Tomorrow, a “Flood Brooklyn for Gaza” rally is planned to begin at the Brooklyn Museum, located in the borough’s Crown Heights neighborhood. The title is an unambiguous reference to Hamas’s own name for its attack on Israel: “Al-Aqsa Flood.” John Podhoretz writes:

Roughly 20,000 observant Jews live . . . in the neighborhood called Crown Heights. “Jews should definitely avoid the area,” a police source told COLlive.com. . . . Our NYPD is telling the Jews of Brooklyn that they are at risk, and—this is the implicit corollary—they cannot be protected.

Why do you think the marchers are meeting near Crown Heights anyway? This is why. Their purpose isn’t to call for a ceasefire or to advocate for the Palestinian people. Their purpose is to make it known what October 7 made known: there will be no peace or security for any Jew anywhere in the world if they get their way. And rather than announcing that it will send 5,000 cops into the streets to ensure that the mob does not disturb the afternoon walk of a single Jew, the NYPD says: stay inside. Mind the mob.

In my 62 years of life, I have thought every day of the blessing America has been to the Jewish people—a blessing unlike any my people have ever known. And this, the most Jewish city in the world outside of Israel, has been a blessing as well. At this moment, though, the Jews had better hide.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.