The Minnesota congressman and former radio talk-show host Jason Lewis recently announced that he is running for Senate in the 2020 election. On air in 2013, Lewis, echoing the concerns of a caller, complained of the supposed number of dual citizens of Israel and the U.S. in Congress and other branches of government, and their malign effect on policy; he also remarked that Jewish or pro-Israel lobbyists “control the Republican party.” Jonathan Marks responds to Lewis’s claim that he was merely “playing devil’s advocate,” and comments on the silence of his fellow Republicans:

Lewis . . . wasn’t playing devil’s advocate. He made every one of the claims in question in his own name.

His next line of defense is that, as a member of Congress, he had a pro-Israel voting record. What are we to make of this? Was Lewis, as a radio host, merely spreading to his listeners a vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that he never believed? Or was he, as a freshman congressman, trimming his sails and voting with the party? Neither conclusion saves Lewis. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was therefore entirely in the right when he said . . . that “Republican leaders need to condemn Lewis’s remarks.”

But the only such leader I’m aware of is Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who is not an elected official and whose response was equivocal. Yes, Lewis’s remarks were “indefensible,” he said, but they were made when he as a “shock jock”—which Lewis wasn’t, exactly—and besides, Lewis had an “outstanding record of support for Israel” in Congress.

We rightly blamed Democrats for failing unequivocally and clearly to denounce Ilhan Omar’s remarks about dual loyalty. But the Republican response to Lewis, who hasn’t even pretended to apologize for his remarks, and whom the party will very likely be putting up as its candidate for senator from Minnesota, has been still more tepid.

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.