In 1951, the radical historian Herbert Read invited a little-known poet named Emanuel Litvinoff to read his work at a distinguished London literary gathering. Litvinoff announced that he would be reading an ode to T.S. Eliot, who happened to be present. The poem began with praise, but then moved to a lyrical attack on Eliot’s anti-Semitism, deftly playing on the slurs found in his poems (“Bleistein is my relative/ and I share the protozoic slime of Shylock”) and eventually working up to this:

Yet walking with Cohen when the sun exploded
and darkness choked our nostrils
and the smoke drifting over Treblinka
reeked of the smoldering ashes of children,
I thought what an angry poem
you would have made of it, given the pity.

Jack Omer-Jackaman comments on the scene:

Had the evening seen only the performance of such an eloquently wrathful poem, had it seen only such a courageous display of Jewish self-respect and such a dignified rebuke of respectable anti-Semitism, then it would still have been enough to be worthy of recall and analysis. But it is the response to Litvinoff that remains instructive. The audience hissed, and both Read and the poet Stephen Spender publicly rebuked him. Read thought it was “bad form.” Speaking to the press after the event, Spender offered this chillingly obsequious banality: “He was classing Eliot with the people who committed atrocities on Jews, whereas I believe that anything Eliot has written about Jews comes under the heading of criticism.”

It’s hard to read that and not think of the English leftists who spew the vilest anti-Semitism and then insist they are merely engaged in “criticism” of Israel. Such “willful obtuseness,” Omer-Jackaman observes, was the typical English way of denying anti-Semitism then, and remains so today.

In a sense, the most successful negotiation with Hamas was the recent agreement securing the release of Edan Alexander, the last living hostage with a U.S. passport. Unlike those previously handed over, he wasn’t exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, and there was no cease-fire. Dan Diker explains what Hamas got out of the deal:

Alexander’s unconditional release [was] designed to legitimize Hamas further as a viable negotiator and to keep Hamas in power, particularly at a moment when Israel is expanding its military campaign to conquer Gaza and eliminate Hamas as a military, political, and civil power. Israel has no other option than defeating Hamas. Hamas’s “humanitarian” move encourages American pressure on Israel to end its counterterrorism war in service of advancing additional U.S. efforts to release hostages over time, legitimizing Hamas while it rearms, resupplies, and reestablishes it military power and control.

In fact, Hamas-affiliated media have claimed credit for successful negotiations with the U.S., branding the release of Edan Alexander as the “Edan deal,” portraying Hamas as a rising international player, sidelining Israel from direct talks with DC, and declaring this a “new phase in the conflict.”

Fortunately, however, Washington has not coerced Jerusalem into ceasing the war since Alexander’s return. Nor, Diker observes, did the deal drive a wedge between the two allies, despite much speculation about the possibility.