Last week, the far-right French pundit and provocateur Éric Zemmour announced his candidacy for the country’s 2022 presidential elections. His platform rests on social conservatism, hostility to immigrants, national pride, and nostalgia for an idealized past. Although Zemmour is himself Jewish, Ben Cohen offers this caution:

When you examine the depressing chronology of anti-Semitic attacks in France over the last twenty years, you note pretty quickly that many of the offenders were Muslims who were influenced in some way by radical Islam. . . . Some Jews, inside and outside France, believe that Zemmour will deal with the problem of domestic Muslim radicalism and that alone would justify voting for him. They will then point to his Jewish origins and his habit of occasionally attending synagogue for additional support.

Still, to reach that conclusion requires you to ignore other pertinent considerations, such as Zemmour’s nauseating Holocaust revisionism, which falsely depicts the Vichy regime as the savior of French Jews at the expense of the foreign-born, and his crackpot belief that Alfred Dreyfus—falsely convicted of espionage amid a surge of violent anti-Semitism in France at the end of the 19th century—might have been guilty after all.

You would have to forget that Zemmour described the victims of the 2012 Islamist massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse as not truly French because they were laid to rest in the state of Israel. And you would have to overlook the fact that Zemmour has no experience of government, a past conviction for racist utterances, and a boorish side to his personality.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.