The New York Police Department Tells Jews It Can’t Protect Them

Oct. 27 2023

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.

Read more at New York Post

More about: American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Brooklyn, Crown Heights riot, New York City

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy