In 2017, a Parisian named Kobili Traoré tortured and then murdered the Jewish retiree Sarah Halimi while shouting various Islamic and anti-Semitic declarations. The police botched their response; for months the authorities refrained from acknowledging the anti-Semitic nature of the crime; and two years later a court excused Traoré on the grounds that he was under the influence of marijuana when he carried out the attack. Adam Milstein examines this all-too-typical approach to the rise in anti-Jewish violence in France in light of the recent riots:

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks famously said, “Anti-Semitism isn’t a threat just for Jews; it’s a threat first and foremost to Europe and the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.” The recent social breakdown in France provides yet another example of an age-old historical truth: untreated anti-Semitism is both a catalyst and warning sign of a broader sickness in society.

Anti-Semitic violence has proliferated in French society, often going unpunished by the judicial system, unaddressed by the political establishment, and unabated by the public. Hate crimes, muggings, terrorism, and intimidation have targeted the small Jewish community. Seventy-four percent of French Jews were victims of anti-Semitic acts during their lifetimes. . . . Although Jews represent less than 1 percent of the French population, 40 percent of all violent hate crimes in France are anti-Semitic.

Due to “political correctness” France has not done nearly enough to combat anti-Semitism. And as in many Western nations, France’s anti-Semitism is not confined to one political camp. It comes mostly from a growing, hostile Muslim population, but also from the far left and the far right. The appeasement of vicious anti-Semitism in France, as Jews have been killed in high-profile terror attacks and hate crimes, has allowed the seeds of social unrest to fester.

For the past 36 hours, I’ve been reading and listening to analyses of the terms and implications of the recent hostage deal. More will appear in the coming days, and I’ll try to put the best of them in this newsletter. But today I want to share a comment made on Tuesday by the Palestinian analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. While he and I would probably disagree on numerous points about the current conflict, this analysis is spot on, and goes entirely against most arguments made by those who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and certainly those chanting for a cease-fire at all costs:

When a cease-fire in Gaza is announced, Hamas’s fascists will do everything they can to frame this as the ultimate victory; they will wear their military uniforms, emerge from their tunnels, stop hiding in schools and displacement centers, and very quickly reassert their control over the coastal enclave. They’ll even get a few Gazans to celebrate and dance for them.

This, I should note, is exactly what has happened. Alkhatib continues:

The reality is that the Islamist terrorism of Hamas, masquerading as “resistance,” has achieved nothing for the Palestinian people except for billions of dollars in wasted resources and tens of thousands of needless deaths, with Gaza in ruins after twenty years following the withdrawal of settlements in 2005. . . . Hamas’s propaganda machine, run by Qatari state media, Al Jazeera Arabic, will work overtime to help the terror group turn a catastrophic disaster into a victory akin to the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Hamas will also start punishing anyone who criticized or worked against it, and preparing for its next attack. Perhaps Palestinians would have been better off if, instead of granting them a temporary reprieve, the IDF kept fighting until Hamas was utterly defeated.