This is the former speechwriter for Barrack Obama, Sarah Hurwitz, at the Jewish Federation of North America General Assembly this past Sunday. She made some rather provocative remarks there regarding the “disconnect” between younger and older Jews in relation to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I would like to respond to those remarks directly.

Sarah- “I think since Oct 7, and even before, there have been huge shifts in America on how people think about Jews and Israel and I think that is especially true of young people. So, we are now wrestling with a new generational divide here. And I think that is particularly true in that social media is now our source for media.”

“And it used to be the media 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 a 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.”

Me- Let me get this straight, Sarah. You are saying that Al Jazeera and Nick Fuentes are ideologically the same? Nick Fuentes, who openly praises Hitler? And what “weird bookstore” are you referencing? Left leaning ones who sold books with Palestinian voices and perspectives? And are you saying that mainstream media once told a single narrative which was all pro-Israel? On this last one, I would agree wholeheartedly. Seldom were Palestinian voices heard in legacy media. But, unlike you, I wouldn’t call that balanced journalism.

Sarah- “You have TikTok just bashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. And this is why many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything we try to say to them they’re hearing through this wall of carnage. So, I want to get data and information and facts and arguments and they are just seeing in their minds carnage and I sound obscene.”

Me- Oh, Sarah. You poor thing. You are having a really tough time explaining away the racist nature of the Zionist project, decades of ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies, and US support for all of it because of a “wall of carnage.” How terribly inconvenient for you. As your friend Van Jones quipped: these young people are seeing all those “dead Gaza babies” scroll by on their newsfeed. And they are appalled by it. How rude of the Palestinians to post about their annihilation. And how silly of these young Jews to be moved by such images and videos.

Hate to break it to you, Sarah. But you are obscene.

Sarah- “And you know, I think, unfortunately, the very smart bet we made on Holocaust education to serve as antisemitism education, in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit. Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated youngsters and they think antisemitism is like anti-black racism, 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 they think, Oh, I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is that you fight Israel, you fight the big powerful people, hurting the weak people.”

Me- My God, Sarah. Where to begin with this one? Are you saying Holocaust education was only about combating antisemitism? It isn’t a lesson on the evil of scapegoating? Dehumanization? Genocide? And that these lessons apply to any marginalized or oppressed people? As someone who has spent a lifetime studying the Holocaust, how did I miss the lesson that it only applied to Jewish people and should be used to defend an ethnostate committing atrocities?

Sarah, normal human beings are appalled by cruelty and sadism. Normal people are repulsed by atrocities and brutality. And they understand that it is wrong for powerful people to violently crush and wipe out weaker people.

Sarah- “The problem is, we’re not just a religion. 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. 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.”

Me- Sarah, if your siblings were murdering children, would you be okay with that? Would you not even say one word in objection? This is not just a dysfunctional family. What you just described isn’t a “family” at all. It is a cult. A death cult, to be more exact.

What a pity, Sarah. You cannot stand atop a mountain of corpses and defend what your “family” is doing any more without push back from young Jews around the world. And the whitewashing spin the legacy media used to employ no longer works.

Sarah, you made opposition to this genocide even more imperative, moral and clear. And for that, I thank you.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025