In a recent interview on CNN, Ilhan Omar was asked about her statement a few weeks ago equating Israel and the U.S. with Hamas and the Taliban—a statement that she had already walked back. She replied that she had no regrets about her original remarks, and then went on to say the Jewish Democratic congressmen who have criticized her anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel “haven’t been partners in justice.” The editors of the Washington Free Beacon write:

Omar, as the kids say, is owning her truth. Her tap dance follows a pattern that is by now well established, in which the [self-described] “justice-seeking” congresswoman makes nakedly prejudicial remarks, pretends to walk them back in the face of muted criticism from her colleagues, characterizes the criticism itself as Islamophobic, and proceeds to reoffend.

That pattern gives the lie to the apology Omar issued after arguing that American support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins, baby,” [Benjamins being slang for hundred-dollar bills]. Her offenses were born of ignorance rather than prejudice, she said, and thanked her colleagues for “educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.”

Omar could give a master class on anti-Semitism, and the pattern of her offenses makes clear she is using that knowledge to perpetuate it. That’s probably why a . . . report earlier this month indicated that “a number of Omar’s fellow Democrats believe Omar is an anti-Semite, even if they don’t say so publicly.” It is, of course, the only prejudice about which Democrats are tight-lipped and the only one tolerated in the party’s ranks.

Yesterday, the head of the Shin Bet—Israel’s internal security service—was in Washington meeting with officials from the State Department, CIA, and the White House itself. Among the topics no doubt discussed are rising tensions with Iran and the possibility that the latter, in order to defend its nuclear program, will instruct its network of proxies in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and even Iraq and Yemen to attack the Jewish state. Oved Lobel explores the history of this network, which, he argues, predates Iran’s Islamic Revolution—when Shiite radicals in Lebanon coordinated with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s movement in Iran:

An inextricably linked Iran-Syria-Palestinian axis has actually been in existence since the early 1970s, with Lebanon the geographical fulcrum of the relationship and Damascus serving as the primary operational headquarters. Lebanon, from the 1980s until 2005, was under the direct military control of Syria, which itself slowly transformed from an ally to a client of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The nexus among Damascus, Beirut, and the Palestinian territories should therefore always have been viewed as one front, both geographically and operationally. It’s clear that the multifront-war strategy was already in operation during the first intifada years, from 1987 to 1993.

[An] Iranian-organized conference in 1991, the first of many, . . . established the “Damascus 10”—an alliance of ten Palestinian factions that rejected any peace process with Israel. According to the former Hamas spokesperson and senior official Ibrahim Ghosheh, he spoke to then-Hizballah Secretary-General Abbas al-Musawi at the conference and coordinated Hizballah attacks from Lebanon in support of the intifada. Further important meetings between Hamas and the Iranian regime were held in 1999 and 2000, while the IRGC constantly met with its agents in Damascus to encourage coordinated attacks on Israel.

For some reason, Hizballah’s guerilla war against Israel in Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s was, and often still is, viewed as a separate phenomenon from the first intifada, when they were in fact two fronts in the same battle.

Israel opted for a perilous unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, which Hamas’s Ghosheh asserts was a “direct factor” in precipitating the start of the second intifada later that same year.