Last Friday—just a few days before the recent, closely contested, Virginia gubernatorial election—the Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin made a campaign stop in Charlottesville, the location of a notorious far-right rally in 2017 that resulted in the death of a counter-protestor. Photographs then circulated of some five people standing in front of Youngkin’s campaign bus holding tiki torches, similar to those paraded at the 2017 march and other white-supremacist gatherings. Reportedly the group also chanted “We’re all in for Glenn.” Later the same day, it became clear that these were political operatives sent in disguise to tar the Republican candidate by associating him with neo-Nazis. Liel Leibovitz explains why Jews should take the incident seriously:

With [nearly] 60 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes in America now directed against Jews, who make up roughly 2.4 percent of the overall adult population, it isn’t just a stupid trick when people dress up as neo-Nazis to score cheap partisan points; it’s a dangerous one, too, blurring the line between real hate and fake news. The next time some [self-styled] Aryan goes parading down the street, after all, how are we to know if he’s there to roast the nearest shul or merely score a photo-op on Twitter and embarrass some conservative politico?

But among those you’d expect to be most engaged, there was silence. The Anti-Defamation League, which took great care to remind you to please refrain from “cultural appropriation” or perpetuating “gender norms” when selecting a Halloween costume, had nothing to say about this far more troubling instance of appropriation, and did not return Tablet’s request for comment.

A self-respecting imperiled minority with healthy survival instincts and a solid sense of self [should have] demanded that the . . . clowns who orchestrated this gag be held accountable, and . . . used whatever real political levers it had to make sure the candidates it supports come out strongly against such perilous partisan hackery.

Information about a supposedly near-finalized hostage deal continued to trickle out yesterday. While it’s entirely possible that by the time you read this a deal will be much more certain, it is every bit as likely that it will have fallen through by then. More likely still, we will learn that there are indefinite and unspecified delays. Then there are the details: even in the best of scenarios, not all the hostages will be returned at once, and Israel will have to make painful concessions in exchange, including the release of hundreds of hardened terrorists and the withdrawal from key parts of the Gaza Strip.

Unusually—if entirely appropriately—the president-elect’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has participated in the talks alongside members of President Biden’s team. Philip Klein examines the incoming Trump administration’s role in the process:

President-elect Trump has repeatedly warned that there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not returned from Gaza by the time he takes office. While he has never laid out exactly what the specific consequences for Hamas would be, there are some ominous signs that Israel is being pressured into paying a tremendous price.

There is obviously more here than we know. It’s possible that with the pressure from the Trump team came reassurances that Israel would have more latitude to reenter Gaza as necessary to go after Hamas than it would have enjoyed under Biden. . . . That said, all appearances are that Israel has been forced into making more concessions because Trump was concerned that he’d be embarrassed if January 20 came around with no hostages released.

While Donald Trump’s threats are a welcome rhetorical shift, part of the problem may be their vagueness. After all, it’s unlikely the U.S. would use military force to unleash hell in Gaza, or could accomplish much in doing so that the IDF can’t. More useful would be direct threats against countries like Qatar and Turkey that host Hamas, and threats to the persons and bank accounts of the Hamas officials living in those counties. Witkoff instead praised the Qatari prime minister for “doing God’s work” in the negotiations.”