A former White House speechwriter’s frantic tirade shows how Israel’s carnage in Gaza has forced Zionists into the role of outright apologists for genocide.
Sarah Hurwitz, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, addressing a conference in 2017. (Thor Brødreskift / Nordiske Mediedager /Wikimedia Commons /CC BY-SA 2.0)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article
Former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz made some very revealing remarks during an appearance at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly on Sunday, expressing frustration with the way younger Jews are dismissing pro-Israel arguments because of the carnage they’ve seen in Gaza.
“We are now wrestling with a new I think generational divide here, and I think that’s particularly true in that social media is now our source of media,” Hurwitz said.
“It used to be that the news you got in America was American media, and it was pretty mainstream; you know it generally didn’t express extreme anti-Israel views. You had to go to a pretty weird bookstore to find global media and fringe media.
But today we have social media, which is the global medium; its algorithms are shaped by billions of people worldwide who don’t really love Jews. So while in the 1990s a young person probably wasn’t going to find Al Jazeera or someone like Nick Fuentes, today those media outlets find them; they find them on their phones.”
“It’s also this increasingly post-literate media; less and less text, more and more videos,” Hurwitz continued.
“So you have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. And this is why so many of us cannot have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they are just seeing in their minds: carnage. And I sound obscene.”
The most insane part of this clip is when she claims that Holocaust education is problematic because today it is failing to make young Jews blindly love Israel, and instead, they are sympathizing with victims of racism, be they Black or Palestinian. What a wretched witch. https://t.co/rFZxR5G4HQ
— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) November 18, 2025
Hurwitz went on to say that Holocaust education has begun backfiring, because it has been giving young people the wrong impression.
“And you know I think unfortunately, the very smart bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-semitism education in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism,” Hurwitz said.
“Because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and they think oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people. So, when on TikTok all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.”
Hoo boy. Lots to unpack here.
It’s just so fascinating to see a former White House speechwriter making so many of the points that anti-Zionists have been making for years, but taking the exact opposite meaning from them:
- The mainstream legacy media has always hidden anti-Israel views from the public — and that was a good thing.
- Social media has now given Palestinians the ability to expose the truth about Israel’s abuses — and that’s a bad thing.
- People aren’t falling for the Zionist spin and narrative-diddling anymore because they’ve seen the carnage in Gaza with their own eyes — and that’s a problem.
- People who learned from Holocaust education that genocide is wrong have been applying those same lessons to the genocide in Gaza — and this means they’re “confused.”
“Never Again to Anyone” sign at a Gaza solidarity demonstration in Berlin on Nov. 4, 2023. (Streets of Berlin – Free Palestine will not be canceled/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)
Hurwitz isn’t denying Israel’s abuses or framing its genocidal atrocities as the problem, she’s just coming right out and saying that people obtaining information and moral clarity about those abuses is the problem. The atrocities aren’t wrong, what’s wrong is people seeing those atrocities and calling them what they are.
I love the way she complains that she looks “obscene” for trying to lay out arguments and narratives justifying the Gaza holocaust for people who’ve seen the “wall of carnage” from the genocide. I mean, yes. Yes obviously you’re going to look obscene if you try to tell someone why raw video footage of massacres, mutilated children and emaciated bodies is actually showing something that is justifiable and acceptable.
You can’t stand in front of a pile of child corpses justifying their murder and then whine when people ignore your spin-meistering and keep staring at the tiny bodies. That’s like murdering an entire family and then telling the cops, “But you’re not listening to my reasons for killing them!” They’re doing the normal thing while you are being obscene.
There’s a viral clip of this tirade going around Twitter and I was curious if Hurwitz had said anything after the video segment ended which might have made what she said sound less horrible, so I went to check out the original video on the Jewish Federations of North America’s Youtube channel, and nope. It didn’t get any better.
Hurwitz went on to say that people are wrong to carry the lessons of Holocaust education into opposition to Israel’s genocidal atrocities because the Holocaust was Nazi Germany blaming Jews for all their problems in the same way people think Israel is the source of all the world’s problems today.
She then mourned the way Western Jews “re-imagined Judaism as a Protestant-style religion” in order to integrate into Western society rather than retaining a strong identity that is loyal to the state of Israel.
“The problem is, we’re not just a religion,” Hurwitz said.
“We’re a nation. Civilization. Tribe. Peoplehood. But most of all we’re a family. And so if you are a young person raised in America who thinks Judaism is a Protestant-style religion, then the seven million Jews in Israel are merely your co-religionists. So my co-religionists, if I look at them and they’re not practicing my religion of social justice and certain prophetic values then what do I have to do with them?”
“But that’s a category error,” says Hurwitz.
“The seven million people in Israel, they are not my co-religionists, they are my siblings. But I think if you think of them as merely your co-religionists, it’s easy to slide into anti-Zionism. You don’t necessarily have that connection to them.”
Hurwitz is saying here that Jews around the world should be loyal to Israel no matter what Israel does, not because that’s the moral or truthful position but because Israel is where their loyalties belong.
I don’t know about you, but if my siblings were murdering civilians I would immediately become their enemy. I wouldn’t defend my brother if he was going around shooting children in the head as IDF snipers have been doing in Gaza, in fact I would feel a special responsibility to stop him exactly because he is my brother. Genocide doesn’t magically become acceptable if the perpetrators are your “siblings” unless you are a sociopath.
It’s just incredible how hard Zionists have been freaking out about the way Israel has lost control of the narrative these last two years. More and more often we’re seeing them say the quiet parts out loud as they frantically scramble to manage perceptions and manipulate minds around the world.
Many things which used to be hidden are finding their way into the light.
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This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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I say it again. ZIONISM = No other lives matter.
True enough, but remember there are two main versions of zionism: one, the Jewish kind, and the other, Christian Zionism. For the former, Jewish lives matter; for the latter, Jews must go to Israel in order to be eliminated one way or another – Christian lives matter. And Christian Zionists are a pretty influential mob, especially in the USA.
Wrong. The Jewish Zionists call all the shots.
Absolutely correct. Its not a case of the tail wagging the dog. Instead the infiltration is complete. In 2025, the tail is the dog. In defense of Zionists, the current state of affairs is the culmination of over 150 years of hard work. Through a combination of astute political maneuvering and control of Private Central Banks, Zionist have consolidated wealth, power and political control throughout the West. What is surprising is that the control is tenuous. The more Zionists come out of the shadow, the more they and their policies are despised.
Xi Jinping? Vladimir Putin? Nazis and neo-Nazis? General strikes brewing across Europe? F35s for Saudi Arabia?
You’re laughably ignorant when you imply that the Christian Zios are more influential than the Jewish supremacists in America. The birth right trips to Israel are organized and paid for by the Jewish supremacists. The land auctions in the West Bank settlements take place in synagogues. The Christian Zios are led around by the nose by the Jewish supremacists.
I said “Christian Zionists are a pretty influential mob, especially in the USA.” I did not say, or mean to imply, that they’re more influential than the Jewish mob. DebsWasRight said that for zionists, no other lives matter. For the Christian ones, it’s Christian lives that matter – though of course if they want all Jews to go to Palestine/Israel, which they explicitly do, it helps if life for Jews there seems at least comfortable and desirable. Their stated aim is to eventually get rid of all Jews, through death or conversion, in a wonderful war to end all wars, whereupon Mr Jesus will return in glory, as laid out in the Bible’s Book of Revelation I think (I haven’t checked it out in detail).
One of the most dispiriting, saddest aspects of zionism is that it negates the very basis of humanitarian concern for others. It justifies raw tribalism as something superior to humanism. This inversion-subversion of humanism erodes and cheapens the concept of MITZVAH. It perverts mitzvah into the opposite of mitzvah… into a performative, narcissistic gesture rather than the pure, selfless giving taught by Jewish sages.
We can see the same sort of perversity in the zionist tendency to put chutzpah over empathy, as though empathy is weakness and rejection of morality, rejection of common humanity, are strengths.
The unfortunate Ms. Hurwitz has abandoned the very heart of Judaism, which is also a core truth about the human condition — namely, that compassion and agapic love for all beings generate meaning and value, and that without these dispositions our lives are meaningless and valueless. By any religious standard — Judaic, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. — Ms. Hurwitz’s soul is sick. Her moral compass is deranged. She needs to atone. She needs to do a mitzvah. Perhaps she needs to bring food and confort to a hungry, desperate Palestinian family.
There is no seven degrees of separation there are seven degrees of interrelationship. All of human civilization is related for what should be considered a living symbiosis and biodiversity and forget wars of separation for selfish profit motives and territoriality. The biosphere is the new religious view for life on Planet Earth. War is the bad romance.
All I can say is spot on Caitlin .They are doing it to themselves and so the exposure for all to see.
That’s why they have been killing journalists to bury the healthy narrative!
thank you for helping us read sarah hurwitz correctly.
the edifice they built to make themselves and the world
believe that THEIR way is the ONLY way can’t crumble
fast enough.
The thing i noticed. But that’s worse. Wonder what number draft that was.
The Zionist propaganda plan in the U.S. now goes something like this: you American rabble, focus on your own domestic affairs, don’t worry about the Middle East at all, you shouldn’t be thinking about foreign policy. Oh, and also be very scared of any Muslims or Arabs in your midst.
That’s basically the game plan now that they know Israel’s conduct has totally exposed the Zionist project for the ultra sadistic violent enterprise it truly is.
I think Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nick Fuentes want to forget foreign policy and focus on domestic affairs. Yet both are antisemitic, and probably not zionists. Greene was blaming wildfires on Jewish space lasers not so long ago, and Fuentes isn’t far from outright Nazi-style antisemitism, holding Jews (and presumably Israel) responsible for everything he sees as bad.
That may not completely invalidate your point – they, and others like them, may be – secretly? – funded or encouraged by zionists of one sort or another, but I don’t find your argument too thorough or convincing.
“Probably not Zionists.” Are you kidding? Your post is kind of incoherent, given that statement.
Greene is very different than Fuentes. Fuentes says some good things, but of course also says racist drivel that should rightfully be denounced.
Both Greene and Fuentes are correct about controlling unfettered immigration in all its forms and curtailing Zionist power. Things to be applauded.
Christian Zionists are plainly antisemitic: their ultimate goal is the elimination of Jews, whether by death or conversion.
Greene and Fuentes may well be different, but they share – to some extent – the view that US foreign policy shouldn’t concern itself with the rest of the world, except insofar as the US is directly affected. Which you claim is the ‘Zionist propaganda plan in the U.S. … : you American rabble, focus on your own domestic affairs.”
So Greene and Fuentes are “correct about … curtailing Zionist power” at the same time as prominently promoting the “Zionist propaganda plan in the U.S.”? I find that somewhat incoherent, at least on the face of it. Curtail zionist power by doing what the zionists want?
So the problem with the 1940s genocide of the Jewish people of Europe by the nazis was not the killing and destroying and erasing but that they first blamed them for causing problems and then did the genocide? It’s the narrative that’s important, not the actions? Duly noted.
Btw, instructive that this immoral psychopath was a speechwriter for the Clintons, no? You get a better sense of how we have gotten where we are as a country …
Belief in the gods may often lead to atrocities. Our fictive are sock puppets for those who wish to control others. As Diderot reportedly said: Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Breathtaking especially coming from the mouth of the speechwriter of two most recently canonized saints of the Democratic party.
Is the following rephrasing of Hurwitz’s words misrepresented or were the two Obummas speaking literal 180° trash every time their mouths were open: “Hurwitz went on to say that people are wrong to carry the lessons of Holocaust education into opposition to Israel’s genocidal atrocities because the Holocaust was Nazi Germany blaming Jews for all their problems in the same way people think Israel is the source of all the world’s problems today.”
Well, no, people think that Israel blames the Palestinians for all its problems*** identically to the way Nazi Germany blamed the Jews for all its problems … and is attempting to solve its “P problem” exactly as the Nazi Germany attempted to solve its “J problem.”
———————————————————————
*** the “problem” for Israel being stubborn, uppity Palestinians would not all leave their land the moment Jewish European colonists invaded it.
It reminds me of the recent resignation of the IDF’s chief military advocate:
“The Israeli military’s top lawyer, Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, has resigned after admitting to leaking footage showing the gang rape of a prisoner at the Sde Teiman prison facility in August last year.”
aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/1/why-has-the-israeli-armys-top-lawyer-resigned-after-leaking-rape-evidence
The issue wasn’t that the video was faked – nobody’s claimed it was; only that it was leaked and didn’t reflect well on the brave, moral, saintly Israelis involved. (Much like Chelsea Manning leaking the ‘Collateral Murder’ video of US goons in Iraq.)
I suspect that she is sincere about what she says. It is interesting how people can become so twisted.
Sarah Hurwitz is as untrustworthy as her mentor ‘O’bama’ in the end proved to be.
Does this individual honestly have her essential existential wits, not only about herself, but more importantly, about the actual equal human rights of all humanity bar none?
Ordinary Jewish people are very intelligent, and so they can see Hurwitz for the gaslighting genocide-apologist for what she is.
Lucky for us, the Unibomber’s brother didn’t think like Ms. Hurwitz.
These people are living in a world of utter depravity and selfishness, devoid of humanity. That they are blind to this is becoming all the more apparent. I suggest that this is religion put to its worst possible use. Instead of uniting people in shared humanity, it creates wholly artificial divisions based on selfishness and narcissism. A superior, entitle race? Bullshit. More like a cancer in the body of humanity.
Caitlin is spot on. It always amazes me that the western Corporate-Owned-News (CON) is so blatant about blocking out views that differ from their empire-friendly perspective. A couple years ago I wrote an article about it titled “One Side Fits All” that made the same point. The CON tries to convince you that all other perspectives or points of view, especially those from outside the empire, are invalid and must be ignored. My impression then, and now, is that the CON knows it doesn’t have valid arguments to make, so they just block out all other perspectives and say that is a good thing. I am astounded when I talk to friends who still watch the “nightly news” despite its obvious bias and blatant omissions.
I doubt I will ever not be amused by the memory of Christmas dinner a few years ago when my lawyer relative sneered that I get my news “from YouTube”. I am sure his adult children didn’t think worse of me for it.
Thank you! I am also astounded when friends parrot the mainstream media bullshit. People I thought of as intelligent reveal themselves to be stupid in the extreme in this regard. I try to change their minds, but they call me names instead.
She had to keep looking down, referring to her notes i presume, as this propaganda needed prompting.
The thing i noticed. But that’s worse. Wonder what number draft that was. Christ.