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(July 13, 2026 \/ JNS)<\/span>\n <\/p>\n Julian Casablancas, the frontman of The Strokes, one of the defining rock bands of the early 2000s, recently told a million YouTube subscribers on the popular web series SubwayTakes that American Zionists \u201cget the benefits of white privileged people, but talk like they are black people during slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n This week, Oxford University released a video of Casablancas expanding on it. Yes, that Oxford.<\/p>\n The Oxford Union, comfortably ensconced at the highbrow academic institution in England, invited him to speak, and he offered a clarification. He now says he meant \u201csettler-style Zionist expansionists and maybe some good-hearted indoctrinated moderates.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cThe true nerve point really comes down to one thing, and that is expansion.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take Casablancas seriously for a moment, since Oxford did. He makes two claims: one about \u201cprivilege\u201d and one about \u201cexpansion.\u201d<\/p>\n First, privilege.<\/p>\n It matters who is delivering the lecture: Julian Casablancas is the son of John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management, one of the most powerful modeling agencies in the world. His mother was Jeanette Christiansen, a former \u201cMiss Denmark.\u201d He attended the Lyc\u00e9e Fran\u00e7ais de New York and, at 13, was sent to Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, a boarding school so exclusive it is known as \u201cthe school of kings.\u201d He came home to the Dwight School in Manhattan, one of the most expensive private schools in America.<\/p>\n I say none of this to mock a childhood that Casablancas didn\u2019t choose. I say it because this specific man, from this specific background, has decided that the people falsely claiming victimhood are the Jews. Including the ones who were recently stabbed in London. Including the ones screamed at in a kosher restaurant in New York. Including families like mine. He whispers the word that makes students cringe: \u201cZionism.\u201d<\/p>\n I am the product of immigrants and of the atrocities of the 1930s and 1940s. I grew up in Queens, N.Y. Nobody sent me to Switzerland.<\/p>\n