Recent articles in Jacobin magazine—the flagship publication of the American hard left—have responded to the upsurge of violent attacks on Jews with articles declaring that “to defeat anti-Semitism we must defeat capitalism” and “only the left can defeat anti-Semitism.” For its part, the likeminded Jewish Currents has simply blamed the victims. Ari Hoffman, noting socialism’s long and well-documented history of hostility toward Jews, takes stock of these arguments:

Jews are being shot and macheted, the editors [of] Jewish Currents collectively mused, because they are more effective at developing real estate and extracting government services. “Fifty-five percent of ḥasidic households in New York City live below the poverty line and have been extraordinarily organized in applying for social services en masse, creating stiff competition for public assistance,” they write. And “for historical reasons involving redlining and white flight, many landlords in the area are Ḥasidim; as a result, members of this community function as the faces, and sometimes the scapegoats, of the ongoing gentrification of these neighborhoods and their worsening housing crisis.”

[Setting aside] this ugly portrayal of Jews, . . . the simplicity of blaming everything on “material conditions,” gentrification, and the existing order is indeed tempting. The Jews become the natural victims of the system that they benefit from, and those who attack them are structurally absolved; their acts of violence get added to the bill of particulars in support of the need for revolution. “Context,” [a favorite term of these writers], does all the work, and what’s left over is picked up by “solidarity,” which can mean anything at all except that Jews deserve protection from those who seek to harm them.

In fact, the relationship [between socialism and anti-Semitism] goes the other way. As with the far right, the socialist left is relentlessly bad news for the Jews. Its most successful contemporary avatar, Jeremy Corbyn, presided over the transformation of one of the great political parties in the West into a [den] of anti-Semites. And its most successful tribune in the United States, while himself a proud Jew, seems unable to quit those like Linda Sarsour who speak for him and see behind him a movement more amenable to their hateful commitments.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.