Whatever the failings of his Middle East policy, Seth Mandel observes, Joe Biden has had no qualms about calling himself a Zionist, something he repeated in an interview on July 12. But Kamala Harris, his apparent successor, might be less willing to make such an unequivocal statement. Mandel writes:

Josh Paul, who resigned as a State Department point man on weapons transfers because Biden insisted on arming our Mideast allies, told Politico that Harris will probably be better (i.e. more evenhanded in her treatment of Israel and Hamas) than Biden. . . . Paul displays a remarkably aggressive ignorance on all things Middle East, and seems to have been particularly radicalized by his misreading of a story about donkeys in Gaza. This is the other reason for concern: U.S. agencies are apparently littered with a combination of entitled but inexperienced activists and historically illiterate fame-chasers. Things can easily get out of hand without a president who knows how to say “no” to them.

Yesterday on CNN, John King noted that the Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro is being considered as a potential running mate for Harris. The fact that Shapiro is Jewish—and not part of the self-hating AsAJew movement—means “there could be some risks in putting him on the ticket.” Progressives have been relying on token anti-Israel Jews willing to . . . renounce the Jewish people. Shapiro does not appear to have the appetite to do so. King is therefore correct.

King is also correct to reject euphemistic word games. Shapiro’s Jewishness would be a target of the progressive base’s ire, even if those voters tried to hide their ignobility by using the word “Zionist” as a proxy for “Jew.”

We can expect the ceding of a degree of policy to any figure who is sensitive to the very loud and public tantrums of progressive activists. Whatever his faults, Joe Biden ignored them when those tantrums demanded the right to persecute Jews here or abroad. Those days are over, and what lies ahead is cause for trepidation.

Information about a supposedly near-finalized hostage deal continued to trickle out yesterday. While it’s entirely possible that by the time you read this a deal will be much more certain, it is every bit as likely that it will have fallen through by then. More likely still, we will learn that there are indefinite and unspecified delays. Then there are the details: even in the best of scenarios, not all the hostages will be returned at once, and Israel will have to make painful concessions in exchange, including the release of hundreds of hardened terrorists and the withdrawal from key parts of the Gaza Strip.

Unusually—if entirely appropriately—the president-elect’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has participated in the talks alongside members of President Biden’s team. Philip Klein examines the incoming Trump administration’s role in the process:

President-elect Trump has repeatedly warned that there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not returned from Gaza by the time he takes office. While he has never laid out exactly what the specific consequences for Hamas would be, there are some ominous signs that Israel is being pressured into paying a tremendous price.

There is obviously more here than we know. It’s possible that with the pressure from the Trump team came reassurances that Israel would have more latitude to reenter Gaza as necessary to go after Hamas than it would have enjoyed under Biden. . . . That said, all appearances are that Israel has been forced into making more concessions because Trump was concerned that he’d be embarrassed if January 20 came around with no hostages released.

While Donald Trump’s threats are a welcome rhetorical shift, part of the problem may be their vagueness. After all, it’s unlikely the U.S. would use military force to unleash hell in Gaza, or could accomplish much in doing so that the IDF can’t. More useful would be direct threats against countries like Qatar and Turkey that host Hamas, and threats to the persons and bank accounts of the Hamas officials living in those counties. Witkoff instead praised the Qatari prime minister for “doing God’s work” in the negotiations.”