In response to the recent ratification of a U.S. trade law, the State Department expressed reservations about provisions of the law intended to discourage economic warfare against Israel. These reservations include concern over the law’s alleged “conflation” of the West Bank with the remainder of Israel. Eugene Kontorovich points out that not only does the law make no such conflation, but the State Department’s reservations bespeak a poor understanding of U.S. policy:

The United States has not consistently opposed [Israeli] settlements, [as the State Department claims]. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both expressed varying degrees of support for them. Moreover, the question of whether one opposes or supports settlements is distinct from what the rules dealing with economic activity there should be.

On this, U.S. policy is longstanding and clear. U.S. laws have long applied the same economic treatment to all areas under Israeli jurisdiction (including Jerusalem). . . . The administration’s statement refers broadly to its opposition to “settlements.” . . . But the law has nothing to do with settlements. It is about business activity. One can have settlements without business activity and business activity without settlements. For example, most people living in the West Bank make their living inside the Green Line. . . . And one can have business activity without settlements—many Israeli factories employ local Palestinians, or even Israelis residing inside the Green Line. Only a redefinition of settlements as meaning “Jews having any kind of physical or constructive activity” would cover this.

The State Department did not say that it will decline to enforce the law, but such a decision, according to Kontorovich, would constitute “an extraordinary constitutional usurpation” by the executive branch.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.