After some time living in Britain, Josh Kaplan recently visited Israel, where he is a dual citizen and where his family lives. He reflects on the real country that he had started to forget about amid the noise of war:

The second you step off the plane, the thought that American ideas of race could be even vaguely applicable, that Israel is a “white supremacist” settler-colonist outpost, is instantly dispelled. Tel Aviv feels more diverse than any American city, its beaches and bars packed with an insanely attractive array of people from all over the world. Despite the war, there are expats, there are foreign workers, there are millions of people—fewer than half of whom are “white”—going about their lives like everyone else.

In Jerusalem, a city of mixed faith for thousands of years, I saw families wearing hijabs picnicking in parks next to secular Jews. At the city’s marathon, I saw prayer mats facing east near the entrance, and runners with their Jewish prayer shawls flapping as they jogged. I mention these little moments not because I found them remarkable—they’re routine in Israel and have been for the last few decades I’ve been visiting. I raise them because seeing them for myself during this conflict, I realized how I’d taken them for granted. I had feared that perhaps the war would have rewritten the DNA of Israeli society.

But it hasn’t. Far away from the culture wars, on the frontlines of the actual war, life goes on. Israeli society has not been infected with the poisonous black-and-white discourse of the West.

While the current Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has never been friendly to Hamas, his government has objected strenuously to the Israeli campaign in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip. Haisam Hassanein explains why:

Cairo has long been playing a double game, holding Hamas terrorists near while simultaneously trying to appear helpful to the United States and Israel. Israel taking control of Rafah threatens Egypt’s ability to exploit the chaos in Gaza, both to generate profits for regime insiders and so Cairo can pose as an indispensable mediator and preserve access to U.S. money and arms.

Egyptian security officials have looked the other way while Hamas and other Palestinian militants dug tunnels on the Egyptian-Gaza border. That gave Cairo the ability to use the situation in Gaza as a tool for regional influence and to ensure Egypt’s role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would not be eclipsed by regional competitors such as Qatar and Turkey.

Some elements close to the Sisi regime have benefited from Hamas control over Gaza and the Rafah crossing. Media reports indicate an Egyptian company run by one of Sisi’s close allies is making hundreds of millions of dollars by taxing Gazans fleeing the current conflict.

Moreover, writes Judith Miller, the Gaza war has been a godsend to the entire Egyptian economy, which was in dire straits last fall. Since October 7, the International Monetary Fund has given the country a much-needed injection of cash, since the U.S. and other Western countries believe it is a necessary intermediary and stabilizing force. Cairo therefore sees the continuation of the war, rather than an Israeli victory, as most desirable. Hassanein concludes:

Adding to its financial incentive, the Sisi regime views the Rafah crossing as a crucial card in preserving Cairo’s regional standing. Holding it increases Egypt’s relevance to countries that want to send aid to the Palestinians and ensures Washington stays quiet about Egypt’s gross human-rights violations so it can maintain a stable flow of U.S. assistance and weaponry. . . . No serious effort to turn the page on Hamas will yield the desired results without cutting this umbilical cord between the Sisi regime and Hamas.