Elected North Carolina’s lieutenant governor last year, Mark Robinson is a political newcomer. (In North Carolina, candidates for lieutenant governor run independently of gubernatorial candidates.) Matthew Kassel notes some troubling remarks about Jews Robinson made before coming to office:

The lieutenant governor, . . . invoked a number of anti-Semitic tropes in the years leading up to his election. In strongly worded Facebook posts, he decried a “globalist” conspiracy to “destroy” then-President Donald Trump and took aim at Black Panther, the Marvel film whose titular protagonist, as Robinson put it, was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by [a] satanic Marxist.” He went on to allege, using a Yiddish slur, that the movie “was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets” [sic].

Last fall, Raleigh’s News & Observer unearthed an interview in which Robinson spoke with a fringe pastor, Sean Moon [the son of Reverend Sun Myung Moon], who claimed that the modern incarnation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse [are] China, the CIA, Islam, and the Rothschild family of “international bankers that rule every single national or federal-reserve-type style of central bank in every single country.”

Rather than objecting, . . . Robinson grunted along in agreement: “That’s exactly right.”

Such statements might be less worrisome if Robinson had made a greater effort to distance himself from them:

“When I made those [Facebook] posts as a private citizen, I was speaking directly to issues that I’m passionate about,” he said at the news conference in early February. “As a public servant, I have to put those opinions behind me and do what’s right for everyone in North Carolina,” he added. “I’m grown enough to do that.”

Tamir Hayman analyzes the latest reports about an offer by Hamas to release three female soldiers in exchange for 150 captured terrorists, of whom 90 have received life sentences; then, if that exchange happens successfully, a second stage of the deal will begin.

If this does happen, Israel will release all the serious prisoners who had been sentenced to life and who are associated with Hamas, which will leave Israel without any bargaining chips for the second stage. In practice, Israel will release everyone who is important to Hamas without getting back all the hostages. In this situation, it’s evident that Israel will approach the second stage of the negotiations in the most unfavorable way possible. Hamas will achieve all its demands in the first stage, except for a commitment from Israel to end the war completely.

How does this relate to the fighting in Rafah? Hayman explains:

In the absence of an agreement or compromise by Hamas, it is detrimental for Israel to continue the static situation we were in. It is positive that new energy has entered the campaign. . . . The [capture of the] border of the Gaza Strip and the Rafah crossing are extremely important achievements, while the ongoing dismantling of the battalions is of secondary importance.

That being said, Hayman is critical of the approach to negotiations taken so far:

Gradual hostage trades don’t work. We must adopt a different concept of a single deal in which Israel offers a complete cessation of the war in exchange for all the hostages.