Now that George Santos’s short, scandal-plagued political career has come to an end with his expulsion from the House of Representatives, Republicans in New York’s Third District must find someone to run in a special election to replace him. Seth Mandel profiles Mazi Melesa Pilip, the candidate for the job:

Pilip . . . was born in Ethiopia and brought to Israel as a child as part of the famed Operation Solomon airlifts. She is an Orthodox mother of seven who served as an IDF paratrooper and as vice-president of her Long Island synagogue, the former presumably a training run for the latter.

The war in Gaza will likely hover in the background of the February 13 election. . . . IDF paratroopers, meanwhile, have been leading the offensive in Khan Younis, so Pilip’s specific military experience will be of interest. . . . Pilip also entered politics in large part because of rising anti-Semitism, which her son had encountered in school. That subject is everywhere at the moment.

In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu torpedoed a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like when it brings up the IDF’s strategy of conducting raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—it offers them in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden administration. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.