On Monday, protestors gathered in front of the offices of the New York Times after the paper’s international edition published a cartoon depicting the Israeli prime minister as a dog leading a blind and kippah-clad President Trump by his leash. Ruthie Blum comments:

[I]n the following weekend edition, the international edition of the New York Times published a second cartoon—this one of Netanyahu dressed as Moses holding the Ten Commandments in one hand and a selfie-stick in the other. . . .

Nobody at the paper, [however], is bracing for an armed Jewish onslaught. You know, like the slaughter in 2015 of twelve cartoonists and editors at the left-wing satirical French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, when it went after Islam. That the Paris-based paper regularly mocked Judaism and Christianity did not factor into the Islamist terrorists’ rampage, which continued on to the district’s Hyper Cacher kosher market, where shoppers were taken hostage and four Jews were murdered.

The Charlie Hebdo office was also fire-bombed in 2011, after publishing a cartoon of Muhammad in an issue whose cover was titled “Sharia Weekly.” This was five years after the paper was sued for running a series of controversial Muhammad-based cartoons that had appeared months earlier in the Danish daily, Jyllands-Posten, and caused a global Islamic assault. . . .

At least 200 people were killed during or as a result of those demonstrations, which were also used as an excuse for radical Muslim groups to vent their rage against Christians. Churches and Western embassies were attacked and Jyllands-Posten cartoonists, who were receiving credible death threats, went into hiding. . . .

[N]o cartoonist, editor, or anyone else ridiculing Jews or Judaism need fear for his life. The same cannot be said of those making fun of Muslims or Islam. Just ask the staff of Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo. If the New York Times editors are concerned today about the current uproar that their anti-Semitic cartoon has unleashed, it is not due to fear of death and destruction. It’s because the Jews complaining noisily outside their office . . . made it difficult for them to concentrate while coming up with their next batch of Israel-bashing pieces.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.