A few weeks ago, a commentator on a Turkish television network associated with the country’s president stated that “Jews [and] Zionists have organized and engineered the coronavirus as a biological weapon just like bird flu.” Such accusations are reminiscent of 14th-century claims that Jews deliberately spread the Black Death, and of more recent libels, like the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s claim in a 2016 speech to the European parliament that a rabbi had tried to convince the Israeli government to poison Palestinians’ drinking water. (The speech received a standing ovation.) David Patrikarakos comments:

The Algerian news outlet Al Masdar recently published an article titled, “A Zionist Organization Is behind the Coronavirus and the Zionist Entity Claims to Have Found the Vaccine.” In a recent sermon, the Gazan imam Jamil al-Mutawa praised the virus as sent by Allah to kill Westerners and Jews.

And the attacks come from all sides. In the United States, the far-right conspiracy theorist and pastor Rick Wiles claims that God is spreading the coronavirus in synagogues because he is “dealing with those who oppose his son, Jesus Christ.” Meanwhile, [other members of] the far-right, in online forums like Reddit and Gab, peddle claims that Israel’s Mossad “invented” the coronavirus and that it is a bioweapon funded by the Holocaust survivor and philanthropist George Soros.

It is easy to dismiss all this as nonsense. I would suggest that this is an error. The coronavirus has shrunk the world’s attention to a degree previously unseen in our lifetimes. People are looking for answers—and once again, scapegoats. This will continue long after we come out of isolation and even after a vaccine is found (should those dates be different). Narratives of Jewish or Zionist culpability now threaten in ways they previously did not. Across the Middle East and in pockets of the West these ideas are the epistemological backdrop to everyday life: their hatred is leavened by their banality. If these societies suffer mass deaths the hatred will remain, the banality will not.

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.