JNS Betrays Its Mission: How Netanyahu’s Echo Chamber is Poisoning World Jewry

Over the past year, a troubling pattern has emerged that should concern anyone who values honest journalism and critical thinking in the Jewish world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, increasingly isolated even within segments of pro-Israel Jewish American media who know that he is not conservative or really loyal to Jewish values, appears to be grooming the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) to serve as his personal echo chamber, regardless of his ultra-progressive policies at home and refusal to achieve victory in Gaza. The role that is designated to JNS by the Netanyahu family is simple - to be an obedient non-critical Channel 14 for Diaspora Jewry.

The first glaring red flag came during Netanyahu’s trip to meet U.S. President Donald Trump. Accompanying him in an official capacity was Caroline Glick, a longtime Netanyahu loyalist whose predictions and pseudo-conservative rhetoric might convince some boomers, but not me.

Oh, and by the way — she also happens to be a JNS columnist.

The conflict of interest was blatant: a supposed independent journalist functioning as part of Netanyahu’s political delegation, while still maintaining her role within JNS.

For a media outlet that claims to represent Jewish journalism, the message could not have been clearer, loyalty to Shrimp Eating Atheist Netanyahu takes precedence over critical distance that serves the Jewish people.

More recently, Netanyahu’s participation in a JNS conference added another layer of concern. The very presence of a sitting prime minister, embroiled in legal troubles and facing widespread domestic dissent, at an event hosted by a supposedly independent Jewish media organization blurs the line between journalism and political propaganda.

If Netanyahu truly were what he has marketed himself to be, a conservative, a hawk, a cool-headed strategist, a victor, I could accept it all.

But given that this masquerade, which has fooled world Jewry for over 30 years, has led Israel to no real national victories, I can only feel sorry for these phony Jewish conservatives who keep drinking the Kool-Aid.

Even more tellingly, this outreach comes precisely at a time when other American Jewish outlets, including more moderate or previously Netanyahu-friendly publications, have begun questioning his leadership - just like so many among the right as a whole.

Publications like the Jewish Journal, Times of Israel (U.S. edition), and even the conservative Tablet Magazine have increasingly published critical analyses exposing Netanyahu’s failures, his personal entanglements, his divisive political strategies, and the ways in which his leadership weakens Israel’s Jewish character and undermines its national security interests.

Netanyahu understands he can no longer rely on the goodwill or ignorance of the broader Jewish media establishment, which has started to see through the myth and lies he crafted around himself.

Thus, he needs new loyalists — new "poodles," as some commentators cynically put it — who are either too inexperienced, too ignorant, or too personally invested to question the deeper damage he is inflicting on Israel and world Jewry with his far-left Marxist tactics at home and his defeatism on the front, all while marketing himself as a good old-fashioned conservative.

The tragedy is that the editors at JNS may not fully realize the stakes. In their eagerness to appear close to power, they risk enabling a "leader" whose very actions increasingly threaten Israel’s future as a strong, victorious Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s desperate need for uncritical platforms has nothing to do with safeguarding Israel’s security or global standing. It has everything to do with preserving his own political survival, even at the cost of degrading Israeli institutions, and preventing victory.

JNS must decide: Does it want to be a serious journalistic institution, committed to the Jewish people and to truth? Or will it allow itself to become the overseas auxiliary of Netanyahu's crumbling political brand, just another Channel 14 for the diaspora?

The choice could not be more consequential — for JNS, for American Jewry, and for Israel itself.