In Los Angeles, the recent riots have left several synagogues and Jewish-owned business looted or vandalized, including with such pointed slogans as “F— Israel” and “Free Palestine.” To find the real culprits behind such acts of violence, writes Cynthia Ozick, one must look to the intellectuals—and it has ever been thus:

The Inquisition was the brainchild not of illiterates, but of the most lettered and lofty prelates. Goebbels had a degree in philology. Hitler fancied himself a painter and doubtless knew something of Dürer and da Vinci. . . . The hounding and ultimate expulsion of Jewish students from German universities was abetted by the violence of their Aryan classmates, but it was the rectors who decreed that only full-blooded Germans could occupy the front seats. Martin Heidegger, the celebrated philosopher of being and nonbeing, was quick to join the Nazi party, and as himself a rector promptly oversaw the summary ejection of Jewish colleagues. Stupid mobs are spurred by clever goaders: the book burners were inspired by the temperamentally bookish—who else could know which books to burn?

Anti-Semitism dressed in the sheep’s clothing of social justice is the province of elevated pitchmen—cultivated elites, learned professors, scholarly theorists.

At the heart of the dangerous theories of today, writes Ozick, is the doctrine of “intersectionality,” according to which various groups of people are ranked so that the most oppressed are categorized as the most righteous:

On the lowest rung of [intersectionality’s] hierarchy of ethnic worthiness, Jews are designated as white oppressors of marginal peoples. They are accused of complicity in a colonialist plot against Palestinians and as accomplices in the training of police brutality. If they profess to be liberals, or radicals of the left, they are shunted aside as persecutors of the weak. Even as they are scorned as unfairly privileged, they are treated as campus pariahs.

Marxism is a movement of the deluded; anti-Semitism is a movement of the cleverest. When students become inquisitors and administrations are feeble, when the elect succumb to the political haters, so will a nation’s conscience. A vengeful mob is a fearsome thing, but the true monsters are its teachers.

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.