Nominated by the Biden administration to serve as America’s ambassador to Brazil, Elizabeth Frawley Bagley has held diplomatic positions in every Democratic administration since Jimmy Carter, including a stint as ambassador to Portugal from 1994 until 1997. Adam Kredo, who obtained a copy of an interview Bagley gave in 1998, examines some of its more alarming content, which also disturbed two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

The interview was conducted by a historian at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training for an oral history project. . . . Bagley opened up about the “Jewish lobby” and its impact on Democratic party politics. She was asked about “the Israeli influence” on the Clinton administration.

“There is always the influence of the Jewish lobby because there is major money involved,” Bagley said. . . . Democrats, she said, “always tend to go with the Jewish constituency on Israel and say stupid things, like moving the capital to Jerusalem always comes up. Things that we shouldn’t even touch.”

The “Jewish factor” is not about the raw number of electors who care about these issues, Bagley said, “it’s money.”

When questioned about these remarks during a May 18 confirmation hearing with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bagley claimed they were the result of a “free-flowing discussion” with the interviewer.

Bagley’s assertion that the discussion was “free-flowing” hardly exonerates her. Meanwhile, the “stupid” decision to relocate the U.S. embassy to Israel’s capital—supported by decades of bipartisan legislation—did not bring about any international crises, and was instead followed by major breakthroughs in Israel-Arab peacemaking.

Ron Ben-Yishai explains Hamas’s current calculations:

Strategically speaking, Hamas is hoping to add more and more days to the pause currently in effect, setting a new reality in stone, one which will convince the United States to get Israel to end the war. At the same time, they still have most of the hostages hidden in every underground crevice they could find, and hope to exchange those with as many Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners currently in Israeli prisons, planning on “revitalizing” their terrorist inclinations to even the odds against the seemingly unstoppable Israeli war machine.

Chances are that if pressured to do so by Qatar and Egypt, they will release men over 60 with the same “three-for-one” deal they’ve had in place so far, but when Israeli soldiers are all they have left to exchange, they are unlikely to extend the arrangement, instead insisting that for every IDF soldier released, thousands of their people would be set free.

In one of his last speeches prior to October 7, the Gaza-based Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar said, “remember the number one, one, one, one.” While he did not elaborate, it is believed he meant he wants 1,111 Hamas terrorists held in Israel released for every Israeli soldier, and those words came out of his mouth before he could even believe he would be able to abduct Israelis in the hundreds. This added leverage is likely to get him to aim for the release for all prisoners from Israeli facilities, not just some or even most.