In her book Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier explores the phenomenon of teenage girls trying to become boys by changing their clothes and names, as well as pursuing surgical and hormonal interventions. Naomi Schaefer Riley writes in her review:

Historically, gender dysphoria—“characterized by a severe and persistent discomfort in one’s own biological sex”—begins in early childhood. It affected a tiny sliver of the population and was almost exclusively found in boys. Around ten years ago, all that changed. Now the number of cases has skyrocketed, the sufferers are overwhelmingly girls, and none of it is happening until adolescence. They’re generally from white families with higher incomes. And there are “clusters of adolescents in a single grade, suddenly discovering transgender identities together.”

Ordinarily, we don’t go to doctors explaining that we think we have pancreatic cancer and just expect them to treat it. We go to doctors with symptoms and expect them to run tests and find the source of our pain. When anorexics tell us they are too fat, we don’t expect medical professionals to agree and help them search for a Weight Watchers meeting. But when it comes to gender dysphoria, therapists are supposed to adhere to the “affirmative-care standard,” which basically means telling a patient his or diagnosis is correct and then figuring out how to “treat” it.

It is not just the demand for self-mutilation that should tip us off to the cultish nature of this movement. . . . Take the way that the transgender activists treat apostates, for instance. If someone decides to “de-transition”—that is, she starts to believe that her biological sex was the right one after all—she is shunned, harassed, and threatened online. And current believers are warned not to have anything to do with her.

How bizarre it is that, after decades of giving girls the message that girls can do whatever they want and be whomever they want, what they have decided is that they don’t want to be girls.

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.