Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and a leading figure in the Likud, has recently been the subject of two controversies in the U.S. First, a Hillel house canceled, for political reasons, a talk she was scheduled to give. (The Hillel’s director later apologized.) Second, she gave an interview in which she commented that American Jewish teenagers, unlike their Israeli counterparts, rarely serve in the military and are not subject to rocket attacks. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union of Reform Judaism, responded with pique, calling on Benjamin Netanyahu to dismiss her from his cabinet. Leah Aharoni comments:

The real issue is not what Hotovely had to say. The real issue is who she is. When Rabbi Jacobs and his peers look at Hotovely, they see the ultimate other. She is everything they are not. Hotovely is a young, dynamic, religiously observant woman, who wears her wig with pride. She is [non-Ashkenazi] and [politically] right-wing. And since she is poised, attractive, articulate, and intelligent, they also perceive her as dangerous.

Hotovely breaks every stereotype the Reform leaders seem to want their constituents to believe about Orthodox Judaism and the status of women. No, she is not barefoot and pregnant. Yes, she is the new face of religious women in Israel, an engaged, worldly leader, who embraces the traditional values of Judaism, motherhood, and family. And with all her appeal she holds right-wing political views and serves in Netanyahu’s government.

You would think that the same leaders who are valiantly standing up to Hotovely would have had the courage to stand beside her when Hillel caved in to BDS pressure and canceled her talk. They did not. Ironically, the only American group to defend Hotovely and to offer her an alternative venue for her speech was Chabad. The supposedly misogynist “ultra-Orthodox” rabbis went out of their way to protect her right to speak, while the feminist men did not raise a finger to defend her or her right to free speech.

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.