His tweets pull no punches; he tells it to his more than 800,000 Arab followers as it is, without the usual spin they’re accustomed to in the Arab media. He’s a historian and media commentator who specializes in the Arab-Israeli conflict, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Arab world, Islamist terrorism, and the history of the Jewish communities in Muslim countries. A Lebanese-born Jew, he was named the number-two Middle East and North Africa-based political pundit by Arab News, Saudi Arabia’s first English-language newspaper.
Who is Dr. Edy Cohen?
Edy was born Edward Halala in Beirut, in 1972. “My parents, Chaim and Rachel Halala (Cohen), were both descendants of families that had been expelled from Spain in 1492,” he says. “My ancestors settled in the Levantine region, living under Ottoman rule until the end of World War I, when the area came under the Mandate of Syria and Lebanon administered by France, while the British received the Mandate of Mesopotamia [now Iraq] and Palestine.”
When Edy’s parents were growing up, Lebanon was known as the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” a nickname paying homage to its snow-capped holiday destinations and status as a secure banking hub for Gulf Arabs. Beirut, the cosmopolitan mecca overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, was celebrated as the “Paris of the Middle East.”
The 1960s saw Lebanon reach the peak of its success, becoming one of the world’s fastest growing economies thanks to its banking sector-driven prosperity and tourism. The Jewish community, located mostly in Beirut’s centrally located Jewish quarter, Wadi Abu Jamil, flourished during this time. (Interestingly, Wadi Abu Jamil isn’t far from Dahieh, the predominantly Shia Muslim neighborhood where Hassan Nasrallah was bunkered and later killed by an Israeli air strike in September 2024.)
“There were many synagogues, talmud Torahs and a Jewish high school known as the Alliance. Kosher meat was imported from Syria,” Edy says.
Still, anti-Semitism did exist. In 1965, when Eli Cohen, the famous Israeli spy, was executed in Syria, many Jewish families in Arab countries became concerned about having the name Cohen. “After Eli Cohen was publicly hanged in Damascus, my father changed our last name from Cohen to Halala. The name isn’t really non-Jewish, but it’s not an identifiably Jewish family name,” he explains.
The first mass exodus of Lebanese Jews took place in 1967, after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. Approximately 6,000 Jews immigrated to Israel and other countries. All of Edy’s aunts and uncles went to Israel, except for one of his mother’s brothers, who moved to Mexico. “But my father, who was a successful accountant and businessman, refused to consider leaving the country where his ancestors had lived for centuries,” Edy relates. “Despite rising anti-Semitism, he placed his trust in his Christian and Muslim friends and business associates, whom he had known since he was a child.”
By the time Edy was three years old, Lebanon’s golden age was over. In 1975, a bloody civil war broke out. The once-prosperous tourist hotspot became a war-torn country ripped apart by the bloody tensions between Muslim and Christian factions.
The tens of thousands of Palestinians who had fled to Lebanon after they were kicked out of Jordan in 1970 shifted the demographics. Palestinian terrorist groups began to target the Lebanese Christian community, in addition to the attacks perpetrated against Israelis.
The strongest of these groups was the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Yasser Arafat. In effect, Arafat created a state within a state, gaining popularity among the disregarded Palestinians by providing food and social services that weren’t available to them without Lebanese citizenship.
Life for the Jews in Lebanon became unbearable. “Our suffering was twofold,” Edy recalls with pain. “The civil war had destroyed the lifestyle of all Lebanese citizens—a lifestyle that was once the envy of the entire region—but as Jews, we also suffered from the violent anti-Semitism that was roiling beneath the surface. Anti-Jewish graffiti was everywhere, Jews were cursed in the streets, and we had rocks thrown through our front window in the middle of the night.”
Almost 200 Jews were killed in pogroms that took place in the shadows of the civil war. By the end of 1977, most of Lebanon’s remaining 1,800 Jews had fled, leaving behind a few dozen families and a rich history of hundreds of years. The shuls and talmud Torahs began to close, as did the Alliance high school, and soon it was no longer possible to import kosher meat from Syria.
“By the time my younger brother was born in 1979, there was no rabbi and no mohel in the country,” Edy says. “My parents had to arrange for a mohel to come from Syria to perform the bris.”
With the closure of the Alliance high school, Edy was forced to attend the Christian high school, where he suffered harassment from both his Christian peers and the upper-class Muslims who attended the school. “The Christians accused me of killing their savior, and the Muslims accused me of stealing Palestinian land. It wasn’t pleasant.”
There were six Jewish students in the entire school. At one point, Edy’s only Jewish classmate left Lebanon for Canada, and he became the only Jew in his class. “My mother begged my father to emigrate, but he kept insisting that things would be okay. He believed firmly in coexistence and saw himself as having the same rights as any other Lebanese citizen. Unfortunately, he and Hezbollah weren’t exactly on the same wavelength.”
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, hoping to end the Palestinian attacks coming from that country. Israel seized control of the southern half of Lebanon and laid siege to Beirut, forcing the PLO and its leader, Yasser Arafat, to flee to Tunisia.
It was in the vacuum of influence left by Arafat’s retreat that the Hezbollah terror group was founded, and it immediately began to use aggressive tactics to establish itself as a force to be reckoned with. These included plane hijackings, the bombing of the US Embassy and the US Marine barracks in Beirut, and the kidnapping and murder of foreign nationals. (Ibrahim Aqil, who was responsible for the bombings of the barracks and US Embassy, was killed this past September during Israel’s targeted attacks on Hezbollah’s leaders.)
In 1985, Hezbollah’s terror arrived on the Halala family’s doorstep. “That day we had guests over,” Edy recalls, “and my father was accompanying them to the door. Suddenly, one of the guests ran to my father to warn him that there were armed men outside. They took my father and drove off, and we never saw him again. I was 12 years old.”
Along with Edy’s father, 11 other prominent Jews were kidnapped in broad daylight. These included Isaac Sasson, a Jewish community leader; Dr. Elie Hallak, a pediatrician who had cared selflessly for children of all religions for many years; and the head of the chevrah kaddisha. “At 38 years of age, my father was the youngest of the group,” Edy says. “Hezbollah accused them of being Mossad operatives.”
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