For years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) paid for healthcare, electricity, and other basic civilian needs in the Gaza Strip, while Hamas raised funds through heavy taxes (often leveled on top of PA taxes) that it could then devote largely to its military needs. The PA recently brought an end to this arrangement, as part of last month’s reconciliation deal. Evelyn Gordon explains how the new situation will affect the terrorist group’s bottom line:

Hamas for the first time has to spend some of its own money on [public services], causing its military budget to plummet from an estimated $200 million in 2014 to just $50 million this year (not counting the extra money it gets from Iran, which is solely for military spending). . . .

[I]mplementation of the reconciliation deal got off on the right foot on Wednesday when Hamas formally handed over Gaza’s border crossings to the PA. This isn’t because of the handover itself, which was largely meaningless, but because Hamas also agreed to dismantle the tax-collection checkpoints it erected near the crossings with Israel. . . . [These] checkpoints were major revenue sources for Hamas, since almost all imports to Gaza passed through them. . . . Thus the removal of these checkpoints will severely dent Hamas’s revenue stream.

Of course, it will still have the money it gets from Iran, estimated at $60-70 million this year, and that money will continue going straight to its military wing. But that’s far below what it was spending on its military in 2014 when it was getting less money from a cash-strapped Tehran but had a steady stream of Gazan tax revenue. . . .

[However], it’s not clear how anyone could stop [Hamas] from using its guns to resume extorting taxes once it has gotten what it wants out of the deal, which is to cease being responsible for civilian affairs. [And] the more money Hamas has to spend on its military build-up, the sooner it will reach the point where it feels it can afford to start another war. Hence if the PA, Egypt, and the international community want to avoid such a war, they must start thinking now about how to keep Hamas away from Gazan revenues if and when the reconciliation deal is fully implemented.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.