In a cynical ploy to boost his standing among African-American voters, the South Bend, Indiana mayor and presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg very publicly shared a meal with the notorious race-baiter and anti-Semitic agitator Al Sharpton. Most of the other candidates for the Democratic nomination joined Buttigieg in attending Sharpton’s annual conference. To Seth Mandel, the current rush to pledge fealty to Sharpton—who instigated the 1991 Crown Heights riots as well as the 1995 firebombing of Freddie’s Fashion Mart—is “particularly ghastly.”

Sharpton’s elevation comes amid an uptick in reported incidents of anti-Semitism. Just days before Buttigieg’s public celebration of Sharpton, a man fired shots at a Chabad synagogue in Poway, killing one person. In chilling echoes of the 1991 Crown Heights riots, in which Sharpton played a leading role, there’s been a rash of anti-Semitic assaults in Brooklyn. In New York on the whole, . . . the embrace of Sharpton isn’t coming in a vacuum. It accelerates a trend of enabling anti-Semitism in the service of an all-consuming [anti-Trump] “resistance.”

Sharpton’s comeback was helped along massively by President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. The latter is also running for the Democratic presidential nomination this year. Sharpton was marginalized by their predecessors and by his actions, but Obama and de Blasio arguably made him more powerful politically than he’s ever been. Sharpton’s return to respectability surprised fans and critics alike.

Sharpton was and remains unrepentant [for the acts of violence and murder he instigated]. “You only repent when you mean it, and I have done nothing wrong,” he insisted in 2001. In 2011, on the twentieth anniversary of the Crown Heights pogrom, he blamed “extremists in the Jewish community” for setting a dishonest racial narrative.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.