“No Jews” in our times, writes Jerold Auerbach, “have been as relentlessly maligned as the Jews of Hebron.” In her recent book Settling Hebron: Jewish Fundamentalism in a Palestinian City, the Columbia University anthropologist Tamara Neuman—armed with the latest social-science jargon—joins her many predecessors in casting aspersions on the West Bank city’s small Jewish community. Auerbach writes:

Gazing at the Machpelah shrine where, according to [tradition], Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are entombed, [Neuman] nonetheless discerns its “staunch witness to the site’s Islamic character.” Muslims, however, first appeared in the 7th century CE long after the reign of King Herod, when the towering Machpelah enclosure was built.

[Elsewhere, Neuman] absurdly describes the joyous descent of Jews from [the nearby village of] Kiryat Arba to the Machpelah holy site . . . as “ongoing forays of armed ideological settlers into Palestinian space.” This, she writes, is “ethnicized space” for Jews that demonstrates “the spatial character of ethnic exclusivism.” But the reality is that Jews are prohibited by Muslim authorities from entry into the stunningly beautiful Isaac Hall except for ten days a year. It is Muslims, not Jews, who impose “ethnic exclusivism.”

Neuman seems oblivious to the demographic reality that 500 Jews living in Hebron’s Jewish quarter are outnumbered by more than 20,000 Palestinians. And should she try to enter Arab Hebron—a thriving city of nearly 200,000 residents with shopping malls, high-rise apartment buildings, and universities—she would be turned away because she is a Jew.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.