights groups, including Muslim organizations, were quick to condemn Trump for his comments.
But the Israeli press hardly covered them. A couple of publications and networks mentioned the incident in brief reports, but none of them provided their audience with any idea of how offensive the comments were to American Jews or how they should be of concern for any Jew across the world.
4. The Less-Reported Antisemitism
Which goes back to the unique way in which the Israeli Hebrew-language press covers antisemitism in America.
One might have expected the media in the Jewish state to pay special attention to any expression of bias or hatred toward Jews. But the Israeli press, by and large, prefers to focus on antisemitism from the left and from anti-Israel circles, while almost ignoring right-wing expressions of hatred toward Jews.
Here’s a quick list of incidents hardly noticed by the Israeli press: Elon Musk’s Nazi-like salute was mentioned briefly in Israeli media, while Musk sharing a post claiming Hitler did not murder millions of people didn’t even get a mention. (Could it have anything to do with Benjamin Netanyahu taking the time to publicly defend Musk?) Steve Bannon’s similar salute was reported in Haaretz and on the KAN-11 public broadcaster’s website, but nowhere else. Statistics, such as that indicating that all hate related murders in the U.S. in 2024 were carried out by right-wing extremists, were not reported, and Islamophobic incidents following the October 7 attacks did not make it into the Israeli press.
5. What Israelis Read About Trump’s America
Donald Trump’s first two months in the White House took over American newsrooms. The endless stream of executive orders, firings and high-profile international betrayals are now dominating the U.S. agenda.
But what do people in Israel know or hear about all this in the media? Very little.
There is, of course, a lot of Trump-related news that makes it to the headlines in Israel. It all has to do with the president’s efforts to broker a hostage release deal, his threats aimed at Iran, and Trump’s relations with Middle Eastern and Gulf countries. But with the notable exception of the on-camera public blowout with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky (which raised the question, in some Israeli media outlets, “what if Trump turned on Bibi like he did on Zelensky?”) hardly any part of Trump’s domestic overhaul has been reported in Israel.
Some of the issues that Israelis rarely hear about in the press include the administration’s immigration crackdown, Musk’s efforts to gut the federal public service, and even Trump’s global trade wars, which barely make it to the business section in daily newspapers.
There is, of course, a good reason for ignoring these dramatic developments, namely the fact that Israel is still in the midst of its worst war ever. Overseas news, even coming from its greatest ally, simply doesn’t make the cut.
And while this is fully understandable, it also means that an average Israeli media consumer right now has a very different perspective on the U.S. than those reading the American press. And it’s probably a way more optimistic understanding of America than many Americans currently share.
Top image: President Donald Trump in front of the White House (Credit: Getty Hall (CC BY-SA 3.0) / Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)).