On the morning of May 11, the Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed during an IDF incursion in the West Bank, the aim of which was to apprehend a terrorist. It remains unclear whether Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian gunmen or by Israelis returning fire. Israel immediately called for an investigation into the shooting, but the Palestinian Authority has refused to hand over the bullet that killed Abu Akleh for a ballistics test, or to cooperate in virtually any other way. The U.S. has also refused to assist, despite the fact that Abu Akleh was a dual American-Israeli citizen.

Ruthie Blum provides a detailed report on the circumstances of Abu Akleh’s death and funeral—which was violently disrupted by Palestinian activists who wished to claim the Christian woman as an Islamic martyr—as well as responses by leading media and government figures.

The context for the IDF entry into Jenin on the Wednesday that Abu Akleh lost her life has been glossed over by left-wing media outlets, if not altogether excluded from the coverage of those with an openly anti-Israel slant. [However], the Internet platforms enabling the rapid dissemination of demonization also allow for swift rebuttal.

The actress and author Noa Tishby, Israel’s first-ever special envoy for combating anti-Semitism and delegitimization, is a prime example.

“Here are some facts you may not know,” she begins [in a recent TikTok video]. “The International Federation of Journalists . . . conducted a report about the number of death cases of journalists in war zones between 1990 and 2020. According to the report, 2,658 journalists have been killed in that period of time. Three-hundred-forty were killed in Iraq, 178 in Mexico, 160 in the Philippines, 138 in Pakistan, and 116 in India. Twelve of the cases were Al Jazeera journalists. Seven of them were killed in Syria, two in Iraq, one in Yemen, one in Libya, and one last week.”

She goes on: “Each one of these deaths is horrific, but you can’t name the other 2,657 journalists. You can only name the one [who] was killed in clashes between Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli army.”

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.