While Mayor Eric Adams’s legal troubles have been national news, New York City is getting ready for its mayoral election in November, with primaries taking place in June. Among those expected to vie for the Democratic nomination is the speaker of the City Council, Adrienne Adams (no relation). Hannah Meyers explains why this should worry members of America’s largest Jewish community:

On Tuesday, an anti-Israel mob targeted one of the city’s densest and most visible Jewish communities in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Rioters banged drums, shouted pro-Hamas slogans and chanted, “Zionists go to hell” as they waved Palestinian flags, their faces hidden behind keffiyeh scarves. Some broke through police barricades to charge at nearby Jews and pro-Israel demonstrators, leading to a violent scuffle.

Speaker Adams has consistently rejected opportunities to use her leadership position to show concern and support for New York’s Jewish community following the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel and the immediately ensuing rise in attacks on American Jews.

On top of these signals of disparate disregard for Jews, Speaker Adams in June drafted and promoted a City Council resolution demanding a cease-fire in the Gaza war—to the disgust of many Jewish council members and New Yorkers. The speaker showed her sympathy for the socialist left’s anti-Semitic politicking by allowing the preposterous appointment of Councilwoman Shahana Hanif as co-chair of a new City Council Task Force to Combat Hate. Hanif is a poster child for the normalization of vitriolic anti-Zionism among New York progressive politicians.

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.