Friday, October 16, 2026
From Ian:
Bret Stephens: Going Back to To Jerusalem and Back
Bret Stephens: Going Back to To Jerusalem and Back
Current events books tend to age poorly. Controversies fade. Trends that seem unstoppable in one decade are unexpectedly reversed in the next. Predictions based on extensive data and careful analysis nonetheless prove wrong. It’s hard to make sense of one’s time, or of its direction, while living within it.Seth Mandel: Anti-Semites Waste So Much of Our Time
Yet to read Saul Bellow’s To Jerusalem and Back a half century after its publication feels remarkably, almost disconcertingly, current. On a visit to Kiryat Arba, the Israeli settlement next to Hebron, Bellow is distressed by the sight of Jewish kids playing so close to the Palestinian town: “It’s when I see the children on their bikes that I feel most uneasy, knowing how much madness there is just over the horizon.” (Remember: This is the mid-1970s.) Speaking of settlements, Bellow worries about “ultra-Orthodox zealots who insist that to settle on the West Bank is their God-given right.” The occupation, he says, “is costly and embarrassing. Israel, born out of a national liberation movement, now seems to be denying the Palestinians their political liberties.” But the attitudes of Israel’s enemies aren’t far from his mind, either. He quotes Syria’s minister of defense urging his troops not only to butcher Jewish foes but to eat them. “Egyptian and Syrian leaders speak of the founding of Israel as ‘the original sin,’” Bellow writes. “Is this sin so great that it justifies not only slaughter but cannibalism?”
Turning to global perceptions of Israel, he relates a conversation he had over lunch with Yitzhak Rabin, then the prime minister. “The Arabs have succeeded in winning worldwide public support,” Bellow warns, and “Israel had better give some thought to the media intelligentsia in the United States.” Rabin, like Israeli leaders before and after, shrugs.
In Europe and the U.S., far-left critics of Israel “are not overtly anti-Semitic” but discuss the country using “the Marxist-Leninist categories: finance capital, colonialism, and imperialism.”
The Ford administration, along with prominent commentators who speak for it, are growing weary of what they see as Jerusalem’s recalcitrance in the face of American diplomatic maneuvers, leading Israelis to fret constantly about whether their only true ally is about to turn on them.
Then there’s the problem of historical ignorance, particularly of young people passing judgment on Middle East affairs. “Very few Americans,” Bellow writes, “seem to know, for instance, that when the U.N., in 1947, proposed the creation of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, the Jews accepted the provision for the political independence of the Palestinian Arabs. It was the Arab nations which rejected the U.N. plan.” Many French intellectuals agreed with the Arabs, Jean-Paul Sartre most of all, leading Bellow to note: “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”
As for the Israelis with whom Bellow spends time—not just political figures such as Rabin or Shimon Peres or Abba Eban but also kibbutzniks, Soviet émigrés, fellow novelists, Holocaust survivors, academics, masseurs and barbers, people of the left and others of the right—they were in 1976 very much what they are in 2026: brimming. Brimming with anxieties and hopes, recrimination and self-recrimination, opinions on every subject, profound doubts about the future matched by that unmistakable Israeli resoluteness. “Life in Israel is far from enviable, yet there is a clear purpose in it,” Bellow writes. “People are fighting for the society they have created, and for life and honor.”
If Bellow’s experience of Israel feels familiar, it’s a reminder that while much has happened in the intervening 50 years, little has changed. Threats from Egypt, Syria, and their proxies may no longer keep Israeli generals awake at night. Threats from Iran, Turkey, and their proxies do. The social tensions and splits that Bellow saw then—between the religious and secular, Israelis and Palestinians, critics of the occupation and defenders of it—remain more or less unchanged. Unchanged, too, is the volcanic hostility Israel arouses from its critics, so completely disproportionate to its place in the world or, even on the most invidious reading of its actions, the comparative scale of its alleged crimes.
You have to laugh at the “can spill over into hostility towards Jews” when the post is about encouraging anti-Israel “resistance” anywhere in the world one sees an Israeli buying a house. And of course the post ends with praise for the United Nations.Former Archbishop of Canterbury says Israel is ‘the land that God promised’
Back in J Street’s early days, its founder Jeremy Ben-Ami told the New York Times that the organization’s mission was to help Barack Obama, who was trying to put daylight between the U.S. and Israel: “Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”
There are various practical effects this “blocking back” strategy has. One of those effects is to waste lots of everybody’s time.
I’ll explain. When a political figure emerges as a harsh critic of Israel, there is an instinctive circling of wagons around him, even when he don’t exactly radiate good faith.
Organizations like J Street that exist to point out Israel’s flaws don’t want anybody on their side of the aisle accused of anti-Semitism, because smart anti-Semites (I know, I know, that’s an oxymoron) will use the arguments already advanced by such groups. It gives them cover. They can say, “I’m just saying what these Jewish groups have already said.”
But anti-Semites obsess over Jews and Israel. And before long, that fixation asserts itself. They continue using the kind of rhetoric that a group like J Street might use—but they start using it all the time. Pretty soon they can talk about nothing else but the evils of the world’s one Jewish state. It’s a clear red flag that this person has an unhealthy concept of Jewish power in his head and self-pitying resentment in his heart.
That’s an explosive combination, and eventually it blows up. When that happens, crass anti-Jewish comments and actions start to show in place of the previously-measured “just anti-Zionism.” When that rhetorical escalation is criticized, the anti-Semite will toss aside all pretense and embrace the fame of podcasters and influencers who rally around them.
It will become obvious that those who initially raised concerns about them were right all along. At that point, partisan pressure groups will throw in the towel. They will condemn the rhetoric, after months (or years) of either silence or running interference for the now-obvious-anti-Semite.
Zohran Mamdani seems to finally have hit that point after his ghoulish statement and behavior on October 7. In the opinion of many liberal Jews in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed is getting there, too. The defenses of Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo—his Nazi tattoo—went on for months, during which time we were expected to pretend the Nazi tattoo didn’t have a very obvious explanation.
It is into this illustrious company that I guess we can finally place Francesca Albanese. For well over a decade Albanese has been making openly anti-Semitic comments. But her cheerleading for Hamas after October 7 really crossed a line for the Biden administration, which called her an anti-Semite. Even the secretary-general of the United Nations admitted she was “a horrible person.” Now there appears to be no one left with a sliver of mainstream legitimacy to defend her.
And all that was lost is time. What a waste of everyone’s time.You have to laugh at the “can spill over into hostility towards Jews” when the post is about encouraging anti-Israel “resistance” anywhere in the world one sees an Israeli buying a house. And of course the post ends with praise for the United Nations.
Back in J Street’s early days, its founder Jeremy Ben-Ami told the New York Times that the organization’s mission was to help Barack Obama, who was trying to put daylight between the U.S. and Israel: “Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”
There are various practical effects this “blocking back” strategy has. One of those effects is to waste lots of everybody’s time.
I’ll explain. When a political figure emerges as a harsh critic of Israel, there is an instinctive circling of wagons around him, even when he don’t exactly radiate good faith.
Organizations like J Street that exist to point out Israel’s flaws don’t want anybody on their side of the aisle accused of anti-Semitism, because smart anti-Semites (I know, I know, that’s an oxymoron) will use the arguments already advanced by such groups. It gives them cover. They can say, “I’m just saying what these Jewish groups have already said.”
But anti-Semites obsess over Jews and Israel. And before long, that fixation asserts itself. They continue using the kind of rhetoric that a group like J Street might use—but they start using it all the time. Pretty soon they can talk about nothing else but the evils of the world’s one Jewish state. It’s a clear red flag that this person has an unhealthy concept of Jewish power in his head and self-pitying resentment in his heart.
That’s an explosive combination, and eventually it blows up. When that happens, crass anti-Jewish comments and actions start to show in place of the previously-measured “just anti-Zionism.” When that rhetorical escalation is criticized, the anti-Semite will toss aside all pretense and embrace the fame of podcasters and influencers who rally around them.
It will become obvious that those who initially raised concerns about them were right all along. At that point, partisan pressure groups will throw in the towel. They will condemn the rhetoric, after months (or years) of either silence or running interference for the now-obvious-anti-Semite.
Zohran Mamdani seems to finally have hit that point after his ghoulish statement and behavior on October 7. In the opinion of many liberal Jews in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed is getting there, too. The defenses of Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo—his Nazi tattoo—went on for months, during which time we were expected to pretend the Nazi tattoo didn’t have a very obvious explanation.
It is into this illustrious company that I guess we can finally place Francesca Albanese. For well over a decade Albanese has been making openly anti-Semitic comments. But her cheerleading for Hamas after October 7 really crossed a line for the Biden administration, which called her an anti-Semite. Even the secretary-general of the United Nations admitted she was “a horrible person.” Now there appears to be no one left with a sliver of mainstream legitimacy to defend her.
And all that was lost is time. What a waste of everyone’s time.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has said that Israel is “the land that God promised, and we must hold on to that”.
Speaking to a mostly Jewish audience at an event in Westminster, he said: “I think that the pattern of the history of God's people is that the nature of the land [of Israel] is embedded in who they are, and if we lose sight of that truth, we lose sight of why the situation there now is so difficult.”
The speech was for an event organised by Repairing the Breach, a group which works to “build healing relationships” between the UK and Jewish people who suffered under the British Mandate, especially in the post-Holocaust.
Addressing the current situation in the region, he said: “I'm not commenting on what's going on at the moment.
“It doesn't mean everything else is fine, you can do anything – but it does mean that place and promise, journey and return, are utterly and deeply embedded in the story of Israel, and we have to listen to that truth, and recognise that we must live in that truth.”
Guests heard from speakers who as small children had boarded the Exodus, a ship which carried more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors towards then-Mandate Palestine in 1947, and which was attacked and seized by the British Royal Navy, with passengers forcibly removed and sent back to Europe.
Others spoke about their relatives’ role in the Bricha movement, the underground network that helped Jewish refugees escape post-war Europe and make their way towards the land which would soon become the state of Israel.
“There are no reflections that are adequate in the face of those stories,” Welby said.
“Listen to the truth as to what the British did. Listen to how we kept people from going to the land which they were intending to make sure was the one place of safety in the world, and how we stopped that.
“It’s very easy for institutions to do the wrong thing because the rules say X or Y, or because we've been given orders to do it.
"But the lesson for me and the reflection I hear is that we must act according to what is right, to love justice and do mercy and walk humbly with our God.
“Where we have gone wrong, as the British nation, in our recent history and in our further history, it is a cause for repentance and sorrow and acknowledgement.”
Welby, who served as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury between 2013 and 2025, also spoke positively about the “people of Israel”, and of his reaction on encountering the opposite sentiment.
“One cannot look at the history of the people of Israel in any place without realising that wherever they are, they bring blessing,” he said.
