Recently arrived on Broadway, Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic focuses on a French Jewish family between 1940 and the present. Ari Hoffman writes in his review:

The play’s central question is whether this confused bunch should move to Israel. It is no idle parlor game, as the Jewish agency reports a 430-percent increase in the number of aliyah files opened in France since October 7.

The ability of Prayer to answer that conundrum, though, is hobbled by the blind spots that mar its vision. It only sees threats from the Jews as emanating from the right. Set just before France’s last presidential election, in 2022, its villains are President Trump and the leader of the National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, who was beaten by President Macron in that contest but has since grown in political strength, possibly heralding a populist moment.

While there is no gainsaying the legacy of Vichy or the long arm of Pétainism, it is exceedingly strange that a play about anti-Semitism in France ignores the motherlode of anti-Semitism—a tidal wave of immigrants implacably hostile to Israel and Jews and a leftist class that has made common cause with them. From the banlieues to the heart of Paris, rage at Israel finds Jewish victims close at hand. By and large, the terror is not coming from the right. . . . The tribune of the country’s left, Jean-Luc Melenchon, meanwhile, is emerging as one of Hamas’s apologists. He once accused a Jewish minister of thinking not “in French” but in “international finance.”

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.