From Ian:
Benny Morris:
Iran Contra Israel
While everyone understands that actual American military power remains robust, there is a perception of America’s weakness of resolve and reluctance to use force, rooted in two pre-Biden episodes. The first took place under President Obama in 2013, when Biden was vice-president, when Obama warned Syria’s President Bashar Assad not to use chemical weapons against his opponents in the Syrian Civil War. Despite Obama’s warning that this was a “red line,” Assad went ahead and used chemical weapons anyway and Obama refrained from doing anything in response. The second episode took place in September 2019. In a kind of preview of the recent assault on Israel, Iran launched cruise missiles and drones against Saudi Arabia’s oil installations, causing major damage, yet President Trump did nothing to help America’s ally. (In the 14 April assault, the Iranians launched more than 10 times as many missiles: at least 110 ballistic missiles, 30 or so cruise missiles, and more than 170 drones.)
To this catalogue of incidents highlighting American irresolution and lack of resolve, we should add Washington’s striking reluctance to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighters and various advanced munitions and, of course, America’s unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, culminating in the shameful retreat from Kabul. This is not how Great Powers behave.
In the context of the current Middle East war, Biden said “don’t” back in October, in the hope of deterring Iranian and Hezbollah involvement, just after Hamas’s savage assault on southern Israel. Washington even sent a naval task force to the region. Nonetheless, Hezbollah and the Houthis, obviously directed or at least authorised by Tehran, went ahead and launched their wars of attrition against northern Israel and in the Bab al Manad straits—and the two groups have persisted in, respectively, launching daily rockets at Israeli military positions and communities and in launching rockets against both Israeli and non-Israeli shipping in the Red Sea. Indeed, the day before their missile strike against Israel, the Iranians, in defiance of international law, brazenly hijacked a Philippines ship in the Straits of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Clearly, Tehran does not fear Washington’s wrath.
How exactly the Iranian attack of 14 April and its frustration will affect the war in Gaza is unclear. The Iranians may have wanted to signal their support to Hamas—even though the attack appears to have been mainly motivated by Iranian calculations regarding their own position in the Middle East. Since launching its assault on Israel’s southern border communities on 7 October, Hamas has hoped to widen its war with Israel and ignite a regional war, involving Iran and its other proxies, who might rain down missiles on Israel from the north, east and south. The mini wars of attrition Hezbollah is waging from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen have only partly fulfilled Hamas’s hopes. Perhaps the Hamas leaders see the Iranian missile strike on Israel as a further token of regional support for their war.
On Israel’s part, the country has certainly drawn comfort from the fact that Jordan helped to block the Iranian strike (the Jordanians reportedly shot down several Iranian drones), and Washington certainly views Jordan’s cooperation as a sign that its plans to consolidate an Arab Sunni bloc to impede Iran’s ambitions to dominate the Middle East are bearing fruit. We should expect an improvement in Israeli–Jordanian relations over the coming weeks.
But the key question is whether Israel will agree to join the emergent bloc, which Biden has been advocating since 7 October, even if it entails accepting a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinians (which would imply eventual Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and perhaps East Jerusalem) and allowing the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to take over the Gaza Strip after Israel completes its withdrawal when the war with Hamas comes to an end.
So far, Netanyahu has agreed to neither of these conditions and is unlikely to agree to them in the future, given his desire to maintain his right-wing coalition government. This is a major reason why Washington—together with Israel’s liberals and left-wingers—is seeking Netanyahu’s ouster as quickly as possible. The problem is that Netanyahu’s ruling coalition controls 64 seats in Israel’s 120-seat Knesset (parliament) and, unless a handful of coalition members defect, there is no way to unseat Netanyahu and his coalition before the general elections scheduled for 2026. Hence, Biden’s geopolitical plans are out of synch with internal Israeli politics.
Meanwhile, Israel has withdrawn most of its forces from the Gaza Strip, has allowed tens of thousands of Gazans to move from the southern end of the Strip back to their homes in the north, seems undecided about conquering the town of Rafah and its environs—the last piece of Gaza still under full Hamas control—and has reached a dead end in the negotiations for the return of the remaining hundred or so hostages whom Hamas abducted from Israel on 7 October. So far, Hamas has refused any deal and insists that Israel must definitively end the war and pull all its forces out of the Strip before Hamas will even contemplate an exchange of hostages for Palestinian terrorists (or “freedom fighters”) in Israeli prisons.
The “Don’t” Doctrine
This capitulation to aggression against a key ally embodies the flaws of Biden’s “don’t” doctrine: words followed by minimal action toward adversaries, and pressure on allies not to respond to attacks. It’s an approach that recalls the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the tepid response to Houthi terrorist-pirates attacking American-owned vessels and destabilizing crucial shipping lanes. Thanks to the “don’t” doctrine, Iran has established a new status quo: it can fire scores of rockets and drones at an American ally and emerge materially unscathed.
The only saving grace of the “don’t” doctrine, and the associated capitulation to Iranian aggression, is that it inadvertently highlights an important truth often overlooked by the U.S. government, media, and punditry: that the Iranian regime is fundamentally responsible for the ongoing chaos in the Middle East and the deaths in Israel and Gaza.
Moreover, the situation underscores the potential of the Abraham Accords, the series of agreements seeking to normalize Israel’s relations with Arab states. Jordan’s and Saudi Arabia’s participation in the joint defense effort against Iran’s attack demonstrates how security cooperation between Israel and Arab states can enhance regional stability—a potential nearly derailed by the Biden administration’s initial reluctance to embrace the accords.
The U.S. urgently needs a shift in strategy. Biden must abandon his ineffective “don’t” doctrine and adopt a more assertive regional posture. This does not mean deploying American ground troops, a move widely opposed in the U.S. and Israel alike. It does, however, mean rallying Democratic support for unconditional defensive weapon sales to Israel, allowing Israel to strike back at Iran, reinstating the embargoes on Iranian drones and missiles that expired in 2020, and initiating a broad international sanctions regime to isolate Iran further.
Unfortunately, the G–7 summit convened by President Biden to address Iran’s attack resulted only in a strongly worded statement condemning the Tehran regime. The administration needs to do much better than this.
Aviva Klompas:
Biden said 'don't,' but Iran attacked anyway. How should Israel respond now?
Biden wants diplomatic response to Iran attack
The question is, now what?
President Joe Biden has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States won’t support a counterattack on Iran, according to a White House official. In a statement released Saturday night, Biden said the United States seeks a “diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”
But what message does that send Iran?
Understandably, nobody wants to spark a regional war or, given the tinderbox that is the Middle East, the next world war. For that reason, Israel has until now withheld from directly confronting Iran.
At the same time, a tepid response to this weekend’s large-scale assault reinforces the message that there are no real consequences for Iranian aggression. The regime already assessed as much when it decided to launch a direct attack.
Iranian leaders have seen Israel’s allies repeatedly backtrack on their “unwavering” commitment to Israel.
The ayatollahs have watched in recent days as the United States allowed the United Nations to pass a cease-fire resolution that didn’t tie the end of hostilities to freeing hostages. They have seen the calls on Capitol Hill to halt military aid to Israel spread beyond the left-wing fringe.
And they’ve taken note that Canada and Sweden resumed funding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees despite that group’s ties to terror.
On Friday, when Biden was asked about Iran’s plans to attack Israel, his response was: "Don’t.”
But Iran did.
The regime is dangerously emboldened, having already destabilized Iraq and Syria and empowered its terror proxies to exert power in Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza. Iran has learned there are no red lines. Not for financing and directing terror groups. Not for disrupting maritime trade in the Red Sea. Not even for killing three American soldiers in Jordan earlier this year.
How will Iran be reined in after latest aggression?
Where, then, is the red line?
Iran will continue to foment unrest and destabilize the Middle East unless there are consequential repercussions for its aggression.
Now is the time to finally show resolve and deliver a morally unambiguous lesson that the ceaseless war fomented by Iran and its radical Islamist proxies is neither normal nor acceptable.
How Biden helps Iran pay for its terror by refusing to enforce current sanctions
President Biden has spent his three years in office making it clear to Tehran’s terrorist regime that America won’t make it pay a price for attacking our allies, bankrolling Hamas and expanding Iranian nuclear capabilities.
In fact, by refusing to enforce sanctions already on the books, Biden is helping Iran foot the bill for its aggression, including the first direct attack on Israel in the regime’s 45 years in power.
Each year since Biden took office, Iran has steadily increased oil exports — its most lucrative revenue source — following a historic collapse of sales during the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure campaign.
The increase is no accident. “U.S. officials privately acknowledge they’ve gradually relaxed some enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil sales,” Bloomberg revealed last year.
This month, Iran boosted oil production to an estimated five-year high of 3.4 million barrels per day — primarily for China, which buys the commodity at a discount.
From oil alone, the regime has earned upwards of $100 billion — and a handy cushion from the consequences of its own actions.
Another source of Tehran’s revenue is liquified petroleum gas, which the regime has started to export in record quantities, rendering it the top seller in the region.
In public, the administration denies it is going easy on Iran. Accordingly, the sanctions it should be enforcing are still on the books: specifically, regulations requiring the administration to sanction individuals and foreign financial institutions that trade in Tehran-origin commodities.
The administration has also left in place Executive Order 13846, issued by Donald Trump, which provides a toolkit to penalize anyone involved in the “purchase, acquisition, sale, transport, or marketing” of regime petroleum.
So why isn’t the administration acting?
In a word: appeasement.
Team Biden — populated by many Team Obama veterans — believe dogmatically that they can keep the Middle East quiet and finally pivot to Asia by paying Iran to behave.
The Oct. 7 massacre proved otherwise — Hamas depends on Tehran’s reliable provision of funding, training and weapons.
The administration’s flawed ideology has also led Washington to pull its punches across a spectrum of Iran-backed threats: the regime’s advancing nuclear program; dealing with Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias; the Houthis’ attacks on global shipping; and the unprecedented arming of Russia with missiles and drones for use against Ukraine.
Tehran is more capable of attacking the United States, Israel and our allies thanks to its windfall from US sanctions nonenforcement.
From Ian:
John Podhoretz:
Israel’s Splendid Isolation
So maybe there is a certain type of rueful wisdom to be taken from these undeniable statistics. Maybe the thing is, Israel doesn’t need the support of the international community and the Council on Foreign Relations and the panel on Washington Week in Review and the jawboners at the Aspen Institute and the billionaires who drink ambrosia from the boots of tyrants at Davos. Maybe the thing is, Israel is a nation that has had this miraculous rise because it has a purpose, which is something most other countries do not have or need, and something that Thomas Friedman and his ilk are (again) too unnerved by to understand.
Israel is engaged in a purpose that is both world-historical and outside history. It exists as a refuge and haven and homeland for the world’s most stateless people, and its claim to statehood is not just due to its need for protection but based in part on a literally transcendent claim. That’s why I say it exists outside history as well.
To ensure the continuity of its existence, Israel must act. First, it must beat back those who would destroy it and who have been coming at it relentlessly since the day it was founded—genocidal evildoers whose Amalekite faces are now showing themselves even in America, really for the first time in our history.
Second, it must not only survive but thrive, because the fulfillment of its purpose depends upon it slowly making Jewish power a simple and undeniable and enduring reality in a world that has not known such a thing before—and is, as I said before, unnerved by it.
That was, in fact, happening during the 2010s with the Abraham Accords—until that progress was halted in part by a bizarrely feckless Biden administration that decided to hinge our national policy toward the world’s most important oil-exporting nation on the murder of a single person in a consulate in Turkey several years earlier. The fact that Israel had grown the way it had grown and shown how to be an innovative nation in a region mired in backwardness was its calling card.
But perhaps it was too focused on hurrying time along. For over the course of the past decade, Israel somehow found itself, like the sightless Samson in John Milton’s imagining, “eyeless in Gaza”—and made itself vulnerable to the worst single event in its history. At least Samson had been blinded by enemy Philistines; Israel’s leaders blinded themselves. They didn’t see the gathering danger because they wanted to look elsewhere and do other things.
Its response has, yet again, isolated Israel. That isolation is wearing away at the determination of some Israelis to see this war through to victory or is causing them to despair that there can be victory. It is a hateful thing, the isolation. It is unjust, it is foul, it is hypocritical, and it is, of course, anti-Semitic at its root.
But as the past six decades have shown us, when it comes to Israel’s purpose as both a change agent in history and a representative of a force outside of history, the isolation doesn’t matter at all. They—we—are not isolated. They—we—are chosen.
Christine Rosen:
Why the Media Ignore Anti-Semitism
In fact, the decision to downplay the anti-Semitic threat from the left is deliberate. Left-leaning media do not like to cover the behavior of their own, as the inconsistent coverage of the Jew-baiting members of the Democratic Party’s “Squad” during the past several years attests. Mainstream reporters at outlets like the New York Times take great pains to provide context and explanations for Representative Ilhan Omar’s blatant anti-Semitism, for example. A 2019 piece gave Omar and her defenders ample space to claim she was being unfairly targeted for criticism because she was a progressive Muslim woman while glossing over the fact that she had repeatedly accused Jews of having dual loyalties.
Amid the current conflict, it’s evident there is tacit agreement among most in the mainstream media that because Israel is defending itself by trying to root out Hamas in Gaza, the behavior of protesters is somehow justifiable and acceptable—but only because it involves Israel and the Jews.
This goes well beyond the deliberately misleading stories and factual errors about the war that have appeared in outlets such as the Washington Post. As Zach Kessel and Ari Blaff outlined in National Review, in a deep dive of the Post’s coverage of the Israel–Hamas war, the newspaper “has been a case study in moral confusion and anti-Israel bias” and has “violated traditional journalistic principles that have shaped coverage of foreign conflicts by American newsrooms for decades.”
Similarly, a recent story in the Free Press by Uri Berliner, a long-time editor and reporter at National Public Radio, described how NPR “approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the ‘intersectional’ lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms,” which meant “highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.”
By contrast, imagine if an elderly African-American civil-rights activist were being heckled and bullied with racist taunts while trying to speak before a red-state city-council meeting about the need to properly recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Every major newspaper, magazine, and television and cable network would air nonstop coverage of the event.
The double standard at work in mainstream media has become impossible to ignore and is a sign of a deep moral failing in the profession of journalism: When it comes to threats and attacks against Jews, integrity is sacrificed on the altar of ideological conformity. Thus the self-proclaimed seekers of truth became handmaidens to barbarity and the world’s oldest and most destructive hatred.
Seth Mandel:
The Evil Campaign to Remove Jews from the Public Square
In her book People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn recounts the furious response she received once when she mentioned, in a lecture, that the common story of immigration officials changing Jewish family names at Ellis Island is a myth. Immigrants’ names were taken from ship manifests, which were compiled using the immigrants’ own passports. Inspectors were there to confirm, not record, each passenger’s name.
Name-changers in the early-20th century were often Jews, but they were much more likely to be already-settled middle-aged parents of children who were pursuing a trade or a degree in higher education. In 1932, according to the historian Kirsten Fermaglich, 65 percent of those petitioning to change their name had Jewish-sounding last names. Most of the name changes—for Jews and non-Jews alike—at this time were motivated by the desire “to abandon ‘foreign’ names that were ‘difficult to pronounce and spell’ and to adopt instead more ‘American’ names,” Fermaglich writes. “These individuals were hoping to shed the ethnic markers that disadvantaged them in American society by taking on unmarked, ordinary names that would go unnoticed.”
This came at a time when public opinion in the United States had been turning against immigrants for a decade. Especially Jewish immigrants. A restrictive immigration bill would become law (over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto) in 1917. Momentum would soon get rolling toward another, even more restrictive one in 1924. Because immigration law was country-of-origin focused, there could be no official “Jewish quota.” But there were quotas for the parts of Europe that Jews were seeking to leave, and those quotas could be reduced in favor of more “desirable” countries of origin.
“The Hebrew race… in spite of long residence in Europe, is still as it has always been an Asiatic race,” thundered prominent immigration restrictionist Prescott Hall. Bolshevism, he said, was a “movement of oriental Tatar tribes led by Asiatic Semites against the Nordic bourgeoisie.” The historian Howard Sachar quotes a U.S. foreign-service officer inveighing against the Polish Jews seeking to come to America: “They are filthy, un-American and often dangerous in their habits.” Most of them “lack any conception of patriotic or national spirit, and the majority of this percentage is mentally incapable of acquiring it.”
That last line was intended to convey the point that assimilation into American ways was impossible for Jews. Therefore, one was right to be suspicious of them—whether or not they were born in America. Thus no one with a Jewish-sounding last name was spared the suspicion that he might not ever be truly American. Clubs and hotels and even residential neighborhoods tightened their policies excluding Jews. In 1922, Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell repeatedly encountered potential donors who demanded to know how the president planned to “leave our university free of this plague.” Official quotas were still controversial, but the Ivies ultimately figured out the same thing the congressional crafters of immigration quotas did: You could limit your intake of Jews by adjusting geographic quotas. By the 1930s, Harvard had dropped its share of Jewish enrollment from over 25 percent to 10 percent, and Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Swarthmore had gotten their Jewish share into the single digits.
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips:
Strangling Israel slowly
What country other than Israel would be told by the so-called civilised world that it must not respond to an onslaught of more than 300 cruise and ballistic missiles and armed drones fired at the entire country?
If a minute fraction of such an attack were to be mounted against America or Britain, they would declare themselves at war and destroy the enemy before it could attack them again. It’s only Israel that is not to be allowed to defend itself in the same way.
After Sunday night’s attack, in which Iran stopped hiding behind its proxies and revealed itself openly for the first time as the actual enemy of Israel and the free world, Israel reportedly intended to attack Iran but was stopped by US President Joe Biden in a phone call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden’s public comments through his spokesman were grotesque. Israel, he said, should “take the win”and not “escalate tensions” with Iran since the attack had caused minimal damage and casualties as a result of Israel’s “military superiority”.
So because Israel fended off that attack it must now do nothing against Tehran and wait for Iran to attack it again? Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles pointing at the whole of Israel. They are fast and accurate, and the fear is that Hezbollah will unleash so many they will overwhelm even Israel’s effective defences.
Does the Biden administration need to see a few thousand Israelis killed in skyscrapers if missiles get through to Haifa or Tel Aviv before it comes to its defence again?
Deterrence does not mean being able to defend yourself against attack. Deterrence means deterring an attack in the first place. Biden’s prohibition would destroy the very concept of Israeli deterrence and allow Iran to continue to tighten its ring of proxy fire around Israel in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen — and Gaza (where Biden wants Israel to submit to a Palestinian terrorist administration after the war).
Michael Oren:
How Did the War Begin? With Iran’s Appeasers in Washington
Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran to repeatedly assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.
While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. Press reports about President Biden’s refusal to support an Israeli counterattack against Iran indicate, sadly, that nothing substantial in the U.S. position has changed. He has reportedly urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to see the coordinated response to the attack as a “win.”
The Iranians, though, will not see things that way. Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity. If Israel follows Biden’s advice it will send one message to the ayatollahs: “You can launch another 350 missiles and drones at Israel or try to kill Israelis by other means. Either way, the United States won’t stop you.”
Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”
The story of America can end only one of two ways: either it stands up boldly against Iran and joins Israel in deterring it, or Iran emerges from this conflict once again unpunished, undiminished, and ready to inflict yet more devastating damage.
Seth Mandel:
Why Weren’t Iran Sanctions Immediately Triggered by the Attacks?
On Sunday morning, barely twelve hours after the conclusion of Iran’s unprecedented missile barrage on Israel, White House spokesman John Kirby was asked on Fox News Sunday about the Biden administration’s recent decision to waive some sanctions on Iran.
“You know the conversations about unfreezing assets, about waivers on sanctions,” Shannon Bream began. “Could this administration have been tougher on Iran? Did it sense an opening?”
Kirby responded: “It’s hard to look at what President Biden has done with respect to Iran and say that he hasn’t been tough on Iran, or that we haven’t put pressure on them.”
Is it? Because it seems to me that if the administration was prepared militarily for the Iranian attacks Saturday night, and if the president doesn’t want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to retaliate, then a punishment of some kind could have been ready to be instituted immediately, and certainly two days later. At the very least, it would have been easy for the president to cancel the recent sanctions waiver.
It is certainly not the case that sanctions are somehow off the table, at least conceptually. “Biden on Sunday convened leaders from the Group of Seven nations, who said they would consider new sanctions on Iran,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The Journal article, like most of the reporting since the attacks, stressed that the president wants a diplomatic response. It is also clear from the statements that Biden considers sanctions a plausible contribution to such a diplomatic response.
So, where are the sanctions?
The Germans don’t seem to be an obstacle here. “I am strongly in favor of extending [sanctions] to Iran, because we can see how dangerous its actions are at the moment,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
Would the British consider more Iran sanctions? “Yes, absolutely,” says Foreign Minister David Cameron. “We already have 400 sanctions on Iran. We put in place a whole new sanctions regime at the end of last year, which is proving very effective. We’ve sanctioned the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in its entirety, and we’ll continue to look at what further steps we can do.”
Great. So once again, where are they?
Were the allies waiting to see how much damage was done by the Iranian missiles and drones? If so, that’s an indication that no, there will not be sanctions immediately forthcoming. And there is evidence for this idea that the seriousness of the attack would only be judged by the seriousness of the damage it caused. It’s an absurd scale on which to weigh a response because, like spritzing a misbehaving cat with water, it loses its effectiveness if not done right away. The West had the ability to ensure that this case would be more like touching a hot stove: Iran would immediately feel the burn, triggering a response that was basically automatic.
Having the debate over sanctions now—or any retaliative measure, to be honest—only makes it seem as though you can escape punishment by attempting and failing to murder lots of people.
From Ian:
Matti Friedman:
The Real War in the Middle East Comes into Focus
Last night should make clear, for those still in doubt, that Gaza is just one part of the broader story of Iran’s growing power and its tightening encirclement of Israel. When understood in this context, the behavior of Israel and its opponents becomes easier to understand.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza are one link in the Iranian encirclement. The Houthis in Yemen, who have been harassing commercial ships and firing at Israel’s southern port of Eilat, are another link. The Iranian-backed militias in Iraq make up a third. The Iranian forces and proxies in Syria, including the Revolutionary Guard commanders killed in the recent Israeli airstrike in Damascus, are a fourth. (The strike on April 1, which came after months of attacks against Israel by proxies directed and armed by the Revolutionary Guards, is typically being cast by Israel’s opponents as an unprovoked attack on a diplomatic facility, as if the commanders were cultural attachés in town for a goodwill concert.) Lebanon’s Hezbollah, whose bombardments have depopulated a swath of northern Israel since October 7, is the fifth. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Iran has methodically installed proxies that can strike Israel from almost any direction except the west, where we border the Mediterranean.
The importance of last night’s barrage was that for the first time, the full Iranian alliance gave us a practical demonstration of its scope, orchestration, and intentions. The radical departure here was that the Islamic Republic itself dared to attack directly for the first time. If you’d been watching from space, you probably could have seen the lines of this new Middle East etched in orange and red across the map of the region. You might have also seen the second part of the story, which is the successful defense mounted not just by Israel but by the U.S. and Britain, and also by Jordan and, apparently, by Saudi Arabia—a welcome development hard to imagine a few years ago, and still puzzling to a Western observer fed stories about an “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Whether this attack was a masterstroke or an error by Iran will eventually become clear. But it’s already obvious that they’ve done observers a favor by emerging from the shadows to end any doubt about what this war is and who’s fighting it.
Col. Kemp:
The world stands on the brink of all-out war
Israel will have no choice other than to respond to this Iranian attack, as every country would. The IDF has of course been preparing for that as well, perhaps by striking military targets inside Iran and other countries from which any missiles or drones are launched.
As the US sought to prevent Iran from attacking Israel by intensive diplomatic efforts, the Biden administration will likely try to pressure Israel to limit its retaliation, in other words to de-escalate. However, even if limited damage is inflicted in this attack, Israel should strike back hard – perhaps with even greater strength – to deter further attacks.
While hostilities directly with Iran are unlikely to expand beyond air attacks and possibly naval conflict, a major attack by Hezbollah might well lead to an all-out war in Lebanon, which has been on the cards since October.
This latest development in the Middle East shows that this is not just a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The war in Gaza was initiated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both Iranian proxies, and has been joined since the start, in the form of attacks on Israel, by Tehran’s proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and the West Bank.
The ayatollahs have been declaring their intention to eradicate the Jewish state for many years and have built a proxy “ring of fire” around Israel to achieve that, as well as working on a nuclear weapons programme.
However this conflict develops, Israel’s allies, including the US and UK, must do all that is needed to stand strongly by their main ally in the Middle East, if necessary with military action. Failure to do so will increase the prospects of escalating conflict in the region.
Seth Mandel:
Israel-Arab Normalization Proves Its Worth
The 1991 Gulf War, in which President George H.W. Bush organized a coalition to dislodge Saddam Hussein from Iraq, offers a good point of contrast. The Desert Storm coalition notably included Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a diplomatic coup for Bush. In order to try and split off the Arab world from the coalition, Hussein ordered the firing of dozens of Scud missiles at Israel, intending to provoke a response that would force the Arab states to the sidelines. Bush understood that the breadth of the coalition was a historic achievement and that as the Cold War ended, the emergence of a pro-Western bloc in the Gulf would be of immense strategic value.
This meant Israel had to sit on its hands, despite fear that some of the Scuds might be carrying chemical weapons. In return, American Patriot interceptors would protect Israel from the Scuds. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed.
The problem was that the Patriots were far less effective than expected. Israeli civilians were killed both by direct Scud attacks and by heart attacks and unnecessary injection of anti-nerve-gas medications. The absence of the promised protection made it harder for Israeli leaders to hold their fire. (It didn’t make it any easier that the U.S. was claiming an absurdly high interception rate that wasn’t publicly debunked until well after the war.) This was less a matter of effectiveness—the U.S. needed no help defeating Saddam’s troops, so Israeli intervention was viewed as high-cost and low-reward—than a basic demonstration of self-defense of a nation under fire.
In the end, Israel held its fire but won itself no favor from the Bush administration for doing so, leaving a sour taste in many Israeli mouths.
Fast forward to 2024, and we read this report in the Times of Israel: “Jordanian jets downed dozens of Iranian drones flying across northern and central Jordan heading to Israel, two regional security sources said in a dramatic show of support from Amman, which has heavily criticized Israel’s prosecution of its war against Hamas in Gaza.
“The sources said the drones were brought down in the air on the Jordanian side of the Jordan Valley and were heading in the direction of Jerusalem. Others were intercepted close to the Iraqi-Syrian border. They gave no further details.”
The coalition was mobilized not for offensive moves but for the sole purpose of defending Israeli territory from Iranian missiles. Israeli and American and Jordanian and British jets flew a coordinated defense maneuver, presumably with the tacit support of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states.
This is the post-Abraham Accords Middle East. And it is the key to understanding the true strategic accomplishment of those peace agreements: all these states are in a very public coalition not only with the United States but with Israel. Recognition and normalization of ties with Israel by Arab states enables the U.S. to organize and broaden its own alliances. The only variable now is whether the Biden administration wants those alliances to thrive or whether it will continue its courtship of Iran, whose overarching goal is the destruction of all of America’s strategic gains over the past 30 years.
From Ian:
What Happens When You Have to Win a War
War is war, a horrible time demanding attention to impossible possibilities. Those making decisions do not have the time that scholars have, after the fact, to carefully contemplate choices that could have been made. We expect our generals to be decent men but not overburdened by moral complexities. Being distracted by them gets in the way of decision-making, which must often be quick. We hope, we pray, we count on them to do what they have been chosen to do, to win our war, to not let our enemies defeat us. That is priority one, two, and three. We can only hope they are making good choices. If they have given extra thought to moral concerns, that is a plus, but we shouldn’t expect it from them. Their other purposes are too important. Whatever flaws they may have, our generals must satisfy the reason that we need them, to guard the country, to protect us, to win the war.
What’s most extraordinary is that Israel is fighting a war for its existence while employing measures to reduce civilian casualties so extensive and laborious that our own World War II generals—and civilians—would have deemed them preposterous: dropping millions of leaflets and placing millions of phone calls urging Gazans to evacuate in advance of military strikes, observing pauses to allow for aid delivery and safe civilian passage, strategically deploying munitions in ways that reduce their maximum effectiveness so as to spare civilian life in Gaza. Yes, the fight is vicious and the IDF is fierce in battle. But Israel bears no sign of the indifference to civilian casualties that was a simple, accepted fact of American warfighting in World War II.
Despite terrible press throughout the world describing Israel’s war on Hamas, despite President Biden’s criticism, most Israelis agree that their safety depends on Hamas being eliminated. They are today a nation of 9 million, 75 percent are Jews, on a small piece of land 85 miles at its widest. They don’t have oceans to protect them. No Israeli can ignore the repeated history of Jews being successfully slaughtered. Their fear is justified, as is their rightful fury. Never again. The phrase has been repeated so often that it may have lost its sting. But not its meaning. Jews will never again simply submit to those wanting to eliminate them. Whatever it takes, those intent on seeing them dead will pay the price, and others will think a thousand times over whether they want to arouse the sleeping giant. Yes, giant. Not many men, not much land, but a giant. Cruel experience has taught that a Jewish image less than that invites disaster from those looking for trouble.
Jews in Israel sit on a keg of dynamite. What happened on October 7, 2023, happened on August 16, 1929, the day after Tisha B’Av. Muslims were told that it was their duty to take revenge. “Defend the Holy Places” became the battle cry. Mobs of armed Arab worshippers inflamed by anti-Jewish sermons fell upon Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, destroying Jewish prayer books and notes placed between the stones of the Wall. Soon after, more than 1,000 Arabs launched attacks on Jews throughout Jerusalem. Forty-seven people were killed. This was followed by widespread attacks on Jews throughout Palestine.
It isn’t coincidence that Israel has one of the great military forces in the world. Some of this may be due to savvy, but it is foremost an illustration that necessity is the mother of invention. Israelis cannot ignore danger. Ten miles away, their neighbors’ offspring are taught from an early age that Jews are evil and must be eliminated. In Iran, they don’t mince words. Mobs chant “Death to Israel” as they conclude their prayers. They also chant “Death to America.” But even if the very worst were to happen, and we were attacked, we—unlike Israel—wouldn’t fear annihilation.
Even in times of relative calm, there have been unimaginable reminders that Israeli citizens are not safe. Their enemy doesn’t care about projecting a respectable image. Quite the opposite. As with the Nazis and ISIS, inducing terror is the centerpiece of their public-relations initiatives. No other nation has had its athletes murdered at the Olympics. Trampling on the Olympic ideal, a moment of peaceful competition, these murders were almost as unthinkable as an attack on a sacred temple or church filled with congregants who had placed themselves in God’s hands. Correction: Synagogues, churches, and mosques are favorite places for terrorists to attack. The more revered the site and the moment, the greater pleasure it gives terrorists. Hamas deliberately chose Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday, to initiate a war. Their hatred becomes clarified and total when expressed at the most sacred time and place. Choosing death at the finish line of the Boston Marathon was also no coincidence. Terrorists find the greatest bliss in killing when those they hate are joyful in the bosom of their finest moments. Israelis are reminded again and again that it is not paranoid to recognize this. They are not being oversensitive. Evil, the most perfect expression of hatred their enemies can conceive, is even worse than our imaginations can conjure. The task of combating it to preserve oneself, one’s family, one’s country, and one’s civilization combines self-interest and nobility. We did right in World War II, notwithstanding all the wrongs. And Israel is doing right right now.
Israel: Standing Alone Against Multifaceted Threats, Thanks to the Biden Administration
Israel is currently facing a multi-front war for its survival, with Qatar, Iran and Iran's proxies, which are encircling Israel, leading the charge. The gravity of this aggression cannot be overstated: not just for the existence of Israel, but also for that of the US, Europe and the West.
Israel's struggle for survival is not solely a regional conflict; it is a battle between civilization and those who think international law, human rights and the rules of war are a Western joke. Since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, its rulers have been calling for "Death to America" – now also demanded in Dearborn, Michigan.
Which side is the US on? President Joe Biden's legacy, especially after surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021, will be "Biden, friend of the Terrorists."
All the US would have to do to stop much of Iran's bellicosity is take out the bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inside Iran -- so there is a direct cost to Iran, not just to its human shields.
Iran, on the way to having nuclear bombs, has provided support to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Houthis, all of which have vowed to annihilate Israel. Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, boasts an arsenal of an estimated 150,000 missiles, many precision-guided, aimed at Israel's population. Meanwhile, Hamas has demonstrated its willingness to commit a genocide, launching more than 12,000 indiscriminate rocket attacks just since October at civilian targets in Israel, a country the size of New Jersey.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has outlined his vision for Israel's demise in his book, Palestine, a 416-page "guide to destroying Israel," and railing against "The Great Satan," the United States. This is not a hypothetical scenario; it is a meticulously planned campaign of annihilation.
While the Biden administration is threatening to withhold life-saving arms from Israel, the Biden administration just rewarded both of its chief attackers, Iran and Qatar.
The Biden administration just actually invited Hamas's main funder, Qatar, to operate a planned pier in Gaza to bring in humanitarian aid. All of it will certainly end up with Hamas, not Gazan civilians -- and, one can imagine what else Qatar will allow in, from heavy weapons to more terrorists.
A Hamas "victory," incentivizing aggression, cannot be rewarded; it must be stopped.
Pompeo Explains How Biden Put America and Israel in Iran's Crosshairs
"We've lost the bubble, we've lost deterrence." That's the assessment of former CIA director-turned-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo regarding the state of play in the Middle East as an Iranian attack on Israel is feared within 48 hours.
As the former senior member of the Trump cabinet explained in an interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox News Channel's "The Story" Friday afternoon, it didn't have to — and shouldn't — be this way.
"Iranians already attacked Israel on October 7," Pompeo noted of the nonexistent deterrence that saw Iran's proxy Hamas invade Israel and kill the most Jews in any single day since the Holocaust. That attack and the current threat against Israel is more proof of Biden's "continuation of a failed policy to protect Israel."
Worse than merely failing to deter Iranian attacks on Israel, Pompeo said President Biden and his administration's statements in recent days have given Tehran a green light to keep up its attacks.
When asked about the sobering threat against Israel on Friday, Biden's message to Iran was simply: "don't." But that's not a policy, Pompeo noted. "It's not even a deterrent."
The Biden administration's handling of the Middle East since October 7 only "evinces weakness and fearfulness," continued Pompeo. What's more, the White House and Biden administration have accepted the premise of Iran's threat, one that is incorrect.
"When the Iranians said 'stay out of this,' they haven't left us out," Pompeo corrected. What Biden's statements turn a blind eye to are the attacks by Iran-backed terrorists targeting U.S. service members on the Red Sea, in Iraq, and elsewhere with deadly consequences. Yet Biden's response to such attacks — not to mention the fact that American citizens are still being held by Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza — have not demonstrated strength and certainly have not provided a deterring effect.
Inexplicably, with his latest comments, Biden has given "a green light" to the Iranian regime that has made very clear it wants to destroy the United States, known as the "Great Satan" to Iran, as well as Israel.
From Ian:
Andrew Pessin:
The Failed Practice of “Jew-Washing”
The Jew-washer might naturally object here that it is not because those individuals are Jewish that he dislikes them. The proof is that there are many other Jews, the good Jews, that he likes perfectly well. It is because they are Zionists that he does not like them. It is not them personally—it is their ideas, their ideology, their behaviors in support of that ideology. His attitude and behavior reflect anti-Zionism, then, not antisemitism. And of course (many agree) it is acceptable to object to, be hostile toward, even to hate, an ideology, and that ideology’s concomitant behaviors.
But now, let us note, this response only succeeds if we endorse the Generality Assumption, i.e. if we assume that antisemitism requires hating all (or at least most) Jews. For if Jews come in many types—if there are many different ways in which individuals manifest or express or conceive their Jewishness—then it is perfectly conceivable that someone legitimately characterizable as an antisemite might not hate all or even most Jews.
The crucial question should not be whether he hates all or most Jews, in other words.
It is whether the people he hates, he hates for their Jewishness.
To see this, imagine officials of the medieval Church rejecting the charge of antisemitism. “We do not hate all Jews,” they might say, “only those Jews with a certain ideology and behavior. When Jewish people change these—and convert to Christianity—they are A-1 by us!”[11]
The flaw in this defense is obvious: the ideology and behavior these officials rejected was the very essence of those individuals’ Jewishness. They may not have hated the individual people who were Jews (once they converted), but they hated Jewishness. They then absurdly claim not to hate Jews because they do not hate those people who are no longer Jewish by the relevant criteria—namely people who reject Jewishness.
But now Zionism, too, is intimately or essentially related to many Jews’ self-conception and identity. Not every Jew’s, obviously—many Jews claim to derive their anti-Israelism from their Jewishness (as we shall discuss below), and often express their anti-Israel sentiments prefaced with “As a Jew…” But there are in fact many more Jews for whom their Zionism, their connection to and support for the State of Israel, grounded in three-plus millennia of Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, is an essential part of their Jewishness.[12] To hate them for their Zionism just is to hate them for their Jewishness. A person may have a lot of anti-Israel, A-1 Jews among his friends, then, but that itself does not exonerate him from hating the Jews he does hate for their Jewishness.
This account is coarse, clearly, and needs to be refined. As currently formulated, for example, it may turn many of the divisions within the Jewish people into antisemites against each other: if it counts as antisemitic to hate Zionist Jews for their Zionist Jewishness, it would also count as antisemitic to hate the “As a Jew”s who ground their anti-Israelism in their form of Jewishness. Similarly, when generalized this account may classify almost any objection to any group’s ideology or practices as a form of racism or bias. To hate members of ISIS for their ideology might have to count as a form of Islamophobia, since presumably their form of Islam is essential to their ideology and identity, and so on.
To prevent these serious consequences at least two things are needed:
(1) Articulation of just when and where certain beliefs and practices become essential to or part of individuals’ identities. This would yield a distinction between ideologies (toward which it is generally acceptable to be hostile) as opposed to people and their identities (toward whom it is generally not acceptable to be hostile).
(2) A close look at the specific contents of the beliefs and practices that compose people’s identities to see which, if any, it might be legitimate (i.e. not a form of “bias”) to oppose.
These are large projects beyond the scope of this essay, but a start may be made at least with respect to Jew-washing. We shall begin in the next part of this essay by getting a little clearer on just how Jew-washing works.
The Holocaust as Jew-Haters’ ‘Gotcha’
Curious, isn’t it? Leftists as a rule recognize the right to national self-determination. Jones, for instance, has written for Catalonia’s right to form a new nation, calling it an expression of that “basic democratic principle.” The tenet is enshrined in yellowing volumes of Lenin and honored by progressives with respect to countries around the world. Only when it comes to the Jews is national sovereignty regarded as uniquely wicked, to the point that a trendy word exists — anti-Zionist — to convey opposition to a state’s very existence. Leftists really should ask themselves the question I once did, setting myself on the path from Trotskyism to Zionism: Since our tradition supports the right to self-determination absolutely everywhere, why is Zionism considered shorthand for evil? The question answers itself.
Another way of considering the issue of Holocaust guilt, by the way, is to see it as a source of never-ending hostility against the Jews — for burdening non-Jews with guilt over what was done to the Jewish people. As Howard Jacobson writes in a brilliant essay, “When Will Jews Be Forgiven the Holocaust?” the answer to his titular question is “Never.” “Those we harm, we blame,” he observes, “mobilizing dislike and even hatred in order to justify, after the event, the harm we did. From which it must follow that those we harm the most—we blame the most.”
And while Germany is the most immediate bearer of this guilt, Jacobson suggests the feeling is universal. Jews prick the world’s conscience, and the world resents it. This includes the left, which nurtures itself on gratifying myths about its part in that seemingly Manichean era known as World War II. Our people were the bravest and best fighters against the Nazis, they say; how dare anyone say we have a problem with Jews?
But this legend has a disturbing way of falling apart. A glance at history reveals that those fighting under the red flag demanded that Jews reject “particularism,” including Zionism, and remain in Europe to fight for socialist revolution. Revolution did not come; the industrialized slaughter of the Jews did. Jews paid the price for the failure of the socialist vision.
This genocide should have prompted not only a deep rethink on the left, but a plumbing of its soul. A hint of it came after the war by Polish Jewish Trotskyist intellectual Isaac Deutscher, who wrote that “of course” he’d abandoned his anti-Zionism. “If, instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine,” he wrote, “I might have helped to save some of the lives that were later extinguished in Hitler’s gas chambers.”
But how many of Deutscher’s comrades, and their ideological descendants, have shown themselves willing to reflect on their program and actions in the early 20th century — about how their dogmatic insistence that Jews rely on universalism and the solidarity of their proletarian brothers ended with Auschwitz? So fourscore years after history established the legitimacy of Zionism, anti-Zionism is more popular than ever. The last genocide of the Jews is hurled against the Jews, in support of those pursuing a new extermination campaign against the Jews, by those whose tradition regarding the Jews isn’t as irreproachable as they want to believe.
“Get over it!” a member of my former party once yelled at our German comrades, who were seen as harboring neurotic, crippling shame over the Holocaust. So Jones would like Germany to get over it, and rejoin the war on the Jews, absolved and free at last of that nasty, pesky guilt.
Silence is acquiescence
And where were our elites? University professors celebrate murder. Women’s groups ignore rape. Newspapers publish cartoons that trade on anti-Semitic tropes. Our government will not condemn a specious allegation by a corrupt regime that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, and not only supports a UN resolution that calls for a ceasefire without the return of the hostages as a precondition, but would even deny Israel the means to defend herself against an avowedly genocidal terrorist organization (if it could, but thankfully cannot).
The incinerated bodies of October 7 awoke the generational trauma of the ovens of the Holocaust; now rampant anti-Semitism here awakes memories its precursor, Germany in the 1930s. Prospects of a government-sponsored genocide in Canada remain remote. But public expression of Jew-hatred has become normalized in six short months. Escalation of the violence we have already seen seems likely. Many of our Jewish neighbours are terrified, and so should we be too.
Have you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany in the 1930s? Would you have stood against the gathering storm? Would you have fought to save the sophisticated, civilized society that Germany was? Would you have hidden Jews or helped them escape? Or would you have stayed silent and inactive, distanced yourself, looked the other way, avoided your Jewish friends out of fear? Or worse, would you have reported them to the Gestapo?
Well, now you know.
If you are a bystander now, then you would have been then too.
If you are (God forbid) one of those parroting the new anti-Semitic tropes, chanting “from the river to the sea,” accusing Israel of genocide, or ripping down posters of the hostages, then you might have been one of those betraying Jewish neighbours to the Gestapo.
We are now called upon to make good on the pledge the world made after the Holocaust: never again. Never again is now. Not just for the sake of our Jewish neighbours, although that is reason enough. But for the sake of our own society.
We cannot sit this out. If we remain silent, if we do not stand up to this tsunami of hate here in Canada, then haters are exactly what we will become. To be silent is to acquiesce; to remain neutral is to become complicit in a vile refashioning of our society.
Perhaps, once Israel achieves its aims in Gaza, the tsunami will recede and the acts of hate will decrease. But a cancer of hatred has metastasized within our body politic. If we do not act now to cut it out, it will spread further, and one day we will look back and wish we had acted, because those few decent people left will not recognize what we will have become.
From Ian:
UK Statistics Authority urged to review fabricated Gaza casualty figures
The UK Statistics Authority has been urged to review the Palestinian Casualty figures in the Gaza War after several analyses indicated that the figures have been fabricated.
UKLFI Charitable Trust (“UKLFI CT”) has written to Sir Robert Chote, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, inviting it to assess the quality of the Palestinian casualty statistics. These statistics are produced by the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health, and then circulated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) as well as other UN bodies.
Several analyses show that the Hamas produced figures have been fabricated, regarding both the totals and the breakdowns into men, women and children.[1]
UKLFI CT is concerned that these unreliable statistics are invoked and relied upon to support allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law and genocide by Israel.
Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UKLFI commented: “Credence given to these allegations is fuelling antisemitism on a major scale and is also liable to lead to incorrect decisions by public authorities on important issues.”
The Palestinian statistics are also deployed in a way that implies wrongly that all the Palestinian Arabs killed were civilians, as there is no reference to the number of Palestinian Arab combatants killed. The ratio of civilians to combatants killed is particularly relevant when assessing the proportionality of Israeli military actions and hence whether they are likely to have violated international humanitarian law.
The Israel Defence Forces estimated that 13,000 Palestinian Arab combatants had been killed by the end of February 2024. This indicates a ratio of civilian to combatant deaths of less than 1.5:1, even if the apparently fabricated total figures produced by the Gaza Health Ministry are used. This ratio is much lower than the usual ratio of civilian to combatant casualties in urban warfare, as indicated by a Report by the UN Secretary General which found that in urban armed conflicts worldwide in 2021, 89% of the casualties were civilians.
Furthermore, the Gaza Ministry of Health statistics do not distinguish the many Palestinians killed by Palestinian munitions (such as their own rockets that fall short in the Gaza Strip, as well as ground fire and explosive devices). These are included in the total deaths that are attributed to Israel.
FDD:
Hamas-Run Gaza Health Ministry Admits to Flaws in Casualty Data
The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death. The health ministry also released a report on April 3 that acknowledged the presence of incomplete data but did not define what it meant by “incomplete.” In that earlier report, the ministry acknowledged the incompleteness of 12,263 records. It is unclear why, after just three more days, the number fell to 11,371 — a decrease of more than 900 records.
Prior to its admissions of incomplete data, the health ministry asserted that the information in more than 15,000 fatality records had stemmed from “reliable media sources.” However, the ministry never identified the sources in question and Gaza has no independent media.
Hamas is at war with the Jews and Judaism
There are only two things you need to know to understand what is happening in the Middle East, and they both appear in the 1988 Hamas Charter.
First, Hamas is fighting for Islam and its war against Israel is a religious war. The charter states: “It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Muslim generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem and should be dealt with on this basis.”
Hamas asserts Islam’s claim to the territory of the Land of Israel; not the claim of any political organization, the Palestinians or anything else. “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day,” the charter states.
“This,” Hamas explains, “is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till the Day of Judgement.”
Hamas also clearly states that its war for Islam is a war against Judaism: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.”
In the eyes of Hamas, Jews are permitted to live only under Islamic oppression. This is what Hamas means when it says that it “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.”
Under Islamic law, that “coexistence” is a system of religious apartheid in which all minorities are subjugated by the Muslim majority.
Thus, Hamas has an essential problem with Zionism: Zionism is the demand, the insistence, that Jews will not live under anyone. It is the insistence on Jewish independence and the maintenance of Jewish power to defend that independence.
Iran and Hezbollah responsible for AMIA and Israel embassy bombings, Argentina says
Iran and Hezbollah committed crimes against humanity and are responsible for the 1994 Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) and the 1992 Israeli embassy bombings, the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation said on Thursday in a ruling on an appeal of a 2019 decision on cases of corruption and cover-ups by law enforcement and intelligence officials.
The court said that the AMIA bombing "was organized, planned, financed and executed under the direction of the authorities of the Islamic State of Iran, within the framework of Islamic jihad, and with the main intervention of the political and military organization Hezbollah."
High-level Iranian officials and members of the diplomatic mission in Argentina were involved in the ordering of boths attacks, which according to the court fall under the Rome Statute as crimes against humanity for being widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population.
The court reminded that Former Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohsen Rezaee, former IRGC Quds Force commander Ahmad Vadidi, former cultural affairs officer at the Iranian embassy in Argentina Moshen Rabbani, former diplomatic secretary Ahnmad Reza Ashgari, and alleged Hezbollah operatives Hussein Mounir Mouzannar, Salman Raouf Salman, and Farouk Abdul Hay Omairi have standing Interpol arrest warrants for suspected involvement in the bombing.
The court said that Former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati former Iranian ambassador Hadi Soleimpenpour were also suspected of involvement but had immunity from the issuance Interpol warrants because they hold public office, and additional suspects fromer Hezbollah foreign intelligence chief Imad Fayez Moughnieh, Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi, and alleged Hezbollah operative Alí Hussein Abdallah are dead.
The court said that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah were motivated by Islamic jihad against the west and its democratic values, and suggested possible political motivations to punish Argentina for not trading agreed upon materials and technology that could be used in its nuclear program.
As crimes against humanity, double jeopardy did not apply in the petition filed by friends and families of the victims of the attacks, AMIA, the Justice Ministry, and police officers who were wrongly detained by the suspects who were falsely implicated by the officials involved in the cover-up.
Former AMIA investigator Judge Juan Jose Galeano, former State Intelligence Secretariat director (SIDE) Hugo Alfredo Anzorreguy, SIDE deputy director Juan Carlos Anchezar, Department for the Protection of Constitutional Order (DPOC) Police chief Carlos Antonio Castaneda were found to have tampered with evidence and covered up the true culprits of the crime. Galeano was given four years prison, Anzorreguy 4 years and 6 months, and Anchezar and Castaneda three years prison.
From Ian:
Douglas Murray: 'One truth can puncture a thousand lies'
Author and journalist Douglas Murray, who received an award of appreciation from the president of Israel and the Minister of Diaspora Affairs on Wednesday, visited the Arutz Sheva - Israel National News studio in Jerusalem to discuss the event.
“I was deeply moved and honored. I don't do it for awards or anything. It was enormously moving to be honored for my work. I don't see myself as a PR soldier, just as a writer and as a journalist. I think it's very important to see things with your own eyes, and that's always been my policy as a writer. That's all I've tried to do. I guessed early on that the world would spend very little time concentrating on the massacre. The next day people were celebrating the massacre in Times Square in New York. I thought right then that I've got to get there as soon as I can because I thought they'll move on to Israel's response.”
He discussed how that has happened in the USA: “I think Biden has been really supportive, even when he has said things that are critical. He has continued arms supplies, for instance. As the IDF has been more and more successful in ridding Gaza of Hamas, the narrative has changed.”
Although advocacy is difficult, he doesn’t see himself quitting. “I think I would do what I do even if I didn't think I was making a difference, but as it happens, I think I am. My belief has always been that one truth can puncture a thousand lies. In the age of social media, that theory is being put to the test in real-time. A lot of the media has an agenda now. That's their right. I'd like Israel to win this conflict, some of them would like Hamas to win, some of them would just like Israel to lose.”
Murray denounces the focus on Israel. “None of these newspapers covered the far greater death toll that has been going on for the last decade in Yemen and Syria. Why are they so obsessed with this one? It's their opportunity to hold on to something that gives a feeling of crisis, but they have arsonist and firefighter reversed here. Many may talk about the history of the conflict, but that only proves it more.”
He notes other oddities about the war: “It's a very uncommon situation for one side to be fighting and also nourishing their opponents. It's an extraordinary testament to this country, but it's highly unusual. I can think of no other conflicts that I've covered or seen or read about in which that's the case. It's also an uncommon situation in war for one side to not only want the death of its enemies but also wish that its enemies should kill its own people. Israel must both fight this enemy and supply them. There's no doubting the appalling suffering of many of the citizens in Gaza, but that's what happens if you start a war.”
Melanie Phillips:
The surreal echo chamber of lies
It is the people of Israel, not just Netanyahu, who are demanding that the IDF defeat Hamas. It is the people of Israel, not just Netanyahu, to whom the American proposal for the Palestinian Authority to run post-war Gaza is unthinkable. Because it’s the people of Israel who have now seen, in the most horrific way possible, that there is no Palestinian Arab entity that can be trusted not to slaughter them again and again.
The West’s second major error is failing to realize that this is not just Israel against Hamas or Iran. Israel is on the front line of the war being waged by the Islamic world against the West.
The West doesn’t get this because it doesn’t understand Islam. Nor, astonishing as this may seem, do the Israelis. Their failure to grasp Hamas’s true intentions lies in their failure to understand the implacable nature of Islamic Jew-hatred.
In a notable interview in Israel Hayom, Professor Moshe Sharon, an adviser on Arab affairs to several Israeli governments, observed that Islam has abhorred the Jews from the time of Islam’s creation, an animosity that is “a continuing sentiment stretching across time from that period until the ‘end of days.’” Islam’s overall objective, he said, is to take over the world. It is enjoying a considerable degree of success in pursuing this goal—in Europe, Canada and America.
None of these countries, however, is prepared even to admit this, let alone do anything about it.
With the IDF pulling most of its troops out of Gaza, commentators both inside and outside Israel are claiming that the Rafah offensive has been abandoned, the war is effectively over and Israel has lost. Netanyahu and top military brass insist that, on the contrary, Rafah will indeed be taken and the war will be won.
Israelis are braced for whatever is to come. Despite the Greek chorus of doom from the Israeli media and despite the despicable manipulation of some of the desperate families of hostages by activists determined to bring Netanyahu down at the expense of Israel losing the war, the spirit of the vast majority of Israelis remains heroically unbowed.
Israel will survive. At its current rate, the West will not.
But in these terrible times, what is very hard indeed for Jews to take is the devastating feeling of being so mercilessly abandoned by a world that has become a surreal echo chamber of murderous lies.
America’s elite universities failing Jewish students, per ADL report
America’s elite universities are failing to address Jew-hatred on campus, according to a new tracker released by the Anti-Defamation League on Thursday.
The ADL’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card awarded nine of America’s 10 top-ranked universities an “F” or “D” grade, including failing marks for Harvard University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Duke University was the lone top-10 school to earn a respectable “B” for “better than most.”
Many of America’s best universities are not doing enough for their Jewish students, said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national president of the ADL.
“Every campus should get an ‘A.’ That’s not grade inflation. That’s the minimum that every group on every campus expects,” Greenblatt stated. “Like all students, Jewish students deserve to feel safe and supported on campus. They deserve a learning environment free from antisemitism and hate, but that hasn’t been the experience with antisemitism running rampant on campus since even before Oct. 7.”
The ADL selected the 85 public and private schools to rank both from Hillel International’s list of campuses with the highest percentages of Jewish students and from the top-ranked schools in U.S. News & World Report.
It then assessed the universities by reviewing administrative policies on antisemitism; cataloging antisemitic and anti-Zionist activity; and measuring the extent to which they foster Jewish life on campus.
The nonprofit then surveyed 160 Jewish college students about how they would weigh criteria, including whether or not the college offered kosher dining options or had taken an official position against the BDS movement to boycott Israel. The ADL gave the colleges a chance to respond both pre- and post-assessment.
Only two of the 85 schools graded got an “A”: Waltham, Mass.-based Brandeis University and Elon University, in North Carolina. A dozen schools received an “F.”
Several university leaders begin cracking down on anti-Israel disruptions on campus
Six months after anti-Israel activity began to dominate many college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — with minimal action taken by college presidents to quell rising levels of antisemitism — administrators at schools such as Pomona, Columbia and Vanderbilt have taken a harder line in recent weeks. As a result, Jewish leaders are wondering whether these three schools’ tougher responses could represent the leading edge of a trend that takes root across the country.
Jacob Baime, CEO of the Israel on Campus Coalition, told Jewish Insider that other universities will only take similar action if they are pressured to do so. “The suspension of anti-Israel activists at schools like Vanderbilt University is a step in the right direction in addressing the campus climate,” Baime said.
In a statement to Pomona College on Friday, the school’s president, Gabrielle Starr, warned that “any participants in today’s events… who turn out to be Pomona students, are subject to immediate suspension. Students from the other Claremont Colleges will be banned from Pomona’s campus and subject to discipline on their own campuses.”
“I don’t see this as a victory and I don’t know if it’s going to change anything in the future,” Ayelet Kleinerman, a fourth-year Pomona student from Israel who founded the group Haverim Claremont in 2022, told JI. “There is a lot of backlash here from students, faculty and community members on the outside,” she continued. “So we will have to wait and see how things unfold, but when people are arrested I don’t see it as a victory — it’s sad that we got to a situation in the first place where police needed to be called. We shouldn’t have gotten to this in the first place.”
Kleinerman, who started Haverim as a way for Jewish and non-Jewish students to connect and learn about antisemitism — something she felt was missing from on-campus groups in the past — said the climate on campus for Jewish students since Oct. 7 “has been hard and intimidating, [filled] with a lot of [anti-Israel] protests.”
For months, Jewish students and alumni from the Claremont Consortium— Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Pitzer College (known as the 5Cs), have urged administrators to take action in response to what they called in a Nov. 6 email “harassment of Jewish Students at Pomona College.”
“We are particularly alarmed by the administration’s acquiescence in the face of gross violations of College policy and applicable law,” the letter, signed by a group of 5C alumni said, pointing to several incidents at Pomona, including a demonstration on Oct. 20 when “Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace held a rally at Pomona’s Smith Campus Center with several hundred attendees. At that rally, SJP and JVP members assembled, at the Smith Campus Center (a shared space intended for use by all College students), a display honoring the Hamas terrorists responsible for the genocidal attacks of October 7.”
From Ian:
New video showing Hamas capturing IDF women ‘worse than what we imagined’
Newly emerged video shot by Hamas terrorists showing the capture of female Israeli soldiers on the Gaza border has been described as “hard to watch” by Israeli media.
In the video, parts of which have not been shared with the public, Hamas terrorists are initially seen with five female IDF spotters, with two more later added.
“We will exchange you for our people,” the terrorists say.
Another terrorist forces one of the soldiers to show him how to dial a Gaza number from her cell phone. The terrorists later put the soldiers into stolen Israel Defense Forces vehicles for transport to Gaza.
Shira Albag, the mother of the kidnapped soldier Liri Albag, 19, watched it several weeks ago.
“I watched the video. They showed it to us three weeks ago. The IDF spokesman called us and showed us a video from the day of the kidnapping, something we had not seen and did not know about.
“We all only imagined what happened to the girls on Oct. 7, and unfortunately this video proved to us that it was even worse than we imagined,” she said.
According to a recent report by the Times, a number of new female IDF recruits have refused to serve as observer soldiers out of fear that “what happened to them could happen to me,” as one young Israeli recruit, Romi Fisher, told the Times.
At least 15 female soldiers were killed at Gaza border army bases on October 7 with roughly six others taken as hostages by Hamas, including Liri, who was reportedly working her third shift as an observer soldier when she was kidnapped.
Israel to normalise relations with Indonesia
Israel is set to normalise relations with Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, Ynet reported on Thursday.
The move comes after three months of secret talks between Jerusalem and Jakarta. In exchange for establishing diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, Jerusalem will reportedly lift its opposition to Indonesia becoming the 39th member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann sent a letter to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz around two weeks ago, with Jakarta approving the wording.
“I am happy to announce that the Council has officially agreed to the early, clear and explicit condition that Indonesia maintain diplomatic relations with all members of the organisation before any decision to accept [it in] the OECD,” the letter states.
“Moreover, any future decision to accept Indonesia as a member of the organisation will require unanimous agreement among all the members, including Israel. I am convinced that this provides you with security on this important point,” the letter continues.
In a reply letter that Katz sent on Wednesday night and which was seen by Ynet, the minister wrote that “I share your expectation that this process will be a change for Indonesia, as I expect a positive change in its policy towards Israel, and in particular a renunciation of the discriminatory policy towards Israel, towards the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the parties.”
Indonesia has spoken out against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and supported South Africa’s lawsuit at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. However, on Tuesday an Indonesian aircraft participated in an airdrop of humanitarian aid into Gaza, marking the first time that an Indonesian aircraft has flown through Israeli airspace.
Indonesia was one of the Muslim-majority countries that Jerusalem was working to add to the Abraham Accords in the months before the Hamas-led invasion of October 7.
Stephen Pollard:
How Israel secured diplomatic relations with Indonesia
The Jewish Insider report was clearly correct. But the principal reason for Indonesia’s change of heart since 2020 is based almost entirely on Indonesia’s self-interest – and is far more prosaic than the era-changing vision of the Abraham Accords and. Indonesia is set to begin formal diplomatic relations with Israel because of one acronym: OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
Indonesia has been trying to join the OECD for the past few years but in recent months, as its progress towards membership has speeded up, an obstacle emerged. New members require the approval of all 38 existing members – one of which is Israel.
Israel appears to have used this requirement to secure something of a diplomatic triumph. It has been reported that OECD secretary general Mathias Cormann had initially made clear to Israel that it expected it "not to object" to Indonesia’s application to join, but Israel refused – a stance hardened by Indonesia’s criticism of the Gaza war and its moves against Israel at the ICJ in The Hague.
Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz is said in response to the OECD to have demanded that Indonesia show a “gesture of goodwill”. Fearing that the long-planned membership of Indonesia would be blocked by Israel, the OECD secretary general agreed to insist that diplomatic relations were established.
This was not quite the demand it might seem, however, as negotiations towards such an agreement had been proceeding for some months, with both sides anticipating a successful outcome before October 7 derailed everything.
Reports suggest that this normalisation of relations would have been agreed last autumn. A Memorandum of Understanding which is said to have included a commitment towards Indonesia joining the Abraham Accords process was signed in September.
But whilst this new diplomatic process has come as a surprise to many, there have been long been economic ties. The exact amount of trade is impossible to quantify as much of it is via third countries, but it is estimated by one analyst as “the high end of hundreds of millions of dollars a year”, most of which is said to be Indonesian agri-tech exports - and there has been an Israel-Indonesia Chamber of Commerce in Tel Aviv since 2009.
From Ian:
Phyllis Chesler:
Will the world admit it was wrong?
The dense fog of war will clear after Israel has finally destroyed every last Hamas tunnel loaded with weaponry and the fact-based truth about Hamas and Iran’s war against Israel becomes transparent. When that happens, I wonder about those people who believe that Israel deserved Oct. 7 because they have swallowed the lie that Israel is not only an “oppressor, apartheid entity” but a nation that thirsted for “revenge” and allegedly went on to deliberately target women and children, cause famine and commit a “genocide”? Will they finally admit they were wrong?
I doubt it. They are unlikely to accept that the crimes attributed to Israel are Hamas and Iran’s crimes. Nor that diabolic paranoids and indoctrinated haters are essentially confessing their own crimes when they project them onto their victims.
People may always refuse to understand that accidents happen in war and most other countries—Muslim armies, American armies, British armies, Russian and Chinese armies—have caused far more civilian deaths in a single war than Israel has caused over 80 years of war.
In Hitler’s era, it was only the Nazis, the preexisting Jew-haters in Europe and Muslim lands, who brayed for the death of the Jews or minimized and denied what was happening to the Jews.
Now almost the entire world has spewed that bloodthirsty cry. Mobs are in the streets everywhere, cheering Hamas’s barbarism. Never has Israel been in such danger before.
What will the world say, if it says anything, when its allegations have been proven completely false? Will they still insist that they did not know, that no one told them?
Many, of course, will claim that they were right all along. Like Holocaust deniers, they will assert that whatever facts Israel presents are lies and disinformation.
Once again, Israel stands almost alone, accused of crimes it never committed. At this point, no matter how much Israel tries to do the right thing, it will never be credited for it. Thus, Israel must do whatever it takes to survive against the most fiendish odds.
Seth Mandel:
The New Rednecks
Also in 2021, academics John Bitzan and Clay Routledge surveyed a thousand students at more than 70 U.S. colleges and found that a third had a positive view of socialism while only a quarter said the same about capitalism. But don’t worry—the students apparently don’t know what socialism is. So it’s not that they’re evil gulag goons, it’s that they are idiots who will blindly follow the crowd to save themselves the trouble of having to think. Reminder: That’s the good news.
All that should put the eruption of anti-Semitism on campuses in context. After Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage started the current war, college students were polled on how to characterize the attacks. More than ten percent said they were justified resistance. But I don’t know if that’s better or worse than the one in five who “describe it as something else other than an act of terrorism or resistance.” Perhaps they see it as interpretive dance?
My personal favorite was what happened when Berkeley political-science professor Ron Hassner hired a firm to survey U.S. college students on the genocidal slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Most of those polled said they supported the slogan, but fewer than half could name the river and the sea referenced in the line. “Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic,” Hassner reported.
That’s not all these sparkling young minds didn’t know. About 10 percent of those who supported the chant thought Yasser Arafat was the first president of Israel. A quarter of them denied the existence of the Oslo Accords, one of the most thoroughly documented signing ceremonies in modern times, the photos and videos of which are harder to avoid than they are to find.
Of course, these students are young. They’ll have their whole lives after college to get an education. Meantime, once you’ve seen a third billboard for the Ivies, might be time to turn around and go home.
From Stalin to Hamas: The Return of the Left that Doesn’t Learn?
An Interview with Mitchell Cohen
Mitchell Cohen is co-editor emeritus of Dissent in New York and professor emeritus of political science at Bernard Baruch College of the City University of New York. His books include Zion and State: Nation, Class, and the Shaping of Modern Israel and The Politics of Opera. He was interviewed in late February. A version of this interview is to appear in Spanish.
The Western Left, the Israeli Right and the Delegitimisation of the Jewish State
Question: Efforts to delegitimise the Jewish state are at full and loud throttle since Israel’s response to the October 7 massacres. This is taking place both the diplomatic and the intellectual worlds. In 2007 you seem to have perceived an earlier phase of this phenomenon in “Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn,” your widely discussed article in Dissent. In it you pointed to a particular problem coming from the “liberal and left intelligentsia in the United States and Europe.” Are we now seeing the same thing in 2024? Are there new dimensions to it?
Mitchell Cohen: The attack on Israel’s legitimacy has intensified but it is part of a larger story. Opposition to Zionism within the left goes back to the founding of Zionism, although there has been real sympathy too. The current situation has long and short-term contexts. I wrote that article a few years after the UN’s Durban conference of 2001, which unleashed a wave of attacks on Israel for racism. But the problem also descends from decades of political developments, one of which was the assassination of Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin by a rightwing Jewish zealot in 1995.
That murder also targeted the Oslo Accords, the best chance since 1949 for an Israeli-Palestinian peace and the signing of which put anti-Zionism on the defensive. Oslo’s foes gained mounting strength in the later 1990s. One was the Israeli right-wing led by Netanyahu, which always sought to blur reckless, ultra-nationalist goals with real security questions. The other was Hamas, whose bombing campaign in the spring after Rabin‘s murder played an essential role in electing Netanyahu. Hamas has always opposed compromise and its ultimate purposes have been to displace secular Palestinian nationalists with Islamists and to replace Israel with a Muslim state including the West Bank, Gaza and what is now Israel proper. In 2000, at Camp David, Ehud Barak offered a far-reaching compromise to Palestinians but Arafat did not accept it and the Second Intifada began. In this context an anti-Zionist campaign in the intellectual world was ushered along from Durban.
Israeli foreign policy has been dominated for almost three decades – with some interludes – by Netanyahu. One, and it is only one, staggering bungle was to allow Hamas to be strengthened in Gaza in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and thereby to thwart Israeli-Palestinian compromise. It played, finally, into Hamas’s already blood-stained hands, as 7 October showed. This wasn’t just shortsightedness but fits into a long-standing pattern in the history of the Zionist rightwing, which I explored in my book Zion and State (Columbia University Press). That pattern consists in very consequential errors of political judgement based on a resentment-filled, misbegotten ideological orientation. It contrasts sharply to the social democrats of Mapai (Israel Workers’ Party) which, led by David Ben Gurion, dominated the struggle for Israeli statehood. Crucial decisions made by Ben-Gurion and Mapai were almost always measured and perceptive. Nowadays anti-Zionists seek to rewrite Israel’s history, demonising the Jewish state as a creation of Western imperialism – this is an historically spurious charge – by excising the role of the left in creating Israel. At the same time they dance around or excuse the fact that Palestinian nationalists allied themselves to Hitler and Mussolini.
To answer your question more fully, we must take into account what has happened within a highly visible part of the intelligentsia in recent decades. There has been in the university and intellectual worlds a rise in what is called ‘post-modernism’ and the like, which made it a point of turning many things upside down through selective use of history and ideological language games. Ironically, this even includes part of this intelligentsia’s own history. Edward Said complained that he could not convince Jean-Paul Sartre, who was not a post-modernist but an intellectual hero of the left and Michel Foucault, who was a seminal post-modern influence, of his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They understood something he didn’t – or didn’t want to understand.
Anti-Zionism is part of a larger intellectual crack-up on the left with distant roots. There is now a kind of meeting point between simplistic post-modernism and simplistic anti-imperialism. This conjuncture can be called ‘the anti-imperialism of fools,’ a phrase that echoes the famous criticism of antisemitism on the left in the late 19th century by socialist August Bebel. When some on the left tried to blame ‘Jewish capitalists’ for Europe’s woes, he called it ‘the antisemitism of fools.’ Formulations of both the antisemitism of fools and anti-imperialism of fools depend on intellectual twisting and turning until somehow, no matter what, blame is ascribed to, respectively, Jews and Zionists. Ominously, that ascription is often there before the twisting and turning.
Matti Friedman:
Why I Got a Gun
The decision to expand private gun ownership is certain to have unintended consequences, and not just because the number of guns will mean more accidents, homicides, and armed extremists. At the shooting range where I got my license, it was clear that some of the new owners were hardly competent to use a weapon in the sterile condition of the range, let alone in an actual attack where we would have to make life-or-death decisions in a matter of seconds while beset by adrenaline and fear. Those with combat training have a chance, though no guarantee of success. When I came home with my new license and a Glock 43X, I told my kids that if they’re ever near a shooting attack they need to lie down flat and wait until it’s over—the main danger being less the terrorist than other Israelis who will open fire and hit something other than their target.
One incident in particular has become a case in point. On November 30, two Palestinians from Sur Baher, a Jerusalem neighborhood near mine, began shooting Jews waiting at a bus stop, murdering three of them before a lawyer named Yuval Castelman, who happened to be passing by, jumped out of his car with his handgun. He engaged the terrorists with admirable bravery—only to be mistaken for a terrorist himself and killed by an army reservist exercising something between bad judgment and criminal negligence. Guns solve some problems and create many others. It’s hard to say how we’ll remember all of this in a decade or two.
But even in the weeks of my work on this essay, an Israeli with a handgun managed to kill a terrorist, another Palestinian from Jerusalem, who was shooting innocent people on a road in southern Israel, two of whom died. That was on February 16. On March 14, a noncommissioned officer waiting in line at an Aroma café didn’t notice the Palestinian kid in a black sweatshirt who lunged at his neck with a knife—but did manage to draw his handgun and shoot the assailant, preventing more fatalities, before he bled to death.
A friend from America told me recently that every Jewish person he knows has a contingency plan, sometimes secret or scarcely admitted even to themselves, for where to hide or escape if things get really bad in the diaspora—the kind of thought borne of a good education in Jewish history mixed with a close read of current events, like aggressive protests outside synagogues, shots fired at Jewish schools, and the growing fever about “Zionists.”
Mulling this, I asked friends here in Israel if they had a similar plan. No one did. Zionism has clearly failed to change everything in the Jewish condition, but it seems to have changed that, for what it’s worth. I don’t know anyone preparing a hideout. But I do know a remarkable number of people with a new Glock.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
