In September, The Lehman Trilogy, an Italian play that had its English-language debut in Britain in 2018 to much acclaim, is reopening. The drama is a fictionalized telling of the story of the Lehman family, beginning with their arrival in the U.S. from Germany in the 19th century and culminating in the collapse during the 2008 financial crisis of the bank they founded. Dave Rich comments:

The play presents itself as a morality tale about global finance, a story of financial trickery that left countless ordinary people impoverished or homeless. It is also saturated with Jewishness. We are told within the opening lines that Henry Lehman, the eldest of the three brothers, is “a circumcised Jew.” The brothers repeatedly cry Barukh Hashem (“Blessed is God”) as they build their fortune. . . . It is gratuitous and overwhelming: not just a passing mention of Jewishness here or there to make the point that the Lehmans were Jewish, but as in-your-face as it is possible to be. In other words, this is not only a play about bankers who are Jews, but a play about Jews who are bankers.

And what does it tell us about these Jews? Mainly that they love money and will do anything to get more of it. Every stereotype of the greedy, self-absorbed, materialistic Jewish financier is present. . . . Emanuel Lehman is so cheap he reuses the same bunch of flowers every time he asks a girl to marry him “so he would not have to re-buy them,” but so brash that he eventually woos his bride by declaring “I’m one of the richest Jews in New York.”

This ought to ring alarm bells for anyone with even a passing knowledge of anti-Semitic stereotypes, but it seems as if the idea that Jews love money and power is—to use an appropriate phrase—priced in.

In an early scene, the Lehmans, after lighting Hanukkah candles, find out that their neighbors’ crops are on fire and of course say, “Barukh Hashem!” because they see a financial opportunity. And then there is the depiction of the 1929 Wall Street crash and the suicides it supposedly precipitated:

Strikingly, unlike all the other bankers shown in the play up to that point, these victims of the system the Lehmans supposedly built do not appear to be Jewish. Rather than having names like Emanuel and Mayer, they are called Teddy, Vernon, Jimmy, Don, and Fred. They are still bankers, but honorable and sympathetic ones, and not Jewish; . . . it has to be non-Jews who are the unsuspecting victims of Jewish malpractice. Jews making money while non-Jews die is about as anti-Semitic as it gets.

Two of the most important questions about the recent agreement with Hamas are “Why now?” and “What is the relationship between the deal and the military campaign?” To Ron Ben-Yishai, the answer to the two questions is related, and flies in the face of the widespread (and incorrect) claim that the same agreement could have been reached in May:

Contrary to certain public perceptions, the military pressure exerted on northern Gaza in recent months was the main leverage that led to flexibility on the part of Hamas and made clear to the terror group that it would do well to agree to a deal now, before thousands more of its fighters are killed, and before the IDF advances further and destroys Gaza entirely.

Andrew Fox, meanwhile, presents a more comprehensive strategic analysis of the cease-fire:

Tactically, Hamas has taken a severe beating in Gaza since October 2023. It is assessed that it has lost as much as 90 percent of military capability and 80 percent of manpower, although it has recruited well and boosted its numbers from below 10,000 to the 20–30,000 range. However, these are untrained recruits, often under-age, and the IDF has been striking their training camps in northern Gaza so they have been unable to form any kind of meaningful capability. This is not a fighting force that retains any ability to harm the IDF in real numbers, although, as seen this past week with a fatal IED attack, they are able to score the odd hit.

However, this has not affected Hamas’s ability to retain administrative control of Gaza.

Internationally, Hamas sits alone in glory on the information battlefield. It has won the most resounding victory imaginable in the world’s media, in Western states, and on the Internet. . . . The stock of the Palestinian cause rides high internationally and will only get higher as Hamas proclaims a victory following this cease-fire deal. By means of political pressure on Israel, the international information campaign has kept Hamas in the fight, extended the war, prolonged the suffering of Gazan civilians, and has ultimately handed Hamas a win through the fact of their continued survival and eventual rebuild.

Indeed, writes Fox in a separate post, the “images coming out of Gaza over the last few days show us that too many in the wider world have been played for fools.”

Hamas fighters have been seen emerging from hospitals and the humanitarian zone. Well-fed Palestinians, with fresh haircuts and Adidas tracksuits, or in just vests, cheer for the camera. . . . There was no starvation. There was no freezing. There was no genocide.