In 1956, Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Un di velt hot geshvign (“And the World Was Silent”) was published in Yiddish. At the time, he was earning his living as a journalist, writing regularly for the Forward, America’s leading Yiddish newspaper. He traveled to California in 1957 and wrote an article for the paper about his visit to Disneyland. The next year his memoir would be published in French form as La Nuit, and two years later it would appear in English as Night, earning him worldwide fame.

Herewith, his reflections on the magic kingdom, then newly opened, in English:

I don’t know if Heaven is real. But I do know that there is a paradise on earth for children. I know, because I visited it myself. I just came back from it; I just strolled through its gates; I just left the magic kingdom called “Disneyland.”

It took a bit more than a year to build it. To be precise—a year and a day. When you consider the amount of work that was done in this short time, you might start to believe that God actually could have created the world in six days, . . . true, He didn’t have any help, but He is God after all!

Speaking of God: it’s not clear to me if we should thank Him for creating the world and humanity. What is clear to me is that all children who visit Walt Disney’s paradise will show Disney eternal gratitude for building Disneyland.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.