Troubling Though Right-Wing Anti-Semitism Might Be, Jews Should Be More Frightened by the Islamist Variety

An Israeli sociologist recently wondered why many Israeli and American Jews have not been more troubled by the anti-Semitism emerging from some of Donald Trump’s supporters. Evelyn Gordon, dismissing the scholar’s use of “the lazy leftist’s favorite tactic of stigmatizing . . . opponents as racist ultra-nationalists,” proffers some answers of her own:

Throughout the Muslim world, Nazi-style anti-Semitism is both rampant and government-sponsored. State-owned media, state-appointed clerics, and government officials all spew it day after day. . . .

Moreover, whereas anti-Semitic Trump supporters are armed mainly with Twitter and spray paint, Middle Eastern anti-Semites, even assuming Iran never gets nukes, are already armed with hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art missiles, along with suicide bombers, stabbers, car-rammers, etc. Terrorist quasi-states like Hizballah and Hamas have used their weaponry to target Jews directly, and not just in Israel (remember the AMIA bombing [in Buenos Aires]?), while countries like Iran have so far preferred to do so indirectly, by funneling arms and cash to terrorists. Either way, the combination of high-tech weaponry with Nazi-style anti-Semitism constitutes a clear and present danger to millions of Jewish lives, one far greater than the danger posed by even the most noxious Trump fans.

So if your goal is to protect the maximum number of Jewish lives, your top priority is arguably electing a U.S. president who will provide strong backing for Israeli self-defense and strong opposition to murderous Muslim regimes. It should not be to support an American government that will, say, stop arms shipments to Israel in the middle of a war, help turn Iran into the Mideast’s dominant power, or reward Palestinian incitement and terror by blaming the stalemated peace process on Israel—all things Barack Obama actually did.

Read more at Evelyn Gordon

More about: Anti-Semitism, Arab anti-Semitism, Donald Trump, Politics & Current Affairs

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF