As Jews run the entire human gamut in terms of skin-color and physical appearance, the blanket statement that “Jews are white” should be self-evidently absurd. And yet, writes Liel Leibovitz, such a claim can be heard with some regularity in progressive circles. Leibovitz attempts to explain why this should be so:

It’s not too difficult to understand what moves the non-Jews shouting this rot. The creative genius of Jew-hatred has always been its ability to imagine the Jew as the embodiment of whatever it is that polite society finds repulsive. That’s why Jews were condemned as both nefarious bankers controlling all the world’s money and shifty revolutionaries imperiling all capital; as both sexless creeps and oversexed lechers coming for the women and the girls; as both pathetically powerless and occultly powerful. Like something out of the Harry Potter [novels], the Jew takes the shape of whatever the Jew-hater fears and loathes most. And if you decide that there’s such a thing as “whites” and that they are uniquely responsible for all evils perpetrated on the innocent and downtrodden, well, the Jews must be not only of them but nestled comfortably at the top of the white-supremacist pyramid.

Things get a bit hairier when it comes to Jews themselves repeating the “Jews are white” canard, often in the form of a mea culpa. Why do this? Why would any Jew ignore so much evidence and common sense and repeat it?

[One reason]: those Jews who accept the mantle of whiteness . . . conclude quietly that because they themselves have experienced no animosity in Silver Springs or Westchester or Highland Park, that animosity [to Jews] has never really existed. To them, human history began in 1993, between the swearing-in of Clinton and Bjork’s first LP.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.