School may be out for the summer, but elsewhere in the U.S. anti-Israel protests emerged with renewed ferocity last weekend: throwing smoke bombs outside a Democratic fundraiser in midtown Manhattan, shouting pro-Hamas slogans in a Chicago suburb in the middle of the night, and setting up an encampment in a public park in a Massachusetts town. But none of this compares to the routine violence seen in European cities, including the recent anti-Semitic rape of a twelve-year-old girl (by three boys barely older) in Paris and the brutal beating of Jewish schoolchildren in a London subway station. Ben Cohen comments on the situation:

There are structural reasons that explain why the 2020s are different from the 1930s in significant ways. For one thing, European societies are more affluent and better equipped to deal with social conflicts and economic strife than they were a century ago. Laws, too, are more explicit in the protections they offer to minorities, and more punishing of hate crimes and hate speech. Perhaps most importantly, there is a Jewish state barely 80 years old which all Jews can make their home if they so desire.

If Israel represents the greatest achievement of the Jewish people in at least 100 years, small wonder that it has become the main target of today’s reconstituted anti-Semites. . . . Hence, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that while the 2020s may not be the 1930s, they certainly feel like the 1930s.

[T]he situation in Europe increasingly reminds me of the observation of the Russian Zionist Leon Pinsker in Autoemancipation, a doom-laden essay he wrote in 1882, during another dark period of Jewish history: “We should not persuade ourselves that humanity and enlightenment will ever be radical remedies for the malady of our people.”

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.