At protests against vaccine mandates and lockdown policies, demonstrators have from time to time appeared wearing yellow stars, and on October 3 protestors in front of the Utah governor’s mansion unfurled a large flag displaying a swastika made out of syringes. Spencer Cox, Utah’s governor, and the Anti-Defamation League representative Seth Brysk comment:

Extremists have invoked new conspiracies by using old tropes to blame Jews for the pandemic or to accuse them of profiting from it. We have also watched with alarm as protesters have affixed a yellow Star of David to their clothing to protest public-health requirements. Jews in Nazi Germany were forced to wear yellow stars visibly on their clothing so they could be identified as Jews in the aftermath of the violent Kristallnacht pogrom on November 9, 1938. Jews who refused to comply were subject to being shot on the spot.

Using a swastika or yellow star as a cheap symbol of protest against the vaccine or mask requirements is odious. The genocide committed by the Nazis resulting in the destruction of two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of the global Jewish population is not a subject for glib comparisons or politicization. Denying, minimizing, or trivializing of the Holocaust is at worst an expression of anti-Semitism and at best a display of the ignorance of the protester invoking the comparison.

Encouraging vaccinations does not compare to schemes hastening the mass murder of millions of innocent people. . . . Policies designed to save lives do not equate with policies devised to mete out death.

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.