Jewish CNN journalist Dana Bash became the target of a concerted antisemitic protest and mob attack during a book presentation.
Political correspondent and CNN host Dana Bash has been a familiar face at the news network for decades. She co-moderated the TV debate between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump with her colleague Jake Tapper and interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris as well as Republican vice-presidential candidate James D. Vance.
Dana Bash’s Jewish identity is well known. Her great-grandparents and one of her aunts were murdered in Auschwitz. Together with her CNN colleague Wolf Blitzer, whose paternal grandparents were also murdered in Auschwitz, she participated in the March of the Living in Auschwitz in the spring of 2023 . She has spoken publicly about her own Jewish childhood experiences, including her Bat Mitzvah, Shabbat dinners, and a Jewish summer camp.
She has just published a book about the 1872 presidential election in Louisiana – America’s Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History – . The book addresses racism, political violence, and the North-South divide in the US during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. In it, she compares the historical situation to today’s political and social climate.
AIPAC Conspiracy Theories
On September 5, she became the target of a coordinated disruption and mob attack during a book presentation at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington. Bash was repeatedly interrupted by several masked young women shouting abusive remarks, before being escorted out by security. Bash listened to the speeches without responding.
One woman screamed: “Every time she lies, a quarter dies in Gaza! She kills people! You know it! Look me in the eyes!” – “You don’t deserve to look her in the eyes,” a listener replied.
A cell phone video shows another woman accusing Bash of receiving “millions” from the pro-Israel lobbying organization AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), asserting that she used it to pay for her “million-dollar house,” in which she “lives all alone.” She claimed that the money was given to her to tell “lies about the Palestinian people” and the student demonstrations and encampments against Israel. The woman ended with: “Meanwhile, our families and friends are dying… Is this happening to your family?”
One woman shouted: “You belong behind bars! We know who you are! This is not a war; this is genocide. You are complicit in genocide!” As security personnel escorted her out, another shouted: “You call yourself a good journalist. Tell the truth! You want millions of Zionists! You want millions from AIPAC!”
Meanwhile, two bodyguards stood by Dana Bash but did not intervene. The audience remained seated calmly. Given the presence of numerous other security personnel, there was evidently no threat to the speakers’ safety. The police reported that there had been no arrests.
In response to an inquiry from the Jewish-American magazine The Forward, a spokesperson for AIPAC stated that there was no financial connection between AIPAC and Bash, and AIPAC has not provided Dana Bash with any financial resources.
Rising Hate
In 2022, Dana Bash hosted a CNN documentary titled Rising Hate: Antisemitism in America. On this occasion, she recounted her worries for her then ten-year-old son when he expressed a desire to wear a necklace with a Star of David. She would have never thought of this, as she herself had never worn a Star of David.
Because it was so important to her son to show the world that he is a “proud Jew,” and this request emotionally moved her, she ultimately agreed. She said: “What I didn’t say – and I was even ashamed to admit it to myself – was that it made me nervous for my little son to show the world that he is Jewish.”
In 2015, actor Michael Douglas reflected in a guest column for the Los Angeles Times about how his then 14-year-old son Dylan had cried after being verbally abused at a swimming pool in Southern Europe because of such a necklace: “After I calmed him down, I went to the pool and asked the lifeguards to show me the man who had shouted at him. We talked. It wasn’t a pleasant discussion. Afterward, I sat down with my son and said: ‘Dylan, you just experienced antisemitism for the first time.’”
Bash also interviewed Jeff Cohen, one of the hostages in the hostage situation at the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, on January 15, 2022. Cohen, who is the vice president of the community, described the perpetrator this way: “He believed that if he came here and attacked Jews, that the Jews control everything. They would allow it. Jews control the government, Jews control the banks, Jews control the media. He really believed that.”
Not Just a Journalist
This is what Dana Bash has now experienced – certainly not for the first time. For the individuals who disrupted her reading, she is not just a journalist, but a personification of power, of Jewish control over the media, of the alleged wealth of Jews.
If the activists had simply wanted to showcase their hatred for journalists who are perceived as pro-Israel, they could have targeted others. The majority of Americans who support Israel are not Jews, but Christians. However, the disruptors did not choose any journalist from Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, or any other explicitly pro-Israel outlet, but a Jewish journalist.
CNN host Jake Tapper tweeted appropriately that Dana Bash was attacked “because she is Jewish. Her reporting on the war between Israel and Hamas is in no way different from the majority of other news that addresses the suffering of both Jews/Israelis and Palestinians. This harassment is antisemitism.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted: “It is unacceptable to spew such antisemitic bile and false accusations against a Jewish-American journalist. @DanaBashCNN has handled this with dignity, but no one should have to experience this horrible hatred. We cannot allow this to become the new normal.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, co-host of “The View” on ABC, CNN commentator, and former communications advisor to former President Donald Trump, described the disruption as “harassment” that is “not about CNN’s reporting, but solely because Dana is Jewish. It is horrific antisemitism in plain view.”
Jews Made Targets
Recently, the Jewish director of the Brooklyn Museum had her house vandalized at night with slogans accusing the museum of having financial ties to Israel. Here, just like with Dana Bash, money played a role in the antisemitic allegations.
Jews are being targeted. Jewish organizations are marked as targets on city maps. Zahra Billoo, director of the Islamist lobbying organization CAIR in San Francisco and previously on the board of the Women’s March on Washington, called in 2021 to “connect the dots.” There is a “connection between Islamophobia and Zionism.”
One must not only combat the “vehement fascists” but also “the polite Zionists who say, let’s just break bread together.” “We must pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League, we must pay attention to the Jewish Federation, we must pay attention to the Zionist synagogues, we must pay attention to the Hillel groups on our campuses.”
Attacks on a Jewish journalist and a Jewish museum director are the fruit of this ideological seed.