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.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.