AP Casts Bigoted Demand That American Jew Remove Kippa As Saudi ‘Sensitivity’

By: Tamar Sternthal March 17, 2024

Playing into the antisemitic habit of holding Jews worldwide responsible for Israeli actions, the Associated Press has whitewashed a Saudi demand that a visiting American Jew representing a U.S. governmental agency remove his kippah as an Israel-related “sensitivity.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (Photo from USCIRF site)

Jon Gambrell’s otherwise informative report about the Saudi demand that American Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom remove his kippa as he participated in a religious freedom mission to Saudi Arabia contained this unfortunately worded passage (“US mandated religious freedom group ends Saudi trip early after rabbi ordered to remove his kippa“):

The current Saudi sensitivity may come in part because of Israel’s grinding war targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the Oct. 7 militant attack that killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. 

Rabbi Cooper is an American Jew. Imposing discriminatory, bigoted measures against a diaspora Jews because of something Israel did, or is accused of having done, is a textbook example of antisemitism. The working definition of antisemitism, published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance adopted by more than three dozen countries and the European Union, includes: “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

Despite communication from CAMERA, AP has failed to remove the mischaracterization of the Saudi anti-Jewish bigotry hurled at an American Jew, the chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as a “sensitivity” connected to Israel’s war against Hamas.

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