Last month, Rodney Muhammad, the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) posted a crass anti-Semitic cartoon on his personal Facebook page. Despite protests from the local Jewish community—soon joined by black leaders, the Pennsylvania governor, and others—the national organization took two weeks to react. Ben Cohen considers the belated and anemic statement from the national NAACP spokeswoman, stating that the group is “saddened and deeply disappointed” and that Muhammad “now recognizes the offensive nature of the imagery” he used:

The Facebook post that got [Muhammad] into trouble showed the faces of three celebrities who recently made anti-Semitic statements (Ice Cube, Nick Cannon, and DeSean Jackson) above a cartoon of a hook-nosed Jew wearing an evil grin and rubbing his hands together in glee. It is exactly the kind of image one would expect to find on a neo-Nazi website, as exactly the same image of Jews was promoted in the gutter press of Nazi Germany itself.

As a follower of the Nation of Islam, [Rodney] will doubtless deflect the charge of appropriating Nazi imagery by referring to the views of his master, Louis Farrakhan, on the Holocaust. According to Farrakhan, who pals around with Holocaust deniers among other conspiracy kooks, the Holocaust was just another Jewish swindle.

Similarly, on the website of the Nation of Islam’s Mosque No. 12 in Philadelphia, where Muhammad presides, numerous videos are available in which speakers matter-of-factly outline Farrakhan’s conceptualization of Hollywood’s hold on the American public as the “Synagogue of Satan.”

None of this is very subtle—and that is what makes the NAACP’s response so bitterly disappointing. . . . Whether the NAACP national leadership likes it or not, their point man in Philadelphia has embraced a view of the Jewish people that would sit happily with any and every white supremacist. In the meantime, Jewish organizations should freeze all contact with the NAACP until Rodney Muhammad is a part of its past.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”