The U.S. Must Help Iraq’s Last Jews

The Jews of Iraq—who constitute the Diaspora’s oldest and for many centuries most important Jewish community—now find themselves threatened with massacre by Islamic State and facing discrimination by the central government. Tina Ramirez argues that the U.S. should be trying to protect them, along with Iraq’s other beleaguered religious minorities:

When I met with Sherzad Omar Mamsani, the Jewish representative to the Kurdish government, in December 2015, he proudly wore his kippah in public—an act of bravery and defiance against those who would see him and his people wiped out in Iraq. He told me that, contrary to reports of only a half-dozen Jewish families, there are as many as 430 such families left in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Although most of these Jews have kept a low profile in public, they experienced a renewed sense of hope with Sherzad’s appointment by the Kurdish government. Sherzad is working in the relative safety of the Kurdish zone to rebuild Iraq’s remaining synagogues and Jewish holy sites, and is helping rewrite the Jewish portion of Kurdish school lessons on Iraq’s religious history. . . .

[I]t is now the Kurds who are helping the Jews rebuild in Iraq. Similar support has not been forthcoming from the Baghdad government. Iraq is facing a critical turning point in its history. The last historic Jewish community and countless other minority faiths are at risk of disappearing. The U.S. and United Nations need a robust policy that recognizes the departure of these communities as the result of more than just the existential security challenges from Islamic militants. Iraq’s government must treat Jews—and every minority group within its borders—as full and equal citizens or they will disappear in the Middle East.

Read more at National Review

More about: Iraqi Jewry, ISIS, Jewish World, Kurds, U.S. Foreign policy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF