As Americans continue to debate the merits of various policies undertaken to confront the COVID-19 epidemic, Moshe Krakowski looks back on how journalists and even government officials sought to depict Ḥaredim as particularly dangerous vectors of disease:

In August of 2022, [the former chief medical adviser Anthony] Fauci singled out Ḥaredim as poster children for the loss of herd immunity: “when vaccinations get below that number you start to see outbreaks like we saw some time ago in the New Yor City area with ḥasidic Jewish people who were not getting vaccinated.” (This, despite the fact that measles vaccination rates in the ḥasidic community were shown to be 96 percent and other, non-Jewish, communities experienced measles outbreaks too.)

In November 2021, a Department of Health official confirmed in testimony to Attorney General Letitia James that Governor Andrew Coumo’s COVID-19 cluster zones had targeted Orthodox neighborhoods, even though other neighborhoods in the city met exactly the same COVID-positivity metrics.

Ḥaredim were routinely described as ignorant and clannish, and as engaging in mob behavior. Ḥaredi religious beliefs and values were mocked as unimportant. In April of 2020, [then-New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio issued a special “message to the Jewish community” threatening that “the time for warnings has passed” and indicated that he would be dispatching the police to “arrest those who gather in large groups.” Jews were the only one of the city’s many ethnic groups whom de Blasio singled out for public condemnation.

We actually have very little clear or systematic data about how and why Ḥaredim responded to COVID-19—or how the virus responded in turn. There are strong reasons to believe the ḥasidic COVID-19 death rate was exactly the same as the rest of New York, despite the community suffering a massive surge of deaths in the very initial wave that kicked off the pandemic.

In a momentous meeting with the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he is lifting sanctions on the beleaguered and war-torn country. On the one hand, Sharaa is an alumnus of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, who came to power as commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which itself began life as al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot; he also seems to enjoy the support of Qatar. On the other hand, he overthrew the Assad regime—a feat made possible by the battering Israel delivered to Hizballah—greatly improving Jerusalem’s strategic position, and ending one of the world’s most atrocious and brutal tyrannies. President Trump also announced that he hopes Syria will join the Abraham Accords.

This analysis by Eran Lerman was published a few days ago, and in some respects is already out of date, but more than anything else I’ve read it helps to make sense of Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Syria.

Israel’s primary security interest lies in defending against worst-case scenarios, particularly the potential collapse of the Syrian state or its transformation into an actively hostile force backed by a significant Turkish presence (considering that the Turkish military is the second largest in NATO) with all that this would imply. Hence the need to bolster the new buffer zone—not for territorial gain, but as a vital shield and guarantee against dangerous developments. Continued airstrikes aimed at diminishing the residual components of strategic military capabilities inherited from the Assad regime are essential.

At the same time, there is a need to create conditions that would enable those in Damascus who wish to reject the reduction of their once-proud country into a Turkish satrapy. Sharaa’s efforts to establish his legitimacy, including his visit to Paris and outreach to the U.S., other European nations, and key Gulf countries, may generate positive leverage in this regard. Israel’s role is to demonstrate through daily actions the severe costs of acceding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions and accepting Turkish hegemony.

Israel should also assist those in Syria (and beyond: this may have an effect in Lebanon as well) who look to it as a strategic anchor in the region. The Druze in Syria—backed by their brethren in Israel—have openly expressed this expectation, breaking decades of loyalty to the central power in Damascus over their obligation to their kith and kin.